Memorials of the Independent Churches in Northamptonshire / with biographical notices of their pastors, and some account of the puritan ministers who laboured in the county.

WITH
AND SOME ACCOUNT OF
1853.

In presenting some historical Memorials of the Independent Churches in the County of Northampton, it may be proper to take a glance at the rise and progress of Nonconformity from the early days of the Reformation.
When the Pope's supremacy was denied and some change in the Church was sanctioned by Henry the Eighth, there were a number of Protestants in England who desired the reformation from Popery to be carried further than was agreeable to the reigning monarch and those that had the ascendancy in his counsels. The reformers acknowledged that corruptions had been a thousand years introducing, which could not be all discovered and thrown out at once ; and yet the ruling powers sought by Acts of Uniformity to put a stop to all further improvement.
In the days of Queen Elizabeth, when the Protestant exiles returned who had been driven to the Continent by the persecutions in the reign of Mary, there was a considerable increase in the number of ministers who were dissatisfied with the reformation of the Anglican Church. When the Act had passed, in the year 1559, entitled An Act for the Uniformity of Common Prayer and Service in the Church, and Administration of the Sacraments, there were many ministers connected with the Church who could never submit to its requirements. They were men who pleaded for a purer mode of worship and discipline than the authorities would allow; and hence they were called Puritans . They refused to wear the vestments, to read the whole of the liturgical service, and to comply with many of the ceremonial observances required; they regarded them as relics of Popery, contrary to the simplicity of the Gospel of Christ, and opposed to the purity of his Church.
They suffered much during the reigns of Elizabeth and the first two English Sovereigns of the Stuart line. The Star Chamber and the High Commission Court were established, before which they were summoned, and where they were required to answer questions proposed, that would have made them their own accusers. If they refused to answer, they were punished for contumacy; if they complied, they were punished for Nonconformity.