August 24 (Canterbury) — A clumsily-hidden cache of arms and gunpowder were seized by forces loyal to Parliament at the Deanery of Canterbury Cathedral, seat of William Laud, the prelate whose devotion to formality in religion is matched only by his dedication to the persecution of those most zealous for Christian liberty, the Puritans.

Soldiers of the Trained-Band of Kent discovered 200 muskets, 100 pikes, and six barrels of powder behind a false wall in a sub-cellar connected to the Deanery's pantry. Kitchen servants, and the Dean of the Cathedral, after initial protestations of ignorance, admitted the arms had been stored there two years ago to defend the Cathedral against those fanatical enemies of England and religion, the burghers of Amsterdam.

“We found their arguments unconvincing,” said Captain Ralph Thomas, of the Kent Trained-Band. “The Dutch? We laughed, to be perfectly honest.”

Laud, currently imprisoned in the Tower on charges of treason, did not respond to requests for details of these alleged Dutch designs against England.

The raid on the seat of Laud comes as his master, King Charles, calls upon those loyal to his policies to join him in the North. It’s the preference of Parliament they reject the Royal summons. Four days ago townsmen convinced Sir John Strange of Colchester, preparing to ride to Nottingham with eight wagons of supplies and 120 horses, that the interest of England was better served by he staying home. The munitions and mounts were placed at the disposal of the Earl of Essex, now organizing the army of Parliament. Similar arguments were advanced to Lady Rivers, after a search of St Osyth Priory in Essex, her principal residence, discovered some £40,000 in plate readied for delivery to the camp of Charles.

Lady Rivers is a Catholic. Charles has made it clear recusants are welcome in his camp to crush those he describes as “Brownists, Anabaptists, and Atheists, such as who desire to destroy both Church and State.

William Laud, 69, was born in Reading and educated at St John’s College, Oxford. After progressing through various prelatical ranks, including Dean of Gloucester, prebend of Westminster, and the Bishopric of St David’s, he was named Bishop of London in 1628. With the active assistance of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham and very special friend to King James, with responsibility for obliging that monarch in ways that can’t be printed in Anglia Rediviva, Laud was named Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633.

Laud is a most energetic executor of the policy of King Charles toward ritualism and the uniformity of worship in the Church. These include bowing at the name of Jesus; naming the communion table an “altar” and sequestering it behind rails; requiring believers to approaching said altar in a groveling manner and kneel at said rail to receive a Lord’s Supper served on ostentatious silver plate; vestments such as surplices for prelates; and the rote recital of memorized prayers in place of active preaching of the Word. These innovations, combined, create a gulf between the believer and Christ, which can only be bridged by a member of the prelatical caste, to whom the believer must needs submit, surrendering his conscience and reason. For their part, the prelates submit to the King, he being the representative of Christ on earth. The policy of Charles and Laud is in all respects identical to the superstitions of Rome.

The soldiers of Kent stripped the Cathedral of its more offensive Papistical idols, including altar rails, stained glass windows bearing the image of a woman said to be the mother of God, and the great organ and a smaller one in a side-chapel. The altar table was relocated to the center of the choir. The muskets were tested on a tapestry embroidered with a male figure claimed to be Christ, and pronounced ready for service in the defense of the laws and religion of England.

“We rattled old Beckett’s glassy bones,” Captain Thomas said.

Laud is perhaps best-known for his persecutions of the Puritans, particularly the savage punishments meted to William Prynne, Henry Burton, and John Bastwick for their attacks upon the prelatical system.

Prynne, author of Histrio-Mastix, in his News from Ipswich urged the “dunghill- bred” prelates be hung for their suppression of truth in the pulpit and in the press. Burton, author of The Baiting of the Popes Bill and Babel No Bethel, described in a sermon preached on Guy Fawkes Day in 1636 Laud’s war on Puritan ministers: the archbishop and and his prelates, all “barking Beagles,” “creep into Courts and by their hypocrisy, false tales, and detractions of sincere teachers and by a kind of collusion with Courtiers” succeed in labeling grave and faithful preachers of the Gospel as “false Prophets, ravening wolves, theeves and robbers of souls.

Bastwick, for his part, in Letany described Laud’s pompous travels through London to the court of Charles: the Archbishop’s retainers run before him, shouting “roome, roome, my Lords grace is coming, thrusting aside little children a-playing there, flinging and tossing the poore costermongers and source-wives fruit and puddings, baskets and all into the Thames.”

“I can scarce keep from laughter to see the drollery of it,” Bastwick wrote. “The noyse of the Gentlemen crying roome, and cursing all that meet them and but seem to hinder their passage, on the other side seeing the wayling, mourning and Lamentation the women make crying out, save my puddings, save my codlings for the Lord’s sake, the poor tripes and apples in the mean tyme swimming like frogs about the Thames making way for his Grace to go home again.”

Laud, a little man about whom the best that can be said is that he’s a profound lover of cats and keeps an enormous turtle in the garden of his palace in Canterbury, was not amused. Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick were tried for publishing scandalous and libelous books against the state and the church. They were found guilty in 1637. They were each fined £5000 and pilloried at Westminster, after which their ears were cropped in the cruelest manner.

The executioner, an eyewitness said, cut Prynne’s “ears so close, that he cut off a piece of his Cheeke, and cut him deep into the neck, hear his jugular vein, to the great danger of his life. And then hacking the other ear off, he left it hanging, and went down the Scaffold, until the Surgeon called him up againe, and made him cut it off quite.”

Prynne never moved during his this torture, nor made a sound; nor when the executioner, with irons heated red-hot, branded each cheek with “S.L.” While to Laud, this means for “Seditious Libeler”, to Prynne and to England, it means nothing less than “Stigmata Laudis.”

Anyone interested in the purchase of attractive, if slightly damaged organ, or shards of stained glass that can be assembled by an artisan of skill into an agreeable scene, such as a landscape or a bowl of fruit, is advised to leave contact Mr. S.H. by leaving word at the Ivinghoe Plowman.