High-handed however as the Archbishop's course had been, he felt dimly the approaching wreck. At the close of 1639 he notes in his diary a great storm that broke even the boats of the Lambeth watermen to pieces as they lay before his gate. A curious instance of his gloomy prognostications still exists among the relics in the library--a quarry of greenish glass, once belonging to the west window of the gallery of Croydon, and removed when that palace was rebuilt. On the quarry Laud has written with his signet-ring in his own clear, beautiful hand, "Memorand. Ecclesiæ de Micham, Cheme, et Stone cum aliis fulgure combustæ sunt. Januar. 14, 1638-9. Omen avertat Deus."
The omen was far from averted. The Scottish war, the Bellum Episcopale, the Bishops' War, as men called it, was soon going against the King. Laud had been the chief mover in the war, and it was against Laud that the popular indignation at once directed itself. On the 9th of May he notes in his diary: "A paper posted upon the Royal Exchange, animating 'prentices to sack my house on the Monday following." On that Monday night the mob came surging up to the gates. "At midnight my house was beset with 500 of these rascal routers," notes the indomitable little prelate. He had received notice in time to secure the house, and after two hours of useless shouting the mob rolled away. Laud had his revenge; a drummer who had joined in the attack was racked mercilessly, and then hanged and quartered. But retaliation like this was useless. The gathering of the Long Parliament sounded the knell of the sturdy little minister who had ridden England so hard. At the close of October he is in his upper study--it is one of the pleasant scholarly touches that redeem so much in his life--"to see some manuscripts which I was sending to Oxford. In that study hung my picture taken by the life" (the picture is at Lambeth still), "and coming in I found it fallen down upon the face and lying on the floor, the string being broken by which it was hanged against the wall. I am almost everyday threatened with my ruin in parliament. God grant this be no omen." On the 18th of December he was in charge of the gentleman-usher of the Lords on impeachment of high treason. In his company the Archbishop returned for a few hours to see his house for the last time, "for a book or two to read in, and such papers as pertained to my defence against the Scots;" really to burn, says Prynne, most of his privy papers. There is the first little break in the boldness with which till now he has faced the popular ill-will, the first little break too of tenderness, as though the shadow of what was to come were softening him, in the words that tell us his last farewell: "I stayed at Lambeth till the evening, to avoid the gaze of the people. I went to evening prayer in my chapel. The Psalms of the day (Ps. 93 and 94) and cap. 50 of Isaiah gave me great comfort. God make me worthy of it, and fit to receive it. As I went to my barge hundreds of my poor neighbours stood there and prayed for my safety and return to my house. For which I bless God and them."