Among the eleven I have placed Archbishop Laud. He lived before the invention of printing, and consequently is far less known than he ought to be, and I believe that English Christianity owes him a great debt which has never been fully paid. At the head of the eleven I have placed John Wycliffe, the morning-star of the Reformation. Under the biographical head the reader will find in this volume some account of the lives and opinions of eleven remarkable men. We live in an age when they cannot be known too well, and ought to be continually kept before the public eye. In the second, tenth, and last papers in this volume I have tried to supply some condensed information about them. These three events ought to be familiar to every Englishman. The third event is the daring attack on English Protestantism, which was made by James the Second, when he prosecuted the Seven Bishops, and, under the specious name of toleration, endeavoured to re-establish the power of the Bishop of Rome in the land. The second event is the blind and abortive effort of Archbishop Laud to unprotestantize the Church of England, which resulted in his own execution, and well-nigh ruined the Church and the monarchy for ever. The first of these events is the ferocious attempt which was made by Queen Mary, of unhappy memory, to destroy the work of religious Reformation which was begun in the reign of Edward the Sixth.
Under the historical head the reader will find some account of the three most remarkable events in the history of the Reformed Church of England. It is partly historical, and partly biographical. The volume (355 pages) now in the reader’s hands requires a few words of prefatory explanation.
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