directed. To this scheme, in his confidential correspondence, he
gave the expressive name of Thorough. His object was to do in
England all, and more than all, that Richelieu was doing in
France; to make Charles a monarch as absolute as any on the
Continent; to put the estates and the personal liberty of the
whole people at the disposal of the crown; to deprive the courts
of law of all independent authority, even in ordinary questions
of civil right between man and man; and to punish with merciless
rigour all who murmured at the acts of the government, or who
applied, even in the most decent and regular manner, to any
tribunal for relief against those acts.12

This was his end; and he distinctly saw in what manner alone this
end could be attained. There was, in truth, about all his notions
a clearness, a coherence, a precision, which, if he had not been
pursuing an object pernicious to his country and to his kind,
would have justly entitled him to high admiration. He saw that
there was one instrument, and only one, by which his vast and
daring projects could be carried into execution. That instrument
was a standing army. To the forming of such an army, therefore,
he directed all the energy of his strong mind. In Ireland, where
he was viceroy, he actually succeeded in establishing a military
despotism, not only over the aboriginal population, but also over
the English colonists, and was able to boast that, in that
island, the King was as absolute as any prince in the whole world
could be.13

The ecclesiastical administration was, in the meantime,
principally directed by William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Of all the prelates of the Anglican Church, Laud had departed