ECCLESIATICAL
HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

VOLUME I.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

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Age of Christendom: Before the Reformation.

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ECCLESIATICAL
HISTORY OF ENGLAND,

FROM THE OPENING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT TO THE DEATH OF OLIVER CROMWELL.

BY

JOHN STOUGHTON.

VOLUME I.

THE CHURCH OF THE CIVIL WARS.

London:

JACKSON, WALFORD, AND HODDER,

27, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.

MDCCCLXVII.

UNWIN BROTHERS, GRESHAM STEAM PRESS, BUCKLERSBURY, LONDON, E.C.

ADVERTISEMENT.

English literature includes valuable histories of the Church, some of them prominently exhibiting whatever relates to Anglicanism, others almost exclusively describing the developments of Puritanism. In such works the ecclesiastical events of the Civil Wars and of the Commonwealth may be found described with considerable, but not with sufficient fullness. Many persons wish to know more respecting those times. The book now published is designed to meet this wish, by telling the ecclesiastical part of England's story at that eventful period with less of incompleteness. In doing so, the object is not to give prominence to any single ecclesiastical party to the disadvantage of others in that respect; but to point out the circumstances of all, and the spirit of each, to trace their mutual relations, and to indicate the influence which they exerted upon one another. The study of original authorities, researches amongst State Papers and other MS. collections, together with enquiries pursued by the aid of historical treasures of all kinds in the British Museum, have brought to light many fresh illustrations of the period under review; and the author, whilst endeavouring to make use of the results so obtained, has reached the conclusion, that the only method by which a satisfactory account of a single religious denomination can be given, is by the exhibition of it in connexion with all the rest.

His purpose has been carefully to ascertain, and honestly to state the truth, in reference both to the nature of the events, and the characters of the persons introduced in the following chapters. He is by no means indifferent to certain principles, political, ecclesiastical, and theological, which were involved in the great controversy of the seventeenth century. As will appear in this narrative, his faith in these is strong and unwavering: nor does he fail to recognize the bearing of certain things which he has recorded, upon certain other things occurring at this very moment; but he cannot see why private opinions and public events should stand in the way of an impartial statement of historical facts, or a righteous judgment of historical characters. For the principles which a man holds remain exactly the same, whatever may have been the past incidents or the departed individuals connected with their history. Happily, a change is coming over historical literature in this respect; persons and opinions are now being distinguished from each other, and it is seen, that advocates on the one side of a great question were not all perfectly good, and that those on the other side were not all thoroughly bad. The writer has sought to do honour to Christian faith, devotion, constancy, and love wherever he has found them, and never in any case to varnish over the hateful opposite of these noble qualities. And he will esteem it a great reward to be, by the blessing of God, in any measure the means of promoting what is most dear to his heart, the cause of truth and charity amongst Christian Englishmen.

The plan of the work, and the various aspects under which the public affairs, the principal actors, and the private religious life of England from the opening of the Long Parliament to the death of Oliver Cromwell are exhibited, may be discovered at a glance, by any one who will take the trouble to run over the table of contents.

Many defects which have escaped the Author will doubtless be noticed by his critics, and in this respect he ventures to throw himself upon their candour and generosity. One omission, however, may be explained. The theological literature of the period needs to be studied at large, for the purpose of making apparent the grounds upon which different bodies of Christians based their respective beliefs. Most ecclesiastical historians fail to exhibit those grounds. The Author is fully aware of this deficiency in his own case; but it is his hope, should Divine Providence spare his life, to be enabled, in some humble degree, to supply that deficiency at a future time.

He begs gratefully to acknowledge the valuable assistance rendered him by the Very Reverend the Dean of Westminster, in what relates to Westminster Abbey and the Universities—by Mr. John Bruce, F.S.A., for information and advice on several curious points—and by Mr. Clarence Hopper, who has collated with the originals, almost all the extracts from State Papers. Nor can he omit thankfully to notice the special facilities afforded him for consulting the large collection of Commonwealth pamphlets in the British Museum, and the polite attention and help which he has received from gentlemen connected with Sion College and with Dr. Williams' Library. He has also had other helpers in his own house—helpers very dear to him, whom he must not name.

CONTENTS.

CORRIGENDA.

INTRODUCTION.

On the third of November, 1640, at nine o'clock in the forenoon, the Earl Marshal of England came into the outer room of the Commons' House, accompanied by the Treasurer of the King's Household and other officers. When the Chancery crier had made proclamation, and the clerk of the Crown had called over the names of the returned knights, citizens, burgesses, and barons of the Cinque-ports; and after his Lordship had sworn some threescore members, and made arrangements for swearing the rest, he departed to wait upon his Majesty, who, about one o'clock, came in his barge from Whitehall to Westminster stairs. There the lords met him. Thence on foot marched a procession consisting of servants and officers of state.[1]

The King, so accompanied, passed through Westminster Hall and the Court of Requests to the Abbey, where a sermon was preached by the Bishop of Bristol. The King's Majesty, arrayed in his royal robes, ascended the throne. The Prince of Wales sat on his left hand: on the right stood the Lord High Chamberlain of England and the Earl of Essex, bearing the cap; and the Earl Marshal and the Earl of Bath bearing the sword of state occupied the left. Clarence, in the absence of Garter, and also the gentleman of the black rod, were near the Earl Marshal. The Earl of Cork, Viscount Willmott, the Lord Newburgh, and the Master of the Rolls, called by writ as assistants, "sat on the inside of the wool-sacks;" so did the Lord Chief Justices, Lord Chief Baron, and the rest of the judges under them. "On the outside of the woolsack" were four Masters of Chancery, the King's two ancient Serjeants, the Attorney-General, and three of the puisne Serjeants. To the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, apparelled in their robes, and seated in their places, and to the House of Commons, assembled below the bar, his Majesty delivered an address, declaring the cause of summoning this parliament. Then the Lord Keeper Finch made a speech; after which, the Commons having chosen William Lenthall, of Lincoln's Inn, as Speaker, that gentleman, being approved with the usual ceremonies, added another oration, in which he observed: "I see before my eyes the Majesty of Great Britain, the glory of times, the history of honour, Charles I. in his forefront, placed by descent of ancient kings, settled by a long succession, and continued to us by a pious and peaceful government. On the one side, the monument of glory, the progeny of valiant and puissant princes, the Queen's most excellent Majesty. On the other side, the hopes of posterity, the joy of this nation, those olive-branches set around your tables, emblems of peace to posterity. Here shine those lights and lamps placed in a mount, which attend your Sacred Majesty as supreme head, and borrow from you the splendour of their government."

Thus opened the Long Parliament; knowing what followed, we feel a strange interest in these quaint items extracted from State Papers and Parliamentary Journals.[2] With such ceremonies Charles I. once more sat down on the throne of his fathers; and once more, too, clothed in lawn and rochet, the prelates occupied their old benches. Great was their power: Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, might be said to discharge the functions of Prime Minister; Juxon, Bishop of London, clasped the Lord Treasurer's staff; and Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, had some years before held the great seal. They and their reverend brethren sat as co-equals with scarlet-robed and coroneted barons. They represented the stately and ancient Church of England, in closest union with the senate and the throne; suggesting, as to the relations of ecclesiastical and civil power, questions, which are as ancient as mediæval times, and as modern as our own. Thus too again the Commons' Speaker, in florid diction congratulated the monarch on the prosperity of his realms. That day can never be forgotten. Outwardly the Church, like the State, looked strong; but an earthquake was at hand, destined to overturn the foundations of both. To understand the crisis in reference to the Church we must look a little further back.[3]

The Anglo-Catholic and Puritan parties stood face to face in the National Church, at the opening of the Long Parliament. They had existed from the time of the Reformation.

Anglo-Catholics, while upholding with reverence the three creeds of Christendom, did not maintain any particular doctrines as distinctive of their system. Neither did they, though their peculiarities were chiefly ecclesiastical, propound any special theory of Church and State. Under Queen Elizabeth they maintained theological opinions different from those which they upheld under Charles the First. At the former period they were Calvinists. Before the civil wars they became Arminians. Preaching upon the controversy was forbidden; and Bishop Morley, on being asked "what Arminians held," wittily replied, "the best bishoprics and deaneries in England!"[4]

Whereas in reference to doctrine there was change, in reference to ecclesiastical principles there was progress. The constitution of the Protestant Church of England being based on Acts of Parliament, and the supremacy of the Crown in all matters "touching spiritual or ecclesiastical jurisdiction"[5] being recognized as a fundamental principle of the Reformation—the dependence of the Church upon the civil power appeared as soon as the great ecclesiastical change took place. The Act of Uniformity in the first year of Elizabeth was passed by the lay Lords alone—all the Bishops who were present dissented—and the validity of the consecration of the first Protestant Archbishop had to be ratified by a parliamentary statute.[6]

Of the successive High Commissions—which formed the great spiritual tribunals of the land—the majority of the Commissioners were laymen.[7] The Anglo-Catholics of Elizabeth's reign were obliged to accept this state of things, and sometimes to bow before their royal mistress, as if she had been possessed of an absolute super-episcopal rule.[8] Yet gradually they shewed a jealousy of parliamentary interference, and rose in the assertion of their authority and the exercise of their power. Whitgift availed himself of the lofty spiritual prerogatives of the Crown to check the Commons in what he deemed their intrusive meddlings with spiritual affairs.[9] He strove to lift the Parliamentary yoke from the neck of the Church, and to place all ecclesiastical matters in the hands of Convocation. He preferred canons to statutes, and asked for the royal confirmation of the first rather than the second. But, after Whitgift and under the Stuarts, Church power made considerable advances. Anglo-Catholics, under the first James and the first Charles, took higher ground than did their fathers. Their dislike of Parliaments went beyond what Whitgift had dared to manifest. The doctrine of the divine origin of Episcopacy, which was propounded by Bancroft, when Whitgift's chaplain, probably at Whitgift's suggestion, certainly with his concurrence—though it startled some English Protestants as a novelty, and roused the anger of a Puritan privy councillor jealous of the Queen's supremacy,[10] became a current belief of the Stuart Anglicans. At the same time the power of Convocation was widely stretched, as will be seen in the business of the famous canons of 1640. The encroachments of the High Commission upon the jurisdiction of the Civil Courts, and the liberties of the subject, produced complaints in everybody's mouth, and served, as much as anything, to bring on the great catastrophe. What is now indicated in a few words will receive proof and illustration hereafter.

Looking at changes in the doctrine and at progress in the policy of Anglo-Catholics, perhaps, on the whole, the persons intended by that denomination may be best described as distinguished by certain principles or sentiments, rather than by any organic scheme of dogma or polity. They formed a school of thought which bowed to the decisions of the past, craved Catholic unity, elevated the episcopal office, exalted Church authority, suspected individual opinion, gave prominence to social Christianity, delighted in ceremonial worship and symbolism, attached great importance to order and uniformity, and sought the mysterious operations of divine grace through material channels. The Anglo-Catholic spirit in most respects, as might be expected, appears more shadowy and in less power amongst the Bishops connected with the Reformation than amongst those who succeeded.[11] Parker, Whitgift, and Laud represent stages of advancement in this point of view. But from the very foundation of the Reformed Church of England this spirit, in a measure, manifested itself, and in no respect, perhaps, so much as in reverence for early patristic teaching. No one can be surprised that such tendencies remained with many who withdrew allegiance from the Pope, and renounced the grosser corruptions of Rome. It is a notable fact that out of 9,400 ecclesiastics, at the accession of Elizabeth, less than 200 left their livings.[12] Many evaded the law under shelter of powerful patrons, or escaped through the remoteness and poverty of their cures. And it cannot be believed that, of those who positively conformed, all or nearly all became real Protestants.

The divines of this school, drawn towards the Fathers by their venerable antiquity, their sacramental tone and their reverence for the episcopate, did not miss in them doctrinal tendencies accordant with their own. Even the Calvinistic Anglican of an earlier period could turn to the pages of Augustine and of other Latin Fathers, and find there nourishment for belief in Predestination, and Salvation by faith. But the Arminian still more easily found his own ideas of Christianity in Chrysostom, Clement of Alexandria, and other Eastern oracles. The Greek Fathers were favourites with the Anglican party of the seventeenth century. Whether the study of that branch of literature was the cause or the effect of the Arminian tendencies of the day—whether a taste for the learning and rhetoric of the great writers of Byzantium and Alexandria paved the way for the adoption of their creed, or sympathies with that creed led to the opening of their long neglected folios, may admit of question. Certainly the formation of theological beliefs is always a subtle process, and is subject to so many influences that, in the absence of conclusive evidence, it is hazardous confidently to pronounce a judgment.

The fairest side of Stuart-Anglicanism presents itself in the writings of Dr. Donne, and Bishop Andrewes. In the first of these great preachers there is a strong "patristic leaven,"—a lofty enforcement of church claims, a deep reverence for virginity, and an inculcation of the doctrine of the Real presence—such as we notice in the writings of the Fathers before the schoolmen had crystallized the feeling of an earlier age into the hard dogma of Transubstantiation. But there are also in some of his quaint and beautiful sermons statements of Christian truth, resembling the theology of Augustine; and at the same time, from the very bent of his genius, he was led to illustrate practical duty in many edifying ways. As to Bishop Andrewes, his "Greek Devotions" present him as a man of great spirituality; and we are not surprised to learn that he spent five hours every day in prayer and meditation. The formality of method in his celebrated manual, the quaintness of his diction, and his artificial but ingenious arrangement of petition and praise are offensive to modern taste; and, it must be allowed, his catholic animus is betrayed every now and then, so as to shock Protestant sensibilities; yet there are Protestants who still use these Devotions, and find in them helps to communion with God, aids to self-examination, and impulses to a holy life. On turning to his sermons, we discover expressed in his sententious eloquence (which has been rather too much condemned for pedantry and alliteration) doctrinal statements respecting the Atonement and Justification by Faith, quite in harmony with evangelical opinions. Though not a Calvinist, he was free from Pelagian tincture. Andrewes, Donne and others, however, are not—any more than the Fathers—to be judged by extracts. A few passages do not accurately convey their pervading sentiments. Orthodox and evangelical in occasional statements of doctrine, still they are thoroughly sacramentarian and priestly in spirit. And, no doubt, their works, especially those of Andrewes, contributed in a great degree to foster that kind of religion which so much distressed, alarmed, and irritated the Puritans at the opening of the Civil War.

The admirable George Herbert, too, had strong Anglo-Catholic sympathies, on their poetical and devotional side. His hymns and prayers are in harmony with his holy quiet life, and may be compared to a strain of music such as he drew from his lute or viol, or to a deep-toned cathedral antiphony, in response to notes struck by an angel choir.

The type of character formed under such culture partook largely of a mediæval spirit. The saints of the Church were cherished models. The festivals of the Church were seasons for joy, its fasts for sorrow. The liturgy of the Church stereotyped the expressions of devotion, almost as much in its private as in its public exercise. The ministers of the Church were regarded more as priests than teachers, and their spiritual counsel and consolations were sought with a feeling, not foreign to that in which Romanists approach the confessional. The sacraments of the Church were received with awe, if not with trembling, as the mystic vehicles of salvation; and the whole History of the Church, its persecution and prosperity, its endurance and achievements, its conflicts and victories, were connected in the minds of such persons with the ancient edifices in which they worshipped. The cathedral and even many village choirs told them of "the glorious company of the Apostles," "the goodly fellowship of the prophets," and "the noble army of martyrs," and "the Holy Church throughout all the world." They loved to see those holy ones carved in stone and emblazoned in coloured glass. A dim religious light was in harmony with their grave and subdued temper. The lofty Gothic roof, the long-drawn aisle, the fretted vault, and the pavement solemnly echoing every footfall, had in their eyes a mysterious charm. The external, the visible, and the symbolic, more exalted their souls than anything abstract, argumentative, and doctrinal: yet, though their understanding and reason had little exercise, it must not be forgotten, that, through imagination and sensibility awakened by material objects, these worshippers might rise into the regions of the sublime and infinite, the eternal and divine.

Such religion existed in the reign of Charles I. amongst the dignitaries of the Church. Occupying prebendal houses in a Cathedral close, they found nourishment for their devotion in "the service of song," as they occupied the dark oak stalls of the Minster choir. It was also cherished in the Universities. Heads of houses, professors, and fellows carried much of the Anglican feeling with them, as they crossed the green quadrangle, to morning and evening prayer. Town rectors and rural incumbents would participate in the same influence. Devout women, in oriel-windowed closets, also would kneel down, under its inspiration, to repeat passages in the Prayer book, or in Bishop Andrewes' devotions. And some English noblemen, free from courtly vice, would embody the nobler principles of the system. Yet, probably, the larger number of religious people in England were of a different class.

The following extract from a letter, belonging to the early part of the year 1641, giving an account of the death of the Lady Barbara Viscountess Fielding, affords an idea of Anglican piety in the last hour of life, more vivid than any general description:—

"About twelve of the clock this Thursday, the day of her departure, Dr. More being gone, I went to her, and by degrees told her of the danger she was in, upon which she seemed as it were to recollect herself, and desired me to deal plainly with her, when I told her Dr. More's judgment of her, for which she gave me most hearty thanks, saying this was a favour above all I had ever done her, &c.; and when she had, in a most comfortable manner, given me hearty thanks, she desired me to spend the time she had to live here, with her in praises and prayers to Almighty God for her, desiring me not to leave her, but to pray for her, when she could not, and was not able to pray for herself, and not to forsake her until I had commended her soul to God her Creator. After which, some time being spent in praising God for her creation, redemption, preservation hitherto, &c., we went to prayers, using in the first place the form appointed by our Church (a form she most highly admired), and then we enlarged ourselves, when she added thirty or forty holy ejaculations;—then I read unto her divers of David's Psalms, after which we went to prayers again; then she desired the company to go out of the room, when she made a relation of some particulars of her life to me (being then of perfect judgment), desiring the absolution our Church had appointed, before which nurses and others were called in, and all kneeling by her, she asked pardon of all she had offended there, and desired me to do the like for her to those that were not there; and when I had pronounced the absolution, she gave an account of her faith, and then after some ejaculations she praised Almighty God that He had given her a sight of her sins, giving Him most humble thanks that He had given her time to repent, and to receive the Church's absolution; and then she prayed in a very audible voice, that God would be pleased to be merciful to this our distressed Church of England for Jesus Christ his sake. After this she only spoke to my Lord, having spoken to her father, Sir J. Lambe, two or three hours before, and then at last of all, she only said, 'Lord Jesus, receive my soul;' but this was so weakly, that all heard it not, nor did I plainly, but in some sort guessed by what I heard of it."[13]

But the Anglo-Catholicism of the Stuart age presented other aspects. In a multitude of cases, ritual worship degenerated into mere ceremonialism. An ignorant peasantry, who could neither read nor write, and who were destitute of all that intellectual stimulus which, in a thousand ways, now touches the most illiterate, would derive little benefit from reading liturgical forms, unaccompanied by instructive preaching—against which, in the Puritan form, the abettors of the system were much prejudiced. Though the prayers and offices of the Church of England be incomparably beautiful, experience is sufficient to show that, familiar with their repetition, the thoughtless and demoralized, being quite out of sympathy with their spirit, fail to discern their excellence. And, when it is remembered, that the Book of Sports, instituted by King James, was the rule and the reward for Sabbath observance; that after service in the parish church (not otherwise), the rustics were encouraged to play old English games on the village green, to dance around the May-pole, or to shoot at butts; we ask what could be the result, but religious formalism scarcely distinguishable from the lowest superstition? Should it be pleaded, that a pious and exemplary clergyman would impart life to what might otherwise have been dead forms, and restrain what otherwise would have been riotous excess; it may be replied, that a very considerable number of the holders of livings were not persons of that description; they sank to the level of their parishioners, and had no power to lift their parishioners to a level higher than their own.

The sympathies of the Church were with the people in their amusements; a circumstance which contributed to the strong popular reaction in favour of the Church, when Charles II. was restored. In the reign of Charles I. the wakes, or feasts, intended to celebrate the dedication of churches had degenerated into intemperate and noisy gatherings, and were, on that account, brought by the Magistrates under the notice of the Judges. But the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Bath and Wells, backed by the King, came to the rescue. The complaints were attributed to Puritan "humourists." Alleged disorders were denied. The better sort of clergy in the diocese of Bath and Wells,—seventy-two in number, likened to the Septuagint interpreters, "who agreed so soon in the translation of the Old Testament,"—came together, and declared that these wakes were fit to be continued for a memorial of the dedication of churches, for the civilizing of the people, for lawful recreation, for composing differences, for increase of love and amity, for the relief of the poor, and for many other reasons.[14]

The charge has been brought against the high Churchmen of that day, that they were papistically inclined. If by this term be meant any disposition to uphold the Papacy, and to acknowledge the authority of the Bishop of Rome over other Churches, even though modified by a charter of liberties like the Gallican, the charge is unfair. A distinct national establishment was always contended for by those who were suspected of the strongest papal leanings. They advocated an authority not derived from any foreign potentate, but, as they conceived, of immediate divine origin, and this authority they considered to be entitled to uncontrolled jurisdiction within the shores of the four seas. They wished for a Pope—to use the current language of the times—"not at Rome but at Lambeth." A reconciliation with the Church of Rome not involving submission, might have been agreeable to some of the party; yet, it must be acknowledged that, in solemn conclave, the Anglicans accused the Romanists of idolatry.[15] If, however, by papistic be meant a tendency to Catholic worship, and so ultimately to Romish conformity, then may the imputation be supported by facts. The history of Christendom shews that the Church gradually passed from its primitive simplicity to the corruptions of the papacy; that ante-Nicene innovations, with post-Nicene developments and traditionalism, were stepping-stones in the transition. The process, on a wide scale, requires many centuries for its accomplishment; but partially and in individual cases a few years may suffice for the experiment. Ecclesiastical annals, from Constantine to Hildebrand, may be epitomized in a brief chronology. Movements may rapidly pass through stages, like those of the Nicene and Mediæval. And sharp speaking, in order to maintain a certain ecclesiastical position against Rome, may immediately precede, and in fact, herald the approach of pilgrims to the very gate of the seven-hilled city.[16] What has occurred within our own time in individual instances, was likely to occur, to a large extent, in the first half of the seventeenth century.

Mediæval sympathies, at the period now under our review, are obvious not only in the rigorous enforcement of fasting and abstinence,[17] which had continued ever since the Reformation, but in certain monastic tendencies, and in slurs cast on the reformers. A document, prepared in 1633—no doubt under the influence of Laud—by Secretary Windebank, for the direction of Judges of assize, urged obedience to the proclamation for the better observance of Lent and fish-days, because their neglect had become very common, probably in many cases on Puritan grounds.[18] Monastic tendencies, about the same time, appeared in the famous Monastery at Gidding, in Huntingdonshire. While the devotions of the pious family there excited the admiration of Isaak Walton,—in whose account of it is reflected the more spiritual phase of the proceeding,—the superstitions, mingled with better things, provoked the severest animadversions of Puritan contemporaries,[19] who wondered at nothing more than, that in a settled Church government, Bishops could permit "such a foundation so nearly complying with Popery." In connection with this may be mentioned the preface to the new statutes for the University of Oxford, published in Convocation, which "disparaged King Edward's times and government, declaring, that the discipline of the University was then discomposed and troubled by that King's injunctions, and the flattering novelty of the age, and that it did revive and flourish again in Queen Mary's days, under the government of Cardinal Pole, when by the much-to-be-desired felicity of those times, an inbred candour supplied the defect of statutes."[20]

In the sixteenth century, and far into the seventeenth, intolerance, inherited from former ages, infected more or less all religious parties. Few saw civil liberty to be a social right, which justice claimed for the whole community, whatever might be the ecclesiastical opinions of individuals. This position of affairs shewed how little dependent is spiritual despotism upon any particular theological system, and how it can graft itself upon one theory as well as upon another; for, while under Elizabeth persecution allied itself to Calvinism, in the first two of the Stuart reigns, Arminianism—at that time in Holland wedded to liberty of conscience—appeared in England embracing a form of merciless oppression. But, though without special theological affinities, intolerance certainly shewed kinship to certain forms of ecclesiastical rule. It fondly clung to prelacy before the Civil War. The relation in which subsequently it appeared to other Church organizations will be disclosed hereafter. Whitgift and Bancroft, inheriting intolerance from their predecessors, persecuted Nonconformists. They silenced and deprived many; whilst others they excommunicated and cast into prison. The Anglican Canon Law—which must be distinguished from the Papal Canon Law[21]—remained a formidable engine of tyranny in the hands of those disposed to use it for that purpose. That law, of course, claimed to be not law for Episcopalians alone but for the people at large, who were treated altogether as subject to Episcopal rule; and neither creed nor worship inconsistent with canonical regulations could be tolerated for a moment. Only one Church was allowed in England; and for those who denied its apostolicity, objected to its government, disapproved of its rites and observances, or affirmed other congregations to be lawful churches, there remained the penalty of excommunication, with all its alarming consequences.[22]

Anglicanism allowed no exercise of private judgment, but required everybody to submit to the same standard of doctrine, worship, and discipline. Moderate Puritans were to be broken in, and Nonconformists "harried out of the land." It might seem a trifle that people should be fined for not attending parish churches; but imprisonment and exile for nonconformity struck most Englishmen as a stretch of injustice perfectly intolerable.[23]

Ecclesiastical Courts, not only consistory and commissary, but branching out into numerous forms, carried on actively and continuously the administration of canon law after the Reformation. Discipline was, perhaps, not much less maintained after that event than before.[24] Such activity continued throughout the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles; and so late as 1636 the Archdeacon of Colchester held forty-two sessions at four different towns during that single year. The object of the canon law and the ecclesiastical courts being pro morum correctione et salute animæ, immoralities such as the common law did not punish as crimes, came within the range of their authority, together with all sorts of offences against religion and the Church. The idea was to treat the inhabitants of a parish as members of the Anglican Church, and to exercise a vigilant and universal discipline by punishing them for vice, heresy, and schism. Intemperance and incontinence are offences very frequently noticed in the records of Archidiaconal proceedings in the latter part of the sixteenth and the early part of the seventeenth centuries, suggesting a very unfavourable idea of public morals at that time; and a long catalogue also appears of charges touching all kinds of misconduct. Some appear very strange,—such as hanging up linen in a church to dry; a woman coming to worship in man's apparel; a girl sitting in the same pew with her mother, and not at the pew door, to the great offence of many reverent women; and matrons being churched without wearing veils. Others relate to profaning Sundays and holidays, setting up maypoles in church time, and disturbing and even reviling the parish ministers. Certain of them point distinctly to Puritan and Nonconformist behaviour, such as refusing to stand and bow when the creed was repeated, and to kneel at particular parts of divine service. Brownists are specifically mentioned, and extreme anti-sacramental opinions are described.

The method of proceeding ex officio was by the examination of the accused on his oath, that he might so convict himself if guilty, and if innocent, justify himself by compurgation[25]—a method, it may be observed, totally opposed to the criminal jurisprudence of our common law, and one which became increasingly offensive in proportion to the increase of national attachment to the English Constitution on the side of popular freedom. Though, as we look at the moral purpose of these institutions, and the cognizance they took of many vicious and criminal irregularities of conduct which did not come under the notice of civil magistrates, we are quite disposed to do justice to the motives in which the courts originated, and to admit that in the rude life of the middle ages they might possess some advantages—we must see, looking at them altogether, that they became the ready instruments of intolerance when great differences in religious opinion had appeared; that they were certain, in Puritan esteem, to attach odium to the old system of Church discipline; and that they were completely out of harmony with the modern spirit of Protestant civilization.

In the Tudor and Stuart days, there also existed two tribunals of a character which it is difficult in the nineteenth century to understand. The High Commission Court was doubtless intended to promote and consolidate the Reformation on Anglo-Catholic principles, by exterminating Popery on the one hand, and checking Puritanism on the other. According to the terms of the Act of Uniformity, Elizabeth and her successors had power given them "to visit, reform, redress, order, correct and amend all such errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, contempts, offences and enormities whatsoever, which, by any manner of spiritual authority or jurisdiction, ought, or may be lawfully reformed, ordered, redressed, corrected, restrained or amended." Her Majesty became invested with authority to correct such heresies of the clergy as had been adjudged to be so by the authority of the canonical Scripture, or by the first four general councils, or any of them, or by any other general council, or by the High Court of Parliament, with the assent of the clergy in convocation.[26] Many Commissions were successively issued by the Queen.[27] Neal gives an abstract of that one which was issued in the month of December, 1583. After reciting the Act of Supremacy, the Act of Uniformity, the Act for the assurance of the Queen's powers over all states, and the Act for reforming certain disorders touching ministers of the Church, her Majesty named forty-four commissioners, of whom twelve were bishops, some were privy councillors, lawyers, and officers of state, the rest deans, archdeacons, and civilians. They were authorized to enquire respecting heretical opinions, schisms, absence from church, seditious books, contempts, conspiracies, false rumours, and slanderous words, besides offences, such as adultery, punishable by ecclesiastical laws. In the first clause command is given to enquire, "as well by the oaths of twelve good and lawful men, as also by witnesses, and all other means and ways you can devise."[28] With this power of enormous latitude, instituting enquiry over vague offences, was connected a power of punishment, qualified by the word "lawful," and by reference "to the power and authority limited and appointed by the laws, ordinances, and statutes of the realm." Liberty was given to examine suspected persons "on their corporal oath"—in fact, the ex officio oath.[29] Any three of the members had authority to execute the commission.[30]

The Court so constituted extended its range, and increased its activity, and pressed beyond the boundaries of statute law, so as to become, in the reign of Charles the First, a means of arbitrary government intolerable to the country.

Records of the Court are still preserved in the State Paper Office,[31] shewing the modes of proceeding, the charges of which the Commissioners took cognizance, and the punishments they pronounced upon the convicted. Counsel for office—counsel for defendants—appearance and oath to answer articles—appearance, and delivering in of certificate—orders for defendants to give in answers—motion for permission to put in additional articles—commissions decreed for taking answers and examining witnesses—commissions brought in and depositions of witnesses published—and orders for taxation of costs—are forms of expression and notices of proceeding very frequent in these old Books. Some of them conveyed, no doubt, terrible meanings to the parties accused. We meet also with "suppressions of motion," "agreements for subduction of articles," petitions to be admitted in "formâ pauperis," and reference of causes to the Dean of Arches. Collecting together heads of accusation, we find the following in the list—holding heretical opinions, contempt of ecclesiastical laws, seditious preaching, scandalous matter in sermons, using invective speeches unfit for the pulpit, nonconformity, publishing fanatical pamphlets, profane speeches, schism, blasphemy, raising new doctrines, preaching after deposition, and simoniacal contracts. Descending to minute particulars, we discover such items as these:—"locking the church door, and impounding the archdeacons, officials, and clergy," in the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction; wearing hats in church; counting money on the communion-table; saying, "A ploughman was as good as a priest," and asking, "What good do bishops in Ireland?;" profane acts endangering parish edifices; praying that young Prince Charles might not be brought up in popery; and submission performed in a slight and contemptuous manner.[32] Entries of fines and imprisonment frequently occur.

It should be stated that occasionally other religious offences are noticed in these volumes, such as possessing a Romish breviary, and refusing the oath of allegiance. Enquiries also appear, as to persons who secreted young ladies "going to the nunneries beyond seas." There are, too, monitions "to bring to the office popish stuff and books."[33] But such instances are few compared with those relating to Puritans. Also now and then occur cases of flagrant clerical immorality, acts of violence, and of criminal behaviour.[34] But it was the persecution, the intolerance, the irritating control over so many persons and things, and the harsh treatment, and severe sentences of this absorbing jurisdiction, emulating as it did the worst ecclesiastical tribunals of the middle ages, and of Roman Catholic countries, that so roused the wrath of our forefathers against it.

It is very curious, after inspecting the records of the High Commission, to open Dr. Featley's Clavis, and there to find sermons, preached by him at Lambeth before the Commissioners, on such subjects as "The bruised reed and smoking flax," and "The still small voice,"—sermons filled with the mildest and gentlest sentiments. More curious, to light on other discourses in the same volume, bearing the very appropriate titles of "Pandora's box," and "The lamb turned into a lion." But for the knowledge we have of the preacher and of the contents of his discourses, we should suppose the former titles were ironical hits, and the latter outspoken truths. They are neither; but are chosen, it is plain, with perfect simplicity.[35]

The Star Chamber is commonly associated in the minds of Englishmen with the High Commission Court. Unfettered by the verdict of juries, not guided by statute law, and irresponsible to other tribunals, it claimed an indefinable jurisdiction over all sorts of misdemeanours—"holding for honourable that which pleased, and for just that which profited." Though not a constituted ecclesiastical court, like the High Commission, bishops as privy councillors sat amongst its judges, and it took cognizance of religious publications. Whilst the High Commission confined its penalties to deprivation, imprisonment, and fines, the favourite punishments of the Star Chamber were whipping, branding, cutting ears, and slitting noses. The barbarous treatment of Leighton, Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick, will shortly be noticed.

These two arbitrary courts, which, in spite of their difference, were almost invariably linked together in the thoughts of our countrymen, concentrated on themselves an amount of public indignation equal to the fury of the French against the Bastile; and at last, like that prison, they fell amidst the execrations of a people whose patience had been exhausted by such prolonged iniquities.[36]

Nor was it only the intolerance of the Church which exasperated the people, its secular intermeddling did so likewise. Before the Reformation Churchmen had held the highest offices in the State, indeed, had controlled all civil affairs; and Laud was now imitating the Cardinals of an earlier age. But the English Reformation had shaken off from itself the civil power of the Church; laymen, not the clergy, now claimed to guide the helm. The Puritanism of the seventeenth century, and the civil war which grew out of it, were practical protests against the attempts of Charles, Strafford, and Laud to revive what the Reformation in this country had destroyed. The modern spirit of civilization was seen rebelling against the intrusion of the spiritual on the secular power. It was a stage in the great European conflict which ended in the French Revolution; it was an assault upon a system which has now expired everywhere except in the city of Rome.

As was only consistent, the party supporting ecclesiastical intolerance also supported civil despotism. Never since the English Constitution had grown up were the liberties of the people so threatened as during the earlier part of the seventeenth century. The two checks on the tyranny of the Crown, the aristocracy and the Church, had long been enfeebled—the aristocracy by the wars of the Roses; the Church by the loss of independence at the Reformation. The nobles of England had wasted their strength in the fifteenth century; the Church of England had prostrated herself before the throne in the sixteenth. Neither of them had now the power, any more than they had now the will, to defend popular freedom against the invasions of regal prerogative. It is true, that the same causes, which weakened them as the possible friends of the people, weakened them also as actual friends of the Sovereign. What they did for the Crown in the Civil Wars, was far less than they might have done at an earlier period: even as what remained in their power to accomplish on behalf of popular rights was far less. But the malign aspect of the Church, then the chief power next the throne, towards the nation at large, and the Commons in particular, was most manifest and most alarming at the epoch under consideration. Old English liberties indeed had never been extinguished. The spirit of English self-government asserted under the house of Lancaster, though seemingly held in abeyance in the times of the Tudors, so far from expiring, had come out with renewed youth in the days of the Stuarts, through the parliamentary career of those eminent statesmen who formed the vanguard of the Commonwealth army. But against the illustrious Sir John Eliot, with his noble compeers, High Church contemporaries stood in defiant hostility. That kings are the fountains of all power; that they reign "by the grace of God," in the sense of divine right; that they are feudal lords—the soil their property, and the people their slaves—were doctrines upheld by sycophants of the Court, and endorsed and defended by doctors of the Church. Dr. Sibthorpe, a notorious zealot for passive obedience and non-resistance, monstrously declared, "If princes command anything, which subjects may not perform, because it is against the laws of God, or of nature, or impossible; yet subjects are bound to undergo the punishment, without either resisting, or railing, or reviling; and so to yield a passive obedience where they cannot exhibit an active one. I know no other case, but one of those three wherein a subject may excuse himself with passive obedience, but in all other he is bound to active obedience."[37] Another preacher of the same class, Dr. Manwaring, was brought before Parliament for maintaining, "That his Majesty is not bound to keep and observe the good laws and customs of this realm; and that his royal will and command in imposing loans, taxes, and other aids upon his people, without common consent in Parliament, doth so far bind the consciences of the subjects of this kingdom, that they cannot refuse the same without peril of eternal damnation."[38]

The Church of the middle ages had commonly thrown its shield over subjects against the oppression of rulers: but in contrast with this, the Anglo-Catholic Church of the Stuart times stood in closest league with Government for purposes the most despotic. The tyranny of Buckingham in 1624, with his forced loans, became insupportable, and the obloquy of it all—alas for the Church of England!—fell largely upon its dignitaries, because favour had been strongly shown to the policy of that arrogant minister by such men as Sibthorpe and Manwaring. Strafford went beyond Charles in imperious despotism; and Strafford found in Archbishop Laud not only a helper in his "thorough" policy, but an example of even more violent measures, and a counsellor instigating him to still greater lengths.[39]

Besides all this intolerance and oppression, it must be acknowledged that there was in the ministry of the Church of England a large amount of ungodliness and immorality. To believe that all the charges of clerical viciousness and criminality were true, would be to imbibe Puritan prejudice; whilst, on the other hand, to believe that all were false, would betray a strong tincture of High Church partiality; so much could not have been boldly affirmed, and generally believed, without a large substratum of fact. But more of this hereafter.

Rigid ceremonialism, desecration of the Sabbath, sympathy with Roman Catholicism, fondness for imitating popish practices, cruel intolerance, alliance with unconstitutional rule, and the immorality of clergymen, will serve to explain what gave such force to the antagonistic puritan feeling which surged up so fearfully in 1640. The Church had become thoroughly unpopular amongst the middle and lower classes in London and other large places; in short, with that portion of the people, which in the modern age of civilization, must and will carry the day. They did not then, with all their fondness for theological controversy, care so much for any abstract idea of Church polity as for the actual working of ecclesiastical machinery, and the character and conduct of ecclesiastical men before their eyes. It was not any Presbyterian or Independent theory, as opposed to the Episcopalian system of the Church of England, that swept the nation along its fiery path in the dread assault which levelled the Episcopal establishment; but it was the indignation aroused by corruption, immorality, and intolerance, which kindled the blazing war-torch destined to burn to the ground both temple and throne. Had the Church of England been at that time a liberal and purely Protestant Church, and its rulers wise, moderate, and charitable men; whatever might have been the influence of ecclesiastical dogmas, its fate must have been far different from what it actually became.

The person who carried Anglo-Catholicism to its greatest excess, and who, by other unpopular proceedings, did more than anybody else, to alienate from the State religion a large proportion of his fellow-countrymen, was William Laud. Ritualism ran riot under the rule of this famous prelate. Alienated from the theology of Augustine, but relishing the sacerdotalism of Chrysostom, he delighted in a gorgeous worship such as accorded with the Byzantine liturgy, and was penetrated with that reverence for the priesthood and the Eucharist which the last of the Greek orators, in his flights of rhetoric, did so much to foster. Whatever might be the extravagances in Byzantium, they were nearly, if not quite, paralleled when Archbishop Laud held unchecked sway. A church was consecrated by throwing dust or ashes in the air.[40] The napkin covering the Eucharistic elements was carefully lifted up, reverently peeped under, and then solemnly let fall again: all which performances were accompanied by repeated lowly obeisances before the altar. This ceremony was quite as childish and far less picturesque than the dramatic doings in the Greek Church, when choristers aped angels by fastening to their shoulders wings of gauze.[41] Into cathedrals, churches, and chapels, were also introduced pictures, images, crucifixes, and candles, which, with the aid of surplices and copes,[42] bowing, crossing, and genuflections, produced a spectacle which might be taken for a meagre imitation of the mass. Had not public opinion, which was beginning to be a mighty power, checked such proceedings, there can be no doubt they would speedily have reached such lengths, that an English parish church would have differed scarcely at all from a Roman Catholic chapel.[43]

Laud's size was in the inverse ratio of his activity—for he had the name of "the little Archbishop," though his capacities for work were of gigantic magnitude. His influence extended everywhere, over everybody, and everything, small as well as great—like the trunk of an elephant, as well suited to pick up a pin as to tear down a tree. His articles of visitation traversed the widest variety of particulars, descending through all conceivable ecclesiastical and moral contingencies, down to the humblest details of village life. Churchwardens were asked, "Doth your minister preach standing, and with his hat off? Do the people cover their heads in the Church, during the time of divine service, unless it be in case of necessity, in which case they may wear a nightcap or coif?" These functionaries were also required to state, how many physicians, chirurgeons, or midwives there might be in the neighbourhood; how long they had used the office, and by what authority; and how they demeaned themselves, and of what skill they were accounted in their profession.[44] A report of the state of his province he presented to the King year by year.[45] Every bishopric passed under his review, and the substance of the information he obtained and digested, affords a bird's-eye view of the religious condition of each diocese, in the Archbishop's estimation. Oxford, Salisbury, Chichester, Hereford, Exeter, Ely, Peterborough, and Rochester, were in a tolerably fair condition, although furnishing matter here and there for some complaint. But in his own see of Canterbury there were many refractory persons, and divers Brownists and other separatists, especially about Ashford and Maidstone, who were doing harm, "not possible to be plucked up on the sudden."[46] London occasioned divers complaints of nonconformity. Factious and malicious pamphlets were circulated, Puritans were insolent, and curates and lecturers were "convented." From Lincoln came complaints, that parishioners wandered from church to church, and refused to come up to the altar rail at the holy communion; Buckingham and Bedfordshire also abounded in refractory people. Norwich had several factious men: Bridge and Ward are named, and it is said there was more of disorder in Ipswich and Yarmouth than in the cathedral city. Lecturers were abundant, and catechising neglected. In the diocese of Bath and Wells, lectures were put down in market towns, and afternoon sermons were changed into catechetical exercises. Popish recusants appeared fewer than before, and altogether the bishop had put things in marvellous order.

As Laud's eye—that ferret-like eye, which under its arched brow, looks with cunning vigilance from Vandyke's canvas—ran over his whole province, and his busy pen recorded what he learned, he sent to the Inns of Court—the benchers having betrayed Puritan tendencies—and insisted upon surplice and hood, and the whole service prescribed for the occasion being used in chapel before sermon. He claimed rights of ecclesiastical visitation in the two universities, and inspected cathedrals and churches, as to their improvements and repairs; condescending even to order the removal of certain seats employed for the wives of deans and prebendaries, and directing them to sit upon movable benches, or chairs.[47]

English residents in Holland;[48] chaplains of regiments amongst the Presbyterian Dutch; Protestant refugees in this country; and the ecclesiastical affairs of Scotland, all came under his vigilant notice, and within his tenacious grasp.[49]

In his own diocese and province[50] Laud's hand fell heavily on those beneath his sway. "All men," it is remarked, "are overawed, so that they dare not say their soul is their own." The clergy of his cathedral muttered their dissatisfaction. Reports circulated that they were "a little too bold with him;" and his remedy was, "If upon inquiry I do find it true, I shall not forget that nine of the twelve prebends are in the king's gift, and order the commission of my visitation; or alter it accordingly."[51] Dean and prebendaries were soon humbled under such discipline.

In court and country, in Church and State, Laud, next to the Earl of Strafford, must be considered to have been the most powerful minister in England.[52] Pledged to a thorough policy of arbitrary kingship, he helped in all things his royal master, and his able fellow-councillor. When Strafford was in Ireland as Lord Lieutenant, the Archbishop was the great power at home behind the throne. "He is the man," said courtiers, when they would point out the most favourable medium for approaching royalty.[53] His own power availed for the province of Canterbury; by the help of his archiepiscopal brother, Neil of York, it sufficed for all England. Such a man, so bigoted, so imperious, and so marvellously active, was sure to make many more foes than friends. He had also ways, altogether his own, of making enemies. As he himself tells us, he kept a ledger, in which he preserved a strict account of the theological and ecclesiastical bias of clergymen, for the guidance of his royal master in the distribution of patronage. O and P were the letters at the heads of two lists. On the Orthodox all favours were showered. From those favours all Puritans were excluded.[54]

The Anglicanism of Laud was dear to Charles I. for two reasons. First, it harmonized with his own despotic principles. The King had been, ever since he assumed the crown, working out a problem in which the direst mischief was involved—whether it were not possible for an English sovereign, without casting away constitutional forms, to grasp at absolute dominion, to make the Commons a mere council for advice, or a Court to register decrees, rather than an integral branch of the Legislature; and, while conceding to them the office of filling the country's purse, to claim and exercise an independent power of managing the strings. He disliked parliaments, if they exercised their rights. "They are of the nature of cats," said he, "they ever grow curst with age, so that if you will have good of them, put them off handsomely when they come to any age, for young ones are ever most tractable."[55] His remedy for troublesome parliaments was dissolution. He preferred ship money to legal taxation: Anglicanism, from its maintenance of the Divine right of Kings, favoured his views in this respect, and divines of that stamp were after his own heart. But there was a second reason why Charles was drawn towards Laud. It would be unjust to the King to represent him merely as a politician. Grave, cold, reserved and haughty—qualities indicated in the countenance which the pencil of Vandyke has made familiar to us all—he was also a man of sincere religious feeling; but that feeling appears in harmony with his natural character. Stately ceremonialism, court-like prelacy, priestly hauteur, and a frigid creed corresponded even more with the idiosyncracy of the man than with the prejudices of the monarch. From a youth he had shown a leaning towards the Roman Catholic form of worship, and this tendency had been nourished by the education received from his father. "I have fully instructed them," King James observed in a letter touching his sons, "so as their behaviour and service shall, I hope, prove decent, and agreeable to the purity of the primitive Church, and yet as near the Roman form as can lawfully be done, for it hath ever been my way to go with the Church of Rome usque ad aras."[56]

As we proceed in our review of parties, we feel the difficulty of defining the boundary between them. The majority of divines were thoroughly Anglican or thoroughly Puritan; yet a great many had only partial sympathies with the one or the other. Nor did they form a class of their own. In no sense were they party men, except so far as they were prepared to support episcopacy and defend the Common Prayer. Amongst these may be mentioned Dr. Jackson, sometime vicar of Newcastle, (afterwards Dean of Peterborough,) known in his own time as an exemplary parish priest, and very popular with the poor, relieving their wants "with a free heart, a bountiful hand, a comfortable speech, and a cheerful eye;" better known in our day as the author of a goodly row of theological works, including discourses on the Apostles' Creed.[57] He was a decided Arminian, and a rather High Churchman. Bishop Horne acknowledged a large debt to Dean Jackson, and Southey ranks him in the first class of English divines.[58] But his writings present strong attractions for those who have no High Church sympathies, because the reasonings and contemplations of such a man rise far above sectarian levels, and are suited to enrich and edify the whole Church of God. Dr. Christopher Sutton, prebendary of Westminster, the learned author of two admirable practical treatises, "Learn to Live" and "Learn to Die,"—in which patristic taste and a special regard for the Greek Fathers appear in connection with a highly devout spirit—is another theologian of the same period and the same class, in whom, with some Anglican elements, others of a Puritan cast are combined. The well-known Bishop Hall is a still more striking example of the Puritan divine united with the Anglican ecclesiastic.

If Puritanism cared for antiquity it would be possible to make out for it a lineage extending back to the first ages of Christendom. As soon as the Church betrayed symptoms of backsliding, persons arose, jealous for her honour, who recalled her erring children to paths of pristine purity. When, boasting of numbers, the many who were predominant relaxed severity of discipline, and conformed to the world in various ways—a few zealous Novations and Donatists set up a standard of reform. In some cases they proceeded at the expense of charity, and in a narrow spirit; but they aimed ultimately at restoring what they deemed primitive communion. At a later period the name, and some of the ecclesiastical sympathies of the Puritans, were anticipated by the Cathari: and in the Lollards and Wickliffites of England, we may trace the spiritual ancestors of the men who revolutionized the Church in the seventeenth century. Several of our Reformers went beyond their brethren in ideas of reform; and in the reign of Elizabeth—particularly amongst those who returned from the continent, where they had been brought into close fellowship with Zwinglians and other advanced Protestants—there were persons holding opinions substantially the same with those adopted by Puritans under Charles I.; and those who had no doctrinal tenets or ecclesiastical preferences to separate them from their contemporaries, but had become somewhat distinguished by objections to certain forms, and more so by superior religiousness and spirituality of life, were, on that account, reproached by laxer men as bigoted precisians. As was natural, this treatment drove such persons into the arms of others who had embraced distinctive views of polity, between which and the strict habits of these new allies there existed obvious harmony. The anti-hierarchical temper of Puritanism, and its presumed favourableness to the broad principles and popular spirit of the British constitution secured for it, on that side, countenance from such as were far from adopting its religious principles. Leicester and Walsingham looked on it with some favour as a counterpoise to prelatical arrogance, if not for other reasons. Burleigh shielded the persecuted from the violence of the High Commission. Raleigh defended the cause in Parliament. Connection with these politicians gave political significancy to a movement originating entirely in spiritual impulses.

Whenever any vigorous revival of religious life occurs, a tendency to "irregular proceedings" will be sure to appear in the movement party. Accordingly, one peculiarity of the early Protestants is seen in a love of meeting together for Christian culture and edification, apart from the formalities of established worship. The proceedings of these good people were such as would be now pronounced intensely Low Church. One neighbour conferred with another, and "did win and turn his mind with persuasive talk." "To see their travels," exclaimed our old martyrologist, "their earnest seeking, their burning zeal, their readings, their watchings, their sweet assemblies, their love and concord, their godly living, their faithful marrying with the faithful, may make us now, in these days of our free profession, to blush for shame."

Somewhat resembling those meetings in the commencement of Henry VIII.'s reign were the prophesyings in the time of Elizabeth. A number of junior divines, present on these occasions, delivered in the order of seniority discourses on a portion of scripture appointed for the day, and then an elder brother, of learning, experience, and influence, reviewed what had been advanced, and terminated the engagement by prayer. Some of Elizabeth's bishops favourably regarded this practice as good discipline for preachers, and as affording edification to the people. Grindal incurred the royal displeasure for not putting down these prophesyings, for her Majesty would tolerate no innovations in the Established Church. Nor did she look with favour on popular preaching at all. Theological questions she reserved to be investigated by her learned divines. Only moral duties, the most elementary truths of Christianity, and the worship of God, belonged in her opinion to the people in general. "The liberty of prophesying," indeed, in those days so much resembled the liberty of the press—preachers so often spoke as the tribunes of the people, bringing divers public questions within the range of pulpit criticism, that the Queen had political as well as religious objections to the freedom of such orators.[59] To check Puritan tendencies, uniformity was pressed with rigour; The Queen assumed the initiative in the proceeding. Pilkington, Bishop of Durham, disliked the cap and surplice. Grindal, Bishop of London, was reluctant to force the prescribed habits. Even Archbishop Parker was slow in the business. At length the Queen's zeal carried all before it; Parker and his commission set to work, and shewed no want of earnestness. Aylmer, when he succeeded Grindal in the see of London, though once a friend to the Puritans, made up for his predecessor's lukewarmness by a rigorous suppression of all Nonconformity;[60] and Whitgift, tolerant in his Cambridge days, showed himself a stern persecutor when he became Primate, and Archbishop Bancroft went beyond them all. The minutest ceremonies were enforced; clerical garments, odious because of their Popish fashion, were imposed.[61] Such things were held by one party to be in themselves indifferent, and by the other party to involve a grave dereliction of Protestant principle. Yet the former imposed these things upon the latter. What was only excused by the imposer as an affair in itself of little moment, except for the sake of uniformity, was condemned by victims of the imposition as a perilous concession to superstitious ceremonialism. The cause of conscience on the one side came into collision with the cause of order on the other; part of the zeal manifested against Puritanism no doubt proceeded from a desire to gratify the Queen and prevent her from favouring Popery, and therefore originated in Protestant policy, but the policy was very short-sighted, and its injustice was equalled by its folly. Able, faithful, and learned ministers were silenced. In London especially, where Puritan ministers were numerous, multitudes of quiet steady citizens, with no love for schism, were alienated from the Established Church, and a long account of persecution began to be kept, which, when produced at the day of reckoning, had to be paid in the endurance of similar sufferings.

The strong leaven of Puritanism in the reign of Elizabeth fermented in different ways. It produced the memorable controversies between Cartwright and Whitgift, and between Travers and Hooker: curiously enough, in both cases, the combatants were unequally matched; Cartwright being a much abler man than Whitgift, and Hooker vastly surpassing Travers. In the first of these polemical encounters, the Puritan maintained the exclusive authority of Scripture against the Anglican, who appealed to the Fathers: and in his opposition to prelacy, the Puritan developed views of Church government, hereafter to be noticed, which the Presbyterians of the seventeenth century for a while, and in a measure, succeeded in practically carrying out. We see the battle between Travers and Hooker fought on a wider field, including points of doctrine as well as matters of polity. The Puritan contended for the Scriptural authority of Church government, while the Churchman, looking more to the spirit than the letter of God's law and holy order, sought to lay the corner-stones of ecclesiastical polity in general principles. Beyond this difference, as preachers at the Temple where Travers was Lecturer and Hooker was Master, they presented rather dissimilar phases of theological doctrine; for it was said "the forenoon sermon spoke Canterbury, and the afternoon sermon Geneva." The preachers could not agree upon Predestination.[62] They had not precisely the same idea of Justification by faith. And further still—and in an age when the Popish controversy excited such deep feeling, the difference was of great consequence,—Hooker maintained, that the Church of Rome, though not a pure and perfect Church, was a true one, so far that such as live and die in its communion, upon repenting of their sins of ignorance, may be saved; but Travers said, that the Church of Rome is no true Church at all, so that such as live and die therein, holding justification in part by works, cannot, according to the Scriptures, be regarded as saved. Whatever now may be thought of this latter teaching, most Churchmen then would agree with Hooker, most Puritans with Travers.

Puritanism opened its lips in parliament. An effort was made in 1584 to curtail the power of bishops, to supersede or control canon law by common law, to give the people a share in the election of ministers, and to erect an eldership which, conjointly with the clergy, should manage the spiritual affairs of a parish. Attempts also were made at Sabbath reform; but the whole of this Puritanical movement was stopped by the Queen. Whitgift wrote to his royal mistress, condemning the interference of Parliament with ecclesiastical matters, and advising that whatever alterations were made in the Church should come in form of canon law from the clergy by her Majesty's authority. In this business we recognize an anticipation of the subsequent relative position of parties. Anglicanism stood on the side of prerogatives claimed by the Crown, Puritanism on the side of power claimed by Parliament.[63]

With the Anglican change of doctrine came a change in Puritan controversy. Under Elizabeth, both parties in the Church of England were Calvinistic in their creed. When High Churchmen in the reign of James I. adopted Arminian views, this naturally excited the opposition of Low Churchmen, and the battle which had before been waged against caps and canons assumed a character of higher importance, and discussions were carried on involving creeds.

The Puritans were the champions of predestination, and identified it with the doctrine of salvation by grace. Whether right or wrong in this respect, it is necessary that such an identification in their minds should be remembered, for the just appreciation of their character and conduct. They did not consider themselves as contending for mere abstractions, but for truths of the highest practical moment to the interests of mankind: and certainly many of their opponents in their anti-Calvinistic zeal shewed little sympathy with Evangelical sentiments, and contented themselves too generally with a hard, dry, Nicene orthodoxy, coupled with strong ritualistic predilections. There may certainly be found not a little of powerful moral teaching, like Chrysostom's, amongst the Anglican divines of that day, and a firm inculcation of such views as he held on the person of Christ; but there is a lack, as in his case, of that teaching which exalts the atoning work of the Redeemer, and the regenerating and sanctifying agency of the Holy Spirit. The Calvinistic decisions of the Synod of Dort—whither King James sent English representatives—did not at all allay the furiousness of the controversy: and if, in consequence of the Court instructions of 1622, "that no preacher under a bishop or dean should meddle with the dispute,"[64] the flame here and there might smoulder, assuredly the fire was by no means extinguished. It may be added, that many excellent men in the Church of England, who were far from embracing the theory of government espoused by Cartwright and Travers, and who considered as trifles the habits and ceremonies against which the earlier Puritans so earnestly protested, nevertheless joined with all their heart in opposing the doctrinal tenets of the Anglicans. Hence arose the distinction between doctrinal and ecclesiastical Puritans. To Puritans of both kinds James I. had a strong antipathy. Though at one time a sturdy Calvinist, he abandoned the system when it became a Puritan badge, but his most intense dislike fell on the ecclesiastical peculiarities of the party. When once he had come across the border, he identified Presbyterianism with republicanism, declaring that a kirk and a monarchy could no more agree than God and the Devil; and with a coarse insolence and vulgar spite, far more intolerable to his subjects than the temper of Elizabeth in her most imperious proceedings—for the two sovereigns were of totally different natures—the Scotch King of England declared, "I will harry the Puritans out of the land, or worse."

We have already noticed the prayer-meetings and the prophesyings of the sixteenth century. Puritan lectureships, proceeding from the same spirit, were very much in advance of the other associations. They sprung from a desire to promote spiritual edification by means extraneous to the old parochial system, and in fact they practically anticipated the popular rights of election, and the principles of ecclesiastical voluntaryism taught at the present day. The lectureships depended on the free contributions of the people, who exercised the privilege of choosing as their lecturer the man whose doctrines and manner of life they approved. As parochial duties did not attach to the office, the lecturers were relieved of certain ceremonies, and, consequently, such ministers as felt Puritan scruples preferred to minister in this more limited capacity. The origin of the institution is obscure. It was first legally recognized by the Act of Uniformity at the Restoration; but a Friday evening lecture existed in the parish of St. Michael Royal as early as the year 1589. Whatever might be the exact nature of the beginning, the extensive progress of lectureships is apparent in the seventeenth century. The lecturers stood somewhat in the same relation to parish priests as the friars of the middle ages to the secular clergy, and, like them, they exercised large popular influence; like them too, they received large popular contributions; and also like them, in some cases, they were found in painful rivalry and collision with parochial incumbents.

Another form of Puritan activity appeared in the institution of a body of trustees for the purchase of impropriations, with a view to secure as many livings as possible for ministers of Puritan opinions—a proceeding closely imitated in recent times by religious laymen, who buy advowsons for Evangelical clergymen. Fuller, who, in his own droll style, tells us of the twelve trustees, that four were "divines to persuade men's consciences; four lawyers to draw all conveyances; and four citizens who commanded rich coffers"—goes on to observe what incredibly large sums were advanced in a short time, and that it was verily believed, "if not obstructed in their endeavours, within fifty years, rather purchases than money would have been wanting."[65]

Puritans disliked ceremonies. Earnest as to the spirit of worship, they cared little—often not enough—about forms. These men did not study, and could but imperfectly understand, the æsthetics of religion—as some people now call that which relates to seemly and expressive modes of divine service, dictated by propriety, common sense, and good taste. But beyond this, and chiefly, they had conscientious scruples respecting observances, to which, no doubt, with equal conscientiousness, the rulers of the Church attached importance. If conscience, on the one side, had been content to practice and not impose; conscience, on the other side, would have been saved the pain of resistance, if not the trouble of protest. The two parties were ever coming into dogged antagonism—prelates, zealous for uniformity, and Puritans as zealous against it. The latter, if ministers, would not wear the surplice, or read the whole liturgy; if people, they would not recite the creed after the minister, nor repeat the responses in the Litany and after the Ten Commandments; they would sit when they ought to stand, or stand when they ought to kneel, or remain erect when they ought to bow; ministers would preach when they were required to catechise; people wanted lecturers when they had only rectors or curates. Rather than yield in these matters they would suffer anything. Their oppressors called them "proud," "self-conceited," "malapert," "puffed up by popular vogue," "indiscreet," "hollow pillars of Puritanism."[66] They retorted that Popery was overflowing the land, and they prayed that the Spirit of the Lord would lift up a standard against it.

To repress these disorders, articles of visitation were drawn up more carefully than ever, with an increase of minuteness and stringency; and these were sent to churchwardens and sidesmen. But the power of spiritual courts, and episcopal and archidiaconal authority were set at nought by Puritan Protestants. It was asserted by some of the stiffer sort that bishops have no right to hold visitations without express commission under the great seal, or to tender articles unless made by Convocation and ratified by Parliament. People were advised to keep the visitation articles "for waste paper, or to stop mustard-pots." Citations to spiritual courts should be disregarded, it was said, unless the courts were held by royal patent and the processes were in the King's name. "Depart without more ado," advised these hasty disposers of ecclesiastical law; "if they excommunicate you it is void—you may go to Church notwithstanding. If all subjects will take this course, they will soon shake off the prelates' tyranny and yoke of bondage, under which they groan through their own defaults and cowardice."[67]

Such was the spirit shown by some; but in many cases the ecclesiastical powers could not be so trifled with, and Puritans suffered fines and imprisonment. Rather than endure this injustice many preferred exile; some retired to Holland; others to the shores of New England. Six-score passengers, it was reported, were going out in two ships, and six hundred more were prepared to follow. Such swarms of emigrants alarmed their neighbours, who complained of the decrease of the king's people, the overthrow of trade, and the augmented number of those who were disaffected towards episcopacy.[68] But the drain went on, the Puritans saying, "The sun of heaven doth shine as comfortably in other places; the sun of righteousness much brighter; better to go and dwell in Goshen, find it where we can, than tarry in the midst of such an Egyptian darkness as is falling on this land."[69] This was in the spirit of Dante, who, when an exile from his beloved home on the Arno, asked, "Shall I not everywhere behold the light of the sun and of the stars?—Shall I not everywhere under Heaven be able to enjoy the most delightful truths?"

Baxter has embodied the sentiment in one of his hymns:—

"All countries are my Father's lands,

Thy sun, Thy love doth shine on all;

We may in all lift up pure hands,

And with acceptance on Thee call.

"No walls, nor bars, can keep Thee out,

None can confine a holy soul;

The street of heaven it walks about,

None can its liberty control."

Such men were not likely to be subdued by persecution; they had caught a spirit which all the violence in the world could not crush; and the only results of that violence were the increase of their own constancy, surrounded by the honours of spiritual heroism, and the infamy which will for ever rest on the memory of their cruel oppressors.

It must not be supposed that their cause was unpatronized by men of influence, or their case unheard in the halls of Parliament. They had friends amongst the noble; and patriotic tongues were eloquent on their behalf in the House of Commons. Though for a while protest did not avail against their persecution, in the end it bore for the persecutors bitter fruit. It made way for the exposure and chastisement of their guilt, and was neither forgotten nor found to be ineffective, when, in the dispensations of a righteous Providence, a day of retribution came.

Puritanism was a reaction against Anglicanism. It was an assertion of the right of private judgment against Church decisions, of the exclusive authority of Scripture against tradition, and of the simplicity of worship against elaborate ceremonialism. The intense horror of Popery felt by the Puritans was deepened by the papistic practices of the Anglicans. The strict observance of the Sabbath was made still more strict by the publication of the "Book of Sports," and by the practical depreciation of the Lord's day through the immense importance attached to Church festivals. The defection of the High Church party from the Evangelical creed, and still more from the evangelical spirit of the Reformers, riveted closely the attachment of the Puritans to the articles and homilies, as distinguished from the liturgy and rubric; and made them more full and earnest in exhibiting the freedom of salvation through the atonement of Jesus Christ, and the new birth of the Spirit of God. Also the working out of Arminian principles in unevangelical ways drove the Puritans into sharper and more rigid forms of Calvinistic speculation. But, happily for the fame of the latter, they were led, by the persecution they suffered, to connect themselves with the friends of political liberty; and thus to share in the honour belonging to the noble band of patriots, who, not without some mistakes but with a wisdom and heroism—which it would be idle to question and unthankful to forget—secured for us those national privileges which distinguish Englishmen from the rest of Europe.

Taking Andrewes and Donne as exponents of Anglican theology, the reader may take Bolton and Sibbs as representatives of Puritan teaching. Their works were exceedingly popular with the Evangelicals of Charles I.'s reign. In rough leather binding they might have been seen on the humble library shelf of the yeoman's house, or in his hands well thumbed, as he sat in his window-seat or walked in his little garden. "The Four Last Things" led many to prepare for the future life; and "The Bruised Reed" became honoured as the chief means of Richard Baxter's conversion. The tone of piety in these men partook of a glow and ardour which made their spiritual life, at times, appear like a rapture, and rendered their death "a perfect euthanasia." "By the wonderful mercies of God," said Bolton, "I am as full of comfort as my heart can hold, and feel nothing in my soul but Christ, with whom I heartily desire to be." Asked by a friend in his last moments on a sharp December day, "Do you feel much pain?" "Truly no," he replied, "the greatest pain I feel is your cold hand." If, to use a figure of Coleridge, the Cross shines dimly in certain Anglican authors, that Cross is all-radiant in Puritan theology. If, in the one case, the cloudy pillar hovers in the neighbourhood of the promised land without entering it, in the other, it conducts those who follow its guidance straight into a land flowing with milk and honey.

Let it not be supposed that the doctrinal Puritans in Stuart times were perpetually preaching, or writing on doctrinal subjects; or that they had the least sympathy with the sectaries. Thomas Adams is an eminent doctrinal Puritan of that age, but no sermons can be more eminently practical than his; they are the furthest removed from Antinomian tendencies. He is ever combating the vices around him, and insisting upon a solid scriptural morality; whilst his allusions to Brownists are caustic enough to have satisfied, in that respect, the taste of the most decided Anglican.

Puritanism was not so much a creed, or a code, as a life. Though a reaction, the movement was no superficial phenomenon thrown up by the chafing together of obstinate minds on opposite sides. The causes were some of them ancient, and all of them deep. It is possible even that peculiarities of race and blood might have somewhat to do with the strong sympathies of the middle and lower classes, in a simple and unostentatious kind of religious worship. The plain and sturdy nature of the Anglo-Saxon was still pure, in a multitude of cases, from Norman admixture in those ranks of society where Puritanism most prevailed; and the Anglo-Saxon had ever shown himself unfriendly to that ecclesiastical pomp of architecture and glittering ritual which delighted the Norman. Traditional opinions and sentiments, opposed to the spirit of Romanism, had been handed down through the middle ages, from one generation to another of the English commonalty in their homesteads and cottages; and, probably, as those opinions and sentiments had contributed to the outbursts of Lollardism, and helped on the cause of the Reformation, so also they ministered to the later development of principles, proceeding further in the same direction. Beyond all doubt, the Puritan under James was the religious son and heir of the reformer under Elizabeth; he inherited, and expressed more boldly and more truly, his father's spirit. Puritanism came only as the second stage in a progress of which the Reformation was the first. Such an impulse as Protestantism could not be resisted—set, as it was from the beginning, decidedly in the direction of change beyond what the compromise under the Tudors allowed. The pent-up waters of Protestantism found a vent through Puritanism. Besides, the persecutions under Mary rendered Rome more hateful to Englishmen during the last half of the sixteenth century than during the first; the children who heard of the Smithfield fires were more exasperated even than the parents who saw them, and they hated with a bitter hatred everything in the Church which, in their opinion, pointed Romewards. The Puritan reaction against Popery is to be regarded as also aided by its alliance with the reactions, moral and political, against despotism; freedom appeared to the Puritan not merely as something expedient, and to be desired for temporal ends, but as a heaven-born right, a gift of God, which it was man's duty to claim and assert, in the face of earth and hell: and thus kindred forces bore toward the same point. Puritanism, moreover, presented a strong attraction to religious minds of a certain class. Multitudes were sinners of a coarse type, and wanted something infinitely stronger than forms, ceremonies, orthodox abstractions, and moral advice to put things right between their souls and God, and to give them holiness and peace. The Puritan exhibition of the love of God in Christ, of the wonders of redemption, and of the abounding mercy of Heaven through the Cross for the chief of sinners, supplied just what such persons required. Nor to these alone, but to numbers beside, not coarse-minded transgressors, the full, clear, and unmixed manifestation of the Gospel plan of saving the lost came as the most blessed and welcome of messages. And finally, in enumerating the causes of Puritanism, devout minds, at all in sympathy with it, will assuredly include that mighty wind which "bloweth where it listeth."

Being in some respects a reaction, I may venture to observe, it had in it what all reactions have—much onesidedness. It betrayed narrow views of many subjects, straining at trifles, magnifying unimportant points, and not seeing that the avoidance of superstition in one quarter is no security against being overtaken by it in another. There also often occurred a want of charity in judging other people, and those who did not adopt the Puritan type were in danger of being put down as publicans and sinners. Puritans were also prone to use irritating language to their opponents, and shewed at times little of that meekness and gentleness, the want of which they bitterly condemned in others.[70] They were intolerant,—with the exception of a few separatists,—and cannot be regarded as having understood the principles of religious liberty. They asserted freedom on their own behalf, but if they could have had the power, they would have imposed their own peculiarities on all their fellow-countrymen. They were too apt to be rigid and precise in their methods of theology, and to take "tithe of mint, anise, and cummin," though not so as to be unmindful of "the weightier matters of the law." Their scruples as to liturgical forms were carried to excess, and they evinced a want of that kind of taste which marked the Anglican churchman by excluding, as Jeremy Taylor says, "the solemn melody of the organ, and the raptures of warbling and sweet voices out of cathedral choirs."[71] And finally, they did not sufficiently recognize the need of providing innocent and healthy recreations for the people. Man was regarded by them as a creature made to work and worship, but hardly to play. Some Anglicans were ascetic, but they were gleesome at times, and conceded, if they did not enjoin, rather uproarious amusement in connection with their festivals. They had their fast-days and lenten seasons, but they had also the merry feasts of Christmas and Easter, Whitsuntide and Michaelmas. They went daily to church, were fond of the Prayer Book and oratory, but they had no objection to revels, masques, May-poles, and village games. These sudden transitions from what was grave to what was gay, and this mixing up of things sacred with things trifling, had a hurtful effect, and the religion thus fostered closely approached that of France and Italy. Hence the Puritans rushed to the extreme of putting down many manly sports, and discouraging national pastimes, which, purified from immorality, were adapted to promote national vigour, cheerfulness, and good fellowship. While, however, they abolished church festivals they appointed holidays of another kind, and had relaxations of their own, hereafter to be recounted. Yet the restraints they placed upon society in the day of their power were such, perhaps, as more than any thing else tended to alienate from them the sympathies of a large portion of their fellow-countrymen. The broken May-pole and deserted village green had no small share in bringing about some of the worst resentments of the Restoration.

Blind homage is no honour. To acknowledge the defects of Puritanism gives all the more force to an exhibition of its excellencies. There clung around it the imperfections of humanity, but it had in it a germ of lasting life, a divine element of grace and power.

CHAPTER I.

We meet with statements, on the authority of Lord Clarendon, to the effect that the members of the Long Parliament "were almost to a man for episcopal government," and "had no mind to make any considerable alteration in Church or State."[72] On the other hand, we are told that at the beginning, "the party in favour of presbyterian government was very strong in the House of Commons, and that they were disposed to be contented with no less than the extirpation of bishops."[73] Neither statement conveys a correct idea of this remarkable assembly.

1640, November.

Let us enter St. Stephen's chapel after the ceremony described in our Introduction, and see for ourselves.

Dressed mostly in short cloaks, and wearing high-crowned hats, grave-looking men were seated on either side the speaker's chair, which was occupied by William Lenthall, a person of dignified aspect, arrayed in official robes, as represented by the picture in the National Portrait Gallery. Behind the chair were the Royal arms, and above it was the grand Gothic window, rendered familiar to us by old quaint woodcuts. The mace lay on the table by which the clerks of the House sat, busy with books and papers; and it may be stated, once for all, that the forms of the House were rigidly observed, during the memorable war of words through which this history will conduct the reader.

Denzil Holles, younger son of John, first Earl of Clare, sat for Dorchester. Foremost amongst those afterwards known as Presbyterian leaders, his influence in part was owing to his rank, and early court associations—for he had been on terms of intimacy with the King—but still more his power proceeded from the firm and somewhat fiery decision of his views, as well as from a reputation for integrity and honour, which raised him above the suspicion of self-interest or of factious animosity. Even in the days of James, he had resisted the encroachments of prerogative; and, in the reign of Charles, he had, through his adherence to the same course, been not only mulcted in a large fine, but imprisoned during the Royal pleasure.[74]

Members of Long Parliament.

Glynne, Recorder of London, and a Member for the City, was also ultimately a decided Presbyterian; and the same may be said of Maynard, who represented the borough of Totness. In the same class may be included Sir Benjamin Rudyard, member for Wilton, and Surveyor of His Majesty's Court of Wards and Liveries, an accomplished gentleman, "an elegant scholar," and a frequent speaker. In earlier parliaments he had hotly debated religious questions, though he was conspicuous for loyal protestations as sincere as they were fervid. At first he advocated some qualified form of episcopal superintendence, but, from the opening of the Long Parliament, he condemned existing prelacy, and thus prepared himself for adopting presbyterian tenets.

All these, and others less known, were from the first not only doctrinal but ecclesiastical Puritans, and were inspired by an intense detestation of Popery, and of everything which they believed paved the way to it. Beyond them, we find another group of men further advanced in the path of Church politics.

1640, November.

Members of Long Parliament.

Few have been more unfairly represented than Sir Harry Vane the younger, member for Hull. Though son of the Comptroller of His Majesty's household, and brought up at Court, he was, when a youth, reported to the King as "grown into dislike of the discipline and ceremonies of the Church of England." Not long after this, it was stated in a letter, that he had left his father, (old Sir Harry Vane,) his mother, and his country, and that fortune which his father would have left him, and for conscience' sake was gone to New England.[75] There he became Governor of Massachusetts, and, in that capacity, carried out the principles of religious toleration with a consistency and an equity so unique, as to offend many of the colonists, who, while advocates of religious freedom, persecuted, through mistaken fears, a sincerely religious woman, only because she was obstinate and fanatical. Returned to England, young Vane became not only member of the Short Parliament, but received knighthood from Charles I., and joined Sir W. Russel in the Treasurership of the Navy—a proceeding which indicated at the time something of a conciliatory disposition on both sides. With a philosophical temperament of the imaginative cast, and with strong religious tendencies in a mystical direction; smitten also with the charms of Plato's republic, and longing for the realization of his ideal within the shores of England, Vane seemed to many of his sober-minded contemporaries an enthusiast and a visionary; yet it would be difficult to disprove the testimony of Ludlow, that "he was capable of managing great affairs—possessing, in the highest perfection, a quick and ready apprehension, a strong and tenacious memory, a profound and penetrating judgment, a just and noble eloquence, with an easy and graceful manner of speaking. To these were added a singular zeal and affection for the good of the Commonwealth, and a resolution and courage not to be shaken or diverted from the public service."[76] Probably no man, at the beginning of the Long Parliament, so thoroughly grasped or could so well advocate the principles of religious liberty as Sir Harry Vane. There he sat in old St. Stephen's, with a refined expression of countenance, most pleasant and prepossessing; a person, says Clarendon, "of unusual aspect, which made men think there was somewhat in him of extraordinary."[77]

Nathaniel Fiennes, Lord Say and Sele's son, who represented Banbury, also held rank in the vanguard of religious liberty. Educated at Geneva—where also Vane had spent some of his early years—he had imbibed in some degree the spirit of that renowned little republic; and his opposition to the ecclesiastical establishment of his native country was, on his entering public life, soon roused by the working out of Anglo-Catholic principles. He agreed with Vane in his broad views of freedom, and when the Presbyterian and Independent parties assumed a definite form, he took his place with the latter. Clarendon admits his "good stock of estimation in the House of Commons," his superior "parts of learning and nature," and speaks of his being "a great manager in the most secret designs from the beginning."[78]

1640, November.

Another individual there—according to the report of a courtly young gentleman, Sir Philip Warwick—wore a suit which seemed made by a country tailor; his linen was plain, and not very clean; a speck or two of blood stained his little band, which, very uncourtier-like, was not much larger than his collar; his hat had no hat-band, and his sword stuck close to his side. The man appeared of good stature, but his countenance looked swollen and reddish, and his voice sounded sharp and untunable; but he spoke with fervour, and much to the vexation of the royalist observer, this shabby-looking member was "very much hearkened unto." "Pray who is that man, that sloven who spake just now?" said Lord Digby—one who then took the patriotic side—to another, John Hampden,—who afterwards died for it.—"That sloven whom you see before you hath no ornament of speech; that sloven, I say, if we should ever come to a breach with the King, which God forbid, in such a case I say, that sloven will be the greatest man in England." The speaker was the sloven's cousin, and, with the intuitive perception of a kindred mind, saw in that rough piece of humanity some of the rarest elements of power which this world has ever felt.

Oliver Cromwell began his parliamentary career in 1628, as member for Huntingdon. In the Long Parliament he represented Cambridge, being returned by a majority of only one. As early as 1628 he distinguished himself in a debate respecting the pardon of certain religious delinquents, by charging some leading Churchmen with Popery; and though we can see nothing in his speeches but a rough, rude energy, they were jerked out by his untunable voice in such a fashion that they were remembered and talked of when many eloquent orations had glided into oblivion. His house at Huntingdon afforded a refuge to persecuted Nonconformist ministers. At St. Ives he achieved an unequalled reputation for "piety and self-denying virtue." And at Ely—whence he had now come to London, over bad roads in the foggy month of November, travelling on horseback in humble style—at Ely, dwelling at the glebe house, near St. Mary's Churchyard, he maintained the same character and influence, though there he suffered dreadfully from hypochondria. In part it rose from seeing his brethren forsake their native country to seek their bread among strangers, or to live in a howling wilderness.

Members of the Long Parliament.

Oliver St. John, member for Totness, was on terms of friendship with Oliver Cromwell, more so in the later than in the earlier portion of his history. Eminent for qualities such as help to make the good lawyer and the useful statesman, there hung round his ways a mystery—the effect of reticence and moroseness—which impaired his influence, and gave him the name of "the dark-lantern man!" At first chiefly known in a legal and political capacity, as time advanced, and events rolled into ecclesiastical channels, he became active in religious affairs, and took a foremost place amongst political independents.

Sir Arthur Haselrig represented Leicestershire. He had married the sister of Lord Brook, and probably shared in what were considered the extreme ecclesiastical opinions of that nobleman. What these opinions were will be seen as we proceed, together with the course which the Leicestershire baronet took, as well on State as on Church questions. He, at an early period of the Long Parliament, showed himself decidedly opposed to Episcopacy, and ultimately became a thorough Republican. With much warm-heartedness and generosity, he had also the rashness and prejudice which are the dark shadows of such virtues, so that his enemies said he had "more will than wit," and gave him the nickname of "hare-brained."

But far more influential at first than any of these were other men whom we must describe.

1640, November.

Of the Parliamentary leaders, the most renowned and influential at the commencement of the struggle was John Pym. That "grave and religious gentleman"—burgess for the good town of Tavistock—appeared as conspicuously in religious business as in that which was strictly political. His countenance had a lion-like dignity, and, with a touch of melancholy in eyes and lips, there blended an expression of invincible firmness, while his shaggy mane-like hair, disarranged, as he spoke with tremendous energy, were in keeping with the rest of his majestic appearance. For eight and twenty years he had struggled against the policy of King, Court, and Church. Wise in council, and eloquent in speech, though quaint and tedious in the style of his oratory—a trifling drawback, however, in that age—he stood forward the most formidable antagonist with whom the High Church party had to deal. So closely at one time did John Pym connect Church and State—in this respect widely differing from Sir Harry Vane—that in 1628, he declared, "It belongs to the duty of a Parliament to establish true religion and to punish false; we must know what Parliaments have done formerly in religion. Our Parliaments have confirmed General Councils."[79] This now would be called a thoroughly Erastian style of speaking. It proceeded on the theory of the Church being subject to the State, and in this view many of the ecclesiastical reformers of that age were practically agreed, however diversified their notions of Church government might be. Pym, though never a Nonconformist, but simply professing himself "a faithful son of the Protestant religion," from the beginning of his career opposed the spirit and proceedings of Anglican prelacy; and as to the questions affecting Episcopacy, he at last acted with those who sought its overthrow. He had a large share in calling the Long Parliament, as he prepared the petition for that purpose, and went to York to present it to the King. After the writs had been issued, Pym and others proceeded on an electioneering crusade, urging the voters to support representatives who would maintain the liberties of their country, then so threatened and imperilled. As popular opinion counted him the author of the Long Parliament, so common consent assigned to him the position of its leader.

Members of the Long Parliament.

Next to John Pym comes John Hampden—the illustrious member for Buckinghamshire, universally known for his resistance of ship-money, and for his brief but brilliant military career. His religious character and the part he took in ecclesiastical affairs have, however, been much overlooked; yet, in early life, as the friend of Sir John Eliot, he had followed that single-minded and unflinching patriot in his noble resistance of ecclesiastical as well as regal despotism, and was one of the leaders of the advanced party which sought to promote reforms in Church and State. In 1629 he was engaged in preparing bills for enlarging the liberty of hearing the Word of God, and for preventing corruption in the collation to benefices, headships, fellowships, and scholarships in Colleges, besides other measures of less importance in a similar direction. "He was," says Clarendon, "not a man of many words, and rarely began the discourse, or made the first entrance upon any business that was assumed; but a very weighty speaker, and after he had heard a full debate, and observed how the House was like to be inclined, took up the argument, and shortly, and clearly, and craftily, so stated it, that he commonly conducted it to the conclusion he desired; and if he found he could not do that, he never was without the dexterity to divert the debate to another time, and to prevent the determining anything in the negative which might prove inconvenient in the future."[80] All this, when stript of its manifest unfairness, means neither more nor less than that this persistent enemy of ship-money must have been also a skilful parliamentary tactician, possessing a rare insight into men and motives. His modesty and moderation are acknowledged even by this prejudiced historian; and the rapid progress of his opinions on ecclesiastical affairs made him what the same authority truly calls, "a root-and-branch man"—a fact which, though doubted by one of his biographers, is correctly maintained by another.[81] His high intellectual forehead, his delicately chiselled features, his eyes so calmly looking you through, his lips of compressed firmness, with a kind of melancholy presentiment imprinted on his whole face—betoken a man born to a great but sad destiny; and we do not wonder at the confidence he inspired, whether he appealed to the patriotism of his tenantry and neighbours in the old family mansion down in Buckinghamshire, at the back of the Chiltern hills, or stood up to address the grave assembly in St. Stephen's Chapel, Westminster.[82] Perhaps it is right here to mention a man of a very different stamp, who sat near these illustrious statesmen and acted with them. Henry Marten, member for Berks—and, after his father's death, renowned through the county for his hospitable entertainments in the vale of "White Horse"—was as gay and humorous, and as fond of fun as the other two were serious and dignified. Nor can it be denied that he seems to have been as licentious as they were virtuous—as "far from a Puritan as light from darkness," and as destitute of religious faith as they were diligent in its cultivation. Strongly republican, he steadily opposed the Court policy, and, perhaps through religious indifference, became tolerant of the religious opinions of others. He belongs to a considerable class of men who from political feeling are attached to ecclesiastical reformers, and who join with them in aspirations after the widest liberty, though incapable of entering into their loftier purposes. Marten's name does not occur in the early ecclesiastical debates of the Long Parliament, but he is found afterwards in connection with political Independents.

John Selden, member for the University of Oxford, must not be dropped out of this roll. Merely to mention his name is to suggest the idea of marvellous learning. His reputation—now exalted by distance of time, and widened by the flow of ages—reached in his own day almost surprising magnitude, and must have imparted immense authority to his opinions. Those opinions, in reference to Church affairs, were what are commonly called Erastian. In the early conflicts of Puritanism, Selden fought in its ranks against the domineering spirit of prelacy, though no Puritan himself, and not having any objection to bishops, provided they were kept in subjection to the State.[83] His strength in public affairs seems to have shewn itself more in the way of opposition than in constructive skill. If he did not positively help to pull down Episcopacy he hindered the setting up of Presbyterianism. Nor should it be forgotten that, student-like, he preferred his library to the arena of debate, and notwithstanding his sacrifices at one time to liberty, he had too great a love of ease—if we are to believe Clarendon, who knew and admired him[84]—to take much trouble in guiding the helm of public affairs.

1640, November.

Members of the Long Parliament.

Anecdotes are related serving to shew that even after the opening of the Long Parliament, the reformers had not definitely made up their minds as to what should be done. One "fine evening," Nathaniel Fiennes, after dining at Pym's lodgings with Mr. Hyde, afterwards Lord Clarendon, rode out with him on horseback "in the fields between Westminster and Chelsea." Hyde, in the course of conversation, asked Fiennes, "what government do you mean to introduce if the existing constitution of the Church were altered?" To this he replied "there will be time enough to think of that;" but he "assured him, and wished him to remember what he said, that if the King resolved to defend the bishops, it would cost the kingdom much blood, and would be the occasion of as sharp a war as had ever been in England; for that there was so great a number of good men who resolved to lose their lives before they would ever submit to that government."[85] These words were uttered in the summer of 1641, when the Long Parliament had been sitting seven or eight months. At an earlier period, Sir Philip Warwick—the Court gentleman who quizzed Cromwell's clothes—met the rough-looking man in the lobby of the House, and wished to know what the real objects of his party were. "I can tell you," he bluntly replied, "what I would not have, if I cannot what I would." We are convinced that Cromwell spoke the truth in relation to his views of both the political and ecclesiastical changes on the brink of which the nation stood. Changes hovered not in the distance but at hand, and amongst them some which must modify the ecclesiastical establishment; but how far, looking at the different opinions of the country, reform ought to be carried, did not at once appear. Some few had republican theories—for example, Vane and Marten—and possibly at an early period they contemplated the overthrow of the monarchy, and with it the Episcopal Church. The latter of these gentlemen blurted out as much, with regard to monarchy, only two days after Fiennes' talk with Hyde, intimating his design to employ certain persons up to a certain point, and then to use them "as they had used others." But there is no solid ground for believing that the greater number of the reformers had at first any further object than that of effectually curbing kingly prerogative in the state, and bringing down the pomp and pride of episcopacy in the Church. The course which they actually pursued shaped itself according to the discipline of circumstances. Their views widened as they went along. As is often the case in times of change, these reformers in the end were forced to seek more than they originally imagined. First denied the little which might have contented them, they felt prompted to a further struggle, and naturally claimed more and more: it was but the story of the Sybil, with her books, repeated once again. Easy is it to point out apparent inconsistencies in the career of men so influenced, and plausible too are the charges against them of concealment, treachery, and breach of faith; but an impartial consideration of facts, and honest views of human nature, will lead to conclusions at once more favourable and more just. The truth is, that the members of the Long Parliament were not theorists intent on working out some perfect ideal, but practical men who looked at things as they were, and with upright intentions endeavoured to mend them as best they could. They aimed at reforming institutions much in the same plodding way as that in which their fathers had founded and reared those institutions. The opening of the States General in France presents in this respect a contrast to the opening of the Long Parliament in England; the brilliant theoristic Frank cannot be confounded with the sober, practical Saxon. The defiance or treachery of opponents filled our religious patriots of the seventeenth century with alarm, drove them to take up a higher position than they at first assumed, and to encamp themselves behind more formidable entrenchments than it then entered into their minds to raise.

Another class in the House of Commons requires attention. Many were favourably disposed to the Church of England, advocating a moderate episcopacy and approving the use of the Common Prayer, with a few alterations. They had no liking for Presbyterian schemes of government, much less for a congregational polity. Their sympathies went with the Church of their fathers, the Church of the Reformation, the Church which was built over the ashes of Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer. They cannot be called Anglican Catholics; but they were to the heart English Churchmen. Despising the mummeries of Laud, and not liking the instructions of his school, then so common in parish churches—these persons loved the old Gothic and ivy-mantled edifices where they had been baptized and married, and by whose altars their parents slept under quaint old monuments, which touched their hearts whenever they worshipped within the walls. They wished to see the Church of England reformed, not overturned.

Members of the Long Parliament.

1640, November.

Lucius Carey, Viscount Falkland, member for Newport, stood among the chief of this description. His early fate, as well as his high esteem for John Hampden, must ever link their names in affecting companionship. For a time they fought a common battle. What Hampden said at the commencement of the strife about bishops and Anglican High Churchism we do not know; but we know what Falkland said, and shall have occasion to record some of his words, which for fiery sharpness against prelatical assumptions were not surpassed by the speeches of any Puritan. Attempts had been made to bring him over to Popery, which had led to his reading the Fathers and pursuing the controversy for himself.[86] Thus skilled in the knowledge of the whole question, the result of his studies was not only an aversion to the finished system of Popery, but a healthful horror of all those insinuating principles and practices which lead to it. A sounder Protestant did not tread the floor of the House than Viscount Falkland. Virtuous and brave, with honour unimpeachable, and with patriotism unsuspected, he wins our heart, even though we lament the course he ultimately pursued. His full-length character, drawn by Clarendon, true and faithful no doubt, though the hand of friendship laid on the colours, inspires the reader with admiration and love: but we are somewhat startled at what the historian says of the physique of his honoured friend: his stature low, his motion not graceful, his aspect far from inviting, with a voice so untuned that none could expect music from that tongue, he was so uncomely that "no man was less beholden to nature for its recommendation into the world." The portrait of Falkland, by Vandyke, hardly confirms this unfavourable description of his appearance by Clarendon, though even there, in spite of cavalier silk and slashed doublet, ample collar tassel-tyed, and flowing locks, the face of the young nobleman wears a somewhat rustic simplicity, albeit, tinged with an expression of sincere good-nature.

Members of the Long Parliament.

A chief place amongst Church reformers during the first few months of the Long Parliament must be assigned to Sir Edward Dering. He represented the Kentish yeomen, the majority of whom had been driven into Puritanism by the Anglo-Catholic zeal of Laud; and he expressed the predominant feeling of the county, when he quaintly said, "he hoped Laud would have more grace, or no grace at all." Chairman of a sub-committee for religion, and a frequent and ardent speaker, he gathered round him the sympathies of the party opposed to the government, and was hailed by the citizens of London with "God bless your worship!" while the people—who in those days gathered about the doors of the House of Commons, as crowds do still, to cheer their favourite members—pointed to him as the man of the day, exclaiming, "There goes Sir Edward Dering!" This he tells us himself—an indication of his egotism. Vanity, no doubt, and weakness mixed themselves with his impetuous but persistent pursuit of an object, of which many laughable examples are furnished in the story of his life.[87] Impetuous and rash, flexible to flattery, neither firm nor courageous under opposition, he was, nevertheless, amiable, well-meaning, patriotic, gentlemanly, and even chivalrous. He could reason with force, and declaim with eloquence, being no less fervent in his religious affections than in his political sentiments. The comely person of the Kentish baronet aided his popularity, and so did his genial manners, in spite of his hasty temper.[88]

Posthumous fame is often not at all in proportion to contemporary influence. Sir Edward Dering is now by many forgotten, and, even John Pym, perhaps, does not hold the place in history which he did in life; yet, in the early days of the Long Parliament, these persons were more conspicuous in debate, and had more weight with the populace than John Hampden or Oliver Cromwell.

Amongst the class at first favourable to extensive ecclesiastical reforms was also that mercurial royalist, Lord Digby, who represented Dorsetshire, and afterwards became Earl of Bristol. He soon diverged very far from his early compatriots, and played a part which must always affix dishonour to his name, whatever opinion may be formed of the cause he espoused.

1640, November.

All the persons now mentioned acted together in ecclesiastical affairs, more or less intimately, at the opening of Parliament. Those who came nearest to one another in opinion had meetings for conference. Pym, Hampden, Fiennes, and Vane the younger, with some liberal noblemen of the Upper House, were wont to assemble at Broughton Castle, Oxfordshire, the seat of Lord Say, Fiennes' father, and at Tawsley, in Northamptonshire, the mansion of Sir Richard Knightley, father-in-law to Hampden. A story is related—not a very likely one—that in certain old stone-walled and casemated rooms, shown in the castle, the worthies[89] used to meet lest they should be detected; and, which is more probable, that a printing-press, established in the mansion by Sir Richard's father, was applied to their purposes. Perhaps about the same time, meetings of a similar kind were also held at Kensington, in the noble mansion of Lord Holland, one of the statesmen who took part in these conferences. There were gatherings in Gray's Inn Lane, too, whither reports came up from the country, and whence intelligence was distributed amongst the city patriots. After the opening of Parliament, Pym's lodgings at Westminster became a place of rendezvous, at least for a select few. But though these consultations so far obtained amongst certain chiefs, it must not be supposed that there existed a large organized party, resembling the phalanx which till of late years used compactly to follow some great leader. The two parties into which the House of Commons fell did by no means distinctly divide at first. How, on ecclesiastical questions they formed, and took up their position, will be seen as we proceed.

Members of the Long Parliament.

Certainly there can be traced nothing like an organized party for defending the Church. The King and the bishops, with many of the nobility and a number of the people, were sincerely attached to the Establishment, and were prepared to admit only slight changes in its constitution. In the House of Commons, however, where its battle had to be fought, and its fate decided, there did not appear any strong alliance, or any distinct advocacy in its favour. It is surprising that in the early debates, when so many voices fiercely proclaimed its corruptions, so few made themselves heard in its defence. No chivalrous spirit stepped forward to resist the band of assailants. The tide flowed in. Not one strong man attempted to build a breakwater.

Edward Hyde, who did so much for the Church of England at the Restoration, did little for it in this crisis of its fate. It is true he was a young man, and without great influence, but he shewed no heroism on its behalf; indeed, heroism was foreign to his nature. What he attempted he himself describes, and that the reader will discover to be paltry enough.

In the Upper House were the bishops, who might naturally be esteemed as guardians and defenders of the Church in the hour of need. But there were none of them possessed of that statesman-like ability, without which it would have been impossible to preserve the Episcopal Establishment in the shock of revolution. Laud, no doubt, had great talents and abundant courage, but the blunders he had made in driving the ship on to the rocks, gave no hope that he would have skill enough to pilot the ship off, even if granted the opportunity. But he had not even the opportunity. Hardly did the Long Parliament open when his indignant enemies thrust him from the helm. The conduct of other bishops had only served to strip them of the last chance of saving their order. The best on the bench shared in the obloquy brought on all by the intolerance and corruption of the worst, while none of them possessed the mental and moral calibre necessary for dealing with those huge difficulties amidst which the Church of England had now been dashed.

1640, November.

Puritans too, it should be remembered, sat in the Upper as well as in the Lower House. Amongst them may be numbered Devereux, Earl of Essex; Seymour, Earl of Hertford; Rich, Earl of Warwick; Rich, Earl of Holland; Viscount Say and Sele, Viscount Mandeville, Baron Wharton, Greville, Lord Brook, and others. Some of these will appear in the following pages, and of them in general we may observe that they did not lack astuteness, courage, and power. Anglicanism might be stronger in the House of Lords than in the House of Commons; but Puritanism, on the whole, appeared stronger than Anglicanism even there.

One man alone could be found capable of doing aught to preserve the Church in this hour of her adversity. Could Lord Strafford have carried out his thorough policy, had he been left free to pursue his course, had no coup d'etat come in the way to arrest his daring ambition, and crush his despotic projects; he might, with his subtle brain, brave heart, and iron hand, have defeated the patriots once more, and so have saved the Anglican Establishment awhile. Another dissolution, or some arbitrary arrests, would, for a season, have crushed Pym and his party. That, however, was not to be.

CHAPTER II.

Shortly after the opening of Parliament, Pym met Hyde in Westminster Hall, and showed unmistakeably, by his conversation, the course which he intended to pursue. "They must now," he told him, "be of another temper than they were the last Parliament; that they must not only sweep the house clean below, but must pull down all the cobwebs which hung in the top and corners, that they might not breed dust, and so make a foul house hereafter. But they had now an opportunity to make their country happy, by removing all grievances, and pulling up the causes of them by the roots, if all men would do their duties."[90]

1640, November.

On the 6th of November, the Commons, in pursuance of precedent, appointed a grand Committee of religion,[91] consisting of the whole House, to meet every Monday afternoon, at two o'clock. The next morning came a petition from Mrs. Bastwick, and another from Mrs. Burton, on behalf of their husbands—"close prisoners in remote islands"—after having stood in the pillory, and lost their ears, by a Star Chamber sentence. Immediately upon this, another petition followed from John Brown, on behalf of his master, Mr. Prynne—"close prisoner in the Isle of Jersey"—who also had suffered mutilation by authority of the same tribunal. Scarcely had this arrived when another appeared from John Lilburne—"close prisoner in the Fleet"—also under Star Chamber condemnation. A fifth was read from Alexander Leighton, complaining of his sentence by the same court, in pursuance of which he had been whipped, slashed in the nose, branded on both cheeks, and deprived of his ears, and then closely imprisoned.[92]

Debates on Religion.

The presentation of these petitions produced an impression most adverse to the Church. The offences of the prisoners had been the publishing of books, which virulently assailed prelacy, superstitious worship, and ecclesiastical despotism. The tone in some of these writings is quite indefensible, and scarcely to be excused,[93] and had they been passed over in silence, sympathy might have turned towards those assailed; but after the liberty of the Press had been violated, and a merciless punishment had been inflicted on the assailants, the tide of popular feeling ran in their favour, and they were honoured as martyrs in their country's cause.

1640, November.

The House of Commons at once overrode the authority of the Star Chamber, and sent for the prisoners. Even in the pillory, and the prison, Burton and Prynne had received testimonies of sympathy, and now their return to London was a perfect ovation. They arrived on the 28th of November, and were "nearly three hours in passing from Charing Cross to their lodging in the city, having torches carried to light them." The parish churches had rung merry peals as the liberated prisoners reached town after town, and their escort into London consisted of a hundred coaches, some with six horses, and two thousand horsemen, with sprigs of rosemary in their hats—"those on foot being innumerable."[94] Afterwards the House resolved that the proceedings against these sufferers had been illegal and unjust—that their fines should be remitted—that they were to be restored to liberty, and that their persecutors should make reparation for the injuries they had inflicted.[95] Prynne—when vacancies in Parliament occurred through the secession of royalist members—was elected to a seat; and thenceforth in the Long Parliament his mutilated ears became constant mementoes of Star Chamber cruelty, stimulating resistance to arbitrary government, if not provoking retaliation for past offences. And here it may be noticed that many members on the patriotic side had suffered from the despotic doings of past years. Hampden, Holles, Selden, Strode, Sir Harbottle Grimston, Long, and Hobart had all been in prison, and some also had paid fines.[96] They would have been more or less than human if their memories had not aroused indignation against the despotism of the King and his ministers. Such members seated on the opposition benches, backed by a majority, were enough to make the hearts of courtiers quail.

Debates on Religion.

Not only did Pym's spirit pervade the House, and manifest itself in these early proceedings, but his voice was heard enumerating the main grievances in Church and State. Scarcely had the session of the Commons commenced, when—according to the Puritan habit of the times—he denounced the encouragement given to Papists, because their principles were incompatible with other religions, and because with them laws had no authority, nor oaths any obligation, seeing that the Bishop of Rome could dispense with both. He complained further of their being allowed offices of trust in the Commonwealth, of their free resort to Court, and of their having a Nuncio in England, even as they had a congregation of Cardinals in Italy. It would be unreasonable to apply to a statesman maintaining these views in the seventeenth century, a standard of opinion belonging to the nineteenth, and also it is unnecessary to expose the fallacies which underlie such specious coverings. We must admit that there were special circumstances then existing, and recent facts in fresh remembrance—some of them will be hereafter seen—which rendered the position of the friends of freedom very different from what it is now. Though principles of righteousness and charity are immutable, the recollection of old evils just escaped, and the apprehension of new perils just at hand, may well be pleaded in excuse of measures then adopted for self-preservation. The fear of the restoration of Popery at that period cannot be pronounced an idle apprehension. The Reformation was young. Rome was busy. The Queen was a Papist. Roman Catholics were in favour at Court. Anglo-Catholicism unconsciously was opening the gates to the enemy. And further, in connection with this speech by Pym, it is only fair to quote what he said on another occasion:—"He did not desire any new laws against Popery, or any rigorous courses in the execution of those already in force; he was far from seeking the ruin of their persons or estates, only he wisht they might be kept in such a condition as should restrain them from doing hurt."[97]

1640, November.

From the subject of Popery, Pym turned at once to Anglican innovations, which he regarded as the bridge leading to it. He pointed out the maintenance of Popish tenets in books and sermons, together with the practice of Popish ceremonies in worship—which he compared to the dry bones in Ezekiel, coming together, and being covered with sinews, flesh, and skin; to be afterwards filled with breath and life. First the form and finally the spirit of the old apostacy were creeping over the Church of England, and the corpse buried at the Reformation even how seemed rising from the grave. The speaker proceeded to complain of the discouragement shown to Protestantism by prosecuting scrupulous persons for things indifferent—such as not coming to the altar rails to receive the communion,[98] preaching lectures on Sunday afternoons, and using other Catechisms than that in the prayer book. This part of Pym's speech concluded with a notice of alarming encroachments made by ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Accused persons were fined and punished without law. A jure divino authority was claimed for Episcopal order and proceedings, and articles were contrived and published, pretending to have the force of canon laws, which the orator declared was an effect of great presumption and boldness, not only in the bishops, but in their archdeacons, officials, and chancellors, who thus assumed a kind of synodical authority. Such injunctions might well partake, in name, with "that part of the common law which is called the extravagants."[99] This last charge referred to what had been done in the late convocation.

Debates on Religion.

Other speakers followed Pym, and all adopted the same tone. Sir Benjamin Rudyard complained of disturbances made on account of trifles, "where to place a metaphor or an altar," and of families ruined for not dancing on Sundays; and he asked what would become of the persecutors when the master of the house should return and find them beating their fellow-servants? These inventions were but sieves for the devil's purposes, made to winnow good men. They were meant to worry diligent preachers, for such only were vexed after this fashion. So it came to pass that, under the name of Puritan, all religion was branded, and under a few hard words against Jesuits, all Popery was countenanced; whoever squared his actions by any rule, either divine or human, he was a Puritan; whoever would be governed by the King's laws, he was a Puritan; he that would not do what other men would have him to do, was a Puritan. The masterpiece of the enemy was to make the truly religious suspected of the whole kingdom.[100]

Sir John Holland, member for Castle Rising, also insisted on ecclesiastical grievances. Bagshaw, Culpeper, and Grimston proceeded in a similar strain. Even Lord Digby complained of prelates, convocations, and canons, the last being "a covenant against the King for bishops and the hierarchy."

1640, November.

Perhaps there is not on record another great debate in which such unanimity found expression, and such volleys of grape-shot rattled into a regiment of abuses. No question, however, affecting the fundamental principles of the Establishment was at present raised; but the corruptions which had covered and choked it were unsparingly threatened. Towards them nothing but indignation was shown.

When the debate had closed with the appointment of a Committee to prepare a remonstrance, the House, well knowing that the right way to obtain a blessed issue was to implore the divine assistance, resolved to desire the Lords to join with them in requesting his Majesty to allow so holy a preparation, and, further, to appoint a general fast.

What the next day witnessed is most memorable for its political consequences, yet it also involved ecclesiastical results of the greatest importance. The Earl of Strafford, though suffering from the gout to which he was a martyr, had hastened to London, and reached it on the 10th of November; fully comprehending the state of affairs, and meditating measures for stopping the tide of revolution. People believed he had a project for accusing the patriots of a share in the Scotch invasion; and that, failing other schemes, there remained the old expedient of dissolving Parliament.

The Earl, the morning after his arrival in London, went down to the House and took his seat; being received with all the "expressions of honour and observance, answerable to the dignity of his place, and the esteem and credit which he had with the King as the chief Minister of State. But this day's sun was not fully set before his power and greatness received such a diminution as gave evident symptoms of his approaching ruin."[101]

Debates on Religion.

His fellow-counsellor and trusty adherent, Archbishop Laud, moved that from a Committee of the two Houses, to be held that afternoon, he and four other bishops might be spared their attendance, on account of a meeting of Convocation. The Prime Minister and the Archbishop left the House, little dreaming of what would happen before sunset on that November day.

Pym had heard of Strafford's arrival. Knowing the man, regarding his return as ominous, and with a keen eye piercing into the heart of his policy, he felt that he must grapple with him at once. Not merely for himself had it come to be a question of life or death, but all reform in Church and State depended on an immediate defeat of Strafford. If suffered to do what he pleased but for another day, he might render all the work of the last few months abortive, and bring back absolutism in triumph. Men said of him, "he had much more of the oak than the willow about his heart." To bend the oak was impossible, and therefore Pym resolved to cut it down. Another such instance of timely sternness there is not in English history.

1640, November.

Twelve years before, at Greenwich,—when Strafford, faithless to his party, thought of accepting a coronet,—Pym had said to him, "You are going to leave us, but I will never leave you while your head is upon your shoulders." Did those words cross the mind of the patriotic statesman as he passed through the lobby to take his accustomed seat on the morning of the most memorable day of his life? Suddenly he rose, looked round on the well-filled benches, and said he had matter great importance to bring forward. "Let the strangers' room be cleared," he went on to ask, "and the outer doors be locked, and the keys laid on the clerk's table." This done, breathless silence followed. Before the Parliament of England, now sitting in secret conclave, Pym spoke out boldly what was in his heart. The kingdom had fallen into a miserable condition. "Waters of bitterness" were flowing through the land; he must enquire, he said, "from what fountain? what persons they are who have so far insinuated themselves into the royal affections, as to be able to pervert His Majesty's excellent judgment, to abuse his name, and apply his authority to support their own corrupt designs?"

Pym's speech occupied some hours in delivery. In the midst of it came interruption. With the usual formalities, a message arrived from the House of Lords, touching the conference to which the Archbishop had referred that morning. Though the message itself could not at first have been contrived with a view of getting at the secret, about which outside curiosity had risen to fever heat; yet it might have been sent at that moment, with the hope of worming out what His Majesty's Commons were doing within locked doors. But the messengers, as they walked slowly up to the clerk's table, making their measured obeisances, were none the wiser for their visit. Pym, suspecting some other object than the professed one, had them quickly dispatched with the answer, "that as the House was engaged on very weighty business it could not meet the Lords just then." At the same time, he managed to "give such advertisement to some of the Lords," that their House might be kept from rising till his project should be fully accomplished.

Debates on Religion.

The messengers dismissed, the doors re-locked, the buzz of conversation hushed, Pym resumed, and at length ended his speech by demanding that Strafford should be impeached. The demand found "consent from the whole House;" nor in all the debate did one person offer to stop the torrent of condemnation by any favourable testimony respecting the Earl. Lord Falkland only counselled that time should be taken to digest the accusation. Pym immediately replied such delay would blast all hopes, for Strafford, hearing of their intentions, "would undoubtedly procure the Parliament to be dissolved."

The House at once appointed a committee of seven to draw up the charges. They retired, and soon returned with their report. The House at once solemnly resolved to impeach the Earl at the bar of the Lords.

The clock had struck four. The doors were thrown open. "The leader of the Commons issued forth, and followed by upwards of three hundred of the members, crossed over in the full sight of the assembled crowd, to the Upper House." Standing at the bar, with the retinue of members pressing round, Pym, in the name of the Commons, accused Strafford of high treason.[102]

1640, November.

Strafford's seat was empty. The Commons withdrew. After consideration of the message by the peers, the Lord-keeper acknowledged its receipt, gave credit for due care taken in the business, and promised a further answer. The Earl was sitting at Whitehall with the King. Swift as the wind, tidings of the impeachment began to travel, and reached the accused amongst the first. He had been out-manœuvred. While preparing for an attack on the enemy's camp he found his own citadel assailed, stormed, taken. Still dauntless, he coolly remarked, "I will go and look mine accusers in the face." Then going to the court gate he took coach, and drove to the House. Advancing to the threshold, he "rudely" demanded admission. James Maxwell, keeper of the Black Rod, opened the door. His lordship, with a "proud glouming countenance," made towards his seat as well as his lameness would allow. He sat down, heard[103] what was going on, and, in spite of orders to withdraw, "kept his confidence and his place till it raised a vehement redoubling of the former scorn, and occasioned the Lord-keeper to tell him that he must withdraw, and to charge the gentleman usher that he would look well to him."[104]

The proud minister found himself detained in the lobby of the House in which once his word had been law.

The Lords debated further on the message of the Commons, and came to the conclusion that the Earl, for this accusation of high treason, should be committed to the safe custody of the gentleman usher, and be sequestered from coming to Parliament until he cleared himself. Called in, he was commanded to kneel at the bar. Completely vanquished, he did so on the very spot where his great antagonist an hour before had stood a conqueror. He now had formal information of the charge brought up by Pym, and was taken into custody. Master Black Rod, proud of his business, required his prisoner to deliver up his sword, and told a waiting-man to carry it. As the prisoner retired, all gazed, but no man "capped to him before whom, that morning, the greatest of England would have stood discovered."[105] Discourteous speeches followed—for an English mob has little pity for fallen greatness—and, to add to his humiliation, when at last, amidst the bustle, the Earl found his carriage, Master Maxwell insolently remarked, "Your lordship is my prisoner, and must go in my coach."

Debates on Religion.

That day sealed Strafford's fate; the only impediment in the patriot's path lay crushed. Now Pym could do his will, and carry out some great reform in Church and State. It was time.

"The strong man armed kept his palace, and his goods were in peace. But now a stronger than he came upon him and overcame him, and took from him all his armour, wherein he trusted, and divided his spoils."

To some readers, there may appear little or no connection between Pym's death-wrestle with Wentworth, and the overturning of the Episcopal Church, the setting up of Presbyterianism, and what followed; yet really without that death-wrestle the things which happened afterwards appear impossibilities.

When Strafford had been in the Tower a month, Laud was impeached, and followed his friend into the custody of James Maxwell.[106]

On the 17th November, a public fast took place, when the House of Commons assembled in the Church of St. Margaret, Westminster, and continued in divine worship for seven hours.[107]

1640, November.

A few days after the fast[108] the Commons, according to precedent, received the Holy Communion, and also according to precedent resolved that none should sit in the House who did not partake of the Sacrament.[109] A measure of policy was connected with their piety on this occasion, which from its having been misunderstood has led to a misapprehension of the whole proceeding. The fact of its having been resolved that all should participate in the Lord's Supper has been cited as a proof that the members were all attached to the Church of England;[110] but Rapin[111] adopts the subtle theory that, bent upon assailing the Bishops, the Commons resolved on this communion, to save themselves from being suspected of Presbyterianism,—as in the reign of Henry V., the Commons prefaced their assault on the clergy by passing a Bill for burning heretics, to save themselves from being suspected of heresy. Yet amidst these speculations upon the subject, the real purpose of the House—beyond its following a precedent and gratifying religious feelings—is frankly expressed in the Journal to have been the discovery of papists amongst the members. The committee who reported on the subject conceived that some confession of faith and a renunciation of the Pope should be required from such as were suspected of popery. At the same time two members of the House were directed to convey to the Dean of Westminster a desire that "the elements might be consecrated upon a communion-table, standing in the church, according to the rubric, and to have the table removed from the altar."[112]

Debates on Religion.

1640, November.

The Long Parliament, in its early sittings, occupied much time in hearing Puritan petitions. Such petitions came from sufferers under ecclesiastical oppression; from people dissatisfied with Anglican clergymen; from individuals scandalized at ceremonial innovations; and from different counties praying for redress of grievances in Church and State. The latter petitions were brought up to town by troops of horsemen. Such documents, accompanied by the denunciations of members who presented them, occasioned searching inquiries into Anglican superstition and intolerance. Persons alleged that communion-tables were set altar-wise; that anthems and organs were superseding plain and proper psalm-singing; that wax candles were burnt in churches in honour of our Lady; that copes of white satin were worn by ministers; that boys with lighted torches went in procession and bowed to the altar; and that Puritans were roughly handled for refusing to make a like obeisance. Further, such persons declared "flat Popery" had been preached, as well as performed; transubstantiation, confession, and absolution, being doctrines maintained in Anglican pulpits.[113] Cases were brought up of clergymen unrighteously suspended for refusing to read the "Book of Sports," and for similar offences. The private gossip of the day touching church matters reached the House through members anxious to stimulate their partizans. Though such reports appear undignified enough in senatorial speeches, they are welcome to the historian, because indicative of the staple talk round firesides in those boisterous days. Alderman Pennington told how an archdeacon's son had said, "God take the Parliament for a company of Puritanical factious fellows, who would wiredraw the King for money, when a Spanish don would lend him two millions. The King would never have quiet until he had taken off twenty or more of their heads." In petitions, according to the Diurnals, very odd references occurred to the sayings and doings of High Churchmen. One declared "the Commissaries were the suburbs of heaven, and the High Commission the Archangels, and that to preach twice a day, or to say any prayers but the Common Prayers, was a damnable sin." Moreover, the same newspaper states, that a minister in Shoreditch stood charged with preaching on the man who went down to Jericho—saying, the King was the man, the Scots the thieves, the Protestant the priest, the formal Protestant the Levite, and the Papist the Good Samaritan.[114] Another, being asked how he could maintain by Scripture the turning of the communion-table altar-wise, replied, "the times were turned, and it was fit the tables should be turned also."

A petition came from a churchwarden cited and punished for not prosecuting parishioners who refused to stand while hearing the creed, to bow at the name of Jesus, to kneel at public prayer, and to sit uncovered during sermon time. These breaches of prescribed ecclesiastical decorum were taken as proofs of Puritan irreverence; but when Puritans were threatened in consequence with legal penalties, such acts appeared to them to be full of heroic virtue.

Debates on Religion.

The growth of popery formed a fruitful topic of quaint declamation. The approach of any great personage, it was said, may be known by the sumpter mules sent on before. And when the Pope travels, altars, copes, pictures, and images precede his progress. High Church ceremonies announced the coming Mass. Clerical tricks of this description prepared for the revival of papal domination. Resistance had provoked persecution. Fire had come out of the bramble, and devoured the cedars of Lebanon.[115]

Stories, too, were told of a parsonage worth three hundred a year, where not even a poor curate remained to read prayers, catechise children, or bury the dead; and of a vicarage, where the nave of the church had been pulled down, the lead sold, the bells profaned, the chancel made into a dog-kennel, and the steeple turned into a pigeon-house.[116]

The debate of the 14th and 15th of December, on the canons, was conducted in the same spirit as other proceedings. Convocation had met in April, at the opening of the Short Parliament; one of the first measures adopted being an imposition on the clergy of six subsidies of four shillings in the pound for six years. Canons had then been prepared, relative to the regal power for suppressing popery, also against Socinianism and sectaries, and further, for preventing Puritan innovations and for promoting uniformity. While discussions on these subjects were proceeding, Parliament had been dissolved, but Convocation had unconstitutionally determined as a royal synod, to persevere sitting until it should be dissolved by the King's writ.[117] Some of the clerical body had protested against this procedure, but the King, with the opinion of certain judges, had confirmed it, and Convocation, then acting as a synod under royal sanction, had completed the new canons.[118]

1640, November.

Parliament poured out vials of wrath on all these canons. They included protests against popery—the third being for the suppression of its growth, and the seventh charging the Church of Rome with "idolatry committed in the mass for which all popish altars were demolished," but the Puritans overlooked or regarded all this as only a pretence for covering assaults upon themselves. To have done so seems to us unfair, though considering the character of the men framing the canons, with whom members of the House of Commons were well acquainted, everybody must believe the authors of the new laws hated Puritanism more than Popery. The truth is, Anglicanism, though thoroughly opposed to papal supremacy, and to some of the dogmas and superstitions of Rome, fostered sympathy with much of the faith and worship characteristic of that church, while it had not a breath of kindness for Puritan sentiments. Such a state of things drove the two parties wide as the poles asunder, and we cannot wonder that on the question of the canons the House of Commons, revolting at Anglo-Catholicism, read all which Convocation had done in the light of those well-known principles by which Convocation was actuated. Whatever the bishops and clergy there, might honestly say about popish ceremonies and the idolatry of the mass, they were chiefly bent on crushing the Puritans, and accordingly the Puritans grappled with the Anglicans as in a struggle for life. Matter enough existed in these new laws to provoke destructive criticism. The first propounded the divine right of kings, and claimed for them powers inconsistent with the English constitution. The canon against sectaries was extremely intolerant, and was so ingeniously contrived as to turn statutes for suppressing popery against all sorts of nonconforming Protestants.

Debates on Religion.

No one, however, of this ill-fated assembly's enactments had to run the gauntlet, like the canon relative to the et cetera oath.[119] It speedily sank under torrents of argument and invective, ridicule, and satire. Also, the prolonging of convocation as a synod, after the dissolution of Parliament, incurred condemnation as wholly illegal; the canons were pronounced invalid; and the entire proceedings subversive of the laws of the realm.[120]

Heylyn declares that the et cetera was introduced in the draft to avoid tautology, and that the enumeration was to be perfected before engrossment, but the king hastened its being printed, and so occasioned the mischief.—Heylyn's Life of Laud, 444.

Archbishop Laud had to bear, in no small measure, the odium of the new ecclesiastical measures. Doubtless, he had a leading hand in their origin, but it is also a fact, that before the opening of the Long Parliament, he wrote by His Majesty's command to the bishops of his province, to suspend the operation of the article respecting the et cetera oath.[121] And when the House had been sitting a little more than three weeks, after Pym, Culpeper, Grimston, and Digby, had attacked this unpopular clerical legislation, and when a still more distinct and violent assault was seen to be approaching, the Archbishop wrote a letter to Selden, member of a committee for enquiry upon the subject, requesting that the "unfortunate canons" might be suffered to die quietly, without blemishing the Church, which had too many enemies both at home and abroad.[122]

1640, November.

The vote of the House of Commons administered a blow to Convocation from which it could not recover. That assembly, indeed, again appeared as the twin sister of the new Parliament. Representatives of the province of Canterbury met on the 3rd November, the day on which the Lords and Commons assembled. The usual formalities having been observed, a sermon preached, and a prolocutor chosen—Archbishop Laud addressed the clergy in Henry the Seventh's chapel, in a manner which shewed that he heard the sound of the brewing storm, and had sense enough to discern the impending danger. So had others of the assembly. Accordingly, some one proposed in the Lower House, that "they should endeavour according to the Levitical law to cover the pit which they had opened, and to prevent the designs of their adversaries by condemning the obnoxious canons." But the majority, not willing to be condemned till formally accused, heeded not this warning; yet the members avoided giving further provocation, and, feeble themselves, they only watched the proceedings of their parliamentary neighbours. When the resolution of the Commons was passed it paralyzed them. The Upper House did not meet again after Christmas, nor the Lower after the following February.[123] The assembly of the Convocation of York had been prevented by the death of the Archbishop, and the new writ issued came to nothing.

Here we shall pause for a moment to watch other forces coming into play.

CHAPTER III.

Two ideas of Church reform evolved themselves: one already indicated,—that of separating from simple primitive Episcopacy all prelatical assumptions,—and another, which amounted to a decided revolution in the Church, including the extinction of Episcopacy altogether. While the former rose out of reverence for the Reformation under Elizabeth, combined with disgust at the history of prelatical rule,—the latter had a deeper and wider cause.

When Episcopacy strove to maintain itself in England, after the shock given to ecclesiastical power in the days of Henry VIII. and Edward VI., Presbyterianism made good its position at Geneva under Calvin, and at Edinburgh under Knox. The connexion between the two cities and the two Reformers, and between them both and our own country, everybody knows. The exiles who had found a home, not only on the shores of the beautiful Lake Leman, but also on the scarcely less beautiful banks of the Lake of Zurich, brought with them, when they returned home after the Marian persecution, strong Presbyterian predilections. Calvin, also, exercised a direct influence on some of the English Reformers; and the system of John Knox, in such close neighbourhood as the north of the Tweed, could not fail to affect those who were studying the question, "what ought to be the Church of the future?"

1567.

Indications of Presbyterian sentiments in the England of Elizabeth are very numerous.[124] They wrought within the Episcopal establishment without producing a severance. Cartwright was a Presbyterian. He contended for the abolition of archbishops, and archdeacons, and would retain only bishops or presbyters to preach the word and pray, and deacons to take care of the poor. Every Church, by which he meant a "certain flock," was to be governed by its own ministers and presbyters, and these were not to be created by civil authority, but chosen by popular election. The directory of government, found in the study of that eminent Puritan after his death, said to be composed by Travers, is in perfect harmony with this Presbyterian scheme. Certain clerical meetings, under the auspices of Cartwright and Travers, took a decided synodical shape.[125] This element continued in the Church under the Stuarts, notwithstanding the efforts of bishops to extinguish it.[126]

Presbyterianism.

Certain Puritans of a Presbyterian turn, formally separated themselves from the Establishment so early as 1567, and met together for Nonconformist worship in Plumber's Hall.[127] An organized Presbytery appears at Wandsworth in 1572,—in the Channel Islands, where the Government of England could not reach it, the system was fully established in 1577; and Presbyterian classes may be traced in Cheshire and Lancashire, Warwick and Northampton, during the last few years of the Tudor dynasty. Organized Presbyterianism is seen but faintly in the early part of the seventeenth century, but Presbyterianism, as a sentiment within the Established Church, is distinctly visible. Nonconformity of another kind was also on the increase at this period. Churches of the Independent and Baptist order may be discovered in Tudor times, but they became more apparent and numerous in the days of the Stuarts. Their rise and progress will be afterwards described.

1640.

How Puritanism glided into a state of separation, and the nonconformist in the Church became a dissenter outside its pale, is curiously illustrated in the Records of the Church assembling in Broadmead, Bristol. In those records is a story of a certain zealous lady of that city named Kelly.[128] "She kept a grocer's shop in High Street, between the Builders' Inn and the High Cross," and that she might bear a testimony against superstitious observances, "she would keep open her shop on Christmas Day, and sit sewing in the face of the sun, and in the sight of all men." Afterwards, when she heard a clergyman she did not like at the parish church, "away she went forth before them all, and said she would hear no more, and never did." Puritan emigrants to New England embarked at Bristol, and would abide with Mrs. Hazzard "if they waited for a wind." Women actually sought to be confined in the parish of a Puritan clergyman, to avoid the ceremonies of "churching and crossing." "The consciences of the good people began to be very weary." Then "it pleased the Lord to stir up some few of the professors of this city to lead the way out of Babylon." "Five persons began to go further, and scrupled to hear common prayer, even four men and one woman." So that in the year 1640, those five persons met together at Mrs. Hazzard's house, "at the upper end of Broad Street, in Bristol, and came to a holy resolution to separate from the worship of the world and times they lived in, and that they would go no more to it."[129] In this case, we see how dissatisfaction with the Established Church gradually led to positive separation, and how extremely feeble, in some instances, was the commencement of organized dissent. But the spirit working in the way just indicated, slowly, and without much notice, came suddenly and boldly on the surface, soon after the Long Parliament had opened.

Presbyterianism.

Though the incumbents of the metropolis were almost all High Churchmen, there were many Puritan lecturers in the city with strong Presbyterian sympathies, supported by wealthy citizens, and in high repute with the multitude. Amongst them, Dr. Cornelius Burgess is a very noticeable man—already mentioned as the fast-day preacher—who, in connection with a lectureship at St. Paul's, held other Church preferment. To him and his brother lecturers may be ascribed the inspiration of much intense public feeling against prelatical assumptions, and against Episcopacy itself,[130] out of which arose an extraordinary memorial, which has attained no small notoriety under the name of the Root and Branch petition.

This petition complained that the offices and jurisdictions of archbishops were the same as in the papal community, "little change thereof being made, except only the head from whence it was derived;" that there was great conformity of the English Church to the Church of Rome in vestures, postures, ceremonies, and administrations; that the liturgy, for the most part, is framed out of the Romish Breviary, Ritual, and the Mass Book; and that the forms of ordination and consecration were drawn from the Romish pontifical.[131] Whoever prepared this document, it was soon submitted to Mr. Bagshawe, of the Inner Temple, member for Southwark, who had obtained great popularity by his lectures against the temporalities of bishops—lectures which brought on him the displeasure of Laud. But Bagshawe, though zealous for the reform of Episcopacy, did not desire to see it abolished. He therefore declined to take charge of the petition, when Mr. John White, his fellow-burgess for Southwark—afterwards the famous chairman of the committee for scandalous ministers—arranged its delivery to the Commons, not however by his own hands, but through Alderman Pennington, a citizen well known for his extreme dislike to the Episcopal Bench.[132]

1633.

A still more effective agency on the Presbyterian side appeared in London at the same time.

Presbyterianism.

Scotland had silently fostered the Presbyterianism of England for many years. Head quarters for that polity had been there established. In the neighbourhood of the Highlands, synods found even a kindlier soil and a more congenial climate than under the shadow of the Alps. True to its old French sympathies, Scotland did not follow the example of reformation set in England or in Germany; it eschewed Saxon examples, and adopted that form of Protestantism which had been embraced by such of the Gallic nation as had seceded from Rome, and which bore the impress of the piety and genius of one of the most illustrious sons of France. Edinburgh, during the ministry of Knox, saw as complete a work accomplished as Geneva had witnessed during the ministry of Calvin. Episcopacy was thoroughly rooted out, and the attempts under Charles I. to replant it only exasperated the husbandmen of the vineyard, and made them love the more what they counted "trees of the Lord's right hand planting." Presbyterianism became doubly dear to Scotchmen when the grandson of Mary sought to destroy that, which, in the days of his grandmother, their forefathers had cultivated with toil and tears. To make the matter worse, when Charles went to Scotland in 1633, and took with him Laud, then Bishop of London, everything seemed to be done which was likely to arouse Scotch prejudices against episcopal order and the English liturgy. Instead of reducing the Anglican ceremonies to as simple a form as possible, the most elaborate pomp of worship appeared in Holyrood Chapel. The Dreadnought, a good ship, well victualled, "appointed to guard the narrow seas," was engaged to transport from Tilbury Hope to the Firth of Forth, twenty-six musical gentlemen of the Royal Chapel at Whitehall, with their goods and paraphernalia to perform the cathedral service, so as to impress the Presbyterians of Edinburgh.[133] A more thorough mistake could not have been made in a city where even the sight of a surplice and the reading of the common prayer, a few years afterwards, occasioned the world-known episode of "Jenny Geddes and her wonderful Folding Stool."

The attempt to impose Episcopacy and its associations on Presbyterian Scotland provoked a Covenant war, and roused a determination in the hearts of her sons to carry Presbyterianism over the border, and to make the two countries one pure Kirk. How the strong Presbyterianism on the other side the Tweed re-inforced what was comparatively weak at first on this side the border,—how the Scotch made the system amongst Englishmen what it became,—how, like a loadstone, it attracted and brought together the scattered particles of Presbyterian sentiments throughout England,—how the Church of the North greatly augmented the mass of Puritanism in the South, and welded it for a while into form somewhat like its own, will appear as this narrative proceeds.

Meanwhile some passing notice must be taken of the enthusiasm of the Scotch army in support of Presbyterianism, and it cannot better be done than in the words of a worthy minister who visited the camp, and whose naïve and graphic notes on other subjects, we shall have frequent occasion to use.

1639.

"It would have done you good," the writer says, "to have cast your eyes athwart our brave and rich hill as oft as I did, with great contentment and joy; for I (quoth the wren) was there among the rest, being chosen preacher by the gentlemen of our Shyre, who came late with my Lord of Eglintoun. I furnished to half-a-dozen of good fellows muskets and picks, and to my boy a broadsword. I carried myself, as the fashion was, a sword, and a couple of Dutch pistols at my saddle; but I promise, for the offence of no man, except a robber in the way; for it was our part alone to pray and preach for the encouragement of our countrymen, which I did to my power most cheerfully." The troops were commanded by noblemen; the captains, for the most part, were landed proprietors; and the lieutenants, experienced soldiers, who had been employed in the wars of Gustavus Adolphus. The colours flying at the entrance of each captain's tent bore the Scottish arms, with the motto, 'For Christ's Crown and Covenant,' in golden letters. There were some companies of Highlanders, "souple fellows, with their playds, targes, and dorlachs." But the soldiers were mostly stout young ploughmen, who increased in courage and experience daily; "the sight of the nobles and their beloved pastors daily raised their hearts; the good sermons and prayers, morning and evening, under the roof of heaven, to which their drums did call them for bells; the remonstrances very frequent of the goodness of their cause; of their conduct hitherto, by a hand clearly divine; also Leslie's skill and fortune made them all so resolute for battle as could be wished. We were feared that emulation among our nobles might have done harm, when they should be met in the fields, but such was the wisdom and authority of that old, little, crooked soldier, that all, with one incredible submission, from the beginning to the end, gave over themselves to be guided by him, as if he had been great Solyman. Certainly the obedience of our nobles to that man's advices was as great as their forbears wont to be to their King's commands." He further adds: "Had you lent your ear in the morning, or especially at even, and heard in the tents the sound of some singing psalms, some praying, and some reading scripture, ye would have been refreshed. For myself, I never found my mind in better temper than it was all that time frae I came from home, till my head was again homeward; for I was as a man who had taken my leave from the world, and was resolved to die in that service without return."[134]

Presbyterianism.

The writer of this description was Robert Baillie, and he, in company with two other distinguished clergymen, Alexander Henderson and Robert Blair, visited London just as the "Root and Branch" petition was being prepared. They came with a commission from Scotland, under the broad seal of the Northern Parliament, to settle the quarrel which had led to the encampment of the covenant army—a quarrel in which the Puritans and the Long Parliament took part with the Scotch against the King and his Bishops. Three noblemen, three barons and three burgesses were commissioned for the same purpose. With the treaty of peace there was to be the payment of the Scotch troops by the English nation. The clerical commissioners hoped that there would follow the inauguration of goodly presbyteries throughout the fair land of the South, an object which was dearer to them than any political alliance, or than any amount of money.

1640, November.

On Monday morning, November 16th, long before dawn, after spending their Sabbath in the little town of Ware, the three clergymen started for London. They had travelled from Edinburgh on horseback, surprised at the inns, seeming to them "like palaces," which they thought accounted for exorbitant charges for coarse meals. In the dark they trotted forth from Ware, all well, "horse and men, with divers merchants, and their servants on little nags," the road "extremely foul and deep;" and by sunrise that cold morning,—as the light woke up the slumbering city, as the smoke rose through the quaint chimneys from ten thousand hearths,—the three presbyters entered the metropolis.[135] They lodged in the city close to London Stone,[136] in a house which was wont to be inhabited by the Lord Mayor, or by one of the Sheriffs. St. Antholin's (or St. Anthony's) Church, connected with the mansion by a gallery, became their place of worship. There they soon had throngs as great as at their own communions, and daily the crowds increased to hear Mr. Henderson, so that "from the first appearance of day to the shutting in the light, the church was never empty." The lodgings by London Stone became the scene of many an earnest conference, and there Baillie wrote the letters and journals which afford us such an insight into public proceedings and religious life in London during that eventful winter.

The Scotch Commissioners soon saw the famous petition, from "the town of London, and a world of men, for the abolition of bishops and deans and all their appurtenances," and were consulted about the time of its presentation.[137] They seem to have recommended delay, till Parliament should pull down "Canterbury and some prime bishops;" and Convocation should be visited with a præmunire for its illegal canons; and preachers have further opportunity of preparing the people to root out Episcopacy. "Huge things," Baillie told his friends, were working in England. God's mighty hand was raising a joyful harvest from long sown tears, but the fruit was scarcely ripe.

Presbyterianism.

The tide of excitement could not be stayed. The London petitioners had not more desire, but they had less patience than the prudent ministers. On the 11th of December, as Baillie tells us, the honest citizens, in their best apparel and in a very modest way, went to the House of Commons, and sent in two aldermen with the document, bearing 15,000 signatures. It was well received. They who brought it were desired to go in peace, and Alderman Pennington laid the huge scroll upon the table.

1641, January.

Another petition, prepared at the same time,[138] came under Baillie's notice, who speaks of it as drawn up by the well-affected clergy for the overthrow of the bishops, and posted through the land for signatures, and as likely to be returned in a fortnight, with "a large remonstrance." "At that time," he exultingly adds, "the root of Episcopacy will be assaulted with the strongest blast it ever felt in England. Let your hearty prayers be joined with mine, and of many millions, that the breath of the Lord's nostrils may join with the endeavours of weak men to blow up that old gourd[139] wicked oak." Whether the Presbyterian Commissioner had been misinformed respecting the Petition and Remonstrance, or whether the paper had undergone alterations after its first issue, this is certain, that when presented to the House on the 23rd January, it differed materially from that of "the Root and Branch," inasmuch as it prayed not for the subversion, but only for the reform of Episcopacy. It contained the names of seven hundred beneficed clergymen. Other petitions had been brought to the House. On the 12th of January several arrived, and that from Kent may be taken as a sample, in which the government of the Church of England by Archbishops, Bishops, Deans, and Archdeacons, was deplored as dangerous to the Commonwealth, and it was earnestly prayed that this hierarchial power might be totally abrogated, if the wisdom of the House should find it could not be maintained by God's word, and to His glory.[140]

Petitions afterwards flowed in on the other side from Wales, Lancashire, Staffordshire, and other counties.[141] High Churchmen talked about the way in which the Puritans and Presbyterians got up these documents. The signatures were fictitious. People were cajoled into writing their names—intended for one purpose, they were perverted for another. Such things might not be altogether without truth. But we are safe in believing, if tricks were played by one party they were played by the other also; and as at present, so then, whatever was done by either faction came in for an unmerciful, and often unrighteous, share of criticism from exasperated opponents.[142]

Petitions.

While petitioners were busy, and the House of Commons had enough to do to hear their grievances, and debates were earnest, and two potent principles were embodied in the strife, the King watched it all with alarm for Episcopacy rather than with any apprehensions for his own personal safety. For his subjects were loyal and dutiful, and, according to Baillie, "feared his frown." He summoned both Houses of Parliament to Whitehall, on the 25th January, 1641, and, after professing willingness to concur in the reformation of the Church, added the following characteristic sentences: "I will show you some rubs, and must needs take notice of some very strange (I know not what term to give them) petitions given in the names of divers counties, against the present established Government, and of the great threatenings against the bishops, that they will make them to be but cyphers, or, at least, their voices to be taken away. Now I must tell you, that I make a great difference between reformation and alteration of Government, though I am for the former, I cannot give way to the latter. If some of them have overstretched their power, I shall not be unwilling these things should be redressed and reformed—nay, further, if upon serious debate you shall show me that bishops have some temporal authority inconvenient to the State, I shall not be unwilling to desire them to lay it down. But this must not be understood, that I shall in any way consent that their voices in Parliament should be taken away; for in all the times of my predecessors since the Conquest, and before, they have enjoyed it, and I am bound to maintain them in it as one of the fundamental constitutions of this kingdom."[143]

1641, February.

After petitions from the people, consultations with the Scotch, cautions from the Crown, and preparatory proceedings in the House, the grand debate came on respecting the "Root and Branch" Petition. The debate lasted throughout the 8th and 9th of February, 1641. In the course of it, the mercurial royalist, Lord Digby, observed, he had reason to believe that some aimed at a total extirpation of Episcopacy, yet, whilst opposing such extreme views, he was for clipping the wings of the prelates; and, though condemning the Petition, he thought no people had ever been more provoked than England of late years, by the insolence and exorbitance of the bishops. "For my part," declared he, "I profess I am inflamed with the sense of them, so that I find myself ready to cry out with the loudest of the 15,000, "down with them, down with them, even to the ground!" Let us not, however," he added, "destroy bishops, but make bishops such as they were in primitive times." The independent Nathaniel Fiennes opposed Episcopal rule, maintaining that until the Church Government of the country could "be framed of another twist," and more assimilated to that of the commonwealth, the ecclesiastical would be no good neighbour to the civil: for as with children afflicted with the rickets, all nourishment goes to the upper parts, so in the rickety condition of the Church, while the hierarchy became monstrously enlarged, the lower clergy pined away. Bishoprics, deaneries, and chapels, he compared to wasters in a wood. The official Sir Benjamin Rudyard condemned bishops unsparingly, yet advocated episcopal superintendence: and afterwards the learned Mr. Bagshawe pedantically distinguished between Episcopacy primitive in statu puro, and Episcopacy in statu corrupto, pleading, at the same time, for a thorough reformation of abuses, and an alteration of Ecclesiastical government into a Presbyterian form. Sir Harbottle Grimstone also asked for a diminution of prelatical power.

Petitions.

The speakers who carried the greatest weight in this debate were Pym and Falkland. We have only a faint echo of the words delivered by the former. They were to the effect that he thought it was not the intention of the House to abolish either Episcopacy or the Book of Common Prayer, but rather to reform both, so far as they gave offence; and if that improvement could be effected with the concurrence of the King, Parliament would accomplish a very acceptable work, such as had never been done since the Reformation.[144] Falkland's speech is fully reported. Very severe upon the conduct of the bishops generally, he made exceptions, and expressed himself content to take away what he said begot the mischief, such as judging wills and marriages, and having votes in Parliament. He denied the divine right, but would allow the human expediency of Episcopal rank. His opinion was, "that we should not root up this ancient tree, as dead as it appears, till we have tried whether by this, or the like lopping of the branches, the sap which was unable to feed the whole may not serve to make what is left both grow and flourish. And, certainly, if we may at once take away both the inconveniences of bishops and the inconveniences of no bishops, this course can only be opposed by those who love mutation for mutation's sake."

1641, Feb.

The only person who boldly defended Episcopacy, and spoke in an Anglican tone, was Mr. Pleydell, member for Wootton Bassett. "Sir," said he, addressing Mr. Speaker, "there is as much beyond truth as on this side it, and would we steer a right course we must be sure to keep the channel, lest we fall from one extreme to another, from the dotage of superstition to the frenzy of profaneness, from bowing to idols to worship the calves of our own imagination." This honest gentleman lamented libellous pamphlets, Puritan sermons, irreverence in churches, and the like; called himself a dutiful son of his distressed mother, the Church of England; pleaded for referring matters of doctrine to learned divines; and declared that to venture on any alteration was to run a risk, the consequences of which no man could foresee.[145]

Petitions.

A scene unnoticed by our historians, but brought to light by the careful examination of Sir Symonds D'Ewes' journal, occurred during the debate.[146] Alderman Pennington, Member for London, vindicated the character of the anti-Episcopal petitioners, and maintained that in obtaining signatures there "was no course used to rake up hands, for if that had been done, 15,000 might have mounted to fifteen times 15,000." Then Sir John Strangways, Member for Weymouth, offered a few words in favour of Episcopacy, observing that "if we made parity in the Church, we must at last come to a parity in the Commonwealth, and that the bishops were one of the three estates of the kingdom, and had a voice in Parliament." Upon this Cromwell rose, and declared that "he knew no reason of those suppositions and inferences which the gentleman had made that last spoke." At this point some interruption occurred, and divers members "called him to the bar." After which Pym and Holles referred to the orders of the House, that if a gentleman said anything objectionable, he might explain himself in his place. D'Ewes followed this up by saying, "to call a member to the bar is the highest and most supreme censure we can exercise within these walls, for it is rending away a part from our body, because if once a member amongst us is placed at yonder bar, he ceaseth to be a member." He then moved, that if this offence of calling to the bar should be repeated, the offender should be well fined. Cromwell, who thus appears to have already become obnoxious to the Church party, must have still more annoyed his interrupter, when he proceeded to observe, "He did not understand why the gentleman that last spake (before the interruption) should make an inference of parity from the Church to the Commonwealth, nor that there was any necessity of the great revenues of bishops. He was more convinced, touching the irregularity of bishops, than even before; because, like the Roman hierarchy, they would not endure to have their condition come to a trial."[147] This debate resulted in the petition being referred to a Committee which had been appointed to prepare subjects to be submitted to the House—the House reserving to itself the main point of Episcopacy, which was to be afterwards taken into consideration. The speeches had shewn a remarkable coincidence of opinion as to the necessity of abridging prelatical power and Church influence; but they had also brought out discordant views in relation to Episcopacy itself, though few at present advocated its total abolition. As yet, it did not seem wise to the Commons to decide one way or the other on this important point, or to entrust the consideration of the question to a Committee; but as we look at the general complexion of the debate, together with the terms of the resolution, the exceptive clause would appear simply to mean that Parliament was not yet prepared to abolish Episcopacy.[148]

1641, Feb.

Petitions.

The Committee divided the grievances complained of into nineteen heads, of which the principal were the inequality of benefices, the claim of the hierarchy to be a divine institution, the assumption of an exclusive power to ordain, the temporal power of the bishops, the holding of pluralities, and the scandalous lives of the Clergy.[149] The challenge of the divine right of Episcopacy, though it seems to have come very near to the subject excepted in the resolution, was pronounced to be a proper point for enquiry; and a long and minute discussion followed, in which texts of Scripture and passages from the Fathers were cited and canvassed. It was voted at length that the "challenge of the divine right of Episcopacy is a question fit to be presented;"—the Committee in this respect indicating a desire that the House would proceed to discuss the point reserved, and also shewing by the tenor of their private conference, the strong Presbyterian element then at work amongst them. All the nineteen particulars were examined, and evidence collected respecting each—especially that which bore upon the conduct of scandalous bishops, whose speeches and quotations of Scripture are given at length, some in an incredible strain of impious levity. The Committee sat from the 10th to the 19th February. No formal discussion of the abstract question about the divine right of Episcopacy immediately followed the report of the Committee; but the influence of the report probably told upon the House, and prepared for an attack upon the bishops, which was made in the month of May.

CHAPTER IV.

Lords' Committee on Innovations.

Whilst the Commons were receiving Puritan petitions, the Lords were presented with others of a different kind. The presence in the Upper House of Anglican bishops and noblemen, encouraged the Church party to make complaints to them of Puritan irreverence and interruption; and these complaints indicated very plainly, how the revolution of affairs had emboldened certain individuals to commit some very unseemly acts.[150] At the same time, the gracious reception given by the peers to anti-Puritan memorials manifested a temper quite different from that which prevailed in the Lower House. Yet there was not altogether wanting on the part of their lordships a disposition to make some small concession to Puritan demands, with the view of saving the Church of England from changes of a more serious nature. Hence, in the early spring, they appointed a committee to consider the subject of innovations. This committee was empowered to consult with any divines whom they might wish to select; and when the selection had been made, a theological sub-committee was formed.[151]

1641, March.

Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, and Dean of Westminster, became convener of this committee of divines, and he presided over all the meetings. Though possessed of considerable knowledge and ability, and of an active turn of mind, this remarkable person had not the qualities necessary for ecclesiastical statesmanship in troubled times such as those in which his lot was thrown. His whole history supports the opinion that selfish policy formed the guiding star of his life; and there is little doubt that a key to such of his proceedings as favoured Puritanism may be found in his remark that "the Puritans were many, and strong sticklers; and if his Majesty would but give private orders to his ministers to connive a little at their party, and shew them some indulgence, it might, perhaps, mollify them a little, and make them more pliant, though he did not promise that they would be trusty long to any government."[152] Williams cannot be honoured for any high moral or religious principle; he was very much of a time-server, and fondly loved popularity; indeed his whole history is in keeping with the keen and cunning expression of his handsome countenance seen in that portrait of him, with black hat and close ruff, which hangs in the dining-room of the Westminster Deanery.