Ecclesiastical
HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

VOLUME II.

Ecclesiastical
HISTORY OF ENGLAND,

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

BY

JOHN STOUGHTON.

VOLUME II.

THE CHURCH OF THE COMMONWEALTH.

London:

JACKSON, WALFORD, AND HODDER,

27, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.

MDCCCLXVII.

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

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

All ecclesiastical power in England having been long before snatched from royal hands, the death of Charles I. produced no effect upon the condition of the Church. The control of its political destinies had from the year 1641 rested with the House of Commons; and with the remnant of that assembly the control continued, when the kingdom became a Commonwealth in name as well as in fact.

1649, February.

The Presbyterians, immediately after Pride's purge, lost their place in the government of this country, upon which the political Independents at once assumed supremacy in the State. Of the old ecclesiastical reformers who belonged to that party, and had made themselves conspicuous in the year 1641, the chief now remaining in power were Oliver Cromwell, Sir Henry Vane,[1] Henry Marten, Oliver St. John, and Sir Arthur Haselrig; and these remarkable men all took their seats at the table of the new Council of State, being installed as members of it in the month of February, 1649. The other persons occupying places beside them were nothing more than satellites. Neither St. John nor Haselrig held any leading position. The former was more a lawyer than a statesman, and his cold nature and reserved disposition gave him neither influence with his equals nor popularity with his inferiors. Haselrig was no less distinguished by his rashness. Having been simply a follower of Pym, he had not, since his master's death, acquired sufficient influence to make himself a leader; and his want of judgment, though it did not exclude him from the council board, left him without much weight in its deliberations.

Cromwell, Vane, and Marten.

Vane, Cromwell, and Marten, therefore, were now the English triumvirate. Vane and Marten were staunch republicans. Staunch republicans they had been from the beginning. How far Cromwell was really so—whether indeed he ever could be considered one at all—are questions on which much may be said; but at any rate, the government which he now joined was republican in fact, and to that government, for the present, the majority of Englishmen felt compelled to submit. The patriotism of the new rulers cannot be fairly questioned. The vulgar notion of their selfish ambition appears, when we consider the circumstances in which they were placed, little short of an absurdity; yet there can be no doubt that the majority of the people did not sympathize with them, but only tolerated for a season what they could not altogether prevent.

1649, February.

Before recording what was done by the Council of State, it is fitting to notice somewhat further the character and opinions of the men who mainly guided its deliberations and plans. Marten, who was as distant as possible from being a Puritan, had little liking for the sermons and prayers which at times would be forced upon him, and he most enjoyed himself whilst entertaining friends in the Vale of the White Horse, with hospitalities which must have appeared scandalous in the eyes of his staid and sober compatriots. A man of the world, and, if report speaks justly, a man of licentious habits, he was at the same time honest and genial, and, like many shrewd folks of his class, knew how to behave in the presence of religious people so as not to shock their sensibilities. Cromwell and Vane—in this respect the opposite of Marten—were sincerely religious. The question in reference to the former has been set at rest by the publication of his speeches and correspondence, all of which are plainly animated by a spirit of devout earnestness. Not only on state occasions, when performing his part before the world, not only in intercourse with men of strong puritan feeling, from whom it might be supposed he had some point to gain, but also in the most retired privacies of domestic life, Cromwell expressed sentiments of evangelical piety. That hypocrisy should be carried to such a length, that a man should be so cunning as always to wear a veil of apparent religious sincerity in his most private correspondence, without ever betraying himself, is simply incredible; and besides, the incidental way in which religion is introduced into his letters, shews that it was nothing patched upon a character of a different kind, but something which was part of the very texture of his whole being and his entire life. It is not our province to solve the problem, how certain acts of the puritan general and certain habits of the puritan statesman are to be reconciled with the possession of sincere Christianity; yet we may be allowed, in passing, to observe that such an ugly fact as the Drogheda massacre would be less terrible to Cromwell's contemporaries—to men familiar with the barbarities of the Thirty Years' War and the exploits of Count Tilly—than it is to us. Fanaticism, and what may be termed a fierce prudential policy, had, doubtless, more to do with Cromwell's deeds in Ireland than cruelty of disposition. "I am persuaded," he says, "that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood, and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future." No one can help seeing in these words a revengeful justice excited by the Popish massacres of 1641, like that which would nerve the arm of an English officer when fighting with Sepoys by the well of Cawnpore. There are some parts of Cromwell's political conduct which we will not attempt to defend; we would not avail ourselves for that purpose even of what is said by Lord Bacon on "simulation and dissimulation;" but we do think that, whilst condemning certain forms of statecraft in the policy of the great statesman of the Commonwealth, we ought to allow him the benefit of a comparison with preceding rulers. To mention only Queen Elizabeth, accounted by the Puritans of Cromwell's day as one of the most illustrious sovereigns that ever sat on the throne of England, it may be maintained that her diplomacy, in its strategic cunning, went beyond anything recorded in the life of Oliver Cromwell.[2]

Vane's sincerity cannot be questioned. He might be an enthusiast. His religious opinions might be visionary and wild. A cloudy mysticism might belong to his theology, and enthusiasm might mingle with his devotion; but as to the genuineness of his character, the transparency of his ways, and the pure truthfulness which lived in the centre of his soul, no one acquainted with his history can have any reasonable doubt.

Cromwell, Vane, and Marten.

The religion of these two men, however, presented very different aspects. A tinge of mysticism, indeed, is to be detected in the colour of Cromwell's piety; but it is the predominant hue of Vane's whole life. Vane could rise to heights of philosophical speculation, which Cromwell had no power and no desire to reach. Nothing strikes us more than the robust English common sense of Cromwell's mind, compared with which that of Vane appears full of German transcendentalism. Vane, no doubt, had a theory of church polity, as well as of secular government, more complete, more consistent, and more accurately wrought out than Cromwell ever held; but he had far less of that inward mysterious force which, working outwardly, wins the mastery over others—far less of that inexplicable secret which makes a man, in the judgment of posterity, a king of men.

1649, March.

In ecclesiastical politics, Cromwell and Vane were agreed; and, so far as they walked in that path, Marten accompanied them. All three were as anti-presbyterian as they were anti-episcopal, and hated the spiritual despotism of synods as much as they did the rule of Archbishop Laud. They were pledged to toleration, and wished to give full play to the activity of the sects, so far as was consistent with the stability of the new government. Vane could well elaborate the philosophy of religious freedom; but Marten, perhaps, advanced still further in relation to its exercise. He reached practical conclusions which were thought to imply religious indifference, though the same conclusions are now firmly held by many, the earnestness of whose piety none would question. In a petition presented to the House of Commons in 1648, and generally attributed to his pen, these passages occur: "That you would have exempted matters of religion and God's worship from the compulsive or restrictive power of any authority upon earth, and reserved to the supreme authority an uncompulsive power only of appointing a way for the public, whereby abundance of misery, persecution, and heart-burning would for ever be avoided." "That you would have removed the tedious burden of tithes, satisfying all impropriations, and providing a more equal way of maintenance for the public ministers." In the same tone reference is made to the laws against blasphemy and heresies; men, it is said, being easily mistaken, and Divine truths not needing human support.[3]

An extraordinary crisis had now arrived in ecclesiastical affairs. The fate of the Church had become subject almost entirely to the will of three men, one of whom was an utter worldling, another a spiritual theorist, and the third an evangelical Independent, and at the same time a man full of political sagacity.

Question of Toleration.

A declaration of Parliament, stating the grounds of their late proceedings, and the republican nature of the present government, appeared in the month of March.[4] The document entered fully into a defence of the measures which had issued in this result; but the authors were exceedingly cautious in their ecclesiastical references. They state that their design had been to deliver England from tyranny, to prevent a new war, to establish a safe peace, and to provide for the due worship of God according to His word, the advancement of the true Protestant religion, the maintenance of godly ministers, and "a just liberty for the consciences, persons, and estates of all men, conformable to God's glory and their own peace."[5]

1649, April.

These vague expressions are remarkable, especially when it is remembered that the declaration, though published by Parliament, must have emanated from the Council of State. In reference to the doctrine of toleration, it lagged behind the "Agreement of the People of England," a document which is ascribed to General Ireton, and which was presented in the name of the army to the House of Commons in January, a few days before the King's execution. For that political and ecclesiastical manifesto, whilst it recognized the national profession of Christianity and the duty of publicly instructing the people, adds the significant words, "so it be not compulsive;" and also, whilst it excluded Popery and Prelacy from toleration, and approved of the maintenance of religious teachers out of the public treasury, it also protested against perpetuating tithes, enforcing religion by penalties, and the disturbing of those who "profess faith in God by Jesus Christ, however differing in judgment from the doctrine, worship, or discipline publicly held forth," provided they did not disturb the public peace.[6]

Spoliation of the Church.

To such lengths Ireton and certain other officers wished to push the new government; but extreme men in the army were not then, as is often supposed, the rulers of the country, either in religious or in secular affairs. The statesmen possessed the supreme power, and of that power Cromwell exercised the largest share, simply because he possessed as much of the sagacity and wisdom required for the cabinet, as of the valour and generalship needed in the field. And hence it was, that although the army rushed forward towards extreme ecclesiastical measures, the government paused, and declined to adopt any plan for the abolition of tithes; and also maintained so much reticence in expressing what was designed in relation to the extent of religious liberty. The Presbyterians had become alarmed at the paper drawn up by the army, and the ministers of the county of Essex had plainly declared what were the evils which they apprehended in consequence.[7] In their worst apprehensions, many other clergymen throughout the country deeply shared; and the new rulers were not so firmly seated on their thrones that they could afford unnecessarily to provoke the anger of such a number of influential persons. To expound fully at that moment their ecclesiastical policy would inevitably have exasperated their opponents; and therefore they maintained a prudent reserve, and acted with extreme caution.

What the Council said is recorded in their Declaration, what they did may be traced in the Acts of Parliament passed at that time. The new financiers of the State, in order to meet the pressing necessities of the Commonwealth, availed themselves of cathedral property. The ordinance of 1646 for abolishing Bishops, and selling their lands, had taken no notice of the titles and of the possessions of Deans and Chapters. These possessions presented a rich quarry to the needy masters of the realm; consequently, at the end of April, the House of Commons was found at work upon this new spoil.[8] An Act was passed for abolishing the offices of Deans and Prebendaries and Archdeacons, and for investing the endowments of cathedral chapters in the hands of trustees, for the supply of the necessities of the Commonwealth. Other Acts followed for the purpose of removing obstructions to the sale of these estates, and affording encouragement to purchasers. Yet, we may add, that although the stalls of cathedrals were swept of their occupants, with no legal authority remaining for the appointment of successors, Bishop Wren continued the forms of presentation to prebends at Ely, as he had done all along from the commencement of the civil wars. His regular collations to preferments, as they fell vacant, appear in the records of his see.[9]

1649, June.

Amidst this wholesale spoliation of the Church it must be remembered the public support of religion was not neglected. An Act of the 8th of June provided maintenance for preaching ministers and other pious uses out of the appropriate tithes belonging to the late hierarchy. No charge remained on cathedral estates for the service of religion. Such property had undergone a thorough secularization;[10] but the appropriate tithes pertaining to the Bishops were reserved and placed under trustees for the support of the Christian ministry. From that source, according to the Act, salaries and augmentation of salaries were to be supplied; so that every minister should eventually receive £100 a year. The sum of £18,000 per annum was at once to be raised for this purpose, and £2,000 per annum was added for increasing the maintenance of the masterships of colleges.[11]

Opposition to the New Government.

The Council of State and the House of Commons found it hard work to defend their authority. To silence groans of discontent, uttered in divers publications, they had recourse to the common expedient of revolutionary governments, and passed an Act against the licentiousness of the press. The army discontents also rose alarmingly around the new rulers. Levellers, with their wild schemes, were very busy. A trooper, described as a religious man "of excellent parts and much beloved," but tinctured strongly with fifth monarchy notions, had to be shot for his share in a mutiny. Yet, such was the view taken of his case by the people, that at his funeral, "the corpse was adorned with bundles of rosemary one-half stained in blood." Sea green and black ribbons were tied to the hats and breasts of the thousands who followed the coffin rank and file; and many even of the better sort met the procession at the churchyard.[12] It was a serious sign of disaffection for so many persons to shew sympathy with a leveller.

1649.

But the opposition made in the pulpit to the new rulers constituted a still more formidable difficulty. Presbyterian preachers, who at the beginning of the war had defended the army, could not be silent, now that the war had led to results so very different from what they had contemplated. No wonder then that many of them denounced what had been done at Westminster and Whitehall. They accused the usurpers of blood-guiltiness, and regarded the High Court of Justice as "framing iniquity by law." They held themselves bound, they said, in duty to God, religion, the King, the Parliament, and the kingdom, to profess before angels and men, that they verily believed the taking away the life of Charles was opposed to the teaching of the Bible, and the spirit of the Protestant religion. The whole business they declared to be inconsistent with the oath of allegiance, and contrary to the solemn League and Covenant. Accordingly, they prayed for the Prince of Wales as Charles II. Mr. Cawton, a Presbyterian minister, did so before the Lord Mayor of London. While all this is not to be wondered at, and the men who so acted for conscience' sake are commendable for their courage, it is no matter of surprise that the new government, in self-defence, should strive to put an end to such dangerous proceedings. Therefore, in March, an Act appeared, forbidding ministers in their pulpits to meddle with affairs of State, or to hold correspondence with foreign powers. They were ordered to apply themselves simply to the preaching of the Gospel for the edification of their hearers.[13]

Declaration of Parliament.

It became necessary for Parliament to vindicate its conduct. It did so, and, in the declaration published with that view, passages appear relating to religion, in which is recapitulated what had been accomplished in the way of reformation; and desires are avowed for the furtherance of the same object. The rulers profess their wish to suppress Popery, superstition, blasphemy, and profaneness; but they also express their desire to remove such acts and ordinances as coerce conscience, "which have been made use of for snares, burdens, and vexations to the truly sincere-hearted people of God, that fear Him and wait for the coming of His Son Jesus Christ." This last clause of course would please the army. The sheets containing it, wet from the press, would be despatched to the camp, and eagerly would soldiers gather round some comrade sitting by his tent door, to read the new proclamation. The millenarian leveller would take comfort from these words, whether they were meant for him or not. But what would the Presbyterians think? The next sentence seems intended to soothe their fears—and, if it did so, it would rouse alarm in the minds of extreme men, just elated by the tenor of the preceding paragraph. "And because we are not ignorant how injuriously our proceedings herein are charged upon us, as if we were setting up and countenancing an universal toleration, when our true aim in the liberty we give is only the necessary encouragement we conceive due to all that are lovers of God, and the purity and power of religion, we can and do therefore declare, in the sight of God and man, that by whomsoever we shall find this liberty abused, we shall be most ready to testify our displeasure and abhorrency thereof by a strict and effectual proceeding against such offenders."[14] Here the countenance of the Presbyterian would brighten, and that of the wild sectary would fall.

1650.

As protestations and covenants had been the order of the day, a new test of obedience was now contrived under the name of an Engagement. The security of the State demanded something of the kind, for authority cannot exist without allegiance. Reference to religion is indeed avoided in the Engagement, and by the terms used in it no spiritual supremacy whatever is claimed; Presbyterians nevertheless considered the new oath to be inconsistent with their Covenant engagements; and, taking this view, they gave a religious character to that which had been carefully framed in order to prevent any such construction. The new political test appeared to them a snare to catch consciences, and a sword to wound them. Transformed into an anti-covenant pledge, it kindled throughout England the fire of a fierce indignation.

On the 22nd of February, 1649-50, the House passed a law for the better propagation of the gospel in Wales, and on the 8th of March, another for the better advancement of religion and learning in Ireland. The latter provided for the maintenance of seminaries in and near the city of Dublin. Archiepiscopal manors and lands were vested in trustees for the use of Trinity College, and for the erection and maintenance of a free-school; the appointment of governors and masters being vested in the Lord Lieutenant; and the trustees, with his consent, having authority given them to make rules and ordinances subject to confirmation by Parliament.[15] The same month saw a statute for the more frequent preaching of the gospel, and for the better maintenance of ministers in the city of Bristol.[16]

Religious Legislation.

In the spring of 1650, Parliament resumed the question of ministerial support, and a new Act was passed for pious uses,[17] for the augmentation of livings and for the payment of heads of houses in the Universities; £80 per annum being specially provided for "the Margaret Lecturer of Oxford."

Other characteristic instances of religious and moral legislation appear in the statute book for the year 1650. By virtue of an Act passed the 19th of April, penalties were to be levied for the desecration of the Sabbath, and for the non-observance of thanksgiving and humiliation days. Seasons of both kinds were put on a level, which was a position of things not at all consistent with puritan ideas of the Divine authority of the Lord's Day, Goods carried in the streets at such times were liable to seizure; travellers and waggoners, if they performed a journey during the hours of holy rest, were to be fined ten shillings. Writs and warrants executed on a Sunday were to lose their effect, and persons serving them were exposed to the payment of a fine of five pounds. Nobody was to use a boat, a horse, a coach, or a sedan, except for going to church, upon pain of forfeiting ten shillings. The like penalty was to fall on those who visited taverns and alehouses. Authority was given to officers to search for offenders, and justices and constables were made liable to penalties if they neglected their duties. The Act was to be read in all the churches yearly upon the first Lord's Day in the month of March.[18]

1650.

Profane cursing and swearing were prohibited by an Act passed the 28th of June, with a curiously graduated scale of penalties, arranged according to the rank of the offender. A lord was to be fined thirty shillings; a baronet or knight, twenty; an esquire, ten; a simple gentleman was to pay six and eight-pence, and people of inferior quality, three and fourpence. A double fine followed a second offence; and after a tenth instance of transgression the culprit was to give a bond for good behaviour. The law made no distinction between men and women, and gave charge to all constables vigilantly to hunt out all offenders.[19]

There followed, on the 9th of August, a statute against certain atheistical, blasphemous, and execrable opinions derogatory to the honour of God, and destructive to human society, the enumeration of which includes the most monstrous opinions, such even as the following:—that a human being might proclaim himself to be God, to be infinite, to be almighty; that the blasphemy of the Most High, and other horrible acts are not in themselves shameful; that murder, adultery, and the like, are in their own nature as righteous as the duties of prayer; that happiness consists in sensual indulgence; that there is no such thing as sin, or salvation, or damnation, or heaven, or hell. Persons holding such opinions were to be punished by six months' imprisonment, or, on a second conviction, by banishment out of the Commonwealth. A return without licence incurred the consequences attendant on felony.[20]

Moral Legislation.

We have given this specification of opinions as we find it in the Act, because no general description of it could convey an idea of the extraordinary vagaries of thought to which it points. Taken as they nakedly appear in this unique schedule, they must have been of an ultra-fanatical kind, such as we should suppose only madmen would entertain. But, upon a little reflection, it appears not unlikely that some of the opinions pronounced execrable were, by those charged with holding them, expressed in a different form of words from that given in the Act, and that they really consisted only in those wild pantheistic speculations to which transcendental thinkers of a certain description have always been addicted. Amidst excitements which moved human nature to the loftiest heights and the lowest depths, which brought out conspicuously what was in man, both of good and evil, it was not strange that the ignorant should bluntly say some of the same absurd things which the learned have been wont to convey in specious phrase and polished diction. At all events, there must have been a large amount of very objectionable, and even monstrous teaching in those days, to have called forth such minute notice and such terrible denunciation.

1650.

Private morals likewise were scanned and marked by these vigilant legislators.[21] Their policy, as we have said before, was intended to supply a defect consequent upon the abolition of the old Church courts, proceeding as it did upon the idea handed down for ages, that penal laws sufficed to extinguish individual vice, as well as to suppress social crime—an idea now, after an uninterrupted continuance of failures, almost universally regarded as utterly delusive. The Long Parliament in these, its last days, threatened incest with death without benefit of clergy; it marked adultery as felonious, and it punished fornication with three months' imprisonment. A common bawd was to be whipped, set in the pillory, branded with a hot iron, and committed to the House of Correction for three years: a repetition of the offence was to be treated as a capital crime. Henry Marten, looking at the subject from what was then the common point of view, justly observed, in the course of the debate to which the measure gave rise, that such severity only served to increase transgression, inasmuch as merciful people would shrink from bringing offenders to justice, and offenders escaping with impunity would be encouraged in sin.

The laws which we have just enumerated were passed in the spring and summer of 1650; and it was about that time, indeed shortly before the speech just noticed, that the influence of Marten passed its zenith, and he descended from the high position he had occupied in the rule of the Commonwealth. The cause of that event, partly political and partly personal, is to be found in his stern republicanism, and in his disputes with Oliver Cromwell. An enquiry into that subject does not come within the scope of our history, nor do the consequences of it concern us further than this, that they indirectly touched the state of ecclesiastical affairs: for Marten's exclusion from the Council of State in February, 1650, and the inconsiderable part which he took in public business after his re-admission, amounted, according to the view which we have taken, to the dismissal or the withdrawal of one of the memorable triumvirate who had wielded for a time supreme authority in the Church as well as the State. Vane's power was of longer duration, but his disappearance from the lofty sphere he had occupied is an event which we shall speedily have to notice—an event which will be found to have left the government of England in the hands of that one man, who, as the greatest general and statesman of his age, was alone competent to rule his country in the hour of its peril, and the crisis of its fate.

Moral Legislation.

An Act of the 27th of September, 1650, places the religious policy of Parliament in a very doubtful light.[22] It repealed old acts of uniformity. It professed to relieve the religious and the peaceable from the rigour of previous intolerance. Yet this very law goes on to say, that it does not interfere with existing acts and ordinances for the due observance of the Lord's Day, and days of public thanksgiving and humiliation; and it therefore requires that on all such days, every person within the Commonwealth shall resort to some public place, where the service and worship of God is exercised, or shall be present at some other place, in the practice of religious duty. Latitude seems to have been given to the mode of obedience, for people were not tied up to any set form—so far they were released from the bonds of Elizabeth's statute. Still religious worship of some kind continued compulsory, and those who neglected religious duties altogether were to be proceeded against as criminals. No penalty indeed is specified—it is only declared that such as broke this law should be proceeded against accordingly—and probably the statute proved a dead letter; but such an enactment, although it might commend itself to the Puritan, was utterly inconsistent with religious liberty, as expounded by Marten, Vane, and others of the republican school.

CHAPTER II.

Royalty was now a thing of the past; it had been abolished in England. He who had perished on the scaffold came to be called plain Charles Stuart. His son could be designated by no other name. Royal statues were pulled down. Royal arms were no longer allowed in churches. But loyalty, as a sentiment, arose in greater strength than ever after the execution of the King. To Episcopalians, and to some Presbyterians also, Charles appeared a martyr, the victim of a republican faction, who were proceeding to destroy the Church after having already battered down the throne. Both parties shuddered at the idea of being ruled by men whose hands were red with royal blood. Recollections of the 30th of January were indelible. What Ussher and Philip Henry had seen, burned itself into their memories, and the tragedy, down to the minutest particular, with superadded circumstances of brutality, would form a staple of conversation in many a country walk, and by many an English fireside, for months and years afterwards.

1649, February.

A touching expression of Royalist sympathy occurs in the parish register of Woodford, in the county of Essex, where there is recorded a collection for the benefit of Charles' chaplains and servants, about a year after his death. Their claims were urged in a petition which stated that the King's domestics, to the number of forty, were in great distress, and that their means of support out of his revenues were still detained, so that they could in nowise maintain either themselves, their wives, or their families, and therefore they sought the charity of all good Christians.[23]

Scotch Treaty with Charles.

Charles Stuart was in Holland at the time of his father's execution. The Scotch estates, as early as the 5th of February, shewed their loyalty to the Stuarts by proclaiming the Prince of Wales to be their King. Robert Baillie here again comes to our assistance, and we find him writing in February, 1649, to his cousin Spang, then sojourning at the Hague, in the following terms:—

"We have sent the bearer (Sir Joseph Douglas), a worthy gentleman, to signify so much to his Majesty, at the Hague; we purpose speedily to send an honourable commission from all estates. The dangers and difficulties wherewith both his Majesty and all his kingdoms at this time are involved are exceeding great and many. The first necessary and prime one (as all here, without exception, conceive), doth put his Majesty and his people both, in a hopeful proceeding, and his Majesty's joining with us in the national Covenant, subscribed by his grandfather King James, and the Solemn League and Covenant wherein all the well-affected of the three kingdoms are entered, and must live and die in, upon all hazards. If his Majesty may be moved to join with us in this one point, he will have all Scotland ready to sacrifice their lives for his service; if he refuse, or shift this duty, his best and most useful friends, both here and elsewhere, will be cast into inextricable labyrinths, we fear, for the ruin of us all."[24] In these sentences of Baillie's letter, which crossed the winter's sea in Sir Joseph Douglas' despatch box, side by side with a more important document, we find the key-note struck of all the diplomacy then going on between the King and the Scotch. Spang, soon after receiving the letter, is found busy with endeavours to promote the accomplishment of the object designed by his fellow-countrymen. Writing at once to his cousin to express sympathy in his horror at Charles' execution—which Dutch ministers bewailed in sermons from chosen texts—and to shew his exultation at the thought of what his friends in Scotland had accomplished, this resident at the Hague informs us that he had obtained an interview with the Prince of Orange,—the young man, who, it will be recollected, was married at Whitehall in 1641. The writer represents him as concerned for the Protestant religion, and says he heard him express the opinion that Charles might be brought to subscribe that Covenant which concerned Scotland alone, but he was not up to the mark in reference to the other, betwixt Scotland and England. Earnestly did the diplomatist argue the point, but with little avail. When his Highness pressed home the question, whether Scotland, divided herself, were really able to do anything of moment since the ruling party in that country was too weak to suppress its enemies; Spang told the Prince that the condition of the Presbyterians, in Great Britain and Ireland, was not so mean but that the King, if he would cheerfully join himself to them, as caput et vindex fœderis, would be sure of success. At the close of the letter containing this report, the writer added an earnest exhortation to his cousin to inform the reverend brethren of his communion how much the fame of rigidity was likely to endanger the fame of the kirk, and make Presbyterian government hateful. He said plainly that there could be no safety, if the Scotch did not pack up their quarrels among themselves.[25]

1649, March.

On Thursday, the 22nd of March, "at night, the Lord brought" all the commissioners "safe to Rotterdam." Baillie was one of them, being now engaged in a very different business from that which took him to London in the year 1640,—yet did he act herein in a way as true as ever to his cause and to himself, being intent still upon the prosperity of Presbyterianism, the enforcement of the Covenant, and the glory of God. He and his brother commissioners proceeded to Delf, and whilst resting there on the Sabbath, preached and conducted worship. After putting their papers in order, they hastened to the Hague, and were in the royal presence on the following day.

Baillie furnishes a copy of his speech to Charles, spoken in the King's bedchamber, upon Tuesday, March the 27th, 1649, at three o'clock in the afternoon. In the name of the Church of Scotland, the clerical Commissioner expressed much grief for his Majesty's afflictions, and great joy on his accession to the throne, together with deep sorrow for the recent execrable parricide, which the great Judge of the world, he was persuaded, would avenge. Prayers followed this address to the new King, in which the minister fervently implored that the clouds of present danger might fly away, and that more religion and piety might be seen in his Majesty's days than in those of his most prosperous ancestors. The deputation then handed to the sovereign a letter from the Church of Scotland.

Royalist Intrigues.

Charles, during this interview, made a favourable impression on his visitors, as indeed he did on most people. "His Majesty," says Baillie,[26] "is of a very sweet and courteous disposition. We hope he is not so far rooted in any principles contrary to us, but that, by God's blessing on our friends' labours, he may be gotten to do us reason, whatsoever our fears be for the present. There is a very evil generation both of English and Scotch here, who vomit out all their evil humour against all our proceedings." Again the writer breaks out in terms of admiration respecting the King. "He is one of the most gentle, innocent, well-inclined princes, so far as yet appears, that lives in the world,—a trim person, and of a manly carriage, understands pretty well, speaks not much—would to God he were amongst us."

When the Scotch had left Holland, the Hague became a centre of intrigues for the overthrow of the English Commonwealth and the restoration of the Stuarts. Except so far as they illustrate the state of religious parties, we have here little to do with those intrigues.

1650, March.

Certain papers, still in existence, disclose some of the secrets of the Court in Holland during the spring and summer of 1650. Charles then, as ever, in his exile, pursued one line of policy, which was, by honest or dishonest means to recover the crown of Great Britain. Without any ambition like his father, to be in repute as a diplomatist, and wholly lacking the caution and prudence requisite for such a character, he nevertheless eagerly listened to whatever his councillors proposed in reference to his restoration, and at times aided their endeavours after that object by his nimble wit and his unblushing falsehood.

As he sat in his little cabinet with a very scantily attended Council Board, a paper, dated the 5th of March, 1650, came before him, stating what appeared to be the wishes and views of certain Presbyterians.

"They desired that his Majesty would declare himself to his people, that they might raise a satisfaction from it to their friends.

"That his Majesty would please to send some encouragement to such of their clergy friends, as yet, in pulpits and elsewhere, dared publicly to hold up his Majesty's rights and titles.

"To both which desires they seem satisfied, saving they conceive they might have made an advantage of it too for that purpose, if his Majesty had touched also, in particular, upon religion in his declaration.

"That they will not press for the Covenant in England, and will endeavour to moderate the Scots in their desires; beseeching withal, that the King will go as far as he can for their satisfaction, that he may have a greater service by their conjunction.

"That they will rest satisfied with such a settlement in Church and State as a future Parliament—together with such a synod as that Parliament shall approve of—shall make.

Royalist Intrigues.

"That though many particular persons of their party are clearly satisfied with the King and his intentions, yet their single endeavours, without taking more of their party along with them, will signify little for his service; and therefore to bring them in, which is their desire, the persons already satisfied are necessitated to carry themselves more cautiously towards the rest; in compliance with them, for fear of losing them through factious insinuations, which their party is not free from.

"That amongst their party, divers (and especially in London) wealthy persons hanker so much after the Scots, that the rest, not so much Scotified, use to call them bigots or zealots, and labour to break off that dependency as the greatest impediment to their ready conjunction for his Majesty's service, in case the Scots continue unreasonable in their desires.

"That there is yet a fear amongst their party generally that the King's party will not be reconciled to them; and till that fear can be removed it concerns them, in order to their own security, to move with such circumspection, and preserve such strength in themselves as may balance with the King's party."[27]

This paper exhibits the English Presbyterians as earnestly desiring the accession of Charles. It indicates that there were differences of opinions between the Scotch and themselves in relation to the Covenant, and that amongst the latter a much higher degree of confidence was entertained by some than by others respecting the prince's character and intentions; whilst it also shews that sympathy with the Scotch was cherished by the English in very unequal measures, and that those who most nearly coincided in the views of their northern brethren were the rich Presbyterians of the metropolis.

A second paper of rough notes, endorsed as received on the 18th of March, containing suggestions from Roman Catholics in England, came under consideration.

1650, April.

Sir Nicholas Crispe and many other friends tendered their allegiance and offered their services to his Majesty. They approved of his constancy to the Marquis of Montrose, and preferred a union to be formed with him rather than with the contrary faction, if a division of parties were inevitable. They proceeded to beseech his Majesty to have great care in whom he placed confidence, inasmuch as they feared he had some ministers about him who could not be trusted, although they declined to name them. They said that all possible dispatch ought to be used; and they referred to him the question what should be done with his Majesty's Catholic subjects. "In their opinion," to use their own words, "they conceive it very necessary that they have some private assurance from him of a future liberty of conscience, if God shall restore him, and the like to some Catholic prince in their behalf. They proposed some connivance to have been allowed for taking the engagement, but that will be now answered too late, the day being past, as to the banishment, though the last day given be not till the 14th of April—after which day all are outlawed who shall not take it. If the King order any thing herein, then to give some assurance of it under his hand for their better satisfaction who must necessarily take it for their preservation in order to his service." It was proposed that there should be a descent made on the Cornish coast; and after an assurance from the "Lords Shrewsbury, Montague, and all other Catholic nobility and gentry," that they faithfully retained their allegiance, there follows an expression of desire for a mitigation of the severity of the laws against them, should God restore him to the throne, for which they were prepared to hazard fortune and life.

Royalist Intrigues.

The notes of Charles' reply, dated the 8th of April, are also in existence. Amongst other things he states, "As for the Catholics, all care will be taken to give them ease and liberty of conscience. As to the engagement, what liberty their consciences shall give them to do, to preserve themselves for the King's service, their continuing loyal will render acceptable to the King, who will be sure to recompense their merit."[28]

Communications from Papists were evidently far more agreeable than any which came from a Presbyterian quarter. They received a prompt reply, and both his Majesty and his correspondents shewed themselves perfectly willing to adopt jesuitical practices, which, from all we know of the Presbyterians, we are perfectly sure they would have scorned; to take the Engagement with the intention of breaking it was a course perfectly approved by the Prince and his friends. The end sanctified the means.

1650, May.

A third paper, bearing date May the 10th, contains information respecting the English Republicans, which had been gathered from gossip during a journey in this country by Colonel Keynes. An informant, he says, assured him that "a friend of his who dined on Saturday last with Sir Harry Vane the younger, Mr. Bailey, and Judge Thorpe, and was one who had formerly been theirs, though now converted, but did still comply with them, so feigned as not to make himself suspected, told him for certain, that after dinner, being all four alone, they fell into discourse concerning their present condition; that Sir H. Vane said that they were in a far worse estate than ever yet they had been; that all the world was and would be their enemies; that the Scots had left them; their own army and generals were not to be trusted; that the whole kingdom would rise and cut their throats upon the first good occasion, and that they knew not any place to go unto to be safe."

The whole of the report is written in a sanguine spirit, and shews how the Royalists buoyed up the King's hopes. And although such conversations as are here retailed are utterly untrustworthy, yet it is quite possible that Vane, as he saw the cause of pure republicanism was on the decline, might express himself to his friends in terms of despondency, not unlike those which are here represented.

There is also a fourth and earlier paper,[29] belonging to the month of March, containing general suggestions submitted for the consideration of Charles and his council.

"As for England," he is told, "the Independents are possessed of all the forts and towns, the navy and treasures. The Presbyterian yet holdeth a silent power by means of the Divines, and the interest of some gentry and nobility, and especially in London and the great towns. Their fortunes are yet unshaken (though threatened). Besides (by former use when they held the power), they continue an intelligence which the King's party cannot do, which may make them considerable, when they shall be fit for his Majesty's reception.

Charles in Scotland.

"Some are rigid for the jus Divinum of Presbytery, but the greatest part, weary of trouble and the rod that now hangeth over them, would repent and serve his Majesty; some purely without fraud, others being assured to be freed from their past facts, their livings and offices preserved to them, their moneys laid out in church lands, &c., repaid.

"The principal heads look at Government, and manage all these under people's interests to their own, which we conceive all that love his Majesty should give way to, and laying aside all expectations of their own, if these men may be able to do the work to let them receive the thanks of it.

"For his Majesty's party in England, it is so poor, so disjointed, so severely watched by both the other factions, that it is impossible for them to do anything upon their own single score; but if his Majesty could find an expedient to beget a good understanding betwixt his party and the Presbyterians they might under their shadow rise again; otherwise nothing but a foreign force can begin the work and justify the endeavours and affections of his friends."

1650, August.

These notes speak for themselves, and indicate the rumours, expectations, and schemes which were reported to Charles, and the many ways in which religion and politics had become mixed up together in connexion with the efforts he was making to reach the throne of his fathers.

Charles in Scotland.

Charles at length decided upon throwing himself into the arms of the Scotch. The demand to sign the Covenant, though it thoroughly disgusted him in the first instance, obtained his consent after a year's delay. Casting aside a last regard for truth, he passed through the form of signing the document before he left the Dutch shores; that concession having been persistently stipulated for by his new adherents. Having reached Scotland on the 23rd of June, he was proclaimed King at the High Cross of Edinburgh on the 11th of July following.

Faithful to the religious cause which they had espoused, the Presbyterians shewed great care to separate it from the interests of Royalism, whether considered by itself or in connexion with the prelatical party, which had been the main defenders of the throne at the beginning of the war. This appears from the following declaration, dated West Kirk of Edinburgh, the 13th and 14th of August, 1650. "The Commissioners of the General Assembly, considering that there may be just ground of stumbling from the King's Majesty refusing to subscribe and emit the declaration offered unto him by the Committee of Estate, and Commissioners of the General Assembly—considering his former carriage and resolution for the future in reference to the cause of God, and the enemies and friends thereof, do therefore declare that this kingdom does not own or espouse any malignant party, or quarrel, or interest, but that they fight merely upon their former grounds and principles, and in defence of the cause of God and the kingdom as they have done these twelve years past; and therefore as they do disclaim all the sin and guilt of the King, and of his house, so they will not own him nor his interest, otherwise than with subordination to God, and so far as he owns and prosecutes the cause of God, and disclaims his and his father's opposition to the work of God and the Covenant, and likewise all the enemies thereof; and that they will, with all convenient speed, take in consideration the papers lately sent them from Oliver Cromwell, and vindicate themselves from all the falsehoods contained therein; especially in those things wherein the quarrel betwixt us and that party is mis-stated, as if we owned the late King's proceedings and were resolved to prosecute and maintain his present Majesty's interest before and without acknowledgment of the sins of his house and former ways, and satisfaction to God's people in both kingdoms.

["The Committee of Estates having seen and considered the declaration of the Commissioners of the General Assembly, anent the stating of the quarrel whereupon the army is to fight, approved the same, and heartily concurred therein.

"Thos. Henderson.">[[30]

The Episcopalian Royalists of England regarded the Scots with the utmost aversion, and had just been shocked by their hanging the Marquis of Montrose, who had taken up arms for Charles I. as early as the year 1643. Moreover, they entertained deceitful hopes respecting Irish affairs. Hence, when they were told of what the prince had done, they could not believe their own ears.

"We are here in an amaze to understand that the King is gone for Scotland, especially after that horrid murder of the Marquis of Montrose, wherein the King's honour suffered as great a butchery as he did: and my thoughts are the more troubled at his Majesty's adventure thither because we have lately received so good news from Ireland, as that all the Papists have submitted to my Lord of Ormond, and they have lately given Sir C. Coote a great defeat in the north of Ireland, and hope to master the whole kingdom by Michaelmas; which, methinks, seems to upbraid the King's hasty counsellors, who having no patience at all to rely on God's providence, and looking still upon mere human strength, without any consideration of honour or conscience, are still crying out, What else have we to do? when indeed there are times when honest men must pray and do nothing else until God's providence open a way fit for them to take. And now for aught appears to us they have thrust our master upon a course of so much danger that they themselves shrink at the sight of it, when, had they been but masters of so much Christian patience as to have staid awhile, things probably might have been put into a fair and an hopeful way. These are sad considerations, and they make me fear God's heavy hand is still upon us, who will neither be persuaded, nor indeed knocked into any religion, and to suffer that fond instance of Henry IV. of France to persuade more with us than all the precepts of Christ's Gospel.

1650, September.

"I should give the poor Church for utterly lost, but that I believe there is a good God in heaven; but, however it fare with her, some I fear will one day sharply answer that they have preserved her no better, and that to gain the speedier ease they have preferred rash and wicked counsels before those that were pious and just, because they seemed not to promise a more sudden way to prosperity."[31]

Trouble with the Presbyterians.

Another Royalist letter in September reveals what was going on in Scotland—the trouble the Presbyterians had with the King—and the trouble he had with them.

"Mr. Thomas Weston and Daniel O'Neile came from the King nine days ago. Our glorious news of Cromwell's total defeat is nothing to that we hoped, yet he hath had a knock, and may very probably be worsted if the Scots do their best, that is, sit still. But the ministers press their men to fight, contrary to their commander's opinion. If they fight they hazard a beating. The ministers have lately purged the army of 5,000 profane persons, and Lowden went about the camp to tell them it was the cause of God, and not to be maintained by wicked men. Such they account all cavaliers, Montrosians, and such as engaged with Hamilton, that is to say, their best soldiers. Whether this be madness or treachery a little time may discover. The King must not go to the army, for fear he may gain too much upon the soldier. He was pressed to a declaration imputing the late bloodshed and miseries to his mother's Popery and his father's following bad counsel and opposing the Covenant. This the King refused to the death; whereupon instantly the Kirk declare against him, and offer to treat with Cromwell. To prevent the consequences whereof, the King sends to the Kirk again, by Argyle's advice, and satisfies them, mollifying only some words in the declaration. So, as he says in it now, that his father's ill counsel, &c., was the occasion (not the cause) of the troubles. Argyle hath given him great professions of his fidelity, seems to be overpowered by the clergy, and says when the King comes into England he may be more free, but for the present it is necessary to please these madmen. The votes for removing from the King the company that came with him from home, are fully confirmed by the Parliament. They make no laws which are of force till the Assemblies of the Kirk allow them. This is the substance of what I heard from Thomas Weston: you will have it more fully from other hands. I write only to let you see how ready I should be if I were able to express myself.

"Your Honour's most humble servant,

"George Radcliffe."

1650, September.

This letter is dated from the Hague the 7th of September.[32] Fairfax, from Presbyterian scruples, having declined the office, Cromwell had now gone to Scotland as Generalissimo of the Commonwealth army, to crush at once this Scotch attempt, which, by making Charles the covenanted King of Scotland, prepared for making him the covenanted King of England. Not to have endeavoured to put a stop to this enterprise, would have been suicidal infatuation on the part of the founder of the English Commonwealth. The great captain had crossed the Tweed on the 22nd of July, with no such faith in the Covenant as the Scotch brethren cherished; nay, looking on their faith in it as superstitious, and saying even to the General Assembly: "There may be, as well, a carnal confidence upon misunderstood and misapplied precepts, which may be called spiritual drunkenness. There may be a Covenant made with death and hell." Weston and O'Neile had left the King on the 29th of August, and in some slowly-sailing smack had reached Holland, bringing "glorious" news, which turned out in the end to be very false, and was soon followed by other news very disastrous. By Cromwell's "defeat"—the report of which, as related, did not satisfy Mr. George Radcliffe—must have been meant the retreat of the army from Edinburgh after a skirmish on the 27th, "Wherein," says Cromwell, "we had near twenty killed and wounded, but not one commission officer. The enemy, as we are informed, had about eighty killed, and some considerable officers. Seeing they would keep their ground, from which we could not remove them, and our bread being spent, we were necessitated to go for a new supply, and so marched off about ten or eleven o'clock on Wednesday morning."[33]

Battle of Dunbar.

Four days before Radcliffe's letter was written, something had occurred very different indeed from the royalist report.

Late in the blustering night of the 2nd of September, as the blasts shook the tents at Dunbar, and the sleet cut the faces of the sentries, Leslie on the Scotch side, and Cromwell on the English, were encamped front to front, prepared for battle; the former sure of victory from what he gathered as to the condition of the invaders. Cromwell intended to begin the attack at daybreak, and, as the moon rode high, gleaming through the rent clouds, and the first blush of dawn streaked the horizon, he was ready; but the action hardly began before sunrise. And yet, an hour later—when the September mist rolled off the German ocean, and the sun broke all silvery on the waters, lighting up St. Abb's Head, while the cry of the English commander was heard along the line, "Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered,"—his soldiers, with a tornado rush, had swept down the foe. Thousands were slain, the rest routed, and by nine o'clock Leslie rode into Edinburgh, a brave but beaten soldier.

1650, September.

Cromwell, as he rode into the same city a conqueror, found the clergy had left the churches. He sent a trumpet to the castle, to assure the Governor that the clergy might return in peace, that he would not hinder the preaching of the Gospel; only preachers must remember not to rail at their superiors and "overtop the civil power." In reply to the complaint that the pulpit had been opened to sectaries and laymen, the victorious Independent put another question:—"Are you troubled that Christ is preached? Is preaching so exclusively your function? Doth it scandalize the reformed kirks and Scotland in particular? Is it against the Covenant? Away with the Covenant if this be so! I thought the Covenant and 'these professors of it' could have been willing that any should speak good of the name of Christ; if not, it is no Covenant of God's approving; nor are these kirks you mention in so much the spouse of Christ. Where do you find in the Scripture a ground to warrant such an assertion, that preaching is exclusively your function? Though an approbation from men hath order in it, and may do well, yet he that hath no better warrant than that, hath none at all. I hope He that ascended up on high may give His gifts to whom He pleases, and if those gifts be the seal of mission, be not 'you' envious though Eldad and Medad prophesy."[34] In this rather uncouth phraseology may be discerned a certain soldierly instinct, not very different from what is so noticeable in the despatches of a modern general of a far different school. Cromwell, like Wellington, could use words, even as the soldiers at Waterloo and in the civil wars could use swords, cleaving a subject asunder down to the very heart, at a single stroke.

1651, January.

Presbyterian Scotland, honest to the core, stood faithful to what as it believed was God's own cause. Shall our glorious Covenant—not of earth, but of heaven—be crushed by this Independent captain, brave though he be; shall it be buried on the field of this Dunbar fight? No, no! Looking thus at the subject, the leaders, clerical as well as lay, in spite of tormenting divisions in the nation and in the kirk, soon busied themselves with preparations for another trial of arms. "All of us in pulpit," writes Robert Baillie, "myself as much as others, did promove the work. In a very short time three thousand five hundred horse are gotten together, with hopes by volunteers, to make them above five thousand."[35] But all went not on smoothly. Hopes were soon blasted. Hot controversy arose as to whether the lawfulness of a war against Cromwell could be justified by the Covenant. Some went so far as to say: "That the commission of the Kirk would approve nothing that was right; that a hypocrite ought not to reign over us—that we ought to treat with Cromwell, and give him security not to trouble England with a king—and who marred this treaty, the blood of the slain in this quarrel be on their head!"

Coronation of Charles.

However, the ruling party in Kirk and Court continued staunch to the Covenant, and to the King whom they had persuaded to entrust his crown to their keeping. That crown with all solemnity they placed upon the Prince's head on New Year's day, 1651. The ceremony took place at Scone, whose ancient abbey had witnessed the coronation of so many kings of Scotland, as they sat on "the stone of destiny"—still preserved under Edward the Confessor's chair at Westminster. But the solemnities on this occasion appeared shorn of all the splendid ritualism which in other days had adorned the inauguration of a new reign. Mr. Douglas preached upon the crowning of King Joash, "a very pertinent, wise, and good sermon." Charles then swore, in the presence of Almighty God, the searcher of hearts, that he would prosecute the ends prescribed in the Covenant, and agree to all Acts of Parliament for the establishment in his Scotch realm, of Presbyterian rule, of the Directory, the confession and the catechism of the Kirk; and also consent to Acts of Parliament enjoining the same throughout the rest of his dominions. The Earl of Argyle brought forth the crown, and lifted it on the head of the chosen King. Mr. Robert Douglas prayed; and when the Chancellor had conducted the Prince to the throne of his ancestors, the same minister addressed to him an exhortation, pressing on him the duty of constancy to the Covenant, and reminding him how his grandfather James had broken his vow, the consequences of which pursued his family—"God casting the King out of His lap"—and how the plagues of heaven would fall on himself, if he failed to keep the oath of his coronation day. The service closed "with a prayer, and the twentieth psalm."[36]

Charles was forced into a confession of his father's sin in marrying an idolatress, of his own bad education, of the prejudices against God's cause which he had imbibed in his boyhood, and of his manifold transgressions. He also declared his detestation of Popery and Prelacy, and his resolution, inasmuch as he had obtained mercy of the Lord, to be on the Lord's side, to do nothing but with the advice of His Kirk. After all this hypocrisy he felt now in his new position—even as he deserved—that he had a very hard time of it. Tedious forms were imposed upon him; six sermons at one sitting being preached in his presence. Not a walk was allowed him on a Sunday. Mewed up, as he considered it, he had to spend hours in distasteful religious exercises, or in such society as his keepers pleased: and if he ventured to dance, or play at cards—which was a great delight to his frivolous nature—some ministers, who had caught Knox's mantle, administered reproof in a tone like that of the bold Reformer to Mary Stuart, whose levity, fascinating manners, and some other qualities, had descended to her great grandson.

Protesters and Resolutionists.

Honest fanaticism, apparent throughout the treatment which Charles received, manifested itself in some other rather curious ways. First, in excluding from the King's army all who had incurred the taint of malignancy, thereby cutting off from the cause of King and Covenant half the resources at command; and, secondly, on a return of common sense as to that matter, in proceeding to demand that old malignants, now ready to fight the Lord's battles, should, before they handled a pike or shouldered a musket, stand at the church door and do penance. Accordingly, it is recorded, on Sunday, the 12th of January, "This day Lieutenant-General Middleton was relaxed from his excommunication, and did his penance in sackcloth in Dundee church; and Colonel Archibald Strachan was excommunicated, and delivered to the devil, in the church of Perth, by Mr. Alexander Rollock, the same day." The Earl of Lauderdale, the Earl of Crawford, and other nobles, expiated their malignancy after the same fashion. From these two lines of policy originated the two parties known in Scotland as Protesters and Resolutionists—the former remonstrating against the employment of profane and ungodly men in the camp, or the court, or on the bench; the latter resolving upon their admission, after submitting to Church discipline.[37]

1651, August.
Battle of Worcester.

It is not for us to describe the tactics of the Scotch army. It is enough to say that, in August, 1651, that army found itself in such a position with regard to Cromwell's camp, that it was "much nearer to England than he."[38] It seemed safer to turn south than north. Moreover, hopes grew up of large Presbyterian help on this side the border. The army with the King therefore marched into Lancashire; but the army and the King, once on English soil, soon shewed that they were seeking different ends.[39] The army cared little for the King, and much for the Covenant. The King cared much for his crown, and not at all for the Covenant—except to hate it. The Committee of Ministers attending on the forces prepared, unknown to his Majesty, a declaration of their Presbyterian zeal, and of their purpose to receive no recruits who would not subscribe the solemn League. This to Charles, of course, appeared insanity, and he countermanded the publication; at the same time ordering that civility should be shewn to any one who was disposed to enter his service. When the Scotch design became known, it tended to check the advances of episcopal Royalists; and, likewise, the King's want of sympathy with the Covenant served to keep Presbyterians away. Worse still, numbers of the Scots, now convinced of his treachery, turned their backs and marched home, and those who continued faithful fell into discord with their comrades. No cohesion could exist between covenanted and anti-covenanting forces. Personal jealousies, also, increased religious antipathies; for the Duke of Buckingham wanted to snatch the command from the hands of General Leslie. By the time the army reached Worcester—which the King had selected for his last throw in the game of war—the army had fallen into a state of perfect demoralization. Discord prevailed amongst the officers, and confusion amongst the men. The image of iron and clay fell to pieces at the first shock. Cromwell, who had followed the Royalists from Scotland, dashed down upon them by the banks of the river Severn, ere they were aware of his approach. The King suddenly, as he was dining at noon, heard of a battle, and rushed out of the house, only to find a body of his own horsemen already in retreat. They nearly rode over his sacred person, and paid no attention whatever to his loud war cry. The Ironsides swept all before them. Leslie reached Yorkshire with only 1,500 Covenanters; and the rest of the troops were scattered over the country—blown about like the chaff of the summer threshing floor.

1651, May.

If some English Presbyterians could not conscientiously fight for the King, others could not conscientiously fight against him. The Covenant, according to the fairest interpretation of it, together with their own old English sentiments, constrained them to maintain their loyalty to the crown. Regarding the father's execution as a murder, they declined to help the regicides in their designs upon his son. Dr. Samuel Annesley, John Wesley's grandfather, was a type of this class. He refused to send a horse against his Majesty at Worcester, and despatched a servant at night from a distance of forty miles to secure the church keys, in order that no schismatical ministers might hold a thanksgiving service in his church in celebration of Cromwell's victory. Several times he denounced the General as the "arrantest hypocrite" that ever pestered the Church of Christ; as one intent on pulling "down others only to make his own way to the throne," for which demonstrations before "some of note in the army" he was "necessitated to quit a parsonage worth between £200 and £300 per annum."[40]

1651, July.

In the spring of 1651, as Charles did penance for the recovery of the throne, he had Presbyterian friends in London and elsewhere plotting for the same end. They despatched letters to raise money and arms on his behalf; and some of these letters, conveyed in a vessel driven by a storm into the harbour of the town of Ayr, fell into Cromwell's hands.

Love's Trial.

Several ministers were implicated, especially Christopher Love.[41] It was the same person who had made himself famous by his Uxbridge sermon against the Royalists, and he now found himself in the Tower, a prisoner in the hands of the Parliament. Afterwards placed at the bar of the High Court of Justice in Westminster Hall, this young minister was charged with a criminal correspondence to restore Charles Stuart, first, in violation of an ordinance which denounced a traitor's death against those who should make such an attempt; and secondly, in violation of another ordinance, against assisting foreigners to invade the shores of England. Love, in his defence, declared that he only retained his covenanting principles. He referred to what he had suffered as a Puritan, and to what he had done as a patriot, adding, "I have been kept several weeks in close prison, and am now arraigned for my life, and like to suffer from the hands of those for whom I have done and suffered so much, and who have lifted up their hands with me on the same Covenant." He solemnly declared that he had neither written nor sent letters into Scotland; but he confessed that the proceedings in favour of the King were agreeable to his judgment, and for the good of the nation. He owned that he had connived at the scheme for restoring the prince, and had concealed some intelligence respecting it; and for so doing he besought forgiveness, and threw himself upon the mercy of the Court. Matthew Hale appeared as counsel for the prisoner, but no plea or intercession could prevent a verdict of guilty, or avert the sentence of death.

Love's Trial.

The efforts made by Mary Love to save the life of her husband, and the correspondence which passed between them, form an affecting episode. With that courage which is inspired by a wife's affection, and which not unfrequently converts a timid and commonplace woman into a heroine, she laid a petition before Parliament, imploring pardon for the condemned, pledging his friends as security for his peaceable behaviour in time to come, and begging that the God of heaven would bow the hearts of England's rulers to shew mercy. Yet, fearing the worst, this admirable woman wrote to her husband in strains of ardent tenderness, telling him to be comforted; that death was but a little stroke, and that he would soon be where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. "Remember," she said, "though thou mayest eat thy dinner with bitter herbs, yet thou shalt have a sweet supper with Christ that night." He responded in the same spirit of resignation and triumph, assuring her that, as there was "little between him and death," so "there was little between him and heaven." A second prayer from Mrs. Love entreated that, if her husband might not be thought worthy to breathe English air, he might at least have leave to sigh out his sorrows in the utmost parts of the earth. Fifty-four ministers signed a petition, in which they besought the Parliament earnestly, and "in the bowels of Jesus Christ, who, when we were sinners, died for us, if not totally to spare the life of their dear brother, yet that they would say of him as Solomon of Abiathar, that at this time he should not be put to death." A reprieve for one month followed, at the end of which period the suspense of wife and friends settled into blank agony. A third petition produced no effect; nor a fourth, though in that the broken-hearted woman cried, "Your desolate handmaid waiteth with all humility and earnest expectation at your doors, beseeching you not to forget to shew mercy to your poor petitioner and her tender babes." "Be graciously pleased to prevent this dreadful blow." "Whilst you are propagating the Gospel in New England, let my dying husband, as a prophet from the dead, be sent to endeavour the conversion of the poor Indians."

1651, August.

The last words of Christopher Love to his brave, loving Mary were: "Farewell, I will call thee wife no more—I shall see thy face no more; yet I am not much troubled, for I am going to meet the bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom I shall be eternally married."[42]

Love's Execution.

Love met his fate on Tower Hill, on the 22nd of August (together with Mr. Gibbon), and made a long speech, maintaining that he had been convicted upon insufficient evidence, and that certain charges affecting his moral and political character were utterly untrue. He protested against the Engagement, and the invasion of Scotland by an English army; he avowed his preference to die as a Covenant keeper, rather than to live as a Covenant breaker; and ended his words with spiritual counsels and appeals. Ash, Calamy, and Manton, attended their brother on the scaffold; and Baxter says "he died with as great alacrity, and fearless quietude, and freedom of speech, as if he had gone to bed." Manton preached in St. Lawrence church, where Love had been incumbent, a funeral sermon, published under the title of "The Saint's Triumph in Death." The title indicates the preacher's opinion; and in harmony with it is a statement in the discourse, that the departed was a "pattern most worthy of imitation—a man eminent in grace—a man of a singular life and conversation." Christopher Love stood on the scaffold—where so many in like awful circumstances had stood before—under a bright August sky; but soon after the shedding of his blood the heavens became overcast, and thunder and lightning raged all night. At a time when Nature was interpreted by each contending faction as being on its side, no wonder royalist Presbyterians said "God is angry at what has been done," and no wonder republican Independents replied, "It is a mark of Divine judgment against implacable apostasy."

CHAPTER III.

In 1653 the Long Parliament had worn itself out, and its dissolution had become an inevitable necessity. The last gleams of its expiring light emanated from Sir Harry Vane, whose character and genius chiefly, if not entirely, gave to its latest debates whatever of power and brilliancy they possessed. A true estimate of this previously illustrious senate, in the period of its decadence, must rest upon a full consideration of the opinions and conduct of its remaining members regarded in general, and not upon the exceptional views and virtues of a single distinguished individual. There can be little or no doubt that the effect of the later proceedings of this Parliament was likely to be the ruin of the cause for which it had fought in its earlier years; and even the policy of Vane—who was a sincere champion of the rights of conscience, and the toleration of all religious opinions—from being associated with impracticable republican theories, was not calculated to prevent that deplorable result.

Little Parliament.

Cromwell, who alone at that moment had the sagacity to perceive to the full extent the mischiefs which threatened his country, therefore interposed, with an energy which was as startling as it was bold; and which is now acknowledged by numerous careful students of history to have proceeded from wisdom as really profound as it was, at the time, apparently questionable. Upon the disappearance of the Long Parliament from the chapel of St. Stephen's, there followed the disappearance of Sir Harry Vane from the Cabinet of Whitehall. As an honest republican he could not but condemn the course pursued by his colleague; and the two men—who, with Marten, for some time after the establishment of the Commonwealth were the chief pillars of England—now stood parted from each other in this world for ever. The triumvirate was at an end. It had given place to a virtual monarchy.[43]

But though Cromwell dissolved the Long Parliament he had no idea of ruling England without the assistance of a popular assembly; and hence, within three months after that extraordinary event, a new Parliament was convened at Westminster.

1653, July.

The theory of its constitution was unique. It was to consist of men who were able, who loved the truth, who feared God, and who hated covetousness; so ran the terms employed in certain directions given to the Congregational churches to send up names to the Lord General,[44] out of which list, together with another provided by the council of officers, the members of the new convention were to be selected. There were not wanting, at such a moment, people to tilt their jests—and they asked if the image of Him who rode into Jerusalem upon an ass was not a type of the new deliverer about to ride to a throne on the back of one hundred and twenty asses—that being the number of the Little Parliament.

Little Parliament.

Upon the list of the summoned appears the name of Dennis Hollister—a grocer in High Street, Bristol—a person who had great influence with the magistrates of the city, and who is described in the records of the church of which he was a member,[45] "as Diotrephes-like, loving to have the pre-eminence," and as "sucking in some principles of an upstart locust doctrine, from a sort of people afterwards called Quakers." If there be any truth in such a statement, this new member of Parliament must have been fanatical in one way, while his fellow-members were fanatical in another; and such conflicting phases of fanaticism made the settlement of ecclesiastical business in connexion with the State exceedingly difficult; rendering it necessary for Cromwell to interpose with his strong English common sense, unless affairs were left to fall to ruin. Fanatical people there must have been in this singularly constituted assembly, but it numbered also persons rationally religious; and even in the fanatics there might be redeeming qualities. What they said and did are the truest tests by which to judge of what they really were; and it will be seen, that amidst their follies, some of their words and deeds were of a description not to be despised. Much is said of their birth and station; but the grocers and leather-sellers of that day might be rich and prosperous, and socially on a level with the merchants and cotton-lords, who, in our own time, sit upon the benches at Westminster.[46] There were of the number also, Lords, and Knights, and Colonels; and two of the individuals summoned, who afterwards sat in Charles the Second's House of Peers, as Earl of Albemarle and Earl of Shaftesbury, have been pronounced by history as certainly not the most respectable persons in the Little Parliament.

1653, July.

On the 4th of July, 1653—a very sultry day—the gentlemen met in the Whitehall Council Chamber, and seated themselves round the room on chairs. As Cromwell, with his officers, entered, all present rose and bowed. The General moved his hat, advanced to the middle window, and leaning on the back of a chair, addressed them for more than an hour. Descanting upon religion, he pleaded earnestly that all God's saints should be treated with tenderness, and that if he had seemed to reflect upon those who held Presbyterian opinions, he now thought faithfulness demanded that he should love them. He had, when God had been gracious to him and his companions, often read that passage: "He would plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah-tree, and the myrtle, and the oil tree; and He would set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine tree, and the box tree together. That they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together." Therefore he besought his audience to have care for the whole flock—lambs and all—and if the poorest and most mistaken Christian should desire to live peaceably and quietly under the government, let him be protected. He pleaded for a faithful ministry, such as did not derive itself from the Papacy; the true succession being through the Holy Spirit. He never looked, he said, to see such a day as that he now witnessed, Jesus Christ being owned by all. The persons present might not personally be known to each other; but the endeavour in calling that New Parliament had been, not to choose any but such as had hope and faith in Christ. "The Lord," he observed, "shakes the hills and mountains, and they reel; and God hath a hill too, an high hill as the hill of Bashan, and the chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels, and God will dwell upon this hill for ever." Such a speech had never before been delivered at the opening of a Parliament.

When it was finished, a formal instrument devolving authority on the members was placed on the table, with the General's signature and seal, after which he left the Chamber,—politically "nothing more than the brewer's son of Huntingdon."[47]

Little Parliament.

Francis Rouse, provost of Eton, was elected speaker—before which proceeding the members prayed without a chaplain—"Eight or ten speaking in prayer to God, and some briefly from the Word." "Much of the presence of Christ and His Spirit," says a person who was present, "appearing that day to the great gladdening of the hearts of many—some affirming they never enjoyed so much of the spirit and presence of Christ, in any of the meetings and exercises of religion, in all their lives, as they did that day." On the day following they again spent some time in prayer, and prayer, it is recorded, "was daily performed by one member or other, as they were found free to perform it." Presently again they devoted a day to prayer, which "was done by the members, principally by such as had not done service before, when also the Lord General was present, and it was a very comfortable day."[48] The Lord General had been specially invited to join the Assembly, together with Harrison, Desborough, Lambert, and Tomlinson.

Major-General Harrison—a rather noble though not refined-looking man, with flowing locks, irregular features, aquiline nose, and black eyes, often flashing with enthusiasm—had distinguished himself at Basinghouse, Preston, and elsewhere, as a stern soldier, and had been heard by Baxter breaking out into a rapture at Somerton. He was now getting deep in the study of prophecy, and was expecting the reign of the saints to succeed the four great monarchies described by the prophet Daniel. Desborough—a ruder and coarser man than Harrison, as his face, eyebrows, form, and gait all betokened—who had shewn himself a gallant soldier in the storming of Bristol, and had become brother-in-law to Oliver Cromwell—was an Independent, and, after the Restoration, became a member of Dr. Owen's church, in London. Major General Lambert—who had done good service in the wars, had routed the Scots at Linlithgow, and achieved daring feats at Worcester—was Cromwell's particular friend, and adhered to him throughout his career, when others turned their backs; a shrewd, clever, practical sort of person. Tomlinson, Colonel of the Guard at King Charles' execution, was not, beyond that circumstance, at all a noteworthy individual.[49]

1653, July.

The Little Parliament altered the marriage law,[50] which, owing to recent confusion, and consequent irregularities in domestic life, needed amendment. Matrimony was considered by these new legislators in its relation to the State, and was treated by them simply in the character of a civil contract; possibly, in part at least, with the view of diminishing clerical influence, but also with so remarkable an insight into what is just and wise, as to anticipate modern legislation in this respect both in England and on the Continent. Parties were to obtain a certificate from the registrar of the parish, and then solemnly before a justice of the peace to take each other for husband and wife. The religious sanctions of the wedding bond were left entirely to the will of the parties united, and these sometimes were so connected with the secular part of the ceremony, that the service altogether resembled the solemnization of matrimony at the present day in a Nonconformist church in the presence of a registrar.[51]

Question of Tithes.

The Parliament had scarcely commenced its sittings when it entered upon the consideration of the important subject of tithes; and on the 15th of July, it was determined by a majority of twenty-five—in a House consisting of one hundred and eleven members—that the maintenance of ministers by tithes should not be continued after the 3rd day of November following. On the 19th of July, upon a renewal of the debate relative to this subject, the question whether incumbents possessed a propriety in this kind of income, was referred to the consideration of a committee specially appointed for that purpose. And to this same committee a different business was committed on the 26th of the next month. On that day were presented petitions from several churches in Devonshire and Gloucestershire, seeking the further reformation of religion, in connexion with which it was resolved: "That a committee be appointed to consider of some way to be propounded to the House, how ignorant, profane, and scandalous ministers may be rejected; That it be referred to the same committee to consider of some way to be propounded to the House, for the encouragement of such godly and able persons as shall preach the Gospel; and That it be referred to the committee for tithes."[52] The consideration of the question as to whether incumbents had any property in tithes having been previously entrusted to this committee, that question now became mixed up with the other relating to the character of the clergy; and what the Little Parliament ultimately did respecting the one has been supposed to have been a legislative decision of the other, which is not the fact.

1653.

Two parties were in contention, one disposed to retain the old tithe system, the other bent upon supporting ministers in some other way. Harrison led the latter division, and occupied the extreme left in relation to the moderates, who were swayed by Cromwell, and who, as to tithes, agreed with both the Presbyterian and Episcopal parties. The House generally concurred in the opinion that the collection of tithes by the clergy was a grievance; yet perhaps only a few members were prepared to vote for putting an end to that method of support without the provision of some legal substitute. These few, following Harrison, were intent on having the impost repealed at once, leaving only such other provision "as God should direct." A distinction was admitted throughout the debate between the claims of impropriators and the claims of incumbents. The whole House was willing to compensate impropriators in case of the forfeiture of their rights. It was the case of incumbents alone which came under the consideration of the committee. The utmost measure of change formally proposed was, to put an end to the payment of the clergy in the old way, and to equalize benefices by reducing those of £200 per annum and upwards, and by increasing smaller incomes. It was also suggested that a provision should be made to meet the wants of ministers' widows and children.[53]

Question of Tithes.

The larger question respecting ignorant, profane, and scandalous ministers, involved also the minor one touching presentation to benefices; the predominant feeling of the members favoured the right of congregations to choose their own pastors. The Puritan current had long been setting in that direction, and arguments were now urged to the effect that it was unreasonable for people not to be allowed to select their own spiritual guides; much, in short, being advanced upon the subject, of the same kind as is common in the present day. The parties having a pecuniary interest in the maintenance of things as they were, did all they could to keep on their side the men in power. Such people sought protection from the Lord General against what they deemed Parliament-robbery. However, on the 17th of November, the right of presentation to benefices by patrons was condemned by a resolution, and a bill in accordance with it was ordered to be brought in. The effect of this decision was to place the election of the clergy in the hands of parishioners.

1653, December.

On the 2nd of December came the long-expected and much-dreaded report of the Tithe Committee. It first recommended the sending forth of certain authorized commissioners to enquire into ministerial character, and next it gave a deliverance with regard to ministerial maintenance. As this portion of the report is so imperfectly explained by historians, we will present it to the reader as it is printed in the journals:—

"Resolved—That it be presented to the Parliament: That all such as are, or shall be approved for public preachers of the Gospel in the public meeting-places, shall have and enjoy the maintenance already settled by law, and such other encouragement as the Parliament already hath appointed, or hereafter shall appoint; and that where any scruple payment of tithes, the three next justices of the peace, or two of them, shall, upon complaint, call the parties concerned before them, and by the oaths of lawful witnesses shall duly apportion the value of the said tithes, to be paid either in money or land, by them to be set out according to the said value, to be held and enjoyed by him that was to have the said tithes; and, in case such apportioned value be not duly paid or enjoyed, according to the order of the said justices, the tithes shall be paid in kind, and shall be recovered in any court of record. Upon hearing and considering what hath been offered to this Committee touching propriety in tithes of incumbents, rectors, possessors of donatives, or propriate tithes, it is the opinion of this Committee, and resolved to be so reported to the Parliament, that the said persons have a legal propriety in tithes."[54]

An earnest debate ensued, "managed day by day," says one who was present, "with very great seriousness, many arguments and Scriptures being alleged," and "very little of heat or passion being shewed all that time, only one gentleman or two that were for the report, seeing themselves and their party so engaged, flew out a little, complaining of the expense of time, to have given a check to the going on of the debate."[55] The first part of the report, relating to the method of removing scandalous ministers, upon being put to the vote, was rejected by a majority of two, fifty-six voting against fifty-four. The second part, relating to the mode of supporting ministers, and the rights of property possessed by incumbents, was not put to the vote at all. The probable rejection of it might be inferred, but no formal rejection was expressed. What is sometimes represented as the decided abolition of tithes amounted to no more than the rejection of a Committee of Triers. That Committee was a favourite scheme of Cromwell's, and was afterwards by him practically carried out; he also favoured the continuance of the old method of supporting ministers. But the Little Parliament indicated a wish to change that method; yet what they decided now, and even their distinct votes against tithes in the preceding July, did not necessarily imply that they intended to terminate altogether the state maintenance of religious worship.[56]

Fifth Monarchy Men.

It is desirable here once more to pause, and to consider the opinions of Fifth Monarchy men, who were at this time becoming very numerous and very active.

They may be divided into three classes. The first was composed of mere millenarians, who entertained views not essentially different from those which had been held in ancient times with regard to the reign of Christ upon the earth; and whatever may be thought of these persons in some other respects, their opinions cannot be regarded as involving anything discreditable to their reputation, inasmuch as in substance those opinions had received the sanction of a great scholar, Henry Mead, and of a distinguished philosopher, Henry Moore.

1653.

The second class consisted of theoretical theocrats, people who talked in an extravagant manner respecting Divine dominion, and generally opposed the authority of Oliver Cromwell; yet they appear to have been inoffensive persons, not at all disposed to attempt any violent measures for the realization of their wild and mystical dreams. John Tillinghurst, the now forgotten author of several publications on prophecy, which were popular at the time of which we are speaking, belonged to this order of anti-Cromwell millenarians, who were very bold and busy, but for the most part very harmless. Some of them wrote and preached with great confidence upon the prophecies of Daniel and the Revelations of St. John, only to find, in a short time, their theories exploded by the criticism of facts.

But the third class included a number of practical theocrats who blended republican ideas with their theological speculations, and who were quite disposed, whenever the opportunity offered, to open by force a path by which the saints might advance to the government of the world. Venner before and after the Restoration went even this length; and Harrison, although a different man from Venner, was also a military theologian, ready with carnal weapons to cast down strongholds. Certain Anabaptists also belonged to the same division.

Fifth Monarchy Men.

The fifth monarchy fever, in its fanatical symptoms, threatened much mischief to English society. As in the tenth century the notion then so common throughout Europe—that the end of the world had come, that the whole social fabric had crumbled away, and was to give place to an order of things just on the point of descending from heaven—proceeded from the existing confusion of the age; so the prevalence of fifth monarchy dreams, in the earlier part of the Commonwealth, was aided, no doubt, by the convulsions which had so rudely shaken the whole of the British Empire. The actual overthrow of the hierarchy, the peerage, and the throne, with the desolations of civil war, and the disturbance of the whole country, could not but throw the minds of many into a maddening whirl, and dash them completely off their balance. Fifth monarchism arose, in a great measure, out of the ruins of English monarchism. The enthusiastic visions which absorbed certain minds were, to a large extent, the effect of prevalent disorder. Men's brains were crazed by what they had recently witnessed, and their insanity created omens of other things, brighter or more terrible, which were yet to come.

1653.

During the sittings of the Little Parliament, the fifth monarchy delusion reached its height; and to that delusion, though not to that alone, may be attributed, as to their cause, certain incidents which, although exaggerated by both Clarendon and Baxter, were not by any means imaginary. These writers speak of this period, as if the very existence of the Christian ministry, of rational religion, of the two Universities, and of Christian learning in general, were then on the point of complete extinction.[57] Things certainly were not in that condition. What was actually done in reference to the support of the clergy has been already described, and it can by no means be made to sustain the sweeping assertions of those authors; yet, notwithstanding, the interests of the great seats of education were placed in fearful jeopardy, as will appear when we have to notice the history of the University of Oxford at that time; nor can it be denied that the demolition of some noble ecclesiastical edifices had been contemplated even before the breaking up of the Long Parliament. The Norwich Corporation, so early as 1650, debated what should be done with the cathedral of that city; and in the same year, Yarmouth was seeking to share in the spoil.[58] Further still, on the 9th of July, 1652, it was referred to a committee by the House of Commons, to consider this question: "What cathedrals are fit to stand, and what to be pulled down." Such intended destruction betokened other spoliations, and the Long Parliament having set such an example, the Little Parliament had encouragement to proceed in a similar path.

The proceedings of Harrison and his party could not fail to alarm the Presbyterians; even the Independents, with Cromwell at their head, in spite of their broad views of ecclesiastical questions, were also convinced that nothing but confusion could result from the wild schemes of republican visionaries and Fifth Monarchists. The country could not feel confidence in those who formed the slight majority of the House, and sober-minded men apprehended nothing but ruin from the continuance of their power. The Parliament itself, with such an even balance of parties, and amidst so much distraction, had a consciousness of its own incapacity, which led the members speedily to resign their powers into the Lord General's hands.[59]

Feake at Blackfriars.

This resignation, Cromwell's acceptance of it, and his consequent assumption of supreme authority, drove the millenarian democrats into a still more violent expression of extravagant views, and into still more decidedly energetic opposition to the Lord General. Preachers of that day, in close alliance with Harrison, advocated in the pulpit the cause which he and his party upheld in the senate. A House at Blackfriars is repeatedly mentioned in contemporary letters as the head quarters of this menacing agitation. Feake—a well-known Anabaptist and Fifth Monarchy man—there held forth in a strain of rude eloquence, and greatly distinguished himself as leader of a large band of sympathizing disciples. To letters written by contemporaries we are chiefly indebted for what we know of the proceedings of these enthusiasts.

1653.

"I know not," says the writer of an intercepted epistle, "whether you have formerly heard of the Monday's lecture at Blackfriars, where three or four of the Anabaptistical ministers preach constantly, with very great bitterness, against the present Government, but especially against his Excellency, calling him 'the man of sin,' 'the old dragon,' and many other scripture ill names; the chief of them is one Feake, a bold and crafty orator, and of high reputation amongst them. It has been wondered the General has so patiently permitted them; but yesterday I heard the true reason of it, which is, that he cannot help it, for they preach by an Act of the late Parliament, which the council of state cannot over-rule, and this Parliament will not abolish it; but on Tuesday last, as I take it, they were called before a private committee, where your General was present, who told them that the ill odour they had cast upon the Government has given confidence to our enemies abroad and at home, (meaning the Scots,) and would bring the Parliament into contempt; and that whatsoever ill effect followed, they must be accountable for it. Feake replied that he desired that what the General said and what he answered might be recorded in heaven; and that it was his tampering with the king, and his assuming an exorbitant power, which made these disorders; and so held forth the Fifth Monarchy. The General answered, that when he heard him begin with a record in heaven, he did not expect that he would have told such a lie upon earth; but assured him that whensoever they should be harder pressed by the enemy than they yet had been, it would be necessary to begin first with them; and so dismissed them. I forgot to tell you that the General had brought Sterry,[60] and two or three more of his ministers, to oppose spirit to spirit, and to advise Feake and the rest to obedience, as the most necessary way to bring in the kingdom of Christ. But it is believed we shall have very much trouble from the Anabaptists, yet it is thought their power is nothing so great in the army as in the House; they have none above a captain of their party besides Harrison, who, it is thought, will betray all the rest: but whether the General will ease himself of those in the House by the old way of purging, or the new one of dissolving, rests in his own and his officers' breasts."[61]

1653, December.

The district of Blackfriars claimed to be independent of the municipal authorities of London. The inhabitants asserted an inheritance of the privileges of sanctuary, formerly pertaining to that famous monastery which had given its name to the neighbourhood. Hence, to find shelter and protection within the precincts of the ancient foundation, players, who had been driven out of the city, here erected a theatre; and Papists, who were proscribed by law, here assembled for worship. And it is not a little curious that Puritans also were somewhat numerous in the same locality; a fact which is indicated by their presenting what seems to have been an influential petition to the Lords of the Privy Council against the continuance of stage-plays by their dramatic neighbours.[62] Blackfriars, as we have seen, is also mentioned among the places in which certain Nonconformists were wont to meet in the first quarter of the seventeenth century; and in this same place we now meet with an Anabaptist assembly listening to the popular preachers of millenarianism.

Feake and Powell.

A letter from an eye-witness communicates additional information respecting these meetings. The writer states that he had been to one of them, and had heard Feake preach upon the subject of the little horn described in the book of Daniel; and he states that in the course of the sermon the preacher exclaimed, "I know some would have the late King Charles to be meant by this little horn; but as I said at first, I'll name nobody. God will make it clear shortly to His people who is meant here." When Feake had concluded his portion of the service, Vavasour Powell continued to discourse on the same subject, in a similar strain of interpretation—still more explicitly reflecting on public men and measures than his predecessor had done—interpreting the king of the north to signify the late monarch, and inveighing bitterly against the military commanders of the day, as the sole cause of the pressure of taxation. The leading points of the sermon were, that Christ was setting up a fifth monarchy in the world; that a spirit of prophecy had been communicated to the saints, whereby they were enabled to describe future events; and that the design of Christ was to destroy all antichristian forms, including established churches together with their clergy. Upon this third particular, the reporter states that Powell was somewhat copious, and said "they must down, though they were never so strongly protected, for Christ is none of their Lord Protectors, though the army-men protect them." "Yes," said he, "and rather than those shall down, they will pull Parliaments in pieces, and this made them break the last Parliament; for on Saturday, the 10th of December, the House refused to settle a commission of ministers to ride in circuits, as the judges did, and judge who were fit to be continued or put out of their livings, and so to maintain them upon the old corrupt foundation still. And when the House would not yield that these antichristian clergymen and tithes should be upheld, then, on Monday following, in the morning, they were thrust out (I mean the few honest men of them that were present) by violence; and the rest (as they had agreed beforehand) went and subscribed their names to a paper giving up their authority in the name of the whole; whereas none of the honest men would subscribe or surrender, save only some three or four, who have since professed their hearty sorrow to me for it. This is true, and we must speak it out, for our mouths shall not be stopped with paper-proclamations." ... Further, in relation to the Parliament, he remarked, "they were broken by force, and it was a business plotted by the great army-men, clergymen, and their party together." ... Powell afterwards "flew into many strange ejaculations, 'Lord! what have our army-men all apostatized from their principles? What is become of all their declarations, protestations, and professions? Are they choked with lands, and parks, and manors? Let us go home, and pray, and say, 'Lord, wilt Thou have Oliver Cromwell to reign over us, or Jesus Christ to reign over us.'" "I know," he proceeded, "there are many gracious souls in the army, and of good principles, but the greater they grow, the more they are corrupted with lands and honours. I'll tell you, it was a common proverb that we had among us of the General, that in the field he was the graciousest and most gallant man in the world; but out of the field, and when he came home to government, the worst." This strange preacher told his congregation that "snares were laid for them, and spies set over them, and that they might be deprived of the benefit of meeting in that place. But then (said he) we will meet at another, and if we be driven thence, we will meet at private houses, and if we cannot have liberty there, we will into the fields, and if we be driven thence, we will into corners, for we will never give over, and God will not permit this spirit to go down. He will be the support of the spirits of His people. He complained also of the faltering of divers who had formerly been very forward at this meeting, but now drew back, and therefore he prayed that the Lord would hold up the meeting."[63]

1653, December.

Powell having concluded, somebody seated in one corner of the gallery began to speak, and would have replied to the preacher; but, though he strained his voice with the utmost violence to overcome the outcries of the congregation, he was compelled, after half-an-hour's tumult, to hold his peace. A Mr. Colaine, amidst the confusion, ascended the pulpit, and afterwards expounded the fifth chapter of Hosea, representing the state of things in England as parallel to that which the prophet portrayed, and inveighing strongly against the national clergy of Antichrist, and the parochial priests of Baal.

According to another letter, personal allusions to Cromwell even yet more violent occurred in the discourses of these misguided men. Powell and Feake called him "the dissemblingist perjured villain in the world," and desired any friends of his, who might be present, to go and report this to him, adding, that the Protector's reign would be short, and "that he should be served worse than that great tyrant the last Lord Protector was, he being altogether as bad, if not worse than he."[64]

Feake and Powell.

These fanatics threw themselves with earnestness into the Dutch war. That conflict, looking at the political and religious character of the combatants, strikes us as very strange, both parties being republicans, and both being defenders of religious liberty: but it had arisen from commercial and maritime rivalries, into which additional bitterness had been shed by the natural sympathies of the Prince of Orange with the Stuart family. A confederation of the two commonwealths, for the promotion of civil freedom and the interests of Protestantism throughout Europe, formed an English dream at the end of the civil wars; and what had at first been contemplated as a subject for peaceful negotiation was afterwards absurdly sought to be accomplished by naval battles. The republican zeal and Protestant fervour of Feake and his friends enlisted them on the side of a thorough union between the two states, and they stipulated for it as an indispensable condition of peace. That England should persevere till Holland could be yoked to her in humble submission for the attainment of these civil and religious ends, constituted a staple theme in the harangues at Blackfriars. Conciliation and compromise were condemned. The preachers denounced in the wildest way the statesman-like views of Cromwell, who felt anxious to put an end to the deadly struggle of two countries, between which policy as well as justice dictated alliance with mutual independence. His opponents did all they could to stir up the people of England against the Netherlanders, and one of the Dutch deputies, who went to hear them, wrote home, declaring that their sermons were "most horrid trumpets of fire, murder, and flame."[65] Millenarianism thus became mixed up with political schemes; and these Commonwealth visionaries believed that God had given Holland to the English as a "landing place of the saints, whence they should proceed to pluck the whore of Babylon from her chair, and to establish the kingdom of Christ on the Continent."[66]

Between the resignation of the Little Parliament on the 12th of October, and the date of the last of these letters, a great change had come over the government of England. Cromwell and his council of officers, "after several days seeking of God," had determined formally to avow the perpetuation of what was already a fact—that supreme authority should rest in a single person, even in Oliver himself. His title was to be "Lord Protector," and with him was to be associated "a council of godly, able, and discreet persons," consisting of not more than twenty-one.

Cromwell made Protector.

On Friday, the 16th of December, about three o'clock in the afternoon, his Highness went in procession from Whitehall to the Court of Chancery in Westminster. Commissioners of the Great Seal, scarlet-robed Judges and Barons, and the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London, with the usual accompaniments of civic splendour, were in attendance on the occasion. There on a dais stood a chair of state, near to a table on which lay a roll of parchment, containing, in a summary of forty-two articles, the fundamental principles of the Protectorate government.[67] His Highness having subscribed the document, and having sworn to maintain the constitution which it prescribed, sat down on his throne, and then received into his hands the great seal of the realm, the Lord Mayor's sword, and the cap of maintenance. His portrait at that moment has been sketched in the following graphic words: "Fifty-four years old gone April last; brown hair and moustache are getting gray;" "massive stature; big massive head, of somewhat leonine aspect—wart above the right eye-brow; nose of considerable blunt aquiline proportions; strict yet copious lips, full of all tremulous sensibilities, and also, if need were, of all fierceness and rigours; deep, loving eyes, call them grave, call them stern, looking from under those craggy brows as if in life-long sorrow."[68]

As the Protector returned to Whitehall, the Lord Mayor, uncovered, carried the sword before him; and in the banqueting house, Mr. Lockier, the Protector's chaplain, delivered an exhortation; after which the Lord Mayor, the Aldermen, and the Judges all departed home.[69]

State of Affairs at the Time.

A very wonderful day's work was that of the 16th of December.[70] It was an act of usurpation beyond all doubt, yet one which it would be pedantic to criticise according to constitutional rules. For when a house is catching fire, or a vessel is on the edge of a rock, people in their senses do not expect that a strong man, who can extinguish the flame, or steer the ship into open waters, should stand on ceremony and wait for red-tape formalities. A crisis had come, such as must come in the wake of great revolutions, when, however firmly we may maintain Locke's principles of the origin of government, we find people in such a state of perfect helplessness, and former rulers so utterly destitute of power to rule, so incapable, so inevitably rushing to destruction, dragging the whole country along with them—that in mercy to mankind we feel all theories woven of the wisest webs must be laid aside, and a competently skilful hand be allowed to gather up the scattered threads in such fashion as it may be able. Public affairs had now reached such a crisis that the alternative was a Protector or destruction, Cromwell or chaos. The fire long kindling now at length burst into a blaze, and there was only one man who could put an end to the conflagration. The ship was within an inch of foundering, and there remained but one pilot who had the power of steering her off the rocks.

1653.

The Church, it should be recollected, had not ceased to be a State Church. The constant discussion of its affairs by Parliament and the Council of State implied its continued subjection to secular control. No scheme of severance had been propounded, though certain proposals had been made which might seem to involve such a result. However desirable it may appear to some of our readers that the civil and ecclesiastical powers in a country should stand each on its own basis, and not interfere with one another's action; whatever anticipations may be formed of a new and better era of Christian civilization, to be inaugurated when a separation of the Church from the State shall take place, subject to the authority of New Testament teaching, aided by the lights of experience through the exercise of political sagacity, and under the inspiration of Christian disinterestedness; yet every one must see that the time had not then come for such a revolution. Such a revolution involved not only the settlement of questions touching ecclesiastical property and revenue, but also the determination of two other points, namely, that religion should be left to its own unfettered exercise, and that no man should be disqualified by his theological opinions for the discharge of the offices and the enjoyment of the honours of the State. Now, without doing injustice to the character of the Little Parliament, we certainly may go so far as to say that it never indicated the possession of that clearsightedness, that deep wisdom, and that broad sympathy which are essential to the satisfactory solution of the practical problems included in the change just indicated. The members had neither the intellectual nor the moral qualifications requisite for the task. It was in those days more difficult than it is at present to draw the line where free religious action comes to an end, and something else quite different from it begins; for millenarian opinions ran over into Fifth Monarchy schemes, and the Dutch wars had become mixed up in men's brains with the dominion of the saints. The Little Parliament lacked the mental power necessary in those days for carrying out the doctrines of voluntaryism, even had they understood them. But they did not understand them. Had they done so, they would not have clung to the idea in any form, of the State supporting the Christian ministry, nor would they have cherished the conviction that certain theological qualifications are indispensable for the discharge of political trusts.

State of Affairs at the Time.

And further, if the Little Parliament had been composed of the wisest of mortals, and had plainly and skilfully propounded a system of pure voluntaryism, such as is ably and successfully advocated in our own time, still, with the Presbyterians all against them; with many of the Independents against them; and with the Episcopalians also against them; in short, with the bulk of the wealth, of the intelligence, and of the power of the country against them—how useless would have been their attempts to work out the measure. Common sense teaches, and voluntaryism in its very nature implies, that before it can be established as the exclusive method of dealing with spiritual interests, a very large number of those who have to adopt it must be convinced of its wisdom. And as to the alternative of revising the Establishment, and placing it upon grounds adapted to the needs of existing society, that also was an undertaking which, it is needless to repeat, the Little Parliament did not accomplish, and one, too, with which the whole history of that Assembly proved that it was utterly incompetent to deal. The whole web of ecclesiastical affairs had raveled out, and it devolved on a more than ordinarily skilful hand to gather up the threads and arrange them in some sort of order.

1653.

Cromwell ever shewed himself to be a practical man, by no means wedded to any fine-spun theory. No ideal republic, such as was conceived by Plato or by Harrington, floated before his imagination. In this respect a marked distinction existed between him and his contemporaries of the philosophical schools which were led by Sir Harry Vane and Algernon Sidney; and, as in pure politics, so in ecclesiastical politics, he aimed simply at accomplishing what he saw to be practicable. His strong religious feelings, the mystic cast of his piety, his enthusiastic faith in prayer and providence, never turned him aside from plain paths of human action, where he could get common people to walk and work beside him. Whatever idea he might have had as to what was best in itself, and under other circumstances than those of England in his own day, then rocking with the throes of revolution, certainly the plan which he adopted was not that of attempting the exclusive establishment of a voluntary system of supporting religion. He saw that to alienate church property from sacred uses—had he wished to do so—would arouse against him at once all the Presbyterians of the country, and would give them a rallying point and a battle cry quite sufficient to render them irresistible. He knew, that supported in this respect by Episcopalians, and not without sympathy amongst Independents, the Presbyterians would have protested against spoliation, and would have contended for the inviolateness of tithe property with a temper too fierce and with an amount of influence too strong for any government to resist with success. He perceived the wisdom of conciliating the Presbyterian party, and even on that ground he would shrink from provoking them by the confiscation of all church revenues. His keen eye also discerned such a spirit in some of the sects, such violent anti-social principles abroad, such elements seething in the cauldron of religious excitement, that he felt it would not be safe to leave all theological teachers at that time to do and say just what they liked without any sort of legal restraint. The liberty which he believed it just and right to concede in reference to the discussion of simple questions of divinity, he did not consider it just and right to afford to all sorts of semi-political agitations; which, under the cover of prophetical study and of transcendental schemes of society, directly tended to overthrow all law and order, and with law and order, the very liberty which such enthusiasts themselves really desired to enthrone.

Cromwell's Policy.

What, then, was the kind of National Church which Cromwell's practical sagacity led him to establish? Though he might not work according to any definite theory, and was mainly prompted by the quick insight of his own genius, yet there could not but be some principles lying at the basis of his operations. Three politico-ecclesiastical theories of union may be entertained: that of the Church's mistress-ship over the State, that of the Church's servitude to the State, and that of the Church's marriage with the State. What the Lord Protector aimed at accomplishing appears far removed from the first of these. He would not allow Presbyters, or Pastors, or Preachers of any kind, any more than Anglican Priests, to lord it over the people. He would carry the staff in his own hands. At the same time, he did not put the Church in perfect servitude. Though Erastian in one way, his method of ecclesiastical government does not appear to have been so in another. Whilst the appointment and recognition of ministers receiving State pay were placed under the authority of persons who owed their official position to State appointment, yet the inner working, the worship, and the discipline of Churches continued to be left free to a very large extent. Perhaps, on the whole, Cromwell's Broad Church embodied more of the idea of the marriage of the Church with the State than any other Establishment which ever existed.[71]

1653.

His ecclesiastical policy rested on five principles:—State recognition, State control, State support, State protection, and State penalties. How those principles were developed in Cromwell's administration will be seen in the next chapter.

CHAPTER IV.

To prevent confusion, let it be distinctly stated at once, that in tracing the form which the new ecclesiastical establishment assumed under the impress of Cromwell's genius, we confine ourselves in this chapter to the legislation of nine months; consisting of those ordinances which were issued between the end of the Little Parliament, in December, 1653, and the opening of the first Protectorate Parliament, in September, 1654. During this period, the foundations of the Protector's ecclesiastical policy were laid.

I. State Recognition.—The articles of government—the conception and inspiration of which must be regarded as proceeding from Cromwell—distinctly declared "that the Christian religion, as contained in the Scriptures, be held forth and recommended as the public profession of these nations."[72] Christianity being thus recognized as part and parcel of the law of the land, the sanctions of religion were introduced at the inauguration of the Protector; the solemnities of worship and of preaching were connected with all special public acts; and the exercises of devotion constantly accompanied the ordinary business of Parliament. The State continued to recognize religion by the appointment of fast days, which were of frequent occurrence; whilst the Scotch brethren objected to this exercise of civil authority as an Erastian intrusion into the spiritual realm.[73] Preachers, both Presbyterian and Independent, were appointed on these occasions; and a fast day sometimes was solemnized by a service which lasted from nine o'clock in the morning until four in the afternoon.

1654.

By an express article, all who professed the Roman Catholic religion were disabled from voting, as well as from being elected; and as the Act which had been passed against execrable opinions, treated as culprits and subjected to penalties those who opposed Christianity, it virtually deprived all such persons of the electoral franchise. Infidels and heretics, also, who attacked or undermined the foundations of the Christian faith, forfeited the rights of denizenship. But these laws did not affect the social position of any individuals who professed Protestantism in any of its usually-recognized forms of orthodoxy. All the "sects" were accepted as citizens. So were the Presbyterians. And, although Prelacy was forbidden, there was nothing which could legally prevent an Episcopalian from going to the poll to give or receive the vote of a freeman. Still, we must not forget that, since the Common Prayer Book had been prohibited, any one who persisted in using its formularies might have both his franchise and his freedom brought into peril.[74] From these facts, it is evident that England under the Protectorate was, in theory, a religious Commonwealth; that the State possessed a spiritual as well as a secular character; that Christianity was considered essential to the welfare of society; and that an irreligious man was not regarded as a faithful subject. But this theory of the Commonwealth as a Christian State must not be confounded with the theory of the National Church as connected with the Commonwealth. The lines of limitation in the two cases were not the same. Considerable differences existed between the Christianity which entitled all its disciples to the franchise of the citizen and the Christianity which entitled its ministerial advocates to the support of the State. What those differences were will be indicated as we proceed.

State Control.

II. State Control.—The laws made certain distinctions between what was civil and what was sacred. They followed the early legislation of the Long Parliament by withdrawing all secular matters from ecclesiastical authority. Wills received careful attention from the Little Parliament in 1653, when commissioners were appointed to superintend that business, and to grant administrations "in the late provinces of Canterbury and York." Their powers were defined, and the probate fees to be taken by registrars were, after the payment of expenses, to be appropriated to the support of the navy. The Act of 1653 was revived in 1654, and more commissioners were added to the existing number.[75]

The main control over the Church consisted, not in any Act of Uniformity—nor in the establishment of a particular creed—nor in the maintenance of a simple mode of worship, but in the appointment of a spiritual tribunal, invested with the power of determining who were fitting persons to fulfil the Christian ministry. In the month of March, 1653-4, an ordinance appeared,[76] reciting that there had been no certain method adopted for supplying vacancies with able ministers, in consequence of which the rights of patrons had been prejudiced, and "weak, scandalous, popish, and ill-affected persons had intruded themselves, or been brought in, to the great grief and trouble of the good people of this nation." As a remedy, it was ordained that every person presented to a benefice, or appointed to a lecture, should be approved by certain Commissioners who were named for that purpose. No mention is made of any standard of faith, of any mode of worship, or of any scheme of polity. Episcopacy, Presbyterianism, Independency, anti-Pædobaptism—in short, particular forms of Christianity are entirely unnamed and unnoticed. In general terms, power was vested in the Commissioners:—they were to grant admission to the ministry; their certificate being a sufficient induction; but a vote of exclusion did not acquire validity unless nine members were present at the time when the vote was passed. Appointments made by these Commissioners did not interfere with the rights of patronage. They had no authority to dispose of Church benefices, or to elect lecturers; but only to determine upon the qualifications of those whom the patrons presented or the people chose. Nor did the law construe the decision of these judges "to be any solemn or sacred setting apart of a person to any particular office in the ministry." In short, the Commissioners formed a board, and nothing more, for the examination of persons who presented themselves for the ministerial office. So far, it bore a likeness to the Assembly of Divines, for they had exercised similar functions in the examination of clergymen; but then they had been more numerous, and had been wont to consult Church standards and formularies for the guidance of their judgment. Nothing of the sort limited the power of the new Commissioners, and, moreover, their unfettered power was lodged in comparatively few hands. Some creed, statute, canon, or established usage, had in all similar cases been recognized as a rule of action; but in this instance everything was left for determination by the wisdom or the will of irresponsible functionaries.[77] No distinct articles of faith were prescribed. No subscription whatever was enforced.[78] The only way to form an idea of the character of a Church so circumstanced is to infer what it must have been from the known opinions and characters of such powerful officers. The Commission was composed of men of very different characters. Some had much prejudice and party spirit, with little judgment, and less charity. No confidence could be placed in Hugh Peters, and in others of a similar stamp; but there were amongst the members individuals of great wisdom and large benevolence—such as Manton, Goodwin, Owen, and many more. Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists were of the number; and, so far, the constitution of the tribunal permitted access to benefices by ministers belonging to all three denominations. The proportion of different religious parties in the commission suggests what was likely to be the proportion of those admitted to preferment. Nothing hindered the admission of the members of any sect whatever, not even Episcopalians, provided they did not use the Book of Common Prayer; and such persons actually were admitted; but it is not probable that many would be included in the establishment who occupied a position far beyond the circle of the Commissioners' opinions.

State Control.

Another tribunal appeared in August, 1654, for ejecting "scandalous, ignorant, and insufficient ministers and schoolmasters."[79] Unlike the former, this Commission branched out into manifold divisions, which, in fact, formed ecclesiastical courts of assize, spreading over the whole country. Long lists of distinguished laymen are contained in the ordinance—including the names of the Lords Wharton, Fairfax, Lisle, Say and Sele, Sir A. Haselrig, Sir Anthony A. Cooper, and Nathaniel Fiennes. They were to bring before them all clergymen and teachers who were punishable by the Act against blasphemous opinions, or who were guilty of profanity, perjury, popish opinions, adultery, fornication, drunkenness, haunting taverns, quarrelling, fighting, playing at cards or dice, or profaning the Sabbath day. So ran the enumeration of the first class of scandals, cognizable by these judges. Then came words pointing to such as had publicly and frequently used the Common Prayer Book since the first of January last, or should at any time afterwards do so; such as publicly and profanely scoffed at or reviled the strict profession or professors of religion or godliness, or encouraged, or countenanced, "by word or practice, any Whitsun ales, wakes, Morris-dances, May-poles, stage-plays," or similar licentious practices; and such as declared their disaffection to the present government. As to "negligent" ministers, they are defined to be "non-residents," and such as omitted the public exercise of preaching and praying on the Lord's Day: but "the ignorant and insufficient" are not defined at all, they are left to be declared and judged by the Commissioners in every county, or by any five of them, together with five of the ministers mentioned in the ordinance. To them, therefore, in this respect, remained a wide margin of discretion, and individuals guiltless of the scandals and offences before enumerated—yet being charged in general terms by their parishioners with ministerial incompetency—were left to the mercy and the conscience of these lay and clerical assessors. Their character was the only guarantee that justice would be administered; and sometimes proofs appeared shewing how perilous a thing it was to the interests of the parties arraigned that even to men of established integrity there should be entrusted such large powers, especially at a time when party spirit on all sides ran so high.

1654.

III. State Support.—The articles of government declared, that as soon as might be, a provision less subject to contention and more certain than the one existing should be made for the maintenance of "able and painful" teachers, for instructing the people, and for the discovery and confutation of error, heresy, and whatever is contrary to sound doctrine. But until such provision could be devised, the existing maintenance was not to be taken away or impeached. Also the ordinances of 1647, as to tithes, were in 1654 declared to remain in full force; and further still, for the more efficient support of the ministry, an ordinance of the 2nd of September, 1654, directed that there should be a union of small parishes and a division of large ones—authority for that purpose being vested in a Commission, according to a common plan then adopted in all business of that description.[80]

State Protection.

The Long Parliament, in the month of February, 1648, had commanded churchwardens and overseers of the poor to assess every inhabitant of a parish, in such sums as those officers should think proper; no mention being made of holding any vestry meetings whatever for that purpose. The law declared that such rates should be appropriated for repairing the fabric of the church, and keeping in order the churchyard and walls; for providing books to be used in Divine worship; and for the bread and wine required in the administration of the Lord's supper. When the rate had been confirmed by two justices of the peace, the churchwardens were authorized and required to levy payment and to recover by "distress" where payment was refused. The justices, "in default of such distress," might commit the defaulter to the common gaol.[81] This church-rate law remained unrepealed, and therefore was available for the support of worship by all those who were now incorporated in the Establishment. In the ordinance of 1654, for uniting and for severing parishes, reference is made to rates, taxes, parochial rights, charges and duties, as acknowledged sources of revenue.[82]

1654.

IV. State Protection.—The Articles of Government extended protection, within certain limits, to professing Christians who did not share in the resources and immunities of the State Church. Religious compulsion was forbidden, religious persuasion was recommended; and it was expressly declared, "That such as profess faith in God by Jesus Christ (though differing in judgment from the doctrine, worship, or discipline publicly held forth), shall not be restrained from, but shall be protected in, the profession of the faith and exercise of their religion, so as they abuse not this liberty to the civil injury of others, and to the actual disturbance of the public peace on their parts, provided this liberty be not extended to Popery nor Prelacy, nor to such as under the profession of Christ hold forth and practise licentiousness."[83] The shield of the law was thus placed over all Protestant sects whose liberty in no way threatened the security of the Government.

State Penalties.

V. State Penalties.—First, the Papists were deprived of all religious freedom and of all political rights, and this act of injustice was perpetrated as a retaliation which their own habitual intolerance had provoked; and as a precaution which the tendency of their system and their Jesuitical and treasonable practices had rendered expedient. The circumstances in which Prelatists were placed by the legislation of the Long Parliament have been explained. These circumstances remained unaltered; and Prelacy was now conjoined with Popery in the prohibition expressed by the articles. The supporters of Prelacy were known to be disaffected to the Government, and whenever that disaffection manifested itself in overt acts, the magistrates were justified in punishing the offenders; but to inflict penalties for using the Prayer Book was an unrighteous proceeding, no more to be excused than was the persecution of Nonconformists for their worship, after the Restoration. Sometimes that persecution has been defended or its guilt has been extenuated on the ground that the very religion of the Separatists made them disloyal; persons who condemn that plea as being insult added to injury must not set up a similar one on behalf of the rulers of the Commonwealth. After the mention of Prelacy in the articles comes a denial of freedom to such as maintained tenets inimical to the principles of public morality and order;[84] Fifth Monarchists, therefore, preaching after the fashion of Feake and Vavasour Powell, brought themselves within the scope of penal laws. So did some well-known disorderly fanatics, who hung on the skirts of Quakerism. Socinians likewise came under the legislative ban. As the statute against blasphemous opinions remained in force, all persons suspected of holding them were liable to be brought before the magistrate. Yet it should be stated that Cromwell checked as much as he could the severe application of this penal code: and when a Parliament, under his control, undertook to specify what particulars were embraced by the general title of heresy, there was so much caution exercised lest words expressing vague ideas should subject "the godly party to some danger of suffering," that not until after much debate could even the word atheism be allowed "to be part of the question."[85]

1654.

Such were the principles of Cromwell's ecclesiastical policy, and in it may be seen a singular combination of boldness and caution. Of boldness—for he fearlessly innovated upon the ancient principles and precedents of the kingdom, and also defied the prejudices of contemporary bigots by throwing open the Establishment to different sects, and by conceding toleration to all whose opinions and proceedings did not imperil the stability of his republic. Of caution—for he shrank from committing himself to theories of voluntary church support, and of thorough church independence, however those theories might be advocated by some with whom he would be regarded as having considerable sympathy. And the more his policy is examined, the plainer will it appear to be distinguished by originality no less than by the qualities we have just indicated. Whatever its merits or demerits, it was his own. He neither copied the forms of past times nor followed the counsels of contemporary advisers. It is very remarkable that no ecclesiastical personage appears controlling the affairs of the Commonwealth. Indeed his Highness occupied the throne without having at his right hand any prominent individual to influence him in either spiritual or in temporal business. No member of his Council of State was of such importance as to justify our applying to him the appellation of prime minister. We strive in vain to detect any clerical guidance. The principal Divines of the Presbyterian party were but little, if at all, attached to his government; they preferred the royalty which his rule suspended, and they disliked the Broad Church which he so zealously upheld. Independents were about his person, but no evidence exists of his constituting any of them ecclesiastical advisers. The only chaplain he had of high intellectual mark was John Howe, a man indisposed to take part in public affairs, and whose correspondence shews that whatever his power might be in the pulpit, he had little or no influence at court. Owen and Goodwin were too much engaged at Oxford to have many opportunities for conference at Whitehall. Philip Nye might be disposed to give the benefit of his counsel, but Philip was not the person to carry weight with Oliver. No doubt the Protector took care to ascertain the opinions of all parties, and, as a prudent, practical man, he shaped his course so as not to give unnecessary offence; but his own genius was the counsellor on which he chiefly, if not entirely, relied. The outward fortunes of the Church were completely in lay hands—the hands of the Lord Protector of England. In the days of Charles, the country, through Laud, had been priest-ridden, but not even in religious matters was it presbyter-ridden in the days of Cromwell.

Cromwell's Establishment not a Church.

One more remark may be made. Conforming to general usage, we have called Cromwell's religious establishment a Church; but, accurately speaking, it was not a Church at all. We do not mean by this what an ecclesiastical polemic means, when he refuses to apply the name to any organization at variance with what he considers to be New Testament principles. By withholding the title from a particular community, he intends to say that it is not a Church according to his idea of what a Church should be. We abstain from all such controversies in these pages. Our meaning is that Cromwell's establishment did not include or recognize any internal organization whatever of an ecclesiastical kind; it had no Church courts, no Church assemblies, no Church laws, no Church ordinances. It repudiated Prelacy without enforcing Presbyterianism or recognizing Congregationalism. While denying the aid of the civil power for carrying out one method of discipline, it gave no direct sanction to any other. It said nothing about rites and ceremonies. Not even the two great sacraments of Christianity were mentioned. What should be the mode of administering the Lord's Supper, and Baptism, and whether the latter should be confined to adults, or should be extended to infants, were open questions. What should be done in these respects was left to the ministers and their congregations to determine. One parish might be constituted a Presbyterian Church; another might contain an Independent Church; a third, a Baptist Church. But each Church, as shewn already, was independent of the parish incumbency; and often, in the case of Congregational Churches, the members met together in private houses. The particular society so organized really stood outside the Establishment. Hence it follows that the Protectorate Establishment was nothing more than an institution for preaching and teaching. The ministers were acknowledged by the State only in the capacity of instructors. The title given to State ordinances about religion seems in accordance with this; so were the functions of the Committee of Triers. The former were for the maintenance, the latter for the approbation, of "public preachers."

Cromwell's Establishment not a Church.

So far as moral discipline akin to that of the old Church Courts was instituted and enforced by Protectorate enactments, it was by civil statute, not by any kind of canon law. Ordinances for the improvement of public morals appear on the statute book of that period. Cock-matches and horse-races were prohibited, professedly on account of the danger attendant upon large gatherings of people.[86] Fighting a duel upon which death should ensue was adjudged to be murder. Challenges, and the conveyance of them, were made punishable.[87] The Commissioners of Customs, and other officers, received authority to suppress drunkenness and profane swearing amongst all people employed in their departments.

These laws rested on the authority of the Protector and his Council; and the resolutions enacting them can be traced in the order-books of that small but potent assembly. When we turn to these records, we discover numerous proofs and illustrations of the supreme power which was exercised in this way over ecclesiastical causes. Decisions respecting titles to Church livings, and the augmentation of poor benefices, and for the payment of sums to poor clergymen, frequently appear in those interesting minutes.[88]

CHAPTER V.

All the ecclesiastical legislation of the first nine months of the Protectorate had been in the form of ordinances, framed mainly by the genius, and resting principally on the authority, of the Protector. In the autumn of 1654, he summoned his first Protectorate Parliament; and in our notices of its proceedings will be discovered the introduction of measures by certain ecclesiastical parties for modifying the platform of the Broad Establishment which he had laid down in the articles of government.

The elections met with little interference from the Protector and his Council. Glyn, and a large number of Presbyterians, took their seats. Neither Vane nor Marten were returned. Dr. Owen, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, was elected for the University.

The members assembled on the 3rd of September. It was, we are told, the Lord's Day, and they met "in the temple of the Lord," at Westminster; "and the first work they began was to seek the face of the most high God and Eternal Protector of Heaven, by prostrating themselves before Him in His Divine ordinances." On Monday, his Highness went to Westminster—regally attended by life guards, pages, and lackeys, and, upon alighting at the door of the abbey, he proceeded to take his seat over against the pulpit, "Members of Parliament sitting on both sides." Goodwin preached a sermon on "the deliverance out of Egypt and the pilgrimage towards Canaan through the wilderness"—which so gratified Cromwell, that he repeatedly referred to it in the speech with which he opened the Parliament, and indeed the spirit of it pervaded the whole of that address.[89]

First Protectorate Parliament.

This speech indicates that the Protector was environed by difficulties arising from Presbyterians, Ultra-voluntaries, and Fifth Monarchy men. In the estimation of the first of these classes he advanced beyond; in the judgment of the last two he lagged behind, the leadings of Divine truth. Not a theorist, but a practical man—in steering a middle course, he did, as all such statesmen must do, provoke violent opposition in partisans on the right hand and the left. His method of ecclesiastical government, as it appears in his own speeches and proceedings—not as we find them sometimes represented in the generalizations of historical writers—will no more satisfy some of the ecclesiastical reformers, or some of the ecclesiastical conservatives of our own day, than it satisfied similar classes under his own Commonwealth.

1654, November.

Haselrig, the impetuous republican, and Harrison, the religious visionary, both disliked the Protector's authority. The former reluctantly submitted to it, but the latter, being more obstinate, could be subdued only by military apprehension and a brief imprisonment.[90] Afterwards, when his Highness required Members of Parliament to declare their acceptance of certain fundamental principles of government, many of the Republicans withdrew, leaving the Presbyterians in a decided majority.

Debates arose on the new constitution and in the course taken by the House respecting the ecclesiastical bearings, of that constitution the strength of the Presbyterian party appeared manifest. The Instrument of December, 1653, in prescribing the religious qualifications of Members of Parliament, only stated that they must be of "known integrity," having "the fear of God and a good conscience."[91] But in the month of November, 1654, when the articles of that Instrument came under review, it was resolved that no one should be eligible to a seat who entertained any of the opinions specified in the Act of the 9th of August, 1650; or who should so far sympathize with Popery as to marry a Papist, or consent to his child being educated in that religion; or who should deny the Scriptures to be the Word of God, or sacraments, prayer, the magistracy, or the ministry, to be Divine ordinances; or who should be guilty of profaning the Lord's Day, or of committing certain immoralities. It seems incredible, yet it is a fact, that the resolution which enumerates such as were excluded, specifies those who should thereafter drink healths.[92]

Limits of Toleration.

Following the example of the Long Parliament, the House now resolved to exclude spiritual persons from secular authority. To all public ministers of religion was applied the principle which had swept the bishops out of the House of Lords. It was determined that the Act of 1642, for disabling persons in holy orders to exercise temporal jurisdiction, should be in force, so as to prevent all public ministers and preachers of the Gospel from serving in Parliament.[93]

The Presbyterians wished to limit the toleration prescribed in the Articles of 1653. The matter was found more difficult than any which had been previously propounded for consideration. Accordingly, a sub-committee was appointed to wait upon the Lord Protector, and to advise with him about some probable means of reconcilement. The Committee found no favour in the eyes of his Highness. He evidently had no wish to see the liberty of his subjects circumscribed by minute specifications of doctrines. He told the members he was wholly dissatisfied with what they were about—that he had no "propensity" to it—that the Parliament had already taken the instrument of Government to pieces, and had made alterations without his advice—and it did not become him to counsel them in this particular, apart from the other articles contained in the instrument.[94] Yet certain Divines were appointed to explain what was meant by the words "such as profess faith in God by Jesus Christ."

1654, November.

Baxter, who was one of this Committee,[95] lets us into the secret of its proceedings, by saying that he wished the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments to be the only "fundamentals" specified; and that the objection made to his proposal was, that Socinians and Papists would be thereby brought within the boundaries of toleration. To which he acutely replied, that it was impossible to devise any form of words which heretics would not subscribe, when they explained those words in their own sense.[96] The majority of the Committee took a different view; and—as Baxter informs us—Owen, Goodwin, Nye, Simpson, Cheynell, and Marshall, were the most active in framing the principles which at length were submitted to the House, to help them in laying down lines of liberty.

Limits of Toleration.

They were expressed in the following terms:

"First. That the Holy Scripture is that rule of knowing God, and living unto Him, which whoso does not believe cannot be saved.

"Secondly. That there is a God, who is the Creator, Governor, and Judge of the world, which is to be received by faith, and every other way of the knowledge of Him is insufficient.

"Thirdly. That this God, who is the Creator, is eternally distinct from all creatures in His being and blessedness.

"Fourthly. That this God is one in three persons or subsistences.

"Fifthly. That Jesus Christ is the only Mediator between God and man, without the knowledge of whom there is no salvation.

"Sixthly. That this Jesus Christ is the true God.

"Seventhly. That this Jesus Christ is also true man.

"Eighthly. That this Jesus Christ is God and man in one person.

"Ninthly. That this Jesus Christ is our Redeemer, who, by paying a ransom, and bearing our sins, has made satisfaction for them.

"Tenthly. That this same Lord Jesus Christ is He that was crucified at Jerusalem, and rose again, and ascended into heaven.

"Eleventhly. That this same Jesus Christ, being the only God and man in one person, remains for ever a distinct person from all saints and angels, notwithstanding their union and communion with Him.

"Twelfthly. That all men by nature are dead in sins and trespasses, and no man can be saved unless he be born again, repent, and believe.

"Thirteenth. That we are justified and saved by grace, and faith in Jesus Christ, and not by works.

"Fourteenth. That to continue in any known sin, upon what pretence or principle soever, is damnable.

"Fifteenth. That God is to be worshipped according to His own will, and whosoever shall forsake and despise all the duties of His worship cannot be saved.

"Sixteenth. That the dead shall rise; and that there is a day of judgment, wherein all shall appear, some to go into everlasting life, and some into everlasting condemnation."[97]

1654.