17. Hampton Court Conference

" This conference was held at Hampton Court, on the 14th, 16th, and 18th days of January, 1604. On the part of the Puritans, the king summoned four of their divines, selected by himself. To match them, he called nine bishops, as many cathedral clergymen, and four divinity professors from Cambridge and Oxford. It soon became manifest, that the only object of the meeting was to give the king an opportunity to declare his bitter hostility to the Puritans, who were brow-beaten, insulted, and trampled upon by the tyrant and his ghostly minions. The Puritans were confuted, "as bitter bishop Bale" said on another occasion, "with seven solid arguments, thus reckoned up, Authority, Violence, Craft, Fraud, Intimidation, Terror and Tyranny."* The monarch roundly declared that he would "harry out of the land" all who would not conform their consciences to his dictation.

One good result, however, came from this "mock conference," as it was usually called by the oppressed Puritans. Among other of their demands, Dr. Reynolds, who was the chief speaker in their behalf, requested that there might be a new translation of the Bible, without note or comment. In an account of the proceedings, given by Patrick Galloway, one of the King's Scotch chaplains, who was present, and whose account was corrected by the king's own hand, it is set forth as the second of the articles noted

* In the nervous Latin of the crabbed ex-bishop of Ossory, the arguments run thus; Authoritate, Vi, Arte, Fraude, Metu, Terrore et Tyrannide.

among things to be reformed, and presented by Reynolds,—" That a translation be made of the whole Bible, as consonant as can be to the original Hebrew and Greek; and this to be set out and printed, without any marginal notes, and only to be used in all churches of England, in time of divine service."