The Life of John Milton Volume 3 1643-1649 / Narrated in Connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of His Time

by David Masson

INDEPENDENCY AND SECTARIANISM IN THE NEW MODEL: TOLERATION CONTROVERSY CONTINUED: CROMWELL'S PART IN IT: LILBURNE AND OTHER PAMPHLETEERS: SION COLLEGE AND THE CORPORATION OF LONDON: SUCCESS OF THE PRESBYTERIANS IN PARLIAMENT.

The New Model itself, as we know, had been a great chagrin to the Presbyterians. Fairfax, indeed, was understood to be Presbyterian enough personally; but the Army was full of Independents and Sectaries, it was largely officered by Independents, and its very soul was the Arch- Independent Cromwell. For a while, accordingly, it was the secret hope of the Presbyterians that this Army might fail. But, when evidently it was not to fail, when NASEBY was won (June 14, 1645), and when all the while the Scottish Presbyterian army in England was doing so ill in comparison, a sense of departing superiority sank on the spirits of the Presbyterians. "Honest men served you faithfully in this action," were Cromwell's words to Speaker Lenthall in his letter from Naseby field: "Sir, they are trusty; I beseech you, in the name of God, not to discourage them. I wish this action may beget thankfulness and humility in all that are concerned in it. He that ventures his life for the liberty of his country, I wish he may trust God for the liberty of his conscience, and you for the liberty he fights for." [Footnote: Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 176.] This immediate use by Cromwell of the victory of Naseby as an argument for Toleration did not escape the notice of the Presbyterians. "My Lord Fairfax," writes Baillie, June 17, "sent up, the last week, an horrible Anti-Triastrian [Anti-Trinitarian]: the whole Assembly went in a body to the Houses to complain of his blasphemies. It was the will of Cromwell, in his letter of his victory, to desire the House not to discourage those who had ventured their life for them, and to come out expressly with their much-desired Liberty of Conscience. You will see the letter in print, by order, as I think, of the Houses." [Footnote: Baillie, II. 280] The horrible Anti-Trinitarian here mentioned was Paul Best (see antè, p. 157). He was accused of "divers prodigious blasphemies against the deity of our Saviour and the Holy Ghost." Parliament, informed thereof by the Assembly, had been appalled, and had committed the culprit to close confinement in the Gatehouse to await his trial (June 10). The next day (June 11) the impression had been deepened by a complaint in the Commons against another culprit on similar grounds, and the House had instructed Mr. Millington, member for Nottingham, to prepare an ordinance on the subject of blasphemy generally. [Footnote: Commons Journals of dates given. Paul Best's case lasted two years.] All this only a day or two before Naseby; and now from the field of Naseby, in Cromwell's hand, a pleading of that victory on behalf of Toleration! Would Cromwell tolerate a Paul Best?

What Cromwell and the Army-Independents would have said about Paul Best must be left to conjecture. What they were saying about the state of things in general we learn from the Presbyterian Richard Baxter. Being at Coventry at the time of the battle of Naseby, Baxter, then a pious preacher of twenty-nine years of age, with a lean cadaverous body, and the gauntest hook-nosed face ever seen in a portrait, paid a visit of curiosity to the field immediately after the battle, and went thence to the quarters of the victorious army at Leicester, to seek out some of his acquaintances. "When I came to the army, among Cromwell's soldiers," he says, "I found a new face of things which I never dreamt of: I heard the plotting heads very hot upon that which intimated their intention to subvert both Church and State. Independency and Anabaptistry were most prevalent; Antinomianism and Arminianism were equally distributed; and Thomas Moor's followers (a weaver of Wisbeach and Lynn, of excellent parts) had made some shifts to join these two extremes together. Abundance of the common troopers, and many of the officers, I found to be honest, sober, orthodox men, and others tractable, ready to hear the Truth, and of upright intentions; but a few proud, self-conceited, hot- headed sectaries had got into the highest places, and were Cromwell's chief favourites, and by their heat and activity bore down the rest, or carried them along with them, and were the soul of the Army. … They said, What were the Lords of England but William the Conqueror's colonels, or the Barons but his majors, or the Knights but his captains? They plainly showed me that they thought God's providence would cast the trust of Religion and the Kingdom upon them as conquerors." They were full of railings and jests, Baxter adds, against the Scots or Sots, the Presbyterians or Priest-biters, and the Assembly of Divines or Dry- vines; and all their praises were of the Separatists, Anabaptists, and Antinomians.—Grieved at what he found, and thinking he might be of some use by way of antidote, Baxter at once gave up his charge at Coventry, to become chaplain to Col. Whalley's regiment. He had the more hope of being useful because he had some previous acquaintance with Cromwell. But his reception was far from satisfactory. "As soon as I came to the army," he says, "Oliver Cromwell coldly bid me welcome, and never spoke one word to me more while I was there, nor once all that time vouchsafed me an opportunity to come to the headquarters, where the councils and meetings of the officers were." Baxter never forgave that coolness of Cromwell to him. Hugh Peters, who was constantly with Cromwell as his chaplain, and would make camp-jokes at Baxter's expense, was never forgiven either. [Footnote: Baxter's Autobiography (_Reliquiæ Baxterianæ), 1696, pp. 50, 51.]

Not only in the New Model Army was there this ferment of Anti-
Presbyterianism, Anti-Scotticism, Independency, and Tolerationism,
passing on into a drift of universally democratic opinion. Through
English society, and especially in London, there was much of the same.

Since the publication of Edwards's Antapologia in July 1644 the war of pamphlets on the questions of Independency and Toleration had been increasingly virulent. The pamphleteers were numberless; but the chief of them, on the side of Presbyterianism and Anti-Toleration, were perhaps Prynne, Bastwick, and John Vicars, and, on the side of Independency and Toleration, Henry Burton, John Goodwin, and Hanserd Knollys, If Bibliography were to apply itself to the investigation of the popular English Literature of the latter half of the year 1644 and the first half of the year 1645, it would come upon these, and other controversialists whose names have been long forgotten, writhing together like a twisted knot of serpents, not to be uncoiled except by a distinct enumeration of several scores or hundreds of the most quaintly-entitled pamphlets, in the exact order of their publication, and with an account of the nature of each. London contained so many of these pamphleteers that the most deadly antagonists in print could not avoid each other in the streets, and Burton, for example, meeting Dr. Bastwick, would ask him with irritating politeness when his new book was coming out. Many of the pamphlets, however, and these the most daring and intemperate in expression, were anonymous. Such was The Arraignment of Persecution, purporting to be "printed by Martin Claw-Clergy for Bartholomew Bang-Priest," and to be on sale at "his shop in Toleration Street, right opposite to Persecution Court." In this and other popular squibs, to which neither authors nor printers dared to put their names, the toleration which Goodwin and Burton argued for gravely and logically was demanded with passionate vehemence, and with the most unsparing abuse of the Presbyterians, the Scots, and the Westminster Assembly. [Footnote: Wood's Ash. III. 860 (Prynne) and 308-9 (Vicars); Jackson's Life of John Goodwin, 61—79; Hanbury's Memorials, II. 385 et seq. (Prynne and Burton), and III. 68, 69 (Bastwick, Burton, and others). Notes of my own from the Stationers' Registers.]—One Tolerationist, here deserving a notice by himself, was John Lilburne. An avowed Independent even before the meeting of the Long Parliament, and forward as a Parliamentary captain from the very beginning of the war (Vol. II. 175, 458, and 588- 9), Lilburne had been one of those who regarded the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643 as incompatible with Liberty of Conscience, and whom no persuasions could induce to sign that document. He had risen, nevertheless, by Cromwell's arrangement, to be Lieutenant-colonel in Manchester's own dragoon regiment, and he had served bravely at Marston Moor. Between him and Cromwell there was the most friendly understanding. Lilburne looked upon Cromwell as "the most absolute single-hearted great man in England;" and Cromwell owned a kindly feeling for Lilburne. But there was a pig-headedness in Lilburne's honesty which even Cromwell could not control. "If only John Lilburne were left in the world, then John would quarrel with Lilburne and Lilburne with John" was Henry Marten's witty, and yet perfectly true, description of him. Having been a witness for Cromwell in Cromwell's impeachment of Manchester, he thought Cromwell culpably weak in allowing the impeachment to drop and not bringing Manchester to the scaffold; and he had himself brought a charge against a superior officer, named King. Then he had become utterly disgusted with the general conduct of affairs and the subservience of Parliament to the Presbyterians. He would leave the army; he would "dig for turnips and carrots before he would fight to set up a power to make himself a slave." His two brothers, Robert and Henry, continued to hold commands in the New Model; but not all Cromwell's arguments could induce Lilburne himself to come into it. On the 30th of April, 1645, he had resigned his commission, presenting at the same time a petition to the Commons for his arrears of pay, amounting to £880 2_s_. He had resolved to be thenceforward a political agitator, a link between the Independency of the Army and what Independency there was already in London itself. Accordingly, from the beginning of 1645, Lilburne, still not more than twenty-seven years of age, is to be reckoned as one of the most prominent Anti-Presbyterians in London, an especial favourite of all the sectaries, and even of the populace generally, on account of his boundlessly libertarian sentiments and his absolute fearlessness of consequences. There was talk of trying to get him into Parliament on a convenient opportunity. Meanwhile he took to pamphleteering, selecting as his first object of attack his old master, Prynne. In the first half of 1645 Lilburne and Prynne were seen wrestling with each other, Lilburne for toleration and Independency, and Prynne for coercion and Presbyterianism, with a ferocity hardly paralleled in any contemporary duel, and made more piquant to the public by the recollection of the former intimacy of the duellists. [Footnote: Godwin's Hist. of the Commonwealth, II. 1-24, and 418-19; Wood's Ath. III. 353-4, and 860; Edwards's Gangræna, Part I. 46, 47, Part II. 38, and Part III. 153 et seq.; Commons Journals, Jan. 17, 1644-5; Prynne's Fresh Discovery.]

The denunciation of Paul Best (June 10, 1645) was a Presbyterian masterstroke. Even moderate people stood aghast at the idea of tolerating opinions like his; and that the wretched owner of them could plead his liberty of conscience (which Best did in prison) was more likely than anything else to put people out of patience with Conscience and its Liberty. But, about the same time that Paul Best was put in prison to be tried for his life for Blasphemy, there were persecutions and punishments of others, whose offence was far less theological heterodoxy than mere Independency or Anti-Presbyterianism. "Blessed be God," writes Baillie, July 8, 1645, "all the London ministers are with us: Burton and Goodwin, the only two that were Independent, are by the Parliament removed from their places." In other words, John Goodwin had just been ejected from his vicarage of St. Stephen's, Coleman Street, and Henry Burton for the second time from his living in Friday Street, nominally for irregular practices in their ministry, but really because they were in the way of Prynne and the Presbyterians. Mr. Goodwin, who had a large following in the City, had little difficulty in setting up an Independent meeting- house of his own in Coleman Street; but poor old Mr. Burton seems to have been in sad straits for some time. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 299; Jackson's Life of Goodwin, 79 et seq.; Hanbury's Memorials, III. 78, note.— Burton, I believe, migrated to Stepney.]——Burton and Goodwin having been called to account, the next blow was at John Lilburne. With characteristic bluntness Lilburne had been for some months pressing the business of his own petition for arrears of pay upon the House of Commons, going to the House personally, waiting on the Speaker, circulating printed copies of his petition among the members, and always with outspoken comments on affairs, and attacks on this person and on that. On one occasion he and Prynne had met by chance, and there had been a violent altercation between them. Twice, in consequence, Lilburne had been in custody for examination as to his concern in certain Anti- Presbyterian pamphlets, but on each occasion he had been discharged. He had then gone down to the Army, and procured a letter from Cromwell, recommending his case to the House. "He hath done both you and the kingdom good service," wrote Cromwell, "and you will not find him unthankful." Returning to London, Lilburne had caused this letter to be printed and had circulated copies of it. No effect followed, and Lilburne still haunted Westminster Hall, waylaying members as they went into the House, till they abhorred the sight of him. On the 19th of July he was in the Hall, and was overheard by his enemies Colonel King and Dr. Bastwick taking part in a conversation in which dreadful things were said of the Speaker, his brother, and other public men. The information was immediately reduced to writing by King and Bastwick, and sent in to the Speaker, with this result: "Resolved, That Lieutenant-colonel Lilburne be taken into custody, and so kept till the House take further order." Questioned in custody by a committee of the House, Lilburne refused to answer, stood on his rights as a freeborn citizen, &c. He also caused to be printed A Letter to a Friend, stating his case in his own way; this Letter, as increasing his offence, was reported to the House, Aug. 9; and, on the 11th of August, having been again contumacious in private examination and committed to Newgate, he was ordered to remain there for trial at Quarter Sessions. He remained in Newgate till Oct. 14, when he was discharged, by order of the House, without trial. [Footnote: Godwin's Hist. of the Commonwealth, II. l5-21; Commons Journals of dates given; Wood's Ath. III. 860.]

Such prosecutions of individuals formed an avowed part of the method of the Presbyterians for suppressing the Toleration heresy. Cromwell, away with the Army, could only continue to hint his remonstrances to Parliament in letters; but this he did. The greatest success of the New Model after Naseby was the storming of Bristol, Sept. 10, 1645; and in the long letter which Cromwell wrote to the Speaker, giving an account of this success (Sept. 14), he recurred to his Toleration argument. "Presbyterians, Independents, all," he wrote, "have here the same spirit of faith and prayer, the same presence and answer; they agree here, have no names of difference: pity it is it should be otherwise anywhere! All that believe have the real unity, which is most glorious, because in the Body and to the Head. For being united in forms, commonly called Uniformity, every Christian will, for peace sake, study and do as far as conscience will permit. And for brethren, in things of the mind, we look for no compulsion but that of light and reason." By order of Parliament this Letter was read in all the churches of London on Sunday, Sept. 21, and also circulated in print. It does not seem, however, to have sunk very deep. [Footnote: Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 188.—As late as 1648 I find this passage of Cromwell's letter quoted and largely commented on by the Scottish Presbyterian Rutherford (A Survey of the Spiritual Antichrist. 1648, p. 250 et seq.) in proof of Cromwell's dangerousness, and his sympathy with Familism, Antinomianism, and other errors.]

Cromwell's hints from the field in favour of Liberty of Conscience may be regarded as little "Accommodation Orders" in his own name, reminding Parliament and the Westminster Assembly of that formal "Accommodation Order" which he had moved in the House a year before, and which had then been passed (antè, pp. 168-9). What had become of this Accommodation Order? The story may be given in brief:—The Grand Accommodation Committee had immediately appointed a small Sub-Committee, consisting of Dr. Temple and Messrs. Marshall, Herle, and Vines, for the Presbyterians, and Messrs. Thomas Goodwin and Philip Nye for the Independents. The business of this Sub-Committee, called "The Sub-Committee of Agreements," was to reduce into the narrowest compass the differences between the Independents and the rest of the Assembly. The Sub-Committee did their best, and reported to the Grand Committee; but for various reasons the Grand Committee postponed the subject. Meanwhile these proceedings had obtained for the Independents a re-hearing in the Assembly itself. The five original Independents in the Assembly, Messrs. Goodwin, Nye, Bridge, Burroughs, and Simpson, with Mr. William Carter and Mr, William Greenhill now added to their number, presented in writing (Nov. 14, 1644) their Reasons of Dissent from the propositions of Presbytery most disagreeable to them; [Footnote: The increase of the number of avowed Independents in the Assembly at this point from Five to Seven is worth noting. From the very first, however, there must have been a few in sympathy to some variable extent with the leading Five. Thus Baillie, as early as Dec. 7, 1643 (Letters, II. 110), speaks of "the Independent men, whereof there are some ten or eleven in the Synod, many of them very able men," and mentions Carter, Caryl, Phillips, and Sterry, as of the number. (See our List of the Assembly, Vol. II. 516-524,) There had been efforts on the part of the Independents in Parliament to bring more representatives of Independency into the Assembly. Actually, on the 2nd of Nov. 1643, the very day on which the Lords agreed with the Commons in the nomination of John Durie to succeed the deceased Calibute Downing, the Lords on their own account nominated John Goodwin of Coleman Street to ho of the Assembly, and with him "Dr. Homes of Wood Street, and Mr. Horton, Divinity Lecturer at Gresham College" (Lords Journals of date). The Commons, whose concurrence was necessary, seem quietly to have withheld it, and thus the Assembly missed having John Goodwin in it as well as Thomas. "Homes" (Nathaniel Holmes: Wood's Ath. III. 1, 168) was also an Independent, and probably "Horton" leant that way (Thomas Horton: Wood's Fasti, II. 172).] and the Assembly produced (Dec. 17) an elaborate Answer. Copies of both documents were furnished to Parliament; but, without reference to the objections of the Independents, the essential parts of the Frame of Presbyterial Government had been ratified by Parliament in January 1644-5. [Footnote: The Reasons of Dissent by the Seven Independents and the Assembly's Answer were not published till 1648. They then appeared by order of Parliament; and they were republished in 1652 under the title of The Grand Debate concerning Presbytery and Independency.] Affairs then took a new turn in the Assembly. The Independents having often been taunted with being merely critical and never bringing fully to light their own views, one of them was led in a moment of heat to declare that they were quite willing to prepare their own complete Model of Congregationalism, to be contrasted with that of Presbytery. The Assembly eagerly caught at the imprudent offer, and the Seven Independents were appointed to be a committee for bringing in a Frame of Congregational Church Government, with reasons for the same. This was in March 1645; and from that time the Seven, supposed to be busy in Committee upon the work assigned them, had a dispensation from attendance at the general meetings. Spring passed, summer passed, September arrived; and still the Independents had not brought in their Model. The Assembly became impatient, and insisted on expedition. At length, on the 13th of October, the Seven presented to the Assembly— what? Not the Model on which they were supposed to have been engaged for seven months, but a brief Paper of Reasons for not bringing in a Model at all! "Upon these considerations," they said in concluding the Paper, "we think that this Assembly hath no cause to require a Report from us; nor will that Report be of any use: seeing that Reports are for debates, and debates are for results to be sent up to the Honourable Houses; who have already voted another Form of Government than that which we shall present."—It was the astutest policy that the Independents could possibly have adopted; and the Presbyterians, feeling themselves outwitted, were furious. The machinery of the Accommodation Order had again to be put in motion by Parliament (Nov. 14). There were conferences of the Divines with members of the two Houses. What was the upshot? "The Independents in their last meeting of our Grand Committee of Accommodation," writes Baillie, Nov. 25, "have expressed their desires for toleration, not only to themselves, but to other sects." That was the upshot! Army Independency and Assembly Independency had coalesced, and their one flag now was Indefinite Toleration. [Footnote: Hetherington's Hist. of the Westminster Assembly (1843), pp. 220-236; Hanbury's Memorials, II. 548-559, and III. 1-32; Baillie, II. 270-326; Commons Journals, Nov. 14, 1645.]

The Presbyterians behaved accordingly. There was an end to their endeavours to reason over the few Independents in the Assembly, or arrange a secret compromise with them; and there was a renewed onset on the Toleration principle by the whole Presbyterian force. As if on a signal given, there was a fresh burst of Anti-Toleration pamphlets from the press. Prynne published one; Baillie sent forth his Dissuasive (antè, p. 142); and Edwards was printing his immortal Gangræna (antè, p. 141). But appeals to the public mind through the press were not enough. The real anxiety was about the action of Parliament. The expectation of the Presbyterians, grounded on recent experience, as that Parliament, even if left to itself, would see its duty clearly, and repudiate Toleration once and for ever. Still it would only be prudent to bring to bear on Parliament all available external pressure. Through December 1645 and January 1645-6, accordingly, the Presbyterians were ceaseless in contriving and promoting demonstrations in their favour. And with signal success:—Only a certain selected number of the parish-clergy of London and the suburbs, it is to be remembered, were members of the Assembly: the mass of them remained outside that body. But this mass, being Presbyterian almost to a man, had organized itself in such a way as both to act upon the Assembly and to obey it. Since 1623 there had been in the city, in the street called London Wall, a building called SION COLLEGE, with a library and other conveniences, expressly for the use of the London clergy, and answering for them most of the purposes of a modern clubhouse. Here, as was natural, the London clergy had of late been in the habit of meeting to talk over the Church-question, so that at length a weekly conclave had been arranged, and Sion College had become a kind of discussion forum, apart from the Assembly, and yet in connexion with it. At Sion College the London Presbyterians could concoct what was to be brought forward in the Assembly, and a hint from the Assembly to Sion College in any moment of Presbyterian difficulty could summon all the London clergy to the rescue. At the moment at which we have arrived such a hint was given; and on the 18th of December, 1645, there was drawn up at Sion College a Letter to the Assembly by all the ministers of the City of London expressly against Toleration. "These are some of the many considerations," they say in the close of the Letter, "which make a deep impression upon our spirits against that Great Diana of Independents and all the Sectaries, so much cried up by them in these distracted times, namely, A Toleration—A Toleration. And, however none should have been more rejoiced than ourselves in the establishment of a brotherly, peaceable, and Christian accommodation, yet, this being utterly rejected by them, we cannot dissemble how, upon the fore- mentioned grounds, we detest and abhor the much-endeavoured Toleration. Our bowels, our bowels, are stirred within us, &c." The Letter was presented to the Assembly Jan. 1, 1645-6, and the Assembly took care that it should be published that same day.[Footnote: Cunningham's London, Art. Sion College; Hanbury's Memorials, III. 97-99; Stationers' Registers, Jan. 1, 1645-6.]—The Corporation of London was as staunchly Presbyterian as the clergy, and they too were stirred up. "We have gotten it, thanks to God, to this point," writes Baillie, Jan. 15, "that the Mayor, Aldermen, Common Council, and most of the considerable men, are grieved for the increase of sects and heresies and want of government. They have yesterday had a public Fast for it, and solemnly renewed their Covenant by oath and subscription, and this day have given in a strong Petition for settling Church-government, and suppressing all sects, without any toleration." The Petition was to the Commons; and it was particularly represented to that House, by Alderman Gibbs, as the spokesman for the Petitioners, that "new and strange doctrines and blasphemies" were being vented in the City by women-preachers. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 337; Hanbury, III. 99, 100; Commons Journals, January 15, 1645-6.]

Environed by such a sea of Presbyterian excitement, what could the Parliament do? They did what was expected. They shook off Toleration as if it had been a snake. Not only did they assure the Aldermen and Common Council that there would be due vigilance against the sects and heretics; but on the 29th of January, or within a fortnight after they had received the City Petition, they took occasion to prove that their assurance was sincere. The two Baptist preachers Cox and Richardson, it seems, had been standing at the door of the House of Commons, distributing to members printed copies of the Confession of Faith of the Seven Baptist Congregations in London (see antè, p. 148). It was as if they had said, "Be pleased to look for yourselves, gentlemen, at the real tenets of those poor Anabaptists who are described as such monsters." But the Commons were in a Presbyterian panic; Cox and Richardson were taken into custody; and orders were issued for seizing and suppressing all copies of the Baptist Confession that could be found. This alone would prove that as late as the end of January, 1645-6, the Presbyterians, in their character of Anti-Tolerationists, were still masters of the field. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Jan. 29, 1645-6.]