Ecclesiastical History of England, Volume 1—The Church of the Civil Wars

by John Stoughton

FOOTNOTES:

[1] There is a document amongst the State Papers, headed "Proceeding to the Parliament of the Most High and Mighty Prince, King Charles, on Tuesday, the 3rd of November, 1640, from Whitehall by water to Westminster Stairs, and from thence on foot." The document is interesting in connection with Clarendon's statement: "The King himself did not ride with his accustomed equipage, nor in his usual majesty, to Westminster, but went privately in his barge to the parliament stairs, and so to the Church, as if it had been to a return of a prorogued or adjourned Parliament."—Hist. of Rebellion and Life (in one vol.), 68. The paper exhibits the following programme: "Messengers; trumpets; the Sergeant-trumpeter alone; Master of the Chancery; the King's Puisne Sergeants-at-law; the King's Solicitor and the King's Attorney-General; the King's two ancient Sergeants-at-law; Masters of the Requests, two and two; Barons of the Exchequer; Justices of the Common Pleas; Justices of the King's Bench; Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer: Master of the Rolls; the two Lords Chief Justices; Pursuivants-of-Arms; Privy Councillors; Heralds; Lord Finch, keeper of the Great Seal of England, and many other lords and gentlemen."

[2] See Journals of the Lords, to the words of which I have closely adhered, and Parliamentary History. (Cobbett), ii. 637.

[3] No one can see more clearly than myself the defectiveness of these views of the state of parties. We must begin somewhere. To go very far back is unsatisfactory, because the glimpses given of remote periods must be indistinct and confused, and are apt to convey inaccurate impressions. To commence with notices of what took place just before our history opens, is also exposed to objection, because it leaves out of sight so much which served to prepare for what followed. The history of the Commonwealth requires a previous study of the history of the Reformation, and that again the history of the Middle Ages. Notices of the early Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists will be found in subsequent chapters.

[4] This oft-told story rests on the authority of his friend, Lord Clarendon.—Hist. and Life, 928.

[5] Stat. 1 Eliz. C.Q., lv. 3, 15.

When the Bills of Supremacy and Uniformity were read a third time in the House of Lords (April 26 and 28, 1558), the Bishops of York, London, Ely, Wigorn, Llandaff, Coventry and Litchfield, Exon, Chester, Carlisle, are mentioned in the Journals as dissentients from both the Bills.—Strype's Annals of the Reformation, i. 87, (Oxford edition.) In connection with the history of the Bill of Supremacy in Strype's Annals the student should read the history of convocation in Strype's Memorials, Vol. i. Chap. xvii. An extraordinary paper in favour of the King's supremacy, attributed to Gardiner, is given, p. 209.

[6] 8 Eliz. c. 1, "declaring the manner of making and consecrating of Archbishops and Bishops of the realm to be good, lawful, and perfect."—Strype's Life of Parker, (Oxford edition) i. 109-121. See also "paper of arguments for the Queen's supreme power in causes ecclesiastical."—Strype's Life of Whitgift, iii. 213.

[7] Selden says so in his Table Talk, 38. Mr. Bruce informs me, "I have no doubt that Selden was right. Many great persons holding offices in the State and Household were appointed Commissioners by reason of their offices, but never attended. The business fell into the hands of the Bishops (or rather some three or four of them) and a few civilians from Doctors' Commons—the Judge of the Arches, the Judge of the Prerogative Court, and a few other such persons. The sentences that I have seen have been signed by from 15 to 20 persons, generally such as I have indicated."

[8] "Turning her speech to the Bishops, she gave them this admonition, 'That if they, the Lords of the clergy (as she called them), did not amend, she was minded to depose them, and bade them therefore to look well to their charges.'"—Strype's Whitgift, i. 393.

[9] Strype's Whitgift, i. 391. Whitgift has been called an Erastian, and Warburton (Works, xii. 386), on Selden's authority, attributes to him the publication of the De excommunicatione, under fictitious names of the place and printer. I do not know the ground of Selden's statement. The proceedings of Whitgift were inconsistent with Erastianism. The famous work of Erastus will be noticed hereafter.

[10] Strype's Whitgift, i. 559. See Sir Francis Knolly's objection to Bancroft's doctrine, reduced to a syllogistic form (560). Knollys had encouraged Parker to oppose the use of burning tapers, and of the cross, in the Queen's chapel.—Strype's Parker, i. 92.

[11] Parker was kept up to the mark in enforcing uniformity by the Queen, who in this and some other points was more decidedly Anglo-Catholic than her Protestant prelates. See her letter to him "roundly penned." Strype's Parker, ii. 76.

[12] Strype, (in his Annals, i. 106,) says 177. He adds "In one of the volumes of the Cotton Library—which volume seemeth once to have belonged to Camden—the whole number of the deprived ecclesiastics is digested in this catalogue: Bishops, 14; Deans, 13; Archdeacons, 14; Heads of Colleges, 15; Prebendaries, 50; Rectors of Churches, 80; Abbots, Priors, and Abbesses, 6; in all, 192. Camden, in his Annals, little varies, only reckoning 12 Deans and as many Archdeacons."

[13] Paper endorsed—Dr. Bardesy; "Of my Daughter's Death, 1 April, 1641;" 1/4 ho. ante ho. 9, post Mer.—State Papers. Charles I. Domestic.

[14] Mr. Bruce's Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1633-4, p. 275; and Preface, xviii.

[15] Lathbury's History of Convocation, 253.

[16] This is illustrated in the Tractarian movement, as appears in Dr. Newman's Apologia.

[17] Roger Ascham's application to Cranmer in the reign of Edward VI., for a dispensation during Lent is very curious. So is the grant of it in the King's name under the Privy Seal, at the Archbishop's suggestion.—See Strype's Cranmer, i. 238, 240.

[18] "Many choose to be wanton," it is said, "with flesh at that time, rather than at others." February 13.—State Papers, Domestic.

[19] See "The Arminian Nunnery, or a brief description and relation of the late erected monastical place called the Arminian Nunnery at Little Gidding, in Huntingdonshire." 1641. Compare Walton's Lives, 335.

[20] Rushworth's Historical Collection, ii. 324. No doubt, sometimes the charge of Popery was unjustly made, and there is force in what Sanderson says in the Preface to his Sermons, p. 74. The passage is too long for quotation.

[21] See Hale's Precedents and Proceedings in Ecclesiastical Courts. Introductory Essay, xxxiv. Compare Hallam's Const. Hist., i. 99.

[22] See New Canons, iii. to xii., made in 1604.

[23] Whitelocke, when Recorder of Abingdon, was accused and cited before the Council Table because "he did comply with and countenance the Nonconformists there, and refused to punish those who did not bow at the name of Jesus, and to the altar, and refused to receive the sacrament kneeling at the high altar, &c."—Whitelocke's Memorials, 23.

[24] Hale's Precedents in Criminal Causes, xxxix., xliii.; compare Hallam's Const. Hist., i. 180. The extracts from Court Books in Hale are my authority for what follows. I may add here that, soon after the accession of Elizabeth, the bishops complained of interference with their office in discipline, and correction of evil manners, by inhibitions obtained from the courts of the Archbishop of Canterbury.—Strype's Parker, i. 161.

[25] A clear account of compurgation, transferred from old ecclesiastical courts to the Court of High Commission, is given by Mr. Bruce in his Preface to the Cal. Dom. 1635-6, xxxi. A man was restored "to his good name" by swearing to his own innocence when objectors did not appear, and his neighbours, the compurgators, swore that he was to be believed.

[26] It is very remarkable that this Act, the only one which fixes the authority for deciding what heresy is, vests that spiritual power in the secular government, only with clerical "assent."—Stat. 1 Eliz., c. 1, s. 36.

[27] 1562, July 20. A commission was issued for ecclesiastical causes in the diocese of Chester.

1576, April 23. A commission was given to Grindal, Archbishop of Canterbury, and other bishops, for exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction throughout the nation.—State Papers, cviii., No. 7.

The "proceedings of the Archbishop of York" in 1580 are preserved in the State Paper Office, cxli., No. 28. At a private meeting on the 2nd of August, 1580, held in Richmond, "the Court is informed that Robert Wythes, of Copgrave, gentleman, made fast his doors against the messenger; that a little damsel was set to attend at the door, who made answer he was not at home, and refused to receive the process, so the messenger waxed it to the door." Vol. cxli., No. 3.

[28] Neal, i. 410, gives a copy of the commission from a MS. I have sought in vain for the original. Mr. Bruce informs me it is not preserved among the State Papers.

Neal, i. 414, explains "all other means and ways they could devise" as including the rack. Brodie (British Empire, i. 197) disputes this, saying, "Besides that, the rack never was attempted; the other clauses distinctly show that it never was contemplated." On carefully examining the commission printed in Neal, it will be found that the qualifying expressions "lawful," &c., are connected with the infliction of penalty, not the business of enquiry. The penalties were to be according to law, but that restriction would not necessarily apply to the mode of examination. I do not see that Brodie's argument is conclusive; still I do not think that the rack was used. The absence, however, of the word "lawful" in connection with "ways and means" in the first clause is remarkable.

[29] Brodie, i. 198. He adds: "Though fines were imposed, not one was levied in Elizabeth's time by any judicial process out of the Exchequer, 'nor any subject, in his body, lands, or goods, charged therewith.'"—Coke's 4th Inst., 326, 332; 4th Inst., 331.

In various printed books the legality of the Court was questioned. The ex officio oath was objected to as a sinister practice of the Romish clergy, and contrary to fundamental laws of liberty.—Burn's High Commission (a pamphlet published by J. Russel Smith, 1865), 14.

[30] "To you, or three of you, whereof the Archbishop of Canterbury, or one of the bishops mentioned in the commission, or Sir Francis Walsingham, Sir Gilbert Gerard, or some of the civilians, to be one."—Neal, i. 410.

There are subsequent commissions for the diocese of Norwich, 1589; for Manchester, 1596, 1597; for England and Ireland, 1600.—See Rymer, Vol. vii. 173, 194; xvi. 291, 400.

A commission was issued, 1629, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, &c., to exercise all manner of jurisdictions, privileges, and pre-eminences, concerning any spiritual or ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the realm; also to enquire, hear, determine, and punish all incests, adulteries, &c., and disorders in marriage, and all other grievous and great crimes.

[31] Four folio books of proceedings, from 1634 to 1640, are in the State Paper Office. At Norwich there is a book of proceedings from 1595 to 1598, and at Durham two volumes of Acts and Depositions from 1626 to 1639. These are the only records known to exist.—Burn's High Commission, 44 & 52.

[32] See Cal. Dom., 1633-4, 1634-5. Lady Eleanor Davies alias Douglas, (evidently insane) is mulcted to the extent of £3,000 for certain fanatical pamphlets. Richard Parry has a fine of £2,000 for disturbance of divine service and profane speeches, mitigated to 1,000 marks.—Cal. 1634-5, 176. A fine of £1,000, from Theophilus Brabourne, for maintaining and publishing heretical and Judaical opinions touching the Sabbath, is repeatedly mentioned, with notices of respites, suspension of sentence, and mitigation. A silk weaver was committed to the Gate House for fetching a parcel of schismatical books. The most preposterous suspicions were entertained, leading to outrageous injustice, as in the case of "two poor foolish boys, taken amongst others, at Francis Donwell's house, the aleholder, at Stepney," for "sitting at the table with Bibles before them." "They were, by order of the court, discharged," but not till after many days' imprisonment. "They were taken on Sunday last past was fortnight, the 1st of October, 1635."

The following entry occurs relating to Richard Walker Clerk, prisoner in the Gate House: "Defendant having lain a twelvemonth in prison for preaching a scandalous and offensive sermon here in London, and having promised by his subscription to carry himself peaceably and conformably to the orders of the Church of England, he was ordered to be enlarged." Cal. 1634-5, p. 544.

[33] Cal. 1634-5, p. 177, 118, & 110.

[34] Some strange specimens of puritan "faithfulness" are given; (Cal. 1634-5, p. 319,) but the question arises, were the passages we find correctly reported?

[35] Some things appear in the Commission Records strangely illustrating the state of society. Sir Richard Strode and Sir John Strode, near kinsmen, quarrelled about the possession of an aisle in the parish church of Cattistock. Sir Richard came with his lady on Easter-day to receive the sacrament armed with a pistol charged with powder and small shot, and directed his servant to carry a sword. He was also accused of entertaining a degraded minister, who "pronounced prayers extempore, and expounded a passage of scripture. On behalf of Sir Richard, it was proved that he carried the pistol secretly, and that no disturbance ensued."—Cal., 1634-5, p. 121.

Since writing this Introduction I have been permitted to peruse the Rawlinson MS., A., 128, which affords many new illustrations of the proceedings of the High Commission and of the Star Chamber also. I shall have occasion hereafter to notice some parts of this MS. The whole will be published by the Camden Society.

[36] The Court was threatened before the opening of the Long Parliament.

"We are growing here at London into some Edinburgh tumults, for upon Thursday last, the High Commission being kept at St. Paul's, there came in very near 2,000 Brownists, and, at the end of the court made a foul clamour: and tore down all the benches that were in the consistory, crying out they would have no Bishops nor High Commission. I like not this preface to the Parliament, and this day I shall see what the Lords will do concerning this tumult."—Laud's Letter, 186. Works, vi. 585. Oxford edition. Diary, Oct. 22, 1640, iii, 237.

[37] Rushworth, i. 423. After Worrall, Laud's chaplain, had signed the Imprimatur to Dr. Sibthorpe's famous sermon, 1627, Selden told him, "When the times shall change, and the late transactions shall be scrutinized, you will gain a halter instead of promotion for this book." Worrall withdrew his signature, but Laud appended his own.—Life of Selden, p. 129.

[38] Rushworth, i. 594.

[39] See Hallam's Constitutional History, i. 456; and Eliot's Life, by Forster, i. 246; ii. 398; 409; 450.

[40] In Rushworth, ii. 77, is a full account of these ceremonies, with notices of Laud's defence. The latter is found more fully in the history of his Troubles and Trial. Works, iv. 247. He denied he threw up dust, but leaves it to be inferred that he threw up ashes. He also contradicted other statements made respecting this famous consecration. Whatever exaggeration there might be, enough is proved to show the extraordinary superstitiousness of the proceeding.

[41] Bunsen's Hippolytus, iv. 197.

[42] Wearing a cope in cathedrals at the Communion by the principal minister, is, however, prescribed by Canon xxiv.

[43] Southey says of Laud, "Offence was taken because the University of Oxford, to which he was a most munificent and judicious benefactor, addressed him by the titles of His Holiness, and Most Holy Father; and because he publicly declared, that in the disposal of ecclesiastical preferments, he would, when their merits were equal, prefer the single to the married men."—Book of the Church, 448. Laud furnishes an elaborate defence of some of the titles applied to him.—Works, iv. 157.

See curious entry in Laud's Diary of a dream he had that he was reconciled to the Church of Rome.—Works, iii. 201. He afterwards says (264), "I hope the reader will note my trouble at the dream, as well as the dream."

Zeal in crushing dissent, appears in a letter addressed to justices of the peace, which probably Laud procured from the High Commissioners:—"There remain in divers parts of the kingdom sundry sorts of separatists, novalists [sic], and sectaries, as, namely,—Brownists, Anabaptists, Arians, Traskites, Familists, and some other sorts, who, upon Sundays and other festival days, under pretence of repetition of sermons, ordinarily use to meet together in great numbers, in private houses, and other obscure places, and there keep private conventicles and exercises of religion, by law prohibited, to the corrupting of sundry his Majesty's good subjects, manifest contempt of his Highness's laws and disturbance of the Church. For reformation whereof the persons addressed are to enter any house where they shall have intelligence that such conventicles are held, and in every room thereof search for persons assembled, and for all unlicensed books, and bring all such persons and books found before the Ecclesiastical Commission as shall be thought meet."—Cal. 1633-4, p. 538.

At an earlier period, Laud says:—"We took another conventicle of separatists in Newington Woods upon Sunday last, in the very brake where the King's stag should have been lodged for his hunting next morning." P.S. to letter of Laud, June 13, 1632.—State Papers. Printed in Laud's Works, vii. 44.

[44] Articles for Diocese of Winchester. Laud's Works, v. 419-435. Numerous visitation articles, injunctions, and orders appear in this volume, highly interesting as illustrations both of the Archbishop's minute superintendence, and of the religious life of the period.

[45] Reprinted in Laud's Works, v. 315, 370.

[46] Laud's Works, v. 331.

[47] See Cal. Dom., 1633-4, and Laud's Annual Accounts of his province just referred to.

[48] There is an extract of a letter in the State Paper Office (dated 1633, March 18, from the ambassador at the Hague) in the handwriting of Laud's secretary, upon the uncanonical proceedings of the English Congregation there.

[49] These points receive abundant illustration in Mr. Bruce's Calendar, 1633-4, and in his very interesting preface.

[50] Laud's power extended even to America. In a special commission for the colonies, "the Archbishop of Canterbury and those who were associated with him, received full power over the American plantations, to establish the government and dictate the laws, to regulate the Church, to inflict even the heaviest punishments, and to revoke any charter, which had been surreptitiously obtained, or which conceded liberties prejudicial to the Royal prerogative."—Bancroft's United States, i. 407.

[51] Letter in State Paper Office, Dec. 19, 1633. Most of Laud's letters found amongst the State records are printed in the last volume of the Oxford edition of his works.

[52] Indications of his wonderful activity are to be seen in his numerous letters, collected in the Oxford edition of his works, to which my references apply. (Vols. vi. and vii.) Laud's enemies have not done justice to his abilities. His diary reveals his mental weaknesses, but his correspondence and theological writings exhibit his mind under a different aspect. Many persons are too prejudiced against Laud to think of looking into his Conference with Fisher the Jesuit; but whoever will take the trouble of doing so, whatever he may think of Laud's line of argument at times, must admit the learning and ability displayed in the discussion. No book more clearly shows both the resemblance and the difference between Anglo-Catholicism and Popery.

[53] We are here reminded of what Dunstan's biographer said of him—"Nec quisquam in toto regno Anglorum esset qui absque ejus imperio manum vel pedem moveret."—Angl. Sac., ii. 108. Dunstan, too, like Laud, descended to the notice and regulation of trivial matters. There can be little doubt that Laud, as an ecclesiastical and political statesman, was inferior to Dunstan. A man who grasps at such extensive influence is sure to be unpopular in England. Sir John Eliot accused Buckingham of this ambition, and in the memorable peroration to his speech in that nobleman's impeachment, when he instituted a parallel between him and the Bishop of Ely, in Richard II.'s reign, Eliot included this point—"No man's business could be done without his help."—See Speech in Rushworth, and Parliamentary History, and from his own MS. in Forster's Life of Eliot, i. 551.

[54] Diary, Tuesday, April 5, 1625.—Laud's Works, iii. 159.

[55] Strafford's Papers, i. 365.

[56] Halliwell's Letters of the Kings of England, ii. 180.

[57] Coleridge ranks Jackson with Cudworth, More, and Smith as Plotinist rather than Platonist divines.—See Note, Literary Remains, iii. 415.

[58] Life of Southey, v. 283.

[59] See remarks on this in Bancroft's United States, i. 284.

[60] Aylmer is supposed to be represented anagrammatically in the Morell, and Grindal in the Algrind of Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar.

[61] Strype's Parker, i. 300-345. For measures adopted to enforce conformity, see Strype's Parker, i. 420-447. Parker had a hard time of it when engaged in this unpopular business. He did not receive the support he wished. The Puritans condemned him for doing too much, the Queen for doing too little. "An ox," he exclaimed, "can draw no more than he can."—Ibid., 451.

[62] It appears from Foxe that some of the early Protestants were very strong believers in predestination.—See the godly letters of John Careless. Foxe's Book of Martyrs, viii. 187-192. Catley's edition.

[63] Neal, i. 451. For his statement respecting bills for reformation he gives MS. authority. Strype's Whitgift, i. 391, contains the letter to the Queen, dated 24th of March, 1584-5. Parry says in Parliaments and Councils, 1584, December 14, "three petitions are read touching 'the liberty of godly preachers to exercise and continue their ministry, and for the speedy supply of able and sufficient men into divers places now destitute of the ordinary means of salvation.'" Cobbett supplies a brief account of the debate.—Parl. Hist., i. 824.

[64] Dr. Donne preached a sermon at Paul's Cross on the 14th September, 1622, in which he took occasion "for the publication of some reasons which His Sacred Majesty had been pleased to give, of those directions for preachers which he had formerly set forth."—Works, vi. 191. The preacher declared the King was "grieved with much bitterness, that any should so pervert his meaning as to think that these directions either restrained the exercise of preaching or abated the number of sermons."—Ib. 220. One is sorry to find such a man as Donne excusing James's despotic interference with preaching, and to read the absurd eulogium on his royal master's "books." "Our posterity shall have him for a father—a classic father—such a father as Ambrose, as Austin was."—Ib. 221. Such sycophancy on the part of Donne and others greatly tended to prejudice the people against them and their teaching.

[65] Fuller's Church History, iii. 362.

[66] See Cal. Dom., 1633-4, p. 298.

[67] Cal. 1633-4, p. 345.—The cases of Samuel Ward, Anthony Lapthorne, and George Burdett, noted Puritan ministers, are largely illustrated in the Cal. Dom. 1634-5, 361, 263, 537. Mr. Bruce notices that Ward, who suffered so much from the High Commission Court, appears himself as a complainant against certain persons at Ipswich holding Antinomian opinions, 1635-6, Pref. xxxvii.

Illustrations appear amongst the State Papers of the popularity of Puritanism. Dr. John Andrewes writes to the Chancellor of Lincoln, (dated June 5, 1634, Beaconsfield) acknowledging a request to preach a visitation sermon:—"He is contented to show his obedience, howbeit he knows that any other priest in those parts would be better accepted both of laity and the generality of the clergy; and the main reason is, because he is not of the new cut, nor anywise inclining to Puritanism, wherewith the greatest number (both of priests and people) in those parts are foully tainted, insomuch that he is called the most godly who can and will be most disobedient to the orders of the Church. He enumerates things out of order in his own parish. 1. No terrier of Church lands. 2. Elections held in the church. 3. Gadding on Sundays to hear Puritanical sermons in other parishes. 4. Few come to church on holidays. 5. Many sit at service with their hats on, and some lie along in their pews. 6. Many kneel not at prayers, nor bow at the name of Jesus, &c. 7. The churchwardens do not levy the 12d. from those who absent themselves from divine service."—Cal. Dom., 1634-5, June 5, p. 64.

Complaints were made of people forsaking the parish churches.—Ibid., p. 149.

[68] Cal. Dom., 1633-4, p. 450.

[69] Heylyn's Life of Laud, p. 367.

[70] While quite indisposed to attempt defending in the Puritans what is indefensible, I would add, they inherited many of their faults from the early Protestants. On the whole, I should say, the Puritans of the seventeenth century will bear favourable comparison with their fathers of the sixteenth, some of whose worst failings arose from the bad education received in the Church of Rome before they abjured her errors.

[71] Irreverence in worship is often regarded as an offence characteristic of Puritanism. But popish priests, at the time of the Reformation, then loudly complained of irreverence in their congregations—irreverence such as their successors were not guilty of.—Strype's Memorials, i. 213

[72] Neal follows Clarendon in this respect.—History of Puritans, ii. 362.

[73] This is Rapin's view.—History of England, ii. 652, adopted by Godwin, in his Commonwealth, i. 64.

[74] Tanner MS., quoted by Sanford.—Studies and Illustrations of the Great Rebellion, p. 159.

[75] Strafford's Letters, Vol. i. 463, quoted in Forster's Life of Vane, p. 7, as written to the Lord Deputy. The letter is in the State Paper Office, calendared as if written to Lord Conway.—See Calendar of Colonial Papers, 1574-1660, p. 214. In the same Calendar, p. 211, there is notice of a letter by Vane to his father, in which he "requests his father to believe, though as the case stands he is judged a most unworthy son, that however jealous his father may be of circumventions and plots entertained and practised by him, yet he will never do anything that he may not justify or be content to suffer for. Is sure, as there is trust in God, that his innocence and integrity will be cleared to his father before he dies. Protests his father's jealousy of him would break his heart, but as he submits all other things to his good God, so does he his honesty. The intention of his heart is sincere, and hence flows the sweet peace he enjoys amidst his many heavy trials."

[76] Forster's Statesmen of the Commonwealth, Vol. iii. 49.

[77] Clarendon (Hist. 75) says of Vane's father and mother, "they were neither of them beautiful,"—a statement fully borne out by their portraits.

[78] Clarendon (Hist. 454).

[79] Rushworth, i. 647.

[80] Hist. 74.

[81] Compare Nugent and Forster.

[82] Hampden was reported at a Visitation for holding a muster in Beaconsfield Churchyard, and for leaving his parish church. To avoid a suit in the Ecclesiastical Court, he applied privately to Sir Nathaniel Brent, and satisfied him by explanation and concession.—State Papers Cal., 1634-5, p. 250.

[83] "The Puritan would be judged by the Word of God; if he would speak clearly he means himself; but he is ashamed to say so, and he would have me believe him before a whole church, that has read the Word of God as well as he." Table Talk, 160.

Selden, in the same book (p. 13), while denying the divine right of bishops, maintains they "have the same right to sit in Parliament as the best Earls and Barons." Yet he signed the Covenant.

[84] Life, 923.

[85] Life, 936.

[86] In the State Paper Office is a letter by Laud, July 20, 1634, addressed to the King, in which the writer speaks of two daughters of the late Lord Falkland being reconciled to the Church of Rome, "not without the practice of their mother." He alludes to Lord Newburgh's request that she would forbear working on her daughters' consciences, and suffer them to go to their brother, or any other safe place. The archbishop appears anxious to save them from Popery. The letter is printed in Laud's Works, vii. 82, with illustrative notes.

[87] He tells us he was stopped in Westminster Hall, and asked by a root-and-branch man, "Art thou for us or for our adversaries?" but he does not report his answer.

[88] Mr. Bruce's interesting introduction to the volume of Proceedings, &c., in connection with the Committee of Religion appointed in 1640, (printed by the Camden Society,) gives a minute history of the baronet's love adventures.

[89] It is stated on the authority of a letter in the possession of the Trevor family, that, "to escape detection the oppositionists resorted to the place of rendezvous with disguised faces." Johnson's Life of Selden, 30.

[90] Clarendon's Hist., p. 69.

[91] The appointment of a Committee of Religion was debated and delayed in the first Parliament of this reign; One was appointed immediately after the assembling of the second—and also on the meeting of the third.—See Journals, June 25, 1625; Feb. 7, 10, 12, 1625-6; March 20, 1627-8.

[92] The sentence on Leighton is given by Rushworth, ii. 56.

Neal, ii., 218, follows Rushworth and states the particulars of Leighton's punishment as being recorded in Laud's Diary. But in the Diary, 4th November, Works iii. 212, there is nothing beyond a reference to Leighton's degradation in the High Commission Court. Neal adds that Laud pulled off his cap, and thanked God for the sentence.

For this anecdote, authority may be found in a curious book, by Leighton, entitled An Epitome of the great troubles he has suffered. In the course of his narration, after defending himself against the charge of being a Conventicle keeper, a libeller, a schismatic, a traitor, and a factious person, he says, in relation to his trial.—"The censure was to cut my ears, slit my nose, to brand me in the face, to whip me at a post, to stand on the pillory, ten thousand pounds fine, and perpetual imprisonment; and all these upon a dying man, by appearance

—instant morientibus ursæ.

The censure thus past, the prelate off with his cap, and holding up his hands, gave thanks to God, who had given him the victory over his enemies."—pp. 69, 70.

"I being put thereafter on the pillory an hour and a half, in frost and snow, they inflicted the rest, and would not let me have a coach of my own to carry me to the Fleet; but I was forced to be carried by water, for I was not able to go. I lay ten weeks under the canopy of heaven, in the dirt and mire of the rubbish, having nothing to shelter me from the rain and snow, in a very cold season."—p. 85.

In connection with Leighton's statement, the following passage from the Rawlinson MS. is worthy of notice:—"In the Court of High Commission, 19 April, 1632, the King's Advocate against Joseph Harrison, Clerk, Vicar of Sustorke, 'the sentence was presently read by the Archbishop of Canterbury, In Dei nomine, Amen, &c., &c., Deum præ oculis preponentes, &c.,' at which words I marked some of the Bishops to look upward, and put off their hats devoutly." From this passage it would appear to have been a practice in the Court, when sentence was passed, to pronounce it in the name of God, and for the Commissioners to take off their hats in token of reverence when these sacred words were uttered. The question arises, did Leighton mistake what was a customary act for a special expression of Laud's feeling in this particular case? or, did Laud really go out of his way to indicate his gratification at the sufferings of Leighton? I must leave the reader to judge for himself, who, however, ought to bear in mind Laud's character. Leighton gives the following account of his sufferings:—

"The aforesaid censure was executed in every particular in a most cruel manner and measure: the executioner was made drunk in the Fleet the night before, and also was hardened the very same day with very strong water, being threatened to do it with all rigour: and so he did, by knife, whip, brand, and fire, insomuch that never a lash he gave with a treble cord, but he brought away the flesh, which I shall feel to my dying day."

[93] Yet, looking at the persecution which the Puritans suffered, the same plea will avail for them that has been urged on behalf of the early Protestants. "It was, as they thought, like exhorting a Caligula and a Nero to clemency, and advising the poor subjects to compliment such tyrants, to remind them gently of their defects, and humbly to entreat that they would be so good and gracious as to condescend to alter their conduct."—Jortin's Life of Erasmus, i. 212.

From a Biographical Narration, by Burton, it appears he had been Clerk of the Closet to Prince Henry and to Prince Charles. The narration contains many curious particulars. There is an important letter about Burton, by Bishop Hall, in Forster's Life of Eliot, ii. 428.

[94] Hanbury's Historical Memorials, ii., 52.

[95] Rushworth, iv. 207.

[96] Forster's Life of Eliot, ii. 84, 562.

[97] Forster's Life of Pym, 96.

[98] It was a charge against Burton that he carried the sacred elements to the communicants on their seats.—Dow's Innovations, 186. Lathbury's History of Convocation, 261.

[99] Forster's Life of Pym, 99.

[100] Rushworth, iv. 24.

[101] Quoted in Sanford's Illustrations, 310.

[102] Clarendon, 69. Sanford's Illustrations, 310.

[103] Clarendon says Strafford did not come to the House at all that day till after his impeachment. I attach little importance to Clarendon's statements, when inconsistent with what is said by so accurate a man as D'Ewes. From his journal it appears that Strafford did go to the House in the morning. Sanford's Illustrations, 310.

[104] D'Ewes Journal, Sanford's Studies and Illustrations, 312.

[105] Baillie's Letters and Journals, published by the Bannatyne Club, 4to, i. 272. Other minute particulars are taken from the same source.

[106] See his Journal, 1640, Dec. 18. Works, iii. 238.

[107] Burgess and Marshall preached on the occasion from Jeremiah l. 5, and 2. Chron. xv. 2. The sermons were published, and may be found in the library of the British Museum. They relate to covenanting with God, but I do not see that the preachers make any reference to the Scotch covenant, though Nalson charges them with having had their eye on that symbol all the way through.—Collection, i. 530.

[108] November 20. See Commons' Journal.

[109] See Journals, February 9, 1625-6, and March 10, 1627-8.

[110] It is so regarded by Neal and those who follow him.—History of Puritans, ii. 362.

[111] History of England, ii. 653.

[112] Journals, November 20. A collection was made after the communion, amounting to £78. 16. 2.—Nalson's Collections, 1. 700.

[113] Memorials of English Affairs, Whitelocke, 38. Journal of Commons, Nov. 25, 1640, and pamphlets of the period.

[114] The minister complained of was John Squire, of whom Walker gives an account in his Sufferings of the Clergy, Part i. 68.—These illustrations are gathered from Diurnals and other Tracts in the Library of the Brit. Museum.

[115] Speech of Mr. Rouse in Rushworth, iv. 211. See also Speeches of Sir Ed. Dering and Sir John Wray.

[116] These particulars, and many more, are found in A Certificate from Northamptonshire, 1641. Brit. Mus. The "great scarcity of preaching ministers" was early noticed, and a sub-committee appointed to consider it.—See Journals, 19th December, 1640. Extracts from the Register of the Archbishop of Canterbury, shew that the number of benefices in England was 8,803, whereof 3,277 were impropriations, and that the number of livings under £10 was 4,543; under £40, 8,659; and that only the remainder, being 144, were of the value of £40 and upwards.—Cal. Dom. 1634-5, p. 381.

[117] Lathbury's Hist. of Con., 246.

[118] Nalson, i. 545.

[119] This oath "approved the doctrine and discipline of government established in the Church of England, as containing all things necessary to salvation;" and denied all "consent to alter the government of this Church by Archbishops, Bishops, Deans, Archdeacons, &c., as it stands now established."

[120] Journals of the Commons, Dec. 16, 1640.—The matter came before the House again on the 7th June, 1641.

[121] The letter is in Laud's Works, Vol. vi. 584.

[122] Laud's Works, vi. 589.

[123] Lathbury's Hist. of Convocation, 267.

[124] See Letter to Bullinger by Sandys, 1573.—Zurich Letters, 294.

[125] Fuller, ii. 504-5.

[126] It frequently appears in the records of that period. There is a curious example in the introduction to the will of Humphrey Fen.—Cal. Dom., 1633-4, p. 468.

[127] They claimed as precedents the Protestants in Queen Mary's time, and the exiles at Geneva, that used a book framed by them there.—Strype's Parker, i. 480.

There is at Horningsham, in Wiltshire, an old meeting-house, with a large stone in the end wall, bearing date 1566. When the stone was put there is not known, and whence it came I cannot learn, but the Rev. H. M. Gunn, of Warminster, informs me that, according to tradition, some Scotch Presbyterians, disciples of Knox, came over from Scotland to build Longleat House for Sir John Thynne, in 1566. The building went on for thirteen years, when Sir John died. They refused to attend the parish church, and obtained a cottage in which to meet for Divine service, with a piece of land attached for a grave-yard. This house, Mr. Gunn says, turned into a chapel, has been preserved till now. Though originally a Presbyterian, it long since became an Independent place of worship.

[128] Afterwards Mrs. Hazzard.

[129] Records of the Baptist Church, Broadmead, Bristol, 10-18. See also Cal. Dom., 1634-5, p. 416, for arguments by Dr. Stoughton, on the duty of separation.

As women were active in promoting Puritanism, so they had been a century before in promoting Protestantism.—See numerous examples in Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

[130] Dugdale's Troubles in England, 36, 62, 65.

Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses, ii. 347.

[131] Parl. Hist., ii. 674.

[132] Bagshawe's own account, in Hanbury's Memorials, ii. 141.

[133] See Cal. Dom., 1633-4, p. 33 et seq.; also Preface, viii.

[134] Baillie's Letters and Journals, vol. i. 211-214.

[135] Baillie's Letters and Journals, i. 271.

The Lords' Journals, Dec. 10, 14, 1640, shew the sensitiveness of the House upon what concerned the honour of the Scots and the English lords, who favoured them, and in reference to all which indicated popish sympathies.

[136] The first night they tarried at lodgings, "in the Common Garden." Baillie adds: "The city is desirous we should lodge with them, so to-morrow I think we must flit."

[137] Hallam says: (Const. Hist., i. 527) The petition was prepared "at the instigation of the Scotch Commissioners." Baillie's letters do not support this statement. The Scots, however, were very early in the field against Laud. Lords' Journals, January 2, 1641.

[138] "At London we met with many ministers from most parts of the kingdom; and upon some meetings and debates, it was resolved that a committee should be chosen to draw up a remonstrance of our grievances, and to petition the Parliament for reformation, which was accordingly done."—Clark's Lives, page 8.

[139] Cross-grained, twisted. Baillie's Letters, &c., i. 286.

[140] Rushworth, iv. 135.

[141] The Somersetshire churchmen expressed themselves in moderate terms.—Hallam's Const. Hist., i. 527.

From Cheshire came two petitions, one signed by Episcopalians, the other by Puritans, calling prelates "mighty enemies and secret underminers" of the church and commonwealth.—Nonconformity in Cheshire. Introduction, xiv.

[142] Amongst the petitions of that period was one by Master William Castell, parson of Courtenhall, in the county of Northampton: "for the propagating of the gospel in America and the West Indies." While condemning the proceedings of Spaniards, and lamenting the indifference of English, Scotch, French, and Dutch, the petition expresses the desire of the petitioners, "to enlarge greatly the pale of the Church;" to make the synagogues of Satan temples of the Holy Ghost; "and millions of those silly, seduced Americans, to hear, understand, and practise the mystery of godliness." A large number of names are appended, approving the petition. The learned Edmund Castell, Robert Sanderson (afterwards Bishop of Lincoln), Joseph Caryl, and Edmund Calamy, appear in the list, and it is added that the petition had the approbation of Master Alexander Henderson, and some worthy ministers of Scotland. The union of such different men in this missionary endeavour is worthy of notice.—Anderson's History of the Colonial Church, ii. 11.

[143] Abridged from Rushworth, iv. 155.—Baillie says that, as to the part about the bishops, there "was no hum; and no applause as to the rest."—Letters, i. 292.

[144] No traces of Pym's speech are found in Rushworth, Nalson, or Parliamentary Debates. It is not mentioned in Forster's Life of the Great Statesmen, or in Sanford's Illustrations. The extract I have given is from A Just Vindication of the questioned part of the reading of Edward Bagshawe, Esq., 1660, p. 2-4. The tract states that Pym's speech was delivered when the petition was read and debated in the House. Hanbury's Memorials, ii. 141.

[145] Rushworth, iv. 170-187.

[146] 9th Feb., 1641.

[147] Quoted in Studies and Illustrations, by Sanford, 319.

[148] Mr. Godwin, in his History of the Commonwealth, i. 58, interprets the resolution as meaning "we are not yet decided to maintain Episcopacy." The debate, and even the words themselves, seem to me inconsistent with that view.

[149] These particulars are taken from the Journal of Sir Ralph Verney, a member of the Committee. Lord Nugent, in his Life of Hampden, gives some account of this MS.; but Mr. Bruce has published the entire notes in a volume of the Camden Society, with many valuable remarks.

[150] The following extract from the Lords' Journals is an illustration:

"Mr. Etheridge, minister, and Mr. Carter, the curate, and William Till, clerk of the parish, Ben Parsons, Tho. Chadwick, were examined at the bar, concerning the riot lately committed in the church of Halstead, in the county of Essex; as striking the Book of Common Prayer out of the curate's hand as he was baptizing a child at the fount, and kicking it up and down the church, and for taking the clerk by the throat, forcing him to deliver unto them the hood and surplice, which they immediately rent and tore in pieces; and other misdemeanours and outrages were committed in the said church, on Simon and Jude's day last, in divine service, by Jonathan Poole and Grace his wife." 10th December, 1640.

Certain Nonconformists of St. Saviour's parish were complained of to the House for illegally assembling for worship. The House directed they should be left to the ordinary proceedings of justice, according to the course of law. Journals of the Lords, January 16th. See also 19th and 21st.

[151] As the accounts of this committee given by Fuller, Neal, and Cardwell, are incomplete in consequence of the writers having neglected to consult the Journals of the House of Lords, I subjoin the following entries relating to this business:—

10 die Martii, 1640-1.

After an order that the Communion-table in every church remain where it is accustomed to be, it is ordered, "That these lords following are appointed to take into consideration all innovations in the Church concerning religion:—The Lord Treasurer, the Lord Chamberlain, Earls of Bath, South'ton, Bedford, Hartford, Essex, Dorset, Sarum, Warwick, March, Bristol, Clare, Berks, Dover, and Lord Viscount Say and Sele; Bishops of Winton, Chester, Lincoln, Sarum, Exon, Carlile, Ely, Bristol, Rochester, Chichester; and Ds. (Dominus), Strange, Willoughby de Earseby, North, Kymbolton, Howard de Charlton, Grey de Werk, Robarts, Craven, Pawlett, Howard de Escrick, Goringe, Savill, Dunsemore, and Seymor.

"6 die Martii.

"That the Committee for Innovations in Religion do meet on Wednesday next, and the committee to have power to send for such learned men as their lordships shall please, to assist them.

"10 die Martii.

"That the Committee for Religion do meet on Friday next, in the afternoon, and no other committee to sit that afternoon, and their lordships to have power to send for what learned divines their lordships shall please, for their better information: as the Lord Archbishop of Armagh, Dr. Prideaux, Dr. Warde, Dr. Twiste (Twiss) Dr. Hacket, who are to have intimation given them by the Lord Bishop of Lincoln to attend the Lords' Committees."

The following names, given by Fuller, Collier, and Neal must be taken as a list of the sub-committee. Williams, Bishop of Lincoln; Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh; Morton, Bishop of Durham; and Hall, Bishop of Exeter; Drs. Ward, Prideaux, Twiss, Sanderson, Featley, Brownrigg, Holdsworth, Hacket, Burgess, White, Marshall, Calamy, and Hill. Morton of Durham does not appear on the list of the Lords' Committee. Cardwell places in the list the name of Montague, but I find it mentioned by no one else. He is not a likely person to have had anything to do with the Committee, and he is probably confounded by Cardwell with Hall, who succeeded him in the bishopric of Norwich, being translated, on Montague's death, to that see from Exeter.

[152] Quoted in Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, iii. 187.

[153] Hacket's Memorial of Williams, Part ii. 147.

Sir N. Brent, in a paper dated September 9, 1634, gives an account of his "metropolitical visitation" of Williams's diocese. He describes the Communion-table at Lincoln as not decent, and the rail worse; organs old and nought; copes and vestments embezzled; ale-houses, hounds, and swine kept in the churchyard; Hitchin church and churchyard out of order; curate of Stowe accustomed "to marry people with gloves and masks on."—Cal. Dom. In another paper, probably pertaining to 1634, Boston seeks to free itself from the suspicions of Puritanism by saying that there were 2,000 communicants at church, who, for want of room to kneel, were compelled to receive the Lord's Supper standing.—Ibid. p. 422.

[154] Fuller's Church History, iii. 415.

[155] Laud's Works, iii. 241.

[156] The following letter (without signature) illustrates this point: "A new Committee for Religion was appointed to have sat on Monday in the afternoon last, but there being neither meeting nor adjournment, it was left sine die: yet, on Thursday in the afternoon, the Bishops of Lincoln, Durham, Winchester, and Bristol met, where the assistants, attended by some threescore other divines of inferior rank, were present, and many temporal Lords; and many points of doctrine and Church service being questioned, among the rest one Lord said, that it ought to be put out of the creed 'that Christ descended into Hell,' which he did not believe. Yesterday in the forenoon, without any intimation or notice given to the other committees, the same spiritual Lords and divines met at the Bishop of Lincoln's lodging, where, in less than two hours, they condemned, (as I am informed by the Bishop of Bristol, present), about fifty points in doctrine, what they had met with in several treatises and sermons of late printed amongst us. They had culled out a passage of my Lord of Canterbury in his Star Chamber speech, which they say is, that Hoc est corpus meum, is more than Hoc est verbum meum: which the Bishop of Lincoln censured, for that verbum did make corpus; but would not further hear, because his grace was likely to answer it shortly elsewhere."—April 10, 1641. State Papers, Chas. I. Dom.

[157] I say almost, because the practice of sitting, while singing hymns, which was common in Nonconforming places of worship when I was young, may still linger in some quarters.

[158] The following query appears respecting marriage:—

"Whether none hereafter shall have licences to marry, nor be asked their banns of matrimony, that shall not bring with them a certificate from their Minister that they are instructed in their Catechism."

[159] The specified alterations are: "I give thee power over my body;" "knowing assuredly that the dead shall rise again;" and "I pronounce thee absolved;" instead of the well-known forms so often objected to.

I have gone fully into an account of what was proposed to this Committee, not only because it may have a particular interest for those who are active in promoting a revision of the Prayer Book, but because there are such diversified statements in relation to the subject in our historians. Compare Fuller, Collier, and Neal. Neal presents his condensation of the papers with inverted commas, as if placing before the reader the original documents. (In other cases, too, he gives his own abridgment in this fashion, so as to mislead the student.) An entire copy of the proceedings of the Committee may be found in Cardwell's Conferences, p. 270, taken from Baxter's Life and Times, Part i. 369.

[160] Neal, ii. 465.

[161] See Journals for March 9th, 10th, 11th, and 22nd. May says, "Doctors and parsons of parishes were made everywhere Justices of Peace, to the great grievance of the country, in civil affairs, and depriving them of their spiritual edification."—Hist. of Long Parliament, 24.

[162] Rushworth, iv. 206. This Bill was under discussion in the Lords, in October, 1641.—Nalson, ii. 496.

[163] Journals.

[164] Clarendon's Hist., 94.

[165] July 1.—"The Lords, upon the reasons offered by the Commons, were satisfied to consent to pass the Bill to take away the High Commission Court both here and at York, but argued to have the Star Chamber Court not quite taken away, but bounded, limited, and reduced to what power it had in Henry VII's time."—Rushworth, iv. 304. Both Bills received the royal assent, July 5.

[166] The writers were: Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thos. Young, Matt. Newcomen, and Wm. Spurstow.

[167] The Reduction of Episcopacy, which bears Ussher's name, was not published till after his death, in 1656. Baxter says in reference to it, "I asked him (Dr. Ussher) whether the paper be his that is called, A reduction of Episcopacy to the form of Synodical Government; which he owned, and Dr. Bernard after witnessed to be his."—Life and Times, part ii. 206.

I may here observe that the Archbishop, according to his biographer, Elrington, appears always to have spelt his name with a double s.

[168] Baillie, i. 351.

[169] May 3, 1641. Parl. Hist., ii. 776.

I have here and elsewhere, in giving the substance of speeches, adhered to the quaint phraseology employed by the speakers.

[170] For the protestation, see Parl. Hist., ii. 777. Alterations were made which throw light on the fears of returning popery.—Verney's Notes, published by the Camden Society, 67-70.

[171] Instances of the taking of it are numerous. In the Register Book of Wansted it is found with the names of the principal inhabitants.—Lyson's Environs of London, iv. 243.

Whitaker, in his History of Richmondshire, mentions an endorsement on the Return Roll for the parishes and townships of Bentham, Ingleton, Thornton, Sedberg, Dent, and Garsdale:—"The names of those persons who refused to make protestation within Garsdale parcell of the township of Dent, viz: George Heber Gent, Abraham Nelson, chapman, who publiquely refused before the whole Dale in the Church."—vol. ii. 363.

[172] See Journals of the Commons, May 12th.

[173] August 2nd. Parl. Hist. ii, 895. Compare Nalson, ii. 414-417.

[174] Baillie, i. 351. He refers here to the Commons.

[175] Hallam's Const. Hist., i. 524. The sagacious author justly remarks—"And thus we trace again the calamities of Charles to their two great sources; his want of judgment in affairs, and of good faith towards his people." The Lords passed the Bill on the 8th; the royal assent was given on the 10th.

[176] Parl. Hist., ii. 778.

[177] Parl. Hist., ii. 783. May 5. D'Ewes gives another amusing version of the story, (under date May 19).—Sanford's Illustrations, 373. Baillie's account is somewhat different.

[178] Maitland's London, i. 338.

[179] The bitter Presbyterian feeling against Strafford is plain enough in Baillie's letters.

It belongs not to the scope of this ecclesiastical History to enter on the details of the trial, but I cannot resist the temptation to insert in the Appendix two letters found in the State Paper Office, giving an account of the way in which the bill of attainder was introduced.

[180] See Speeches by Lane and St. John (Rushworth's Trial of Strafford, 671, et seq.); then read what follows:

"It certainly does astonish us that men, however they may have condemned the conduct of Strafford, could bring themselves to believe that he was guilty of the crime of high treason; for they could hardly have been deceived by the wicked sophistry of St. John that an attempt to subvert the fundamental laws of the kingdom was high treason at common law, and still remains so, or by the base opinion delivered by the judges—that this amounts to high treason under the Statute of Edward III."—Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, iv. 15.

[181] Ussher of Armagh, Juxon of London, Morton of Durham, Potter of Carlisle, and Williams of Lincoln.

[182] Slightly abridged from Elrington's Life of Ussher, 213.

[183] That such a distinction was suggested seems generally admitted. Clarendon attributes it to Williams, (Rebellion, 140.) This, considering the historian's prejudice respecting the Archbishop, is not perfectly conclusive against Williams, any more than the silence of Hacket (Life of Williams, pt. II., i. 161,)—who only speaks of the advice given in common, founded on the distinction between facts and law—is conclusively in his favour.

Clarendon is corroborated by the circumstance, that Ussher and Juxon were freed from the charge by the King himself (according to the report of Sir Edward Walker), and of the remaining prelates Williams was the most likely to give such advice as Clarendon mentions.

[184] Fuller's Church History, iii. 421.

The author says he copied what he gives of Hacket's speech out of his own papers. Nalson's Report (ii. 240) seems to be an amplification of what is contained in Rushworth, iv. 269. Verney entirely agrees with Fuller (Verney Papers—Camden Society, 75), but only in a few particulars with Nalson. Nalson is also wrong in saying Hacket answered Burgess. Hacket spoke first. Burgess answered him.

[185] Fuller, iii. 422. According to Verney's Notes, Burgess speaks of "Choristers and officers as fellows that are condemned for felons, and keep ale-houses, and so they may still," 77.

[186] Rushworth, iv. 276.

[187] Parl. Hist., ii. 773.

[188] Sanford's Illustrations, 363.

[189] Nalson, ii. 248.

[190] Parry's Parliaments and Councils of England, 353.

[191] Sanford's Studies and Illustrations, 364.

[192] Dering published an apology in 1642.

[193] The following letter by Sydney Bere, secretary to Sir Balthazar Gerbier, afterwards to Sir H. Vane, is preserved in the State Paper Office.

"Whitehall, 17th June, 1641.

"You will surely have heard that the utter abolishing of the bishops and all titular ecclesiastics, with the dependents, hath been agreed upon in the House of Commons, and met with less noes in the debate than the business of the Earl of Strafford had. This day they voted it again, and now it is to be engrossed, a draft of the Act goes herewith.

"The business of the bishops will be of dangerous consequence, they being violent and passionate in their own defence, and having engaged, as it were, the Lords, by their late votes in their favour, to the maintenance of their cause; whereas the Commons seem as resolute to pass the Bill for their utter extirpation, and so transmitting it to the Lords, according to the custom; and then it may be justly inferred the city will prove as turbulent as they were on Strafford's cause."

Sidney Bere became under-secretary upon the appointment of Nicholas, in November, to the chief secretaryship of state.

[194] Rushworth, iv. 279.

[195] Nalson, ii. 529.

[196] Journal, June 7, 1641.

Verney's Notes bear evidence that the same day the feeling of the House was unfavourable to Episcopacy. Monday, 7th June:—"Sir John Griffin, the elder, said, I see it is distasteful to this House to speak for the government of the Church."—Verney Papers, 83.

On the same day, in the course of a debate, the subject of ecclesiastical canons came again under consideration. Mr. Maynard "transmitted the votes about the canons." According to Verney's Notes, (84) in which this appears, the debate touched generally on the power of the clergy to make canons. No formal resolution or vote is recorded.

[197] Sanford's Illustrations, 365.

[198] Clarendon's Hist., 110.

[199] Parl. Hist., ii. 822-826.

Sir Ralph Verney notices the debate on the 12th, but his notes are unfortunately very brief, and run thus:—

"Actions constant at all times to men of one order, 'tis a great sign of their malignity.

Oil and water may be severed, but oil and wine never.

Pledwell's arguments might have been used for the pope as well as for other bishops.

Vaughan.—Three things considerable in bishops: election, confirmation, consecration.

Os Episcopi is a chancellor.

Oculus Episcopi is the commissary.

Consilium Episcopi is the dean."—Verney Papers, 94.

Letters in the State Paper Office show the excitement produced by the Commons' proceedings. Slingsby says, 10th June, "The discourse of all men is they must now strike at root and branch, and not slip this occasion."

[200] Parl. Hist., ii. 828. et seq.

[201] Rushworth, iv. 295.

[202] Nalson, ii. 245.

[203] White was grandfather of Susannah Annesly, the mother of the Wesleys.

[204] For cases which came before Dering, see "Proceedings principally in the County of Kent, &c." Edited by the Rev. L. B. Barking, with preface by John Bruce, Esq. Camden Soc.

[205] Rushworth, iv. 113-123.

[206] Rushworth, 194, 195.

See Laud's Journal, March 1, p. 240.

March 1, Monday.—"I went in Mr. Maxwell's coach to the Tower. No noise till I came into Cheapside. But from thence to the Tower I was followed and railed at by the 'prentices and the rabble, in great numbers, to the very Tower gates, where I left them, and I thank God he made me patient!"—Laud's Diary.

[207] Rushworth, iv. 122-351.

Widdrington's speech on presenting the impeachment is a curiosity in its way. Amongst other odd things he says of Wren: "Without doubt he would never have been so strait-laced and severe in this particular (i. e., his hatred of extempore prayer), if he had but dreamed of that strait which a minister, a friend of his, was put into by this means. The story is short. A butcher was gored in the belly by an ox; the wound was cured; the party desired public thanksgiving in the congregation; the minister, finding no form for that purpose, read the collect for churching of women."—Parl. Hist., ii. 888.

[208] Fuller's Church History, iii. 418. See also Worthies, ii. 359.

[209] Hanbury's Historical Memorials, ii. 97-100.

Thomas Wiseman, in a letter (July 1, 1641) State Papers, says of the Scotch, "God send us well rid of them, and then we may hope to enjoy our ancient peace both of Church and Commonwealth, for till they are gone, whatever they pretend, we find they are the only disturbers of both."

[210] Rushworth, iv. 368.

[211] State Papers, Dom., 1641. Letter of Sidney Bere, August 18.

[212] Idem. Letter of Sidney Bere, August 22.

[213] Letter of Bere. August 30th.

In a manuscript diurnal, also preserved among the State Papers, it is remarked: "Mr. Henderson is in great favour with the king, and stands next to his chair in sermon time. His Majesty daily hears two sermons every Sunday, besides week-day lectures."

[214] Baillie's notices are to the same effect as Bere's: "Mr. Alexander Henderson, in the morning and evening before supper, does daily say prayers, read a chapter, sing a psalm, and say prayer again. The King hears all duly, and we hear none of his complaints for want of a liturgy or any ceremonies." Letters, i. 385.

[215] Nalson, ii. 683.

[216] Parry's Parliaments and Councils, 365.

[217] On the 8th September, "upon Mr. Cromwell's motion, it was ordered, that sermons should be in the afternoon in all parishes of England, at the charge of the inhabitants of those parishes where there are no sermons in the afternoon."—D'Ewes' Journals. Sanford's Illustrations, 371.

[218] Commons' Journals. Parl. Hist., ii. 907.

[219] Nalson, ii. 483. Parl. Hist., ii. 910.

[220] An attempt was made in the Lower House to revise the Prayer Book, but it failed.—Rushworth, iv. 385.

[221] London was in a very troubled state that autumn, as appears from a letter by Thomas Wiseman, dated October 7th.—State Papers Dom.

"The city is full of the disbanded soldiers, and such robbing in and about it that we are not safe in our own houses, yet this day there is an order come from the Committee of Parliament to send every soldier away upon pain of imprisonment, and leave granted to any of them that will to transport themselves for the low countries into the service of the States. On Tuesday last the post was robbed between this and Theobalds, and the letters to the King and other Lords in Scotland, from the Queen and the Lords of the Council, were taken away by fellows with vizors on their faces; such an insolence hath not been, however, before, and who they were, or who set them to work is suspected, but not yet discovered. We have the most pestilent libels spread abroad against the precise Lords and Commons of the Parliament, that they are fearful to be named. And the Brownists and other sectaries make such havoc in our churches by pulling down of ancient monuments, glass windows, and rails, that their madness is intolerable; and I think it will be thought blasphemy shortly to name Jesus Christ, for it is already forbidden to bow to his name, though Scripture and the practice of the Church of England doth both warrant and command it."

[222] May's History of the Long Parliament, 113-115.

[223] See his speeches in Rushworth, iv. 392-394.

[224] Parl. Hist., ii. 924.

[225] Parl. Hist., ii. 919, 920.

[226] Rushworth, iv. 438-451.

[227] Sidney Bere says in a letter dated 25th Nov., 1641 (State Papers Dom.): "For the business of the Houses of Parliament, they have been in great debates about a Remonstrance, which the House of Commons frames, shewing the grievances and abuses of many years past. The contestation now is, how to publish it, whether in print to the public view, or by petition to his Majesty—it was so equally carried in a division of opinion, that there were but eleven voices different. This day is a great day about it, but what the event will be I shall not be able to write you by this ordinary. It seems there are great divisions between the two Houses, and even in the Commons House, which, if not suddenly reconciled, may cause very great distractions amongst us. It is the fear of many wise and well-meaning men, who apprehend great distempers, which I pray God to direct."

[228] Memoirs by Sir Philip Warwick, 201.

[229] Forster's Grand Remonstrance, 324. I refer the reader to this valuable work for minute particulars respecting this debate.

[230] Clarendon. Hist., 125. Compare Carlyle's Cromwell, i. 161.

[231] So Queen Henrietta Maria was then commonly called.

[232] Nalson, ii. 679-681.

[233] Nicholas' Correspondence. Evelyn's Diary, iv. 82.

[234] "I observe since my coming to town, a very great alteration of the affections of the City, to what they were when I went away. They say a great present is to be presented to the King after dinner, and a petition such as he will be glad to receive, the contents I hear not yet, only one clause for the maintenance of Episcopacy and the suppression of schism."—Robert Slingsby, State Papers Dom., Nov. 25.

Respecting the King's reception, Wiseman says, "I confess it was a great one every way, and so acknowledged beyond the precedent of any made to former Kings, that history makes mention of, which well suits with the goodness, sweetness, and meritorious virtues of so gracious a King as ours is. The present mean estate of the Chamber denied the form of a gift, but this of the hearts of the citizens and those of the better sort, and at this tune so seasonably expressed, was of greater import to His Majesty than, for my part, I dare take upon me to value."—2nd Dec., 1641. State Papers, Dom.

[235] Nalson, ii. 681. Rushworth, iv. 432.

[236] Letter of Thomas Wiseman, addressed to "Sir John Pennington, Admiral of his Majesty's fleet for the guard of the Narrow Seas."—State Papers Dom., 9th Dec., 1641.

[237] In the same letter to Sir John Pennington, Wiseman says, "His Majesty was pleased, with a return of many thanks for his entertainment, to set a mark of his favour by knighting the seven aldermen, whereof your cousin the alderman was none, whose ways, as you partly know, are rather to please himself than to strive to do any acceptable service for the king, if it stand not with the sense of the preciser sort of the House of Commons."

[238] Sir Ralph Hopton gave a report to the House of the interview.—Parl. Hist., ii. 942.

[239] Rushworth, iv. 452.

[240] State Papers Dom. Letters of Robert Slingsby, dated (by mistake) 6th Dec., 1641, and properly placed under Jan. 6th, 1641-2. Slingsby is not perfectly accurate in his account of what took place in the House.

[241] The High Church Lord Mayor Gourney would not accompany them.

[242] Nalson, ii. 764.

[243] There were other disturbances in London.

"For the proceedings of the Parliament, you have them here enclosed until Monday, which day there happened some disorder concerning the prisoners in Newgate, who being to suffer, and understanding the priests condemned with them were not, but in hope of reprieve, they found means to seize the jailor's keys, and so made themselves master of the prison, but the train bands coming up that same day forced them to surrender, and the next they were hanged, not without great murmuring of the common people. The saving of the priests is yet a point debated in Parliament, and, as I am told, will hardly be obtained. In the meantime, these intervenient things add much to the distractions and distempers of the time, which I pray God to give a better end unto than at present there is any great appearance for to hope it." * * *

"I am told the House did yesternight vote the printing of the Remonstrance."—State Papers. Letter of Sidney Bere, 16th Dec., 1641.

[244] Bramston's Autobiography, published by the Camden Society, 82.

[245] Rushworth, iv. 463.

Cutting the hair short was a Puritan reaction, occasioned by the opposite Cavalier fashion of wearing locks profusely long. It is worth notice, that the nickname given to Elisha by the boys at the town gate, as they watched the prophet passing by, was just the same as that given to the Parliamentarians. "Baldhead," is really "roundhead," in allusion to shortness of hair at the back of the head.—Ewald, iii. 512.—Smith's Dict. of the Bible, i. 537.

[246] The following letter by Captain Slingsby relates to this disturbance. It will be noticed that the writer says, "none were killed;" but Fuller states one man died of the injuries he received.

"I cannot say we have had a merry Christmas, but the maddest one that I ever saw. The prentices and baser sort of citizens, sailors, and watermen, in great numbers every day at Westminster, armed with swords, halberds, clubs, which hath made the King keep a strong guard about Whitehall of the trained-bands without, and of gentlemen and officers of the army within. The King had upon Christmas-eve put Colonel Lunsford in to be Lieutenant of the Tower, which was so much resented by the Commons and by the City, that the Sunday after he displaced him again and put in Sir John Biron, who is little better accepted than the other. Lunsford being on Monday last in the Hall with about a dozen other gentlemen, he was affronted by some of the citizens, whereof the Hall was full, and so they drew their swords, chasing the citizens about the Hall, and so made their way through them which were in the Palace Yard and in King's Street, till they came to Whitehall. The Archbishop of York was beaten by the prentices the same day, as he was going into the Parliament. The next day they assaulted the Abbey, to pull down the organs and altar; but it was defended by the Archbishop of York and his servants, with some other gentlemen that came to them; divers of the citizens hurt, but none killed. Amongst them that were hurt one knight, Sir Richard Wiseman, who is their chief leader. Yesterday, about fifteen or sixteen officers of the army, standing at the Court gate, took a slight occasion to fall upon them and hurt about forty or so of them. They, in all their skirmishes have avoided thrusting, because they would not kill them. I never saw the Court so full of gentlemen. Every one comes thither with their swords. This day 500 gentlemen of the Inns of Court came to offer their services to the King. The officers of the army, since these tumults, have watcht and kept a Court of guard in the presence chamber, and are entertained upon the King's charge. A company of soldiers put into the Abbey for defence of it."—State Papers, December 30th, 1641.

[247] "There has been great store of the scum of the people who have gone this holidays to Westminster, to have down Bishops, and against Lunsford, who is now dismissed from being Lieutenant of the Tower, the King having given him £500 pension per annum, and hath invested one Sir John Biron in that place. All things are in much distemper, and I fear that they yet will grow worse."—State Papers. Letter of Capt. Carterett to Sir J. Pennington, dated London, 29th Dec.

[248] I drew up this account from documents in the Record Office, dated the last few days of December, 1641, when I had no opportunity of consulting what Mr. Forster says of the disturbances, in his careful history of the Arrest of the Five Members.

[249] See Rushworth, iv. 695, for examples of exaggeration in the royalist statements. This disturbance became a subject of controversy between the King and Parliament.—Rushworth, iv. 710.

[250] "Here," says Mr. Forster, "and not in any dispute as to whom the powers of the militia should reside with, really began the Civil War." Arrest of the Five Members, 66.

[251] Hall's Works for Hard Measure, xiii.

[252] Fuller's Church History, iii. 431. He gives a copy of the protest.

[253] See his speech on the 4th of March—Parl. Hist., ii. 1111.

[254] Bishop Hall's account in his Hard Measure would seem to imply that the King had not seen the paper before it was brought under the notice of the Upper House by Lord-keeper Littleton, but it is clearly stated (Parl. Hist., ii. 993) that what Littleton did in this matter was by his Majesty's command. "The Jesuitical faction," says a letter of the day, "according to their wonted custom, fomenting still jealousies between the King and his people, and the bishops, continually concurring with the Popish lords against the passing any good Bills sent from the House of Commons thither; and their last plot hath been their endeavour to make this Parliament no Parliament, and so to overthrow all Acts past, and to cause a dissolution of it for the present, which hath been so strongly followed by the Popish party, that it was fain to be put to the vote, and the Protestant Lords carried it to be a free and perfect Parliament as ever any was before. This did so gall the bishops that they made their protestation against the freedom of the vote, and the Parliament; and in their protestation have inserted such speeches as have brought them within the compass of treason, and thus the Council of Achitophel is turned into foolishness. The Earl of Bristol and his son have been chief concurrents with them in this and other evil councils, for which they have been impeached and branded in the House of Commons."—State Papers, Letter of Thomas Smith to Sir J. Pennington, dated York House, 30th Dec., 1641.

There are allusions to these proceedings in other letters (State Papers) which all blame the bishops for want of wisdom.

[255] Hall says, "On January the 30th, in all the extremity of frost, at 8 o'clock in the dark evening, are we voted to the Tower. The news of this our crime and imprisonment flew over the city, and was entertained by our well-wishers with ringing of bells and bonfires." Hard Measure.

[256] "This day the bishops have made a protestation against the proceedings of this Parliament, declaring it no free Parliament. This makes a great stir here. The favourers of them think it done too soon, the other side do seem now to rejoice that it is done, having thereby excluded themselves from it." Slingsby to Pennington. State Papers, 30th Dec., 1641.

[257] Collier's Ecclesiastical History, ii. 819.

[258] Parl. Hist., ii. 1206. The bishops were: Dr. John Williams, Archbishop of York; Dr. T. Moreton, Bishop of Durham; Dr. J. Hall, Bishop of Norwich; Dr. Robert Wright, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield; Dr. John Owen, Bishop of St. Asaph; Dr. William Piers, Bishop of Bath and Wells; Dr. John Coke, Bishop of Hereford; Dr. M. Wren, Bishop of Ely; Dr. Robert Skinner, Bishop of Oxon; Dr. G. Goodman, Bishop of Gloucester; Dr. J. Towers, Bishop of Peterborough; Dr. M. Owen, Bishop of Llandaff.

In Parl. Hist., ii. 998, Warner is mentioned as Bishop of Peterborough, but he was Bishop of Rochester. See list of the thirteen impeached in August.

[259] Parl. Hist., ii. 1080.

[260] Lords' Journals, Feb. 16th.

[261] It is related of this eccentric person that, as master of a household, he never allowed the presence of a female servant.—See Worthies of Sussex, by Mark Antony Lower.

[262] Harl. MSS. in Lysons, iii. 56.

[263] There is a curious letter from Towers, then Dean of Peterborough, dated December 30, 1633, in which he seeks to make interest with Sir John Lambe, Dean of the Arches, for the succession of the bishopric. He says he should be almost as glad to see his friend Dr. Sibthorpe in the deanery as himself in the palace. State Papers Dom., Chas. I.

[264] Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, part ii. 78. The few particulars we have given respecting the bishops rest chiefly on his authority.

[265] Hacket's Memorial, ii. 226.

[266] The following State Papers Dom., (Chas. I.), was written at the same time:—

"Sir—What passeth in Scotland I presume you have already understood from Mr. Bere, so that I shall only say, that I believe the great plot there may prove much ado about nothing. Howsoever I am advertised that all the distractions thereupon have suddenly composed, which gives great hope of his Majesty's return ere it be long. Our Parliament, I mean the House of Commons, were very hot in getting the Lords to pass a bill which they had voted, and sent up against the bishops; but the news of a rebellion in Ireland made them cast that by, and ever since Saturday last both Houses have bestowed their time upon this business, and at length have concluded to send away the Lord Lieutenant speedily with 1,000 men and £50,000 in money, which is to be taken up of the city, if they can get it there, for the citizens of the best rank are at this time much discontented with the Parliament about protections, whereby they are stopped from getting in their debts to their great prejudice....

"H. Cogan.

"Charing Cross, 4th Nov., 1641."

[267] Letter of Thos. Wiseman, dated 4th Nov., 1641. (State Papers Dom., Chas. I.)

This letter discloses to us facts which were the subject of many a letter, and many a conversation in the autumn of 1641. Public indignation was awakened by these atrocities in a way resembling that with which we were all sadly familiar at the period of the Indian massacre.

[268] Mant's History of the Church of Ireland, i. 467, 470.

[269] Bramhall's Works, i., letters, p. 79. The Lord Deputy's letter in 1634 also gives a lamentable description.—Strafford's Letters, i. 187. See also Petition of Irish Convocation.—Collier, ii. 763.

[270] Mant's Church of Ireland, i. 548.

[271] Rushworth, iv. 406.

[272] For the Roman Catholic view of the case, see Lingard's History of England, x. 41.

[273] Lister's Autobiography, 7. The places named are on the great highway from South Lancashire to Halifax.

[274] Calamy's Ejected Ministers, i. 45.

[275] Nalson, ii. 647-688. Cogan (servant to some one addressed by Nicholas as Rt. Honble.) in a letter dated Charing Cross, November 18, 1641, after relating the story told by the tailor of White Cross Street, continues—"he went with all speed to the House of Commons, unto whom being with great importunity admitted, he at large related all the aforesaid passages, and withal shewed in how many places of his cloak and clothes he was run through; and after long examination of him they sent him up unto the Lords, who in like manner questioned him a long time, and ever since there hath been a great coil about the finding out of this matter, by searching of Recusants' houses, as my Lord of Worcester's in the Strand, St. Basil Brooke's, and others. Now, whether this be a truth or an imposture, time will resolve."

[276] Nalson, ii. 673. Dering's subsequent history does not belong to our pages. It is enough to say he was expelled the House, his published speeches were burnt by the hangman, he joined the King, and served in the army; and then, after all, made his peace with the Parliament.

[277] Clarendon, 433.

[278] Macaulay's Essays, i. 160.

[279] Quoted in Forster's Grand Remonstrance, 172.

[280] As to Royalists of the mean and selfish class, see Brodie, iii. 344-354.

[281] Parl. Hist., ii. 990.

[282] Nalson, ii. 673.

[283] Letters of the 13th and 14th of January, in the State Paper Office, indicate the excitement of the period, and the uncertainty felt about the King's movements.

[284] State Papers Dom., under date January 13, 1642. Parts of this letter, of which I have not transcribed the whole, are inserted by Mr. Forster in his Arrest of the Five Members. I had intended to introduce other interesting letters of that date, but as they are already printed by him, I refer the reader to his pages.

[285] March 28, 1642.—A conference was held respecting a petition from Kent, which prayed for a restoration of the Bishops, and the Liturgy, &c., &c. Some parts of the petition were voted scandalous, dangerous, and tending to sedition.—Lords' Journal.

April 21.—Both Houses made a curious order against counter-petitions—"As no man ought to petition for the Government established by law because he has already his wish; but they that desire an alteration cannot otherwise have their desires known, and therefore are to be countenanced."

April 28.—The Commons, by Mr. Oliver Cromwell, acquaint the Lords "that a great meeting is to be held next day on Blackheath, to back the rejected Kentish petition." 30—"The Men of Kent come to the House, and again present their petition formerly burnt. Several are committed to the Gate House and Fleet."—Parry's Parliaments and Councils of England, 385, 386.

[286] This appears from a letter by Slingsby.—State Papers, December 2, 1641.

[287] Rushworth, iv. 498.

[288] See also Neal, ii. chap. xii., and May, 247-265.

[289] July 28, 1642—The Lords give judgment against John Marston, Clerk, who had said—"The Parliament set forth flams to cozen and cheat the country and get their money, &c. He is deprived of all ecclesiastical preferments; made incapable hereafter to hold place or dignity in Church or Commonwealth; imprisoned in the Gatehouse; and ordered to give sureties."—Parliaments and Councils of England, 396.

[290] The Royalists sometimes appealed to Scripture.—There is amongst the State Papers, one containing texts of Scripture relating to royal authority:—1. Pray for the King; 2. Speak not evil of the King; 3. Exalt not thyself against the King; 4. The King's confidence in God; 5. The King loveth judgment; 6. The King ought to be feared; 7. God's care of his anointed; 8. Punishment of his adversaries; 9. Exhortation to obedience; 10. His triumph and thanksgiving.

There is also a paper of arguments in defence of taking up arms in maintenance of the true reformed religion:—From the law of nature. From Divine authority out of God's word. From human authority; Citations from fathers, &c. From reason. From practice of Reformed kirks, France, Holland, Germany, Bohemia, Switzerland, Hungary, and Sweden, which had all taken up arms for defence of religion against authority. From the custom of Kings in Reformed kirks—Elizabeth against Spain—James, in his Basilicon, approves reforming of Scotland—Charles sent a naval force to help French Protestants.

[291] I may add the following sentence from Hook's Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, iii. 291:—"The first lawyer whose writings we possess, Bracton, asserts, 'Lex omnium Rex.' A king not less than a subject may be a traitor."

[292] Parl. Hist., ii. 1168.

[293] These papers are given in full by Rushworth, iv. 624, 722. They are also to be found in Neal, ii. 553, 556, 563, as extracts from Rushworth, though much condensed.

[294] Rushworth, iv. 733.

[295] In the Weekly Intelligencer, October 18, 1642, mention is made of a woman called Moll Cutpurse, who wore both, saying she was for King and Parliament, too.

[296] "Powers to be resisted, or a dialogue arguing the Parliament's lawful resistance of the powers now in arms against them, and that archbishops, bishops, curates, neuters, all these are to be cut off by the law of God, therefore to be cast out by the law of the land, etc."—London, 1643. p. 13.

See also John Goodwin's Anti-cavalierisme.

That the people have a right to resist their rulers when they do wrong was a common opinion amongst Reformers in Mary's reign. See Maitland's Essays on Reformation in England, vi.

[297] All these particulars are mentioned in pamphlets of the King's collection.—British Museum, years 1642, 1643. Marvels and Monsters were rife at the time of the Reformation.—Maitland's Essays, 184.

[298] A list of contributors is printed in Choice Notes, Historical, p. 55.

[299] Such a contribution from William Bridge and his family is described in the Yarmouth Corporation Records.

[300] Baxter assigns a number of reasons which induced godly people to take side with the Parliament.—Life and Times, part i. 33. Mrs. Hutchinson, in the Memoirs of her husband, gives amusing sketches of some who joined that party for sinister ends, pp. 105-116. The Life of Adam Martindale, p. 31, indicates how Royalists sought shelter amidst Parliamentarians.

[301] It is worthy of remark that Cromwell began his military course at about forty, the same age as that at which Cæsar commenced his victories. Cæsar, however, when a young man, had served in the army, which Cromwell had not. It is a curious parallel that both should have been such successful soldiers after so long an engagement in peaceful occupations. Both died at the age of about fifty-five.

[302] Rushworth, v. 39.

[303] A small volume was published containing portions of Scripture, and was entitled The Souldier's Pocket Bible.

[304] As to the presence of Roman Catholics in the two armies, the following passages from Baxter and Hallam should be considered:—

Baxter, whose prejudices against the army must be borne in mind when he refers to the subject, only expresses suspicion. "The most among Cromwell's soldiers that ever I could suspect for Papists were but a few that began as strangers among the common soldiers, and by degrees rose up to some inferior offices, and were most conversant with the common soldiers; but none of the superior officers seemed such, though seduced by them."—Life and Times, part i. 78.

Hallam leans to the idea that the common reports had some foundation. He remarks: "It is probable that some foreign Catholics were in the Parliament's service. But Dodds says, with great appearance of truth, that no one English gentleman of that persuasion was in arms on their side.—Church History of England, iii. 28. He reports, as a matter of hearsay, that out of about 500 gentlemen who lost their lives for Charles in the civil war, 194 were Catholics. They were, doubtless, a very powerful faction in the court and army."—Hallam's Const. Hist. i. 587.

[305] Hibbert's History of Manchester, i. 210.

[306] "Some Special Passages from Warwickshire." King's Pamphlets, Brit. Mus. Acts and Orders, i. 124.

[307] King's Pamphlets, Brit. Mus. Acts and Orders, ii. 124.

[308] Rushworth, iv. 783.

[309] These were commenced by Mr. Case, of St. Mary Magdalen, Milk Street, and afterwards circulated from church to church for the convenience of the citizens.—Neal, ii. 592.

[310] Letter of Nehemiah Wharton, dated Aylesbury, August the 16th, 1642. Addressed to his much honoured friend, Mr. George Willingham, Merchant, at the Golden Anchor, Swithin Lane.—State Papers, Chas. I., Dom.

[311] In a letter, dated September 7, Wharton says of Northampton, for situation, circuit, stateliness of buildings, it exceeds Coventry, but the walls are miserably ruined though the country abounds in mines of stone. He also complains of certain soldiers of his regiment who discovered their base ends by declaring they would surrender their arms unless they received five shillings a man, which they said was promised them monthly by the committee. He alludes further to dissensions between foot and horse soldiers. In another letter he mentions a soldier's winter suit made for him, "edged with gold and silver lace," which he hoped he should never stain but in the blood of a cavalier.

[312] Letter of William Harrison, Berwick, dated 7th Sept., 1642, to his good friend Mr. Thomas Davison, at London.—State Papers, Chas. I., Dom.

[313] Whitelocke's Memorials, 65.

[314] Rushworth, v. 35. Baxter's Life and Times, part i. 43.

[315] Parl. Hist., ii. 1495-1504.

[316] Whitelocke, 65. Sanford's Illustrations, 535.

[317] Rushworth, v. 81.

[318] November 26th.—Rushworth, v. 69-71.

[319] Parl. Hist., iii. 59.

[320] The speech is printed in the Harleian Miscellany, v. 224.

[321] Calamy's Continuation, ii. 737.

[322] Edmund Calamy, the popular clergyman of the Commonwealth, was grandfather to the historian of that name.

[323] The Loyal Satirist.—Somers' Tracts, vii. 68.

[324] August 3, 1642.—Rushworth, v. 388.

[325] Parl. Hist., ii. 1465.

[326] On the 20th of January Maynard "spoke very earnestly that we should not abolish the jurisdiction of bishops until we had replaced another government in the Church: which he thought would not be very soon agreed upon, some being for a presbytery, some for an independent government, and others for he knew not what."—Harl. MSS., clxiv. p. 1078, A. B. Sanford's Illustrations, 550.

[327] See Commons' Journal and Lords' Journal.

[328] Baillie's Letters and Journals, ii. 58.

[329] Rushworth, v. 399-406. The papers were presented in February, 1642-3. The petition bears date 4th of January.

[330] Memorials, 67. The safe conduct bears date 28th of January, 1642-3.

[331] Rushworth, v. 166-169.

[332] Hist., 962.

[333] Rushworth, v. 459.

[334] Baillie's Letters, ii. 66, 67.

[335] Letters and Journals, i. 287.

[336] Nalson, ii. 766. Thomas Fuller advocated the calling of a synod.—Life, by Russell, 124.

[337] Rushworth, v. 337. Husband, 208.

"There must be some laymen in the synod, to overlook the clergy, lest they spoil the civil work; just as when the good woman puts a cat into the milk house to kill a mouse, she sends her maid to look after the cat, lest the cat should eat up the cream."—Selden's Table Talk, 169.

[338] Hacket, Bishop of Lichfield; Morley, Bishop of Winchester; Nicholson, Bishop of Gloucester; Prideaux, Bishop of Worcester; Reynolds, Bishop of Norwich.

[339] Calamy's Continuation, i. 28.—Bancroft, on the authority of Winthrop, says that the colonial Churches of America were invited to send deputies to the Westminster Assembly. But Hooker, of Hartford, "'liked not the business,' and deemed it his duty rather to stay in quiet and obscurity with his people in Connecticut, than to turn propagandist and plead for Independency in England."—United States, i. 417. Did Philip Nye seek to strengthen the Independents in the Assembly by inviting brethren from America?

[340] "It was almost implied in the meaning of the word. An 'Œcumenical Synod,' that is an 'Imperial gathering,' from the whole οἰκουμένη, or empire (for this was the technical meaning of the word, even in the Greek of the New Testament) could be convened only by the emperor."—Stanley's Lectures on the Eastern Church, 80. The first council of Arles, inferior only to a General Council, was called by the Emperor Constantine.—Euseb. Hist., lib. x. c. v.

[341] The Divines were allowed by the Parliamentary ordinance four shillings a day.

[342] Perhaps some one better versed in the controversy touching powers of Convocation than I am might shew that, after all, the power of decision, and the liberty of discussion in the two Houses, do not far exceed what was allowed to the Westminster Assembly. It is admitted on all hands that Convocation cannot meet without a royal writ, nor make canons without licence, nor publish them without confirmation by the Great Seal, and some contend that Convocation may not even discuss any matters without royal licence.—See Lathbury's History of Convocation, 112.

While I am revising this book for the press, I find the following in to-day's Times, January 11th, 1866: "Convocation is nothing more whatever than a general commission of enquiry into the affairs of the Church empowered to report its opinions to the Crown." Change "Crown" into "Parliament," and this passage describes the Westminster Assembly, so far as its power was concerned.

[343] Rushworth, v. 339. It does not appear clearly whether the sermon was delivered in the abbey or the chapel. Rushworth, after mentioning the sermon and the presence of the two Houses, says of the Divines, "After which they assembled in the said chapel:" as if the "Houses" had heard the sermon in some other part of the abbey.

I do not find any notice of Twiss's sermon in the list of his works.

[344] The Upper House of Convocation met in Henry the Seventh's Chapel both in 1572 and in 1640.—Gibson's Synodus Anglicanus.

[345] Washington Irving.

[346] Fuller's Church History, iii. 448.

[347] Neal, iii. 60.

[348] Journal of the Assembly. Lightfoot's Works, xiii. 3.

[349] This was Mr. John White, of Dorchester, great grandfather of John and Charles Wesley.—See Kirk's Mother of the Wesleys, 18.

[350] Lightfoot, xiii. 7-9. Hetherington's History of the Westminster Assembly, p. 114.

[351] This will be inserted in the Appendix.

[352] True and faithful Narrative of the Death of Master Hampden, quoted in Nugent's Life of Hampden, 363.

[353] Scarborough church was stormed in 1644 by the Parliament soldiers, and afterwards fortified by them. It is remarkable to find church towers so constructed, as to shew they were intended for warlike purposes. Melsonby and Middleham, in Yorkshire, and Harlestone, in Northamptonshire, are examples.—Poole's Ecclesiastical Architecture, 358.

[354] Joseph Lister's Narrative, 23. Bradford was taken on the 2nd of July.

[355] Hist., 416.

[356] Rushworth, v. 287.

[357] Rushworth, v. 290. Calamy's Account, ii. 675. Palmer's Non. Con. Mem. ii. 467.

[358] Rushworth, v. 344.

[359] Sanford's Illustrations, 575.

[360] David's Annals of Nonconformity in Essex, 535.

[361] Vol. ii. 103, &c.

[362] Instructions given are inserted in Parl. Hist., iii. 151.

[363] Baillie, ii. 88, 97.

[364] Baxter's Life and Times, p. i. 48.—He adds that this public explication was given by Mr. Coleman, when preaching on the Covenant to the House of Lords: "That by prelacy we mean not all Episcopacy, but only the form which is here described."

On the 12th of September, the Solemn League and Covenant was proposed to the Parliament, who, on the 21st, ordered it to be printed.

On the 20th, the Lords declared that none shall have command till they have taken the Covenant.

[365] II. Chron. xv. 12, 14, 15.—The 15th verse is printed with two other texts on the title page of the Solemn League and Covenant, published Sept. 22nd, 1643.

[366] Cunninghame's History of the Church of Scotland, i. 315, ii. 81.

[367] The Solemn League and Covenant will be inserted in the Appendix.

[368] Nye's Exhortation was published, and a portion of it, extolling the Covenant, may be seen in Hanbury's Memorials, ii. 215.

[369] Gouge was a Puritan divine who died in 1653, after being minister of Blackfriars nearly forty-six years.

[370] In the State Paper Office is the following letter written by Falkland in the spring of the year.

"Sir,—If my health were not so ill as yours, with all my business to boot, I should not hope to be excused for being so slow in giving you thanks for two so great favours. I heartily wish we were in a condition of being able to make use of any good inclinations to us beyond sea, and perhaps they are the kinder, because they find it safe to be so, whilst we are as we are, that is, unable to take them at their words, and make use of their kindness. Of Mr. Wightman's commitment I never heard before I read your letter: the petition for him is in Mr. Secretary's hands, but I will assist it to my power; though I conceive it indiscreetly done of the Company to send so obnoxious a person, and yet more indiscreetly done of him to be sent, who could not but know that he was such. My desire of peace, and my opinion of the way to it, agree wholly with yours, for which I congratulate with myself, and wish the second followed (but both sides must then contribute) that the first might be obtained, and I might then have occasion to congratulate with the kingdom too. His Majesty hath commanded me to let you know that he is very sensible of your present condition, and that he is sorry for nothing more than that his friends (especially so honest and deserving a man) should be in danger for being so, and be not able to protect them, but that if retiring of yourself hither out of their power would stand with your occasions, he assures you, you shall be very welcome, but what to advise you, if you stay, I find he knows not, and I am sure I know as little. I wish, whether you stay or come, it might be in my power to serve you. I assure you, Sir, if there were any occasion of doing it by my readiness to catch at, and my diligence in pursuing it, you should find what I must now desire you to believe, that I am, Sir, your very really humble Servant,

Falkland.

"18th April."

(Addressed) "For the Right Honourable Sir Thomas Rowe, Knight, one of His Majesty's most honourable Privy Council."—Dom. Car. i., April 18, 1643.

[371] Rushworth, v. 486.

[372] Perfect Diurnal, 2nd of Sept., 1643.

[373] Baillie's Letters, ii. 99, 113-115.

[374] Rushworth, v. 358.

[375] "Horses have stood ready in several stables, and almost eaten out their heads, for those that were to go with the news to Oxford."—Parliament Scout.

[376] The Diurnals which supply these statements are not trustworthy.

[377] Amongst the State Papers is the following programme, or, as it is entituled, "The proceeding" of Mr. Pym's funeral:—

Two Conductors.
Servants in Cloaks.
Friends in Cloaks.
Esquires.
Knights.
Baronets.
Divines.
The Preacher.
The Pennon borne by Mr. Faulconer.
Rouge Dragon Helm and crest.
Lancaster Coat of arms.

Mr. Alex. Pym, chief mourner.
Mr. Simons and Mr. Nicholls.
Mr. Askew.
Mrs. Symons and Mrs. Katherine Pym, and other Ladies and Gentlemen.
Then the Lords.
Then the Speaker of the House of Commons.

An endorsement shews that the three officers of arms allowed by the committee for this funeral were appointed £20 apiece, making a sum of £60. The following names also appear on the back of the document: Mr. Solicitor, Sir Arthur Haslerigge, Sir John Clotworthy, Mr. Knightley, Sir Gilbert Gerard, Sir Harry Vane, Mr. Stroud. Probably all these were present.

[378] Pym defended himself against imputations on his religious character, by saying that he had ever been a faithful son to the Protestant religion, without the least relation in his belief to the gross errors of Anabaptism or Brownism. He had sought a reformation of the Church of England—but not its overthrow. Neither envy nor private grudge against the bishops, who were personally inimical to him, made him averse to their functions, but only his zeal for religion, which he saw injured by the too extended authority of the prelates, who should have been upright and humble, "shearing their flocks and not flaying them."—Rushworth, v. 378.

Marshall in his Sermon and Baxter in his Saint's Rest would not have spoken of Pym as they did, had they not been satisfied that charges against his moral character were utterly untrue. Marshall includes chastity in the catalogue of his virtues. I can find no proof of anything improper in his intimacy with the Countess of Carlisle. For extracts from Marshall's Sermons, and the Diurnals, see Forster's British Statesmen, vol. ii. 294-302.

[379] Baillie says: "The plottings are incessant."—Letters and Journals, ii. 132.

[380] This is stated in a curious book, called Magnalia Dei Anglicana; or, England's Parliamentary Chronicle, by John Vicars, part iii., entitled God's Ark Overtopping the World's Waves, 135. A full account of these plots is given from the writer's own point of view. Vicars was a violent Presbyterian, and his book is full of party prejudice and curious information. Baillie notices these plots pretty fully, ii. 137.

[381] Mr. Nye and Mr. Goodwin entered into conference with Ogle only that they might entrap him. In the Journal of the House of Commons, January 26th, 1643-4, it is recorded "that Mr. Goodwin, Mr. Nye, with the privity of my Lord General and some members of the House, had conference with Ogle—Resolved, 'that it doth appear upon the whole matter, that the King and his council at Oxford do endeavour and embrace all ways to raise and ferment divisions betwixt us and our brethren of Scotland, and amongst ourselves under the fair pretences of easing tender consciences; that during these fair pretences their immediate design was the ruin of the kingdom by the destroying and burning the magazines thereof; that thanks be returned to Mr. Nye and Mr. Goodwin from both Houses.'" We learn from Baillie, ii. 137, that John Goodwin is the person here intended.

[382] State Papers, April 13, 1651. Bundle 646. Ogle is here styled "Colonel."

[383] Vicars' Chronicle, iii.

[384] Vicars' Chronicle, iii. 128, Baillie, ii. 134, and Perfect Diurnal. In the Perfect Diurnal of Thursday, June 19th, 1645, there is an account of another City feast. After dinner, and grace said by Mr. Marshall, both Houses of Parliament, the Assembly of Divines, the Aldermen of the City, and all the rest being assembled in the hall, they sung the 46th Psalm, and after that they departed.

[385] Mr. Bruen, of Tarvin, in the Deanery of Chester, an eminent Puritan (born 1560, died 1625) "the phœnix of his age," distinguished himself as an iconoclast. Finding in his own chapel superstitious images, and idolatrous pictures in the painted windows, and they so thick and dark that there was, as he himself says, "scarce the breadth of a groat of white glass amongst them," took orders to pull them down, indeed by the Queen's injunctions utterly to extinguish and destroy all pictures, paintings, and other monuments of idolatry and superstition, so that there might remain no memory of the same in the walls, glass windows, or elsewhere within their churches and houses. The Bible and ecclesiastical history are appealed to as further authorities. Theodosius abscondit simulacra gentium, omnes enim cultus idolorum cultus ejus abscondit; omnes eorum ceremonias obliteravit. Ambrosii Orat. in Mort. Theo.—See Hinde's Life of Bruen.

[386] Rushworth, v. 358.

[387] Oct 3. P. Diurnal. "The Commons, for the better taking away of superstitious ceremonies in churches, as in wearing the surplice and the like; which they had noticed (notwithstanding all former orders) was still used in sundry places—especially at the Abbey of Westminster—agreed in a further order, for the taking away of all copes and surplices, belonging to the said Abbey of Westminster, and to forbid the wearing of them in that or any other church or cathedral in England."

[388] Laud was at work upon the restoration of St. Paul's in 1640, "the whole body was finished with Portland stone excellent against all smoke and weather, and the tower scaffolded up to the top with purpose to take it all down and to rebuild it more fair." After his apprehension "the scaffolds were taken away and sold, with some of the lead which covered this famous structure."—Chamberlayne's Anglica Notitia, part ii. 155.

In the State Paper Office there is a document by Montague, Bishop of Chichester, containing an exhortation to the clergy of his diocese, giving thirteen reasons for their contributing to the fund for repairing the Cathedral of St. Paul. He dwells upon the dignity of St. Paul's as, in a sort, the mother church of the kingdom, and stimulates the persons addressed to liberality by a consideration of what was done by their predecessors.—Calendar, 1633-4, 384.

[389] 1643, May 27.—Resolved, an ordinance for borrowing the plate in all cathedrals superstitiously used upon their altars.

1644, April 24.—Ordered, the mitre and crosier staff found in St. Paul's Church to be forthwith sold, and the brass and iron in Henry the Seventh's Chapel.—Parry's Councils and Parliaments.

Whatever was now done in St. Paul's, worse things had been done there and elsewhere at the time of the Reformation.—See Strype's Cranmer, i. 251. Besides spoiling, embezzling, and taking away ornaments, he says, "they used also commonly to bring horses and mules into and through churches, and shooting off hand guns." It should be recollected, that the Puritans of the seventeenth century were familiar with such memories, and that reverence for sacred places had long been on the decline.

[390] Corporation Records in the Guildhall.

[391] Hard Measure, prefixed to Hall's Works, p. xviii. The proceedings at Norwich were of an infamous description, yet more shameful acts had been perpetrated by the Roman Catholic fathers of these very citizens. In 1272, we are told "Quam plures de familia, aliquos subdiacanos, aliquos clericos, aliquos laicos in claustro et infra septa monasterii interfecerunt; aliquos extraxerunt et in civitate morti tradiderunt, aliquos incarceraverunt. Post quæ ingressi, omnia sacra vasa, libros, aurum, et argentum, vestes et omnia alia quæ non fuerunt igne consumpta depradati fuerunt: monachos omnes, præter duos vel tres, a monasterio fugantes."—Anglia Sacra, i. 399.

[392] The following appears in the records of the Norwich Corporation: "Ordered that the churchwardens shall demolish the stump cross at St. Saviour's, and take the stones thereof for the use of the city."

[393] Calamy's Abridgment of Baxter, 24.

[394] Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson, p. 80.

[395] This was in spite of orders "to do no injury to the church." Before these wars the cathedral suffered through neglect, as appears from a draft letter written by Archbishop Laud to the dean and chapter, in the name of the King, complaining that the dotations and allowances were very mean, and that there was "little left to keep so goodly a fabric in sufficient reparation."—State Papers, Domestic. (undated) vol. cclxxxi. 57.

[396] Mr. Britton asserts that numbers were removed when the cathedral underwent repairs in 1786. Two tons of brass were taken to the brazier's shop.—Winkle's Cathedrals, iii. 43.

[397] Poole's History of Ecclesiastical Architecture, p. 260.

All the mutilation of statues must not be put down to the Puritan account, nor the destruction of the mosaic pavement in the choir. "One half of its eastern border was entirely destroyed when the altar-piece was put up at the commencement of the last century." The rest but narrowly escaped.—Neale's History and Antiquities of Westminster Abbey, p. 20.

Oliver Cromwell has been charged with despoiling the tomb of Henry V., but we read in Stowe's Annals: "A royal image of silver and gilt was laid upon his tomb, which Queen Catherine his wife caused to be made for him; but about the latter end of King Henry VIII., the head of the king's image being of massy silver, was broken off and conveyed clean away, with the plates of silver and gilt that covered his body." p. 363.

It is a common story amongst cathedral vergers, that Cromwell turned churches into stables. Like stories are told in the East, with judgments superadded. "It was related to us by our Tartar, that about fifty years ago, Tamr Pasha turned the church into a stable, and next morning all his horses were found dead."—Badger's Nestorians, i. 68.

[398] It appears from the following entry that when the wars were over, the cathedral was desecrated by being made a prison. "That a letter be written to the Mayor of Salisbury, to let him know that the Council are informed that the Dutch prisoners who were lately sent to the town, to be kept there, have done much spoil upon the pillars of the cloisters, and to the windows of the library there, being committed to custody in that place, and also that by reason that due care hath not been had over them, some of them have escaped, &c." October 10, 1653.—State Papers, Order Book of Council.

[399] Again we may remark that like excesses had been committed in Roman Catholic times. In the annals of Rochester, 1264, we find: "Portæ, siquidem, ejus circumquque exustæ sunt, chorus ejus in luctum, et organa ejus in vocem flentium sunt concitata. Quid pluras, loca sacra, utpote oratoria, claustra, capitulum infirmaria, et oracula quæque divina, stabula equorum sunt effecta; et animalium immunditiis spurcitiisque cadaverum ubique sunt repleta."—Anglia Sacra, i. 351.

After the Reformation Ridley was prevented from giving Grindal a prebend in St. Paul's by the King's Council, who had bestowed it on the King, for the furniture of his stable.—Blunt's History of the Reformation, 244.

In 1561, according to Strype, the south aisle of the cathedral was used for a horse fair.

[400] Rushworth, v. 476.

Instructions were given for the taking of the Covenant throughout the kingdom, "the manner of the taking it to be thus:—The minister to read the whole Covenant distinctly and audibly in the pulpit, and during the time of the reading thereof the whole congregation to be uncovered; and at the end of his reading thereof, all to take it standing, lifting up their right hands bare, and then afterwards to subscribe it severally by writing their names (or their marks, to which their names are to be added) in a parchment roll or a book, whereinto the Covenant is to be inserted, purposely provided for that end, and kept as a record in the parish."—Husband's Collection, 421.

[401] Husband's Coll., 416.

[402] Neal, iii. 81.

[403] Husband's Coll., 404.

[404] In the State Paper Office are additional instructions, (dated March 6th, 1643-4,) to the Earl of Rutland, Sir W. Armyn, Bart., Sir H. Vane, and others, to declare to our brethren of Scotland that the Parliament have settled a course for taking the late Solemn League and Covenant throughout this kingdom and dominion of Wales, "we do hereby give you full power and authority by yourselves, or such as you shall appoint, to cause the said League and Covenant to be taken throughout the several places and counties where you shall come."

Vane, on the scaffold, said, respecting the Covenant: "The holy ends therein contained I fully assent to, and have been as desirous to observe; but the rigid way of prosecuting it and the oppressing uniformity that hath been endeavoured by it, I never approved."

Wood states, (Ath. Ox., ii. 84), that Strode made a motion to the effect, "that all those that refused the Covenant, (being certain ill-wishers to the laws and liberties of this kingdom,) might, therefore, have no benefit of those laws and liberties." He adds, "that motion being somewhat too desperate, was waived for the present, and took no effect."

[405] See Sermon on Solemn League and Covenant, by Saltmarsh.—Tracts in Brit. Mus., vol. 253.

[406] These also are in the British Museum; I think in the same volume as the former.

[407] Bishop Hall went on ordaining Episcopal clergymen in spite of the Covenant. He says: "The synodals both in Norfolk and Suffolk, and all the spiritual profits of the diocese were also kept back, only ordinations and institutions continued awhile. But after the Covenant was appointed to be taken, and was generally swallowed of both clergy and laity, my power of ordination was with some strange violence restrained; for when I was going on in my wonted course, which no law or ordinance had inhibited, certain forward volunteers in the city, banding together, stir up the mayor, and aldermen, and sheriffs, to call me to an account for an open violation of their Covenant."—Hard Measure, Hall's Works, p. xvii.

[408] Memoirs of the Life of Col. Hutchinson, 143-191.

[409] Mant's History of the Church of Ireland, i. 580.

[410] Eusebius observes, in his Epistle respecting the Nicene Creed, that he and his friends did not refuse to adopt the word ὁμοούσιος, "peace being the end in view, as well as the not falling away from sound doctrine." He excused the damnatory clause, simply on the ground that it aggrieved none by prohibiting the use of unscriptural phraseology.—Socrates' Ecc. Hist., b. i. c. 8.

[411] "Epistle" by John Canne, quoted in Hanbury's Memorials, iii. 380-386.

The following passage occurs in a paper by the Dissenting Brethren in 1646, also quoted in Hanbury, iii. 62:—"This Covenant was professedly so attempered in the first framing of it, as that we of different judgments might take it, both parties being present at the framing of it in Scotland." "It is as free for us to give our interpretation of the latitude or nearness of uniformity intended, as for our brethren."

[412] The following passages illustrate the state of public feeling in reference to the Covenant:—

"Men cry shame on the Covenant. Those that took it down cast it up again, and those that refuse it have given a world of arguments that it is unreasonable, which arguments our Assembly, like dull, ignorant rascals, never answered. I know, my Lords, many of our friends never took this oath, but they refused it out of mere conscience." ... "I hold the Covenanters extremely reasonable. Though some malignants take it, yet many refuse it; and, as some who love us do hate the Covenant, so some who hate us do take it. Yet our friends who hate it do love to force others to it, for their hatred to malignants is more than to the Covenant; and, as the one takes it to save his estate, so do others give it to make him lose his estate. They both love the estate, and both hate the Covenant."—A learned Speech spoken in the House of Peers by the Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery upon the 28th July last, taken out of Michael Ouldsworth's own Copy. State Papers, 1647.

"All this while I did not take the National Covenant, not because I refused to do, for I would have made no bones to take, swear, and sign it, and observe it too, for I had then a principle, having not yet studied a better one, that I wronged not my conscience in doing any thing I was commanded to do by those whom I served. But the truth is, it was never offered to me, every one thinking it was impossible I could get any charge, unless I had taken the Covenant either in Scotland or England."—Sir James Turner's Memoirs of his own Life and Times, published by the Bannatyne Club, 16.

Turner was a Royalist.

[413] Journals., Sept. 21st.—It was resolved by the Commons: That the Assembly of godly Divines, who, by Ordinance, July 1st, 1643, met in King Henry the Seventh's Chapel, shall, in respect of the coldness of the said chapel, have power to adjourn themselves to the Jerusalem Chamber, in the College of Westminster.

[414] For some of this information I am indebted to the kindness of the Dean of Westminster.

[415] Baillie's Letters, ii. 108, 109.

[416] This is stated on the authority of Brook's Lives, iii. 15. His account of Twiss's illness is confused, so is Clark's (Lives, p. 17,) to which Brook refers.

[417] As Erastianism is a word vaguely used, I subjoin the principal theses in the Book on Excommunication, by Erastus, and his own account of the occasion of his writing it.

"Excommunication is nothing else but a public and solemn exclusion from the sacraments, especially the Lord's Supper, after an investigation by the elders."—Thesis viii.

"In the Old Testament none were debarred from the sacraments on account of immorality of conduct."—Thesis xxiii.

"Christ did not hinder Judas, who betrayed Him, from eating the paschal lamb."—Thesis xxviii.

"It is not the will of Christ that His kingdom in these lands should be circumscribed within narrower limits than He appointed for it anciently amongst the Jews."—Thesis xxxi.

"As in the account given of the celebration of the sacraments we see no mention is made of excommunication, so neither in the history of their institution can anything warranting that practice be discovered."—Thesis xxxvii.

"'Tell it to the church' means nothing else than tell it to the magistrate of thy own people."—Thesis lii.

"I see no reason why the Christian magistrate at the present day should not possess the same power which God commanded the magistrate to exercise in the Jewish commonwealth."—Thesis lxxii.

"If then the Christian magistrate possesses not only authority to settle religion according to the directions given in the Holy Scriptures, and to arrange the ministries thereof, but also, in like manner, to punish crimes, in vain do some among us now meditate the setting up of a new kind of tribunal, which would bring down the magistrate himself to the rank of a subject of other men."—Thesis lxxiv.

According to Erastus, an ignorant man, a heretic, or an apostate should be excluded from the sacraments. But sins were to be punished by the civil magistrate.

The theses were handed about in MS., and not published till 1589—six years after the death of the author—with only the fictitious name "Pesclavii," 1589. The work was reprinted at Amsterdam, in 1649. Two old English translations exist, published in 1659 and 1682. There is a modern one by Rev. R. Lee, D.D., Edinburgh, 1844.

The occasion of writing the theses, Erastus says, was a proposition that a select number of elders should sit in the name of the whole church, and judge who were fit to be admitted to the Lord's Supper, which he thought would introduce dangerous divisions.

Theodore Beza wrote a reply, published at Geneva, 1590. Selden's views of excommunication in his Table Talk (p. 56) are similar to those of Erastus, though not so full.

Hobbes wrote his Leviathan in 1651, in which he says (pt. iii., ch. 42, p. 287, London edition), "The books of the New Testament, though most perfect rules of Christian doctrine, could not be made laws by any other authority than that of kings or sovereign assemblies." His doctrine with regard to Christianity is, that socially considered it is "good and safe advice," but not obligatory law till the government of a country shall make it so. This part of the philosopher's theory runs on the same line with Erastianism, only it is pushed further.

[418] Altogether there were ten or eleven Independents in the Assembly. Baillie mentions Goodwin, Nye, Burroughs, Bridge, Carter, Caryl, Philips, and Sterry.—Letters, &c., ii. 110.

[419] His works have been recently republished. His Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians illustrates what is said here.

[420] See The Wounded Conscience Cured, &c., by William Bridge, 1642.

[421] Baillie remarks: "Liberty of conscience, and toleration of all or any religion, is so prodigious an impiety, that this religious Parliament cannot but abhor the very naming of it. Whatever may be the opinions of John Goodwin, Mr. Williams, and some of that stamp, yet Mr. Burroughs, in his late Irenicum, upon many unanswerable arguments, explodes that abomination."—See Tracts on Liberty of Conscience, 270.

[422] Neal says he died of consumption (Hist., iii. 377), but the following appears in the Perfect Occurrences, 13th November, 1646:—"This day Mr. Burrows, the minister, a godly, reverend man, died. It seems he had a bruise by a fall from a horse some fortnight since; he fell into a fever, and of that fever died, and is by many godly people much lamented."

[423] P. 190.

[424] I do not attempt to vindicate this great man against the charge of inconsistency. One side of a subject was everything to him while he gazed at it. He had no faculty for harmonizing apparently opposite truths, and was apt, as ardent men are, to fall into errors, from which his clearly expressed opinion on certain points ought to have saved him. Mr. Hallam (Literature of Europe, iii. 112), in whose severe judgment of Taylor's inconsistency I cannot coincide, thinks that one inconsistent chapter, (the seventeenth) was interpolated after the rest of the treatise was complete. This is possible, but it is also possible that Taylor when first writing his book might suddenly swing from one side to the other, and then come round again. It has been said that Taylor forgot his liberality when he became a bishop. His biographer, Bishop Heber, attempts to meet this charge.—Works, i. 30. It may be added, that the Dissuasive from Popery, published in 1664, proceeds on the same principles as the Liberty of Prophesying. See Dissuasive, part ii. book i.—Works, x. 383.

How Taylor's work was regarded by a Royalist and an Episcopalian may be seen in Mrs. Sadleir's Letter to Roger Williams. "I have also read Taylor's book of the Liberty of Prophesying, though it please not me, yet I am sure it does you, or else I know you would not have wrote to me to have read it. I say, it and you would make a good fire. But have you seen his 'Divine Institution of the Office Ministerial?'" Life of Roger Williams, 99. Mrs. Sadleir was daughter of Sir Edward Coke. A writer in the Ecclesiastic, April, 1853, p. 179, remarks: "Whatever Taylor may have been thought of since, certainly his contemporaries amongst the Church party had no very high opinion of him."

[425] Sermon preached before the House of Commons, March 31st, 1647.

[426] Ward's Life of Henry More, 171. I have here confined myself to those in the Church of England who advocated toleration, pointing out the grounds which they adopted as distinguished from those occupied by the Independents. Others, who proceeded in the same advocacy on the broadest principles of justice, will be hereafter noticed, i.e., John Goodwin, Leonard Busher, and Sir Henry Vane. Of the last of these it may be remarked that so early as 1637 he used this memorable language, in New England: "Scribes and Pharisees, and such as are confirmed in any way of error, all such are not to be denied cohabitation, but are to be pitied and reformed; Ishmael shall dwell in the presence of his brethren." (Bancroft's United States, i. 390.) The most thorough advocate of intellectual liberty in the New World was Roger Williams, who, though in many respects an impracticable man, and wanting in catholicity of spirit, appears to have been an original and intrepid champion for the political independence of theological opinions, as well as a noble minded and disinterested leader in colonial enterprise. Milton advocates toleration in his Areopagitica, a speech to the Parliament of England for the liberty of unlicensed printing, 1644. Harrington's Political Aphorisms, in which liberty of conscience is justly placed on a political basis, was not published until 1659. Episcopius and Crellius were early advocates for toleration. See Hallam's Introduction to Literature of Europe, iii. 103, 104.

[427] Const. Hist., i. 612.

[428] The petition is largely quoted by Waddington in his Surrey Congregational History, p. 32, and the pamphlet, entitled Queries of Highest Consideration, is quoted in Hanbury, ii. 246.

[429] For proofs and illustrations of this we refer to our second volume. In the meanwhile we may observe that in An Attestation, published by the Cheshire ministers in 1648, allusion is made to some of the Independents as "averse in a great measure to such a toleration as might truly be termed intolerable and abominable"—meaning by that universal toleration.—Nonconformity in Cheshire. Introduction, xxvi.

[430] Life of Goodwin, by Jackson, 93.

[431] A Reply of Two of the Brethren to A. S., 1644. Quoted by Jackson, p. 116. Goodwin states "that the part which treats of religious liberty was the production of his own pen."—Jackson, 57.

[432] Baillie, writing to Mr. Spang, May 17th, 1644, (Letters, ii. 184,) says: "The Independents here, finding they have not the magistrate so obsequious as in New England, turn their pens, as you will see in M.S.," (which he had before identified as Goodwin's, of Coleman Street,) "to take from the magistrate all power of taking any coercive order with the vilest heretics. Not only they praise your magistrate who for policy gives some secret tolerance to diverse religions, wherein, as I conceive, your Divines preach against them as great sinners; but avows that by God's command the magistrate is discharged to put the least discourtesy on any man—Jew, Turk, Papist, Socinian, or whatever, for his religion." "The five will not say this, but M.S. is of as great authority here as any of them." Yet, though this sentiment is by Baillie confined to Goodwin, and expressly said not to be shared by the five, it has by some been put into the lips of Nye.

[433] As I have already observed, Harrington also did this. One of his political aphorisms on the subject is admirable, "When civil liberty, is entire it includes liberty of conscience. When liberty of conscience is entire, it includes civil liberty."

[434] Letter from Grindal to Bullinger, June 11th, 1568. Zurich Letters, First Series.

[435] This is extracted from p. 12 of a small volume entitled Historical Papers, First Series, Congregational Martyrs, published by Elliot Stock. The document bears internal signs of genuineness, but it is not said where the original may be found.

[436] Ecce Homo, 16.

[437] April 21st, 1581.

[438] Fuller's Church Hist., iii. 62.

[439] Strype's Annals, vol. iii. part i. 22-30.

[440] Fuller's Church Hist., iii. 65.

[441] Lansdowne M.S., 115, art. 55. Lord Keeper Bacon had a chaplain of Puritan tendencies. See Strype's Parker, ii. 69. Lady Bacon shewed her learning and Protestant zeal by translating Jewel's Apology,—Ibid., i. 354.

The Rev. Thomas Hill, late of Cheshunt, informs me:—"It is undeniable that there was a congregation of Separatists as early as the days of Elizabeth, in the neighbourhood of Theobalds. One or more of the ministers suffered persecution and imprisonment, but I do not think it improbable that the influence of Cecil, Lord Burleigh, who then resided at Theobalds, may have afforded some degree of protection to the Nonconformists of the neighbourhood."

[442] Hanbury, i. 38. Harl. Miscellany, ii. 21.

[443] Strype's Annals, iv. 245. Hanbury, i. 85.

[444] Published by Camden Society.

[445] This is the name written in the MS., no doubt intended for Greenwood.

[446] Letter from Thomas Phillips to William Sterrell, April 7, 1593. State Papers, Dom. The bracketed portions are underlined in the original, the writer desiring, in a postscript, that the passages so marked, should be "disguised with cipher."

[447] Strype's Annals, iv. 186. Hanbury's Mem., i. 90. The Archbishop referred to was Whitgift. Rippon died in 1592.

[448] "He was a person most excellently well read in theological authors, but withal was a most zealous Puritan, or, as his son Henry used to say, the first Independent in England."—Wood's Ath. Oxon., i. 464.

[449] Jacob's book, printed at Middleburgh, 1599, was entitled: A Defence of the Churches and Ministry of England. Written in two Treatises against the Reasons and Objections of Mr. Francis Johnson and others of the Separation called Brownists. Johnson replied in an Answer to Master H. Jacob, his Defence, &c. 1600.

[450] Hanbury's Mem., i. 226.

[451] See Hanbury's Mem., i. 227.

[452] His name is spelt in different ways.

[453] The church of which Lathrop was minister is said to have been formed in Southwark; if so, the fact of its now assembling in Blackfriars shews how, in times of persecution, the places of meeting were changed according to circumstances. As they had no chapels, and were proscribed by law, they met where they could.

[454] His name was ordinarily spelt "ten," although it stands "tin" in the MS. He was Judge of the Prerogative Court, and father of Henry Marten.

[455] Dr. Thomas Rives was the King's Advocate.

[456] In an interesting volume, just published by Dr. Waddington, entitled Surrey Congregational History, the following entries taken from the records of the High Commission in relation to Lathrop and Eaton, at a later date, are inserted, p. 20:—"June 12, 1634. John Lathrop, of Lambeth Marsh. Bond to be certified, and to be attached, if he appear not on the next Court-day.—June 19, 1634. Bond ordered to be certified, and he to be attached for non-appearance.—October 9. Samuel Eaton and John Lathrop to be attached for non-appearance, and bonds to be certified.—February 19, 1634-5. Samuel Eaton and John Lathrop, for contempt, in not appearing to answer articles touching their keeping conventicles. Their bonds ordered to be certified, and they attached and committed."

[457] The Brownist's Synagogue, 1641.

[458] Henry Jacob, probably, is the first who used the term independent in relation to a Christian Church. "Each congregation," he says, "is an entire and Independent body politic, and endowed with power immediately under and from Christ, as every proper Church is and ought to be."—Declaration and Plainer Opening of Certain Points, &c., 1611, p. 13.

[459] I am indebted for this and other extracts from the Yarmouth Corporation Records to a MS. history of the Yarmouth Church, compiled by my friend, the late Mr. Davey, of that town.

[460] The words printed in italics are underscored in the copy from which these extracts are transcribed.

[461] This Confession is described, and extracts from it are given in Hanbury, i. 293. It is attributed to Henry Jacob.

[462] Hanbury's Memorials, ii. 279-281.

[463] Ibid., ii. 409.

In a pamphlet by Katherine Chidley, it is asserted the Separatists supported their own poor.—Hanbury's Memorials, ii. 112.

[464] The whole account of Congregationalism in Yarmouth is drawn up from the records of the Corporation, and of the Independent Church there.

[465] See Oxoniana, iv. 188; and copy of the woodcut in Knight's Old England.

The Parliamentarians made a great mistake in not planting a garrison at Oxford, as they might have easily done when the war broke out.—See Whitelocke's Memorials, 63. The shrewd lawyer was not destitute of military insight, and justly blames Lord Say, who was opposed to the Parliament's taking possession of the city, because of the "improbability, in his opinion, that the King would settle there."

[466] Macaulay's Hist., iii. 18.

[467] Life of Chillingworth, by P. Des Maizeaux, 277.

[468] Rushworth, v. 354.

[469] A year afterwards, we find the following statement in Perfect Occurrences (June 17, 1644), where after describing the cruel spoliation of Abingdon and Worcester by fire by the Cavaliers, the news-writer thus continues:—"I could here insert the platform of all their projects, had I room to bring it in, set forth in a picture, intended to be sent to Seville, in Spain, and to be hanged in the great cathedral there, this day brought before the Parliament, where the Queen directs the King to present his sceptre to the Pope, and all the Cavaliers with him, and popish leaders with her, rejoicing to see it, he having a joyant, [this means perhaps, joyan, a jewel] to resemble his Majesty and she the Virgin Mary, and this motto upon the cases: 'Para Sancta Aña de Sevilla.' This picture is to be hung up for public view, and is enough to convince the strongest malignant in England."

[470] Parl. Hist., iii. 236.

[471] Meditations on the Times, xvii.

[472] Rushworth, v. 346.

[473] Ussher's Life, by Elrington, 238.

[474] Life, by Heber prefixed to his Works, i. 21, and another, by Willmott, 112.

[475] Memorials of Fuller, by Russell, 142, 148, 151, 153.

[476] He however maintained that Episcopacy was Apostolic. Life, 299, 300.

[477] There are several papers relating to Chillingworth in the Lambeth MSS. Nos. 943, 857-935.

[478] Yet Cheynell says, while some thought him uncharitable, others were of opinion he had been too indulgent in suffering Mr. Chillingworth to be buried like a Christian.—See Life of William Chillingworth, by P. Des Maizeaux, for the particulars we have given.

It has been stated that Cheynell was deranged, and certainly his own account of his conduct towards Chillingworth would indicate that at least he was touched. But then, after all this, we find him sent down as a visitor to Oxford, and made President of St. John's. Hoadly says he was as pious, honest, and charitable as his bigotry would permit. Eachard refers to him as a man of considerable learning and great abilities.—Neal, iii. 470. We have introduced this type of character, not as common, but as one without which an account of the religious phases of the time would be incomplete.

In 1658, Hartlib, writing to Pell, observes: "Cheynell is not shot as was reported, but certain that he is fallen distracted, and is sent to Bedlam."—Letters in Vaughan's Protectorate of Cromwell, ii. 462.

[479] Life of the Rev. John Barwick, D.D., written in Latin by his brother Dr. Peter Barwick, Physician in Ordinary to King Charles II., and translated into English by the editor of the Latin life. Though a fierce royalist production, and, in some respects, untrustworthy, yet it relates several curious facts not elsewhere found.

[480] 1st April, 1643.—Husband's Collection, 13.

[481] May 16th, and June 10th, 1643. Husband's Collection. Laud gives a detailed account of this business in the History of his Troubles and Trials.—Works, iv. 16. The Vicar General was Sir Nathaniel Brent, who, when he saw the Presbyterians begin to be dominant, sided with them. Wood's Ath. Oxon., ii. 161.

[482] A case of this kind is mentioned in Blomefield's History of Norfolk, ii. 424, in a note relating to John Peck, A.M., of Hingham.

[483] Commons' Journals, 27th of July, 1643. Husband's Collection, 311. Persons accused were to have timely notice, in order that they might make their defence.

[484] The following illustrations are from the volumes in the Record Office.—Dom. Inter., 1646.

[485] In the State Paper Office I find a case submitted to Lord Chief Justice Heath, in March, 1644, relative to sueing for tithes, in which his lordship gives opinion "that where the bishop, or other inferior judge, will not, dare not, or cannot do justice, the superior Court may and ought to do it." State Papers, Dom., 1643, March 22nd.

[486] See Scobell (1644), 45; (1647), 85; (1648), 110.

[487] The Parliamentary Journals testify to various kinds of ecclesiastical affairs which came under the notice of the whole House, such as allowances to ministers, the collecting of pew-rents, contributions in churches for those who suffered in the wars, appointments to livings, &c., &c.—See Entries, August 26th, Sept. 7th, 11th, 19th, October 14th, and Dec. 16th, 1644.

[488] Parliament conferred powers on Lord Fairfax in February, 1644, whilst he was in the north, and the next month, commissioners there received the following warrant:—

"Whereas we are credibly informed that many ministers in the several counties of Nottingham, York, bishopric of Durham, Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland, the town and county of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the city and county of the city of York, and the town of Nottingham, are not only of scandalous life and conversation, but leaving their charges and cures, have withdrawn themselves wilfully from the same, and have joined with such forces as are raised against Parliament and Kingdom, and have aided and assisted the said forces, and that many that would give evidence against such scandalous ministers are not able to travel to London, nor bear the expenses of such journeys, you have therefore hereby full power and authority to call before you, &c., &c., and to eject such as you shall judge unfit for their places, and to sequester their livings and spiritual promotions, and to place others in their room, such as shall be approved, godly, learned, and orthodox divines, &c., &c. And further, you shall have power to dispose a fifth part of all such estates as you shall sequester for the benefit of the wives and children of any the aforesaid persons, &c., &c."—State Papers, Dom., March 6th, 1643-4.

With the sword of Fairfax, a real Andrea Ferrara, and other relics of the Commonwealth, there is preserved at Farnley Hall, Yorkshire, the silver matrix of a seal for the licensing of preachers. It shews within a circlet of leaves an open Bible, inscribed "The Word of God," with the words running round the edge, "The Seal for the Approbation of Ministers." It is engraved in Scott's Antiquarian Gleanings in the North of England.

See Resolutions in Journals, August 29th, 1644.

[489] Rushworth, vi. 212.

[490] Great Fight in the Church at Thaxted, 1647. Quoted in Davis's Nonconformity in Essex.

[491] Rushworth, iv. 113-123.

These articles, charging him with introducing Popish innovations into Scotland, are given by Laud, together with his replies, in the History of his Troubles. Works, iii. 301. Laud's answers are not those of a Papist, but those of a thorough Anglo-Catholic. Another set of charges was presented against the bishops generally. Works, iii. 379. How the thing was talked about in Scotland appears in the History of the Troubles in England and Scotland (Ballatyne Club), 275.

[492] Laud, in his Diary, March 24, 1642-3, alludes to plots to send him and Wren to New England.—Works, iv. 19.

[493] Neal, iii. 176. Laud says, under date January 22, 1643-4:—"This day the Thames was so full of ice that I could not go by water. It was frost and snow, and a most bitter day. I went, therefore, with the Lieutenant in his coach, and twelve wardens, with halberts, went all along the streets." "So from the Tower-gate to Westminster I was sufficiently railed on and reviled all the way. God, of his mercy, forgive the misguided people! My answer being put in, I was for that time dismissed; and the tide serving me, I made a hard shift to return by water."—Works, iv. 45.

[494] It has been justly remarked that the Greek orators were careful to impress upon their audience that, in bringing a charge against any one, they were actuated by the strongest personal motives. Æschines, in his oration against Ctesiphon, expresses his intense personal spite against Demosthenes. Christianity has taught us a different lesson, and happily the authority of that lesson is acknowledged, and its spirit generally exemplified by the English bar, and in the British Senate.

With regard to Prynne, let me add that, though his prejudices might warp his judgment, he shewed himself throughout his whole life to be an honest man. Of his learning, there cannot be two opinions. His great work on Parliamentary writs, in four volumes, is pronounced by a competent judge to be so admirable, that "it is impossible to speak of it in terms of too high commendation."—Parry's Parliaments and Councils, Preface, 21. See also Spilsbury's Lincoln's Inn, 283.

[495] See Rushworth, v. 763-780. A fuller account of the trial may be found in Neal, iii. 172-242.

[496] This is taken, not from Rushworth's report (v. 777), but from Laud's own copy of his speech. They differ somewhat.—Works, iv. 60.

[497] Quoted in Neal, iii. 239.

[498] Laud said in his defence: "The result must be of the same nature and species with the particulars from which it rises. But 'tis confessed no one of the particulars are treason, therefore, neither is the result that rises from them. And this holds in nature, in morality, and in law."—Works, iv. 380.

In reply to Serjeant Wylde's argument, that the misdemeanours together, by accumulation made up treason, Laud's advocate wittily observed: "I crave your mercy, good Mr. Serjeant, I never understood before this time that two hundred couple of black rabbits would make a black horse."

[499] Walton's Lives, 390.

[500] Heylyn says, in his Life of Archbishop Laud (527), that Stroud was sent up to the Lords with a message from the House of Commons, to let them know that the Londoners would shortly petition with 20,000 hands to obtain that ordinance.

The arguments of the Commons in support of the attainder, as presented to the Lords, are given in the journals of the latter, under date, Die Sabbati, 4 die Januarii.

Heylyn (528) states, that only seven Lords concurred in the sentence; Clarendon (519), that there were not above twelve peers in the House at the time. In the Journals the names of nineteen appear at the commencement of the minutes of the sitting.

[501] Lives of the Chancellors, iii. 204; Const. Hist., i. 577; Hist. of Commonwealth, i. 428.

[502] Life of Pocock, by Dr. Twells, 84. See also a curious tract respecting Laud in Harleian Miscel., iv. 450.

[503] Rushworth, v. 781. "Let us run with patience that race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God."

[504] Rushworth, v. 785.

[505] A newspaper notices that:—Whereas he had been the archpatron of those who branded honest men with the name of roundheads more than hath been usual, his own head when cut off, though sawdust had been laid about the block, "did tumble once or twice about like a ball."

[506] Henry Rogers.

[507] See Bruce's Account of Laud's Berkshire Benefactions.

Mr. Bruce, who has had ample means of judging of Laud's character, observes:—"A winking at a little finesse designed to accomplish some end, supposed to be for the good of the Church, is all that may be brought home to him—his hands were never defiled by the touch of a bribe."—Calendar of State Papers, Dom., 1635. Preface.

[508] Overstrained parallels between Laud and Wolsey were drawn in the pamphlets of the day.—See Harl. Miscell., iv. 462.

I may add that Dunstan and Laud were alike insular men, if that term may be used to distinguish them from Becket and Wolsey, both of whom had large intercourse with the Continent. Dunstan and Laud were narrower in their feeling and character than the other two. I have before noticed the resemblance between Dunstan and Laud in point of influence.

[509] Journals of the Lords, January 4th, 1645.

[510] An Anatomy of the Service Book, by Dwalphintramis. Southey's Common-place Book, iii. 40.

[511] See Christ on the Throne. 1640.

[512] A letter by George Gillespie, on the Directory, being forwarded to Scotland, shews the difficulty there was in getting it passed.—Baillie, ii., App. 505. He says, May 9th, 1645: "I pray you be careful that the Act of the General Assembly, approving the Directory, be not so altered as to make it a straiter imposition." "Sure I am, the Directory had never past the Assembly of Divines, if it had not been for the qualifications in the preface. This is only for yourself, except ye hear any controversy about it in your meeting."

[513] Baillie's Letters, ii. 271.

[514] Scobell, 97.

[515] The following should be recorded to Whitelocke's credit. 1646. Oct. 26. "Indictment in Bucks for not reading the Common Prayer complained of. Ordered that an ordinance be brought in to take away the statute that enjoins it, and to disable malignant ministers from preaching. This was much opposed by me and some others, as contrary to that principle which the Parliament had avowed of liberty of conscience, and like that former way complained of against the bishops for silencing of ministers."—Memorials, 226. The diarist here shews that the use of the Prayer Book was not considered by the Royalists to be legally abolished.

I may here add that Whitelocke was not a party man. He sympathized with Presbyterian leaders in wishing to save the monarchy, but he co-operated with Independents in advocating religious liberty.

[516] Mant's History of the Church of Ireland, i. 587-594.

[517] Lathbury's History of Convocation, 497.

[518] Clarendon's Hist., 515.

[519] While the Oxford Lords were in London on the embassy, there was, according to the Diurnal, entitled Perfect Occurrences, December 28, a great auditory to hear the chaplain preach and read prayers. After the sermon, it is said, the people were very merry, and a young lady and gentleman went dancing by the river side, and fell in—"good for them to cool their courage in frosty weather."

[520] Whitelocke, 112. The entire propositions for peace may be seen in Parl. Hist., iii. 299.

[521] King's Cabinet opened.—Neal, iii. 250.

[522] Parl. Hist., iii. 339.

[523] Memorials, 127.

[524] All the documents during the attempts at a treaty are given by Dugdale in his Short View of the late Troubles.

A full account is also given by Rushworth, v.

[525] Clarendon's Hist., 521.

Secretary Nicholas writes to the King, 5th of February, 1644: "This morning we are to observe the fast, according to your Majesty's proclamation; but it must be done here in the inn, for we cannot be permitted to have the Book of Common Prayer read in the church here, and we resolve not to go to any church where the Divine service established by law may not be celebrated." "You have done well, but they barbarously," Charles writes in the margin. But in the prayer appointed by the King the war is described as "unnatural," and the Almighty is entreated "to let the truth clearly appear, who those are which, under pretence of the public good, do pursue their own private ends." It was not likely the Parliament would allow that prayer to be used.—Nicholas' Correspondence, Evelyn, iv. 136.

[526] The other chief subjects were the militia and Irish affairs.

[527] Rushworth, v. 818.

[528] Evelyn, iv. 137.

[529] In the British Museum there is a petition, presented in the year 1647, complaining of many hundreds of towns and villages destitute of any preaching ministry, by occasion whereof ignorance, drunkenness, profaneness, disaffection, &c., abound.

[530] Husband's Col., 645.

[531] See ordinance dated November the 8th, 1645, in Rushworth, vi. 212, and Baillie's Letters, ii. 349.

[532] Letters and Journals, ii. 145.

[533] Letters and Journals, ii. 146.

[534] Neal, iii. 309.

[535] Lives, 380.

[536] Baillie's Letters, ii. 157.

[537] The religious feelings of the two armies are thus stated by an eyewitness:—"Consider the height of difference of spirits; in their army the cream of all the Papists in England, and in ours, a collection out of all the corners of England and Scotland of such as had the greatest antipathy to Popery and tyranny."—Sanford, 597. He gives a careful account of the battle.

For the state of feeling in general after the victory, see Baillie, ii. 201, et seq.

[538] I adopt some of the words quoted by Sanford.

[539] There was one of the Royalist soldiers at Marston Moor wounded in the shoulder by a musket ball, who afterwards became Archbishop Dolbon, of York, 1683-1686. The following incident is interesting:—"Mary, daughter of Sir Francis Trappes, married Charles Towneley, of Towneley, in Lancashire, Esquire, who was killed at the battle of Marston Moor. During the engagement she was with her father at Knaresborough, where she heard of her husband's fate, and came upon the field the next morning in order to search for his body, while the attendants of the camp were stripping and burying the dead. Here she was accosted by a general officer, to whom she told her melancholy story. He heard her with great tenderness, but earnestly desired her to leave a place where, besides the distress of witnessing such a scene, she might probably be insulted. She complied, and he called a trooper, who took her encroup. On her way to Knaresborough she enquired of the man the name of the officer to whose civility she had been indebted, and learned that it was Lieutenant-General Cromwell."—Sanford, 610.

[540] See Lightfoot's Journal, September 9, 1644.

[541] Here we may mention that it is probable that John Bunyan was at that time in the Royalist army, and that while he was fighting for the King the incident occurred so often related of his post being occupied by a comrade who could handle a musket better than he could do, and who, on account of his superior skill and bravery, unfortunately received a fatal carbine shot which otherwise might have killed our matchless dreamer. Nobody can say what the world lost by that poor fellow's death, but everybody knows what the world gained by John Bunyan's preservation.

[542] For a full account of the battle of Naseby see England's Recovery, by Joshua Sprigg, 1647. It is he who reports the complaints we have noticed. See p. 6 of his interesting narrative.

[543] There is an interesting letter by Cromwell, dated July 10, 1645, giving an account of the Naseby fight, reprinted in Sanford, p. 625, from pamphlets in Lincoln College, Oxford. As the letter is not in Carlyle (2nd edition), I give the following extract:—"Thus you see what the Lord hath wrought for us. Can any creature ascribe anything to itself? Now can we give all the glory to God, and desire all may do so, for it is all due unto Him. Thus you have Long Sutton mercy added to Naseby mercy; and to see this, is it not to see the face of God? You have heard of Naseby; it was a happy victory. As in this, so in that, God was pleased to use His servants; and if men will be malicious, and swell with envy, we know who hath said—'If they will not see, yet they shall see and be ashamed for their envy at his people.' I can say this of Naseby, that when I saw the enemy draw up, and march in gallant order towards us, and we a company of poor ignorant men, to seek how to order our battle, the general having commanded me to order all the horse. I could not (riding alone about my business) but smile out to God in praises, in assurance of victory, because God would, by things that are not, bring to nought things that are, of which I had great assurance, and God did it. Oh, that men would therefore praise the Lord, and declare the wonders that He doth for the children of men!"

[544] Nevertheless, Royalist hopes were unquenched as late as the month of September, 1645.

"If you consider," it is said in an anonymous letter of that date, in the State Paper Office, "the strange extremities we were then in, the progress which we have made, and our wonderful success at last in the relieving of Hereford and chasing away the Scots, at a time when, in my conscience, within one week there had been a general revolt of South Wales (which is now likely to be entirely settled), you will think that it promises to us and portends to the rebels a strange revolution in the whole face of affairs; and if to this you add the miracles done by the same time by my Lord Montrose, in Scotland (who hath made himself entirety master of that kingdom), you will have reason to join with me in the confidence, that we shall have, by God's blessing, as quick a progress to happiness as we have had to the greatest extremities. I must confess, for my part, that these miracles, besides the worldly joy they give me, have made me even a better Christian, by begetting in me a stronger faith and reliance upon God Almighty, than before; having manifested that it is wholly His work, and that He will bring about His intended blessings upon this just cause, by ways the most impossible to human understanding, and consequently teach us to cast off all reliance upon our own strength."

This letter is dated September the 9th, 1645, and is addressed to Lord Byron.

[545] Life of Dod.—Brooks' Lives, iii. 4.

[546] Brook, iii. 80.

[547] Wood, ii. 89, says this was Aulkryngton, commonly called Okerton, near Banbury, in Oxfordshire; but I cannot find in Topographical Dictionaries any mention of such a place.

[548] Brook's Lives, iii. 10. See also p. 63.

[549] Walker's Sufferings, part ii. 183-185, 193.

I have lighted on the following scraps in newspapers of the day:—

Mr. Bullinger, of Lincolnshire (sometime chaplain to a Regent of the King), grandchild to the old bishop, being newly returned from France, where he hath lately been, is sent up by the Committee of Dover, very poor, in a gray suit, and neither cloak to his back nor money in his purse; and yet he scruples the taking of the Covenant, and desires time to consider of it. His examinations were this day taken.—Perfect Occurrences, 18th of December, 1646.

A story is told of a singing man from Peterborough, who went to Wisbeach, as clerk, and then read the burial service, when he was insulted in the rudest manner, and knocked down, the poor fellow crying out, "I am a Covenanter."—Moderate Intelligence, January, 1647.

[550] Letters, ii. 274.

[551] Letters, ii. 298, 299.

Baillie complains of the growing influence of the Erastians.—Ibid., 311, 318, 320.

[552] These rules are given in Rushworth, vi. 210.

[553] Baillie's Letters and Journals, ii. 362, et seq.

[554] Ibid., 344.

[555] Godwin, ii. 10.

[556] Neal, iii. 311.

[557] See Letter to Parliament, in Rushworth, vi. 234.

[558] Baillie, ii. 367. For the Parliament's notice of what the Scots had said, see Declaration, in Rushworth, vi. 257. The notice is only in the way of general allusion.

[559] Froude's History of England, vii. 340.

[560] Neal, iii. 330.

[561] Neal, iii. 381. Hetherington's History of the Westminster Assembly, 300.

[562] Rushworth, vii. 1035. At a conference between the Lords and Commons, on March 22nd, 1648, the latter declared their consent to the doctrinal parts, with the desire that the same be "made public, that this kingdom and all the reformed Churches of Christendom may see the Parliament of England differ not in doctrine." It is added, "particulars in discipline are recommitted." Of the confession of faith the title was altered to "articles of faith, agreed upon by both Houses of Parliament, as most suitable to the former title of the Thirty-nine Articles." The Covenant was legally enforced, but the Westminster Confession never was. Only part of it, under the title of Articles, ever became law at all.

[563] Baillie, iii., Appendix, 537, et seq. A full account is there given of Rouse's revised version, 1646, in connexion with the present Scotch version, published in 1650, p. 549.

[564] Prose Works, vol. ii., 40.

[565] Life and Times, part i. 73.

[566] Hallam speaks of the Assembly as "perhaps equal in learning, good sense, and other merits, to any Lower House of Convocation that ever made a figure in England."—Const. Hist., i. 609.

[567] Sprigg's England's Recovery, 326.

[568] Opera, iii. 466.

[569] Life and Times, part i. 53-56.

[570] Owen's Works, edited by Russell, xv. 96.

[571] I find the following reference to Peters in the State Papers:—

"Dec. 10.—The fifteen articles and covenant of Hugh Peters, minister of the English congregation in Rotterdam, stated in an indorsement, which is in the handwriting of Sir William Boswell, to have been proposed to that congregation before their admission to the communion. The following are examples of these articles: '1. Be contented with meet trial for our fitness to be members. 2. Cleave in heart to the truth and pure worship of God, and oppose all ways of innovation and corruption. 3. Suffer the Word to be the guider of all controversies. 10. Meditate the furthering of the Gospel at home and abroad, as well in our persons as with our purses. 11. Take nearly to heart our brethren's condition, and conform ourselves to these troublesome times in our diet and apparel, that they be without excess in necessity. 14. Put one another in mind of this covenant, and as occasion is offered, to take an account of what is done in the premises.'"—Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1633-4, p. 318.

[572] The imputations on Peters's moral character were no doubt malicious falsehoods.—Brook's Lives, iii. 350.

[573] Abridged from Life of Colonel Hutchinson, 151.

[574] Ath. Oxon., ii. 287.

The Westminster Assembly condemned certain positions in Saltmarsh's writings, as well as in the writings of Dr. Crisp, and Mr. John Eaton, for their Antinomian tendencies.—See Neal, iii. 68. Neal does not say what the passages were. Edwards, in his Gangræna, part i., 25, 26, gives a list of their tenets, but we place little dependence on his accusations. It is very likely, however, that Saltmarsh might lay himself open to the charge of Antinomianism. We have not seen his book on Free-grace, in which perhaps the dangerous tenets he was charged with are to be looked for.

[575] As an example of the kind of preaching by these officers we may mention a tract entitled "Orders given out—the word Stand fast, as it was lately delivered in a farewell sermon, by Major Samuel Kem, to the officers and soldiers of his regiment in Bristol, November 8th, 1646." The discourse is full of military allusions.

[576] Journal of the Swedish Embassy, 1653-4.

[577] Neal, iii. 330.

[578] This is the account in Ashburnham's Narrative, ii. 72. Rushworth says the King came to Brentford and Harrow, and then went to St. Albans, vi. 267. Ashburnham's is, no doubt, the correct story.

Hacket tells the following story in the Life of Archbishop Williams: "His Majesty, unwilling to stay to the last in a city begirt, by the persuasion of Mons. Mountrevile, went privily out of Oxford, and put himself into the hands of his native countrymen and subjects at Newcastle. 'What,' says Mr. Archbishop, when he heard of it, 'be advised by a stranger, and trust the Scots; then all is lost.' It was a journey not imparted to above ten persons to know it, begun upon sudden resolution against that rule of Tacitus: 'Bona consilia morâ valescere.'"—Memorial of Williams, ii. 222.

[579] There is an important memorandum for Lord Balcarras "anent the King's coming to the Scots' army," in Baillie's Letters and Journals, ii. 514. Appendix.

[580] Charles I. in 1646. Letters published by the Camden Society.

[581] Neal, iii. 336-347.

[582] Rushworth, vi. 319.

[583] Rushworth, vi. 309.

[584] Mercurius Civicus, Oct. 8-15, 1646.

"By letters from Scotland we were this day advertised that the Estates of Edinburgh have sent up their determination to the Commissioners at Worcester House. One, 'That Presbyterian government be established, as that which will suit best with monarchy.'"

It was commonly said at Newcastle, that his Majesty would take the Covenant.

[585] Charles I. in 1646, 63, 86.

[586] Charles I. in 1646, 6, 11. See also Ogle's letter, printed in this volume, p. 306.

[587] Ibid., 24. In reading Charles's correspondence we observe that, whatever may be said of fanatical ideas of providence entertained by Puritans, ideas equally fanatical were entertained by the King.—See Mr. Bruce's Introduction to the volume of Letters.

[588] See Journals under date. Godwin, in his Commonwealth, ii. 66, 236, 246, after a careful examination of the Journals on the subject, explains distinctly the series of enactments with regard to the establishment of Presbyterianism.

[589] Baillie, ii. 357. "They have passed an ordinance, not only for appeal from the General Assembly to the Parliament, for two ruling elders, for one minister in every church-meeting, for no censure, except in such particular offences as they have enumerat; but also, which vexes us most, and against which we have been labouring this month bygone, a court of civil commissioners in every county, to whom the congregational elderships must bring all cases not enumerat, to be reported by them, with their judgment, to the Parliament or their Committee. This is a trick of the Independents' invention, of purpose to enervate and disgrace all our Government, in which they have been assisted by the lawyers and the Erastian party. This troubles us exceedingly. The whole Assembly and ministry over the kingdom, the body of the city, is much grieved with it; but how to help it, we cannot well tell. In the meantime, it mars us to set up anything; the anarchy continues, and the vilest facts do daily encrease."

[590] Husband, 919.

[591] Neal, iii. 385.

[592] Scobell, (1647-8,) 139, 165.

[593] 1646. October the 8th.—On the question in the Lords for passing the ordinance, "the votes were even, so nothing could be resolved on at this time." Only nine earls and five barons were present. October the 9th.—"And the question being put, 'Whether to agree to the said ordinance as it was brought up from the House of Commons?' Audit was agreed to in the affirmative." Seven earls and five barons were present.—Lords' Journals.

[594] Husband's Collection, 922.

[595] Husband, 934.

[596] Printed in Harleian Miscellany, iv. 419.

[597] This information respecting wills is drawn from Sir H. Nicholas' Notitia Historica, 144-205. In the month of November, 1644, an ordinance of Parliament appointed Sir Nathaniel Brent a Presbyterian master or keeper of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, in the room of Dr. Merrick, a Royalist Episcopalian.—Husband, 582.

In the Windsor churchwardens' accounts an instance occurs of money paid in 1651-2 for searching the Prerogative Court for the Countess of Devonshire's will, then lately deceased.—Annals of Windsor, ii. 267.

[598] We shall describe this law in the next volume. It should be noticed that the ordinance of 1646, respecting bishops, said nothing about deans and chapters, or archdeacons. How they were afterwards dealt with will also be seen hereafter.

[599] Scobell, 129.

[600] Ibid., 146.

[601] In September, 1647, the certificate of certain Cheshire justices touching a refusal to pay tithes to a Puritan, Mr. Smith, of Tattenhall, came before the committee. Some Royalist Episcopalians took encouragement, in their refusal, from two petitions of the sequestered clergy to the King and Sir Thomas Fairfax. It is certified, "from the said justices, that they conceive the ordinance of Parliament for payment of tithes cannot be put by them into execution without bloodshed." The Serjeant-at-Arms is commissioned to bring these delinquents "in safe custody to answer their said contempt."—Nonconformity in Cheshire, 472.

The objections to paying tithes at that period went much further than such objections as are urged by Paley.—Moral and Political Philosophy, book vi., iii. A corn-rent, as he suggests, or such commutation of tithes as is now adopted, would not have met the objections. A fixed and uniform stipend paid by the State was widely desired.

[602] Scobell, 139.

"1646, 15th December.—It is ordered that Mr. Tooley, &c., shall treat with the dean and prebends about mending the windows and repairing the cathedral church, and to consider whether it be fit to remove the pulpit to the former place where it stood or not, and to examine whether there be £100 a year appointed for the repairing of the church, and how much thereof is in arrear."

"1647.—8th November. It is ordered that the sheriffs shall give entertainment to the preachers who come to preach at the cathedral in such manner as the former sheriffs did, and that they shall give like allowance for the same as they did."—Extracted from the Norwich Corporation Records.

[603] Husband, 758. The following minutes are extracted from a MS. volume of proceedings in the library of Sion College, London.

December, 1644. At a meeting of the governors of the school and almshouses of Westminster:—

Whereas the governors of the schools and almshouses of Westminster, have, by their former order, nominated and appointed Mr. Strong to be minister of the Abbey Church, Westminster, in the room and place of Mr. Marshall, and in regard Mr. Marshall cannot well perform the service any longer, without inconveniency to him; it is ordered that the said Mr. Strong be desired to undertake the service so soon as possibly he can, and he is to have the allowance of £200 and a house; being the same allowance as the said Mr. Marshall had for his pains, to be taken therein. And the trustees are to pay him the same £200 and quarterly by even and equal portions. The first payment to commence from the time he shall begin the service, and to continue till he shall leave it.

At a committee of the Lords and Commons for the College of Westminster, sitting in the dean's house, the 3rd March, 1645-6:—

After reciting the ordinance of the 18th of November the committee "do nominate and appoint Mr. Philip Nye, minister of God's Word, to preach the term lecture in the said collegiate church, and receive the yearly stipend and allowance for the same. And the Reverend General of the said College for the time being is hereby authorized and required to pay the same unto the said Mr. Philip Nye, at such time as the same hath been heretofore usually paid, and we do further nominate and appoint the said Mr. P. Nye to preach the lecture upon every Lord's day in the morning, at seven of the clock, for which he shall receive such allowance as hereafter shall be settled and appointed by this committee."

9th July, 1646.—By an order of this date, Mr. Nye was to have £50 a year, to be paid quarterly.

Same day.—Mr. Marshall, Mr. Palmer, Mr. Herle, Dr. Staunton, Mr. Nye, Mr. Witaire (?), and Mr. Strong, were appointed to the morning lecture constantly to be performed every day of the week.

July 13th.—Mr. John Bond, preacher at the Savoy in the Strand, was appointed one of the seven morning lecturers for the Abbey on the week day.

[604] Commons' Journals, December 2nd, 1643.

[605] Annals of Windsor, ii. 205.

[606] Hist. of the University of Cambridge, 233. "The Colleges have already sent to the King £6,000, and are now about to send their plate to make shrines for Diane's temple. Magdalene College plate, beginning the march, was seized on by Parliament authority, and is deposited in the Mayor's custody. St. John's College conceived a better secrecy by water, and that way conveyed their plate; but having intelligence of discovery, they landed it in the night into a dung-cart, and returned it to the College. It is said now they expect a convoy of horse. King's College refused to send plate, the Master affirming that it is directly against their oath, binding them in express words, not to alienate the plate of the College. If he be not deceived in his judgment, it will be a problem for the rest of the masters."—Tanner MSS. 63, p. 116. Sanford's Illustrations, 514.

[607] Husband's Collections, 415, 416.

"The Masters of Queen's, Jesus, and St. John's, were sent up to London, and led through the midst of Bartholomew Fair in a leisurely manner, to the endangering of their lives, up as far as Temple Bar, and so back through the City to the Tower, on purpose that they might be hooted at and stoned by the rabble."—Coles' MSS., vol. vii., quoted in Akerman's Hist. of University, i. 260.

The Master of Queen's, and some others, are said to have been put on board a ship at Wapping, where they suffered much, and were then sent to prison. It is impossible to determine the exact truth amidst the exaggerated statements by Walker. Hot-headed party men always overshoot the mark, and bring discredit even on the truths they tell.

[608] Hist. of Cambridge, 236. Sancroft did not take the Covenant. The following extract from a letter of his to Dr. Holdsworth, Master of Emmanuel, is very curious:—"Ah! Sir, I know our Emmanuel College is now an object of pity and commiseration. They have left us like John Baptist's trunk when his head was lopped off, because of a vow or oath (or Covenant, if you will) that went before, or like Pompey's carcase upon the shore; so stat magni nominis umbra. For my part, tædet me vivere hanc mortem. A small matter would prevail with me to take up the resolution to go forth any whither where I might not hear nec nomen, nec facta Pelopidarum. Nor need we voluntarily give up our stations. I fear we cannot long maintain them. And what then? Shall I lift up my hand? I will cut it off first. Shall I subscribe my name? I will forget it as soon. I can at least look up through this mist and see the hand of my God holding the scourge that lashes; and with this thought I am able to silence all the mutinies of boisterous passions, and to charm them into a perfect calm. Sir, you will pardon this disjointed piece: it is the production of a disquieted mind; and no wonder if the child resembles its parent. My sorrow, as yet, breaks forth only in abrupt sighs and broken sobs."—D'Oyley's Life of Archbishop Sancroft, i. 32.

[609] Strype's Life of Parker, i. 390.

[610] Fuller's History of Cambridge, 205.

[611] Thorndike's Works, vol. vi., Oxford edition. Note by Editor, 170. Pure Emmanuel occurs in Corbet's satirical poem, 1615. It was commonly so styled.

[612] Halley's Life of Goodwin, prefixed to Works, vol. ii. of Nichol's edit., p. 23. But Brownrigg, in 1645, was put out of the Mastership of Trinity Hall.

[613] Cartwright, Travers, Calamy, Seaman, Doolittle, S. Clarke, and W. Jenkyns, came from Cambridge. Out of seventy-seven Puritan names in Brook, I find forty-seven belonging to Cambridge, and thirty to Oxford.

[614] The four were Goodwin (Catherine), Burroughs, Bridge (Emmanuel), and Sydrach Sympson. Nye was an Oxford man.

[615] Cooper, quoted in Notes to Thorndike, vol. vi. 177.

[616] Calendar of State Papers, Chas. I., 1633-4, Domestic, July 22, p. 150.

[617] Thorndike's Works, vi. 169.

[618] Cooper gives 2,091 University residents in 1641, but says it does not include the whole.—Thorndike, vi. 165. Walker reports nearly 200 masters and fellows as ejected, besides inferior scholars. Some of the ejected heads of houses were men of moderate opinions.—Neal, iii. 116.

Newcome, in his Autobiography, Cheetham Society, speaks of the bitter feuds between the new and the old fellows in 1645. He judged the supporters of the Parliament to be the most religious, "religion being as little favoured" by many of their opponents as the Puritans themselves were (p. 7).

[619] They are far too numerous and varied for me to classify or indicate. See historical account of all material transactions relating to University.—Laud's Works, vol. v., part I.

The following scrap of a newspaper shews the care taken by the Parliament for the support of the University, and also the feeling existing at Oxford against the Parliament:—

"Ordered that the Committee for the Ordinances of regulating the University shall consider of a fitting maintenance for the masters and heads of houses in both Universities. They also ordered that a committee should sit constantly for giving a competent maintenance to the late bishops until they had despatched that business.

"The House being informed that there were monuments standing in Christ Church, in Oxford, on which were epitaphs engraven abusive to the Parliament, and giving just cause of distaste to many good men well affected to it, as particulary on the monument of Sir Henry Gage and Sir William Penniman, it was ordered that the epitaphs on the said monuments should be razed and effaced."—Weekly Intelligencer, April 15th, 1647.

[620] In the autobiography of Arthur Wilson, an Oxford student, in 1631, this passage occurs relative to the moral state of the University:—

"That which was most burdensome to me in this my retirement was the debauchery of the University. For the most eminent scholars of the town, especially of St. John's College, being of my acquaintance, did work upon me by such endearments as took the name of civilities, (yet day and night could witness our madness), and I must confess, the whole time of my life besides did never so much transport me with drinking as that short time I lived at Oxford, and that with some of the gravest bachelors of divinity there."—Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, ii. 470.

[621] Walker, part i. 127; Neal, iii. 446-453.

[622] Walton's Lives, 388. Morley wrote in the following dignified manner to Whitelocke, acknowledging friendly interposition on his behalf: "Pray God he, whosoever he be that succeeds me in it, may part with it at his death as cheerfully as I do now, and that my judges may not have cause to be more sorry for their sentence than I am. It is glory enough for me that Mr. Selden and Mr. Whitelocke were of another opinion, for being absolved by you two, and mine own conscience, I shall still think myself in a capacity of a better condition."—Whitelocke's Memorials, 250.

[623] Wood's Ath., ii. 215.

Walton, so called (though he wrote his name Wauton), married Cromwell's sister Margaret, and was one of the Commissioners of the High Court of Justice.—Noble's Protectorate House, ii. 224.

[624] Neal, iii. 456.

[625] Scobell, (1647), 116.

[626] Neal, iii. 438.

[627] The following sentence appears in a newspaper of the period:—

"There are many amongst us who are called Independents, but what some say of them, I doubt not that they will prove honest men and peaceable for ought that I can see—experience gives them a better report than rumour."—Papers from the Scotch Quarters.

[628] The following letter, dated September 25th, 1645, was addressed to the mayor and aldermen of Norwich:—

"Gentlemen—The Parliament being desirous above all things to establish truth and righteousness in these kingdoms, towards which the settlement of a church government is very conducible, hath resolved to settle a presbyterial government in the kingdom. For the better effecting whereof you are required, with the advice of godly ministers and others, to consider how the county of the city of Norwich may be most conveniently divided into distinct classical Presbyteries, and what ministers and others are fit to be of each classis, and you are accordingly to make such divisions and nominations of persons for each classical Presbytery. Which divisions and persons so named for every division you are to certify to the House with all expedition. W. Lenthall, Speaker."—Blomefield's History of Norwich, i. 391.

[629] This appears from a petition presented by the Presbyterians to the mayor, in April, 1648, for a more thorough reformation, and complaining that faithful ministers were slighted, ejected ministers of the Church of England preferred, old ceremonies and the service book constantly used, and the directory not observed. The petitioners also prayed for a more thorough execution of the ordinances against superstition and idolatry, and specified as needing to be defaced a crucifix on the cathedral gate, another on the roof inside by the west door, and a third upon the free-school, as well as an "image of Christ upon the parish house of St. George's of Tombland."—Blomefield's History of Norwich, i. 393.

[630] Vox Norwici, or the city of Norwich vindicating their ministers, wherein the city of Norwich, viz., the court of mayoralty and common council, by their act of assembly, the rest of the well-affected citizens and inhabitants by the subscription of their names hereunto, do vindicate their ministers, Master Thornebacke, Master Carter, Master Stinnett, Master Fletcher, Master Bond, Master Stukeley, Master Test, and Master Mitchell, from the foul and false aspersions and slanders, which are unchristianly thrown upon them in a lying and scurrilous libel lately come forth, entitled "Vox Populi, or the People's Cry against the Clergy," or rather the voice of a schismatic, projecting the discouragement and driving away of our faithful teachers, but we hope his lies shall not so, effect it. Jer. viii. 30. London, 1646.

[631] See Godwin's Commonwealth, ii. 211-220, Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow, i. 172.

[632] Baillie's Letters and Journals, ii. 512, Appendix. Gillespie says, March 30th, 1647:—"In sum, the Independent party is for the present sunk under water in the Parliament, and run down."

[633] Parl. Hist., iii. 475.

[634] Journals.

[635] Neal, iii. 365. The following is an extract from the Petition:—"That an ordinance be made for the exemplary punishment of heretics and schismatics, and that all godly and orthodox ministers may have a competent maintenance, many pulpits being vacant of a settled minister for want of it; and here (say they) we would lay the stress of our desires, and the urgency of our affections." They complain further of the "undue practices of Country Committees, of the threatening power of the army, and of some breaches in the Constitution, all of which they desire may be redressed, and that his Majesty's royal person and authority may be preserved and defended, together with the liberties of the kingdom, according to the Covenant."

[636] Neal, iii. 388.

[637] See full account, with authorities, in Baker's Northamptonshire, i. 201.

[638] "The kingdom shall have peace and truth, the Churches uniformity and concord, almost quite lost, Ireland hopes of speedy reduction, sectaries and blasphemers shall be bridled if not extirpated, and church government with the religion established."—Welcome of the King to Holmby (Holdenby).

[639] State Papers, Dom., Chas. I. 1647. The latter is without date.

[640] History of Rebellion, 610.

[641] The funeral of the Earl of Essex, on the 22nd of October, 1646, presented a grand display of military pomp. The Speaker, many Aldermen of the City, and Assembly of Divines also followed in the procession to the grave. "When they came to the Abbey Church, the effigy of the Earl was carried in and laid upon the standing hearse, where it was to remain during the pleasure of the House, or as many days as intervened between his death and burial. The effigy was roughly handled one night. The Abbey being broken into, the head of the image was broken, the buff coat was slit, the scarlet breeches were cut, the boots were slashed, the bands were torn, and the sword broken."—See Perfect Relation of the Funeral.

Mr. Vines, in his sermon at the interment, compared Essex to Abner, and observed: "The funeral, for the state of it, overmatches the pattern. Here are the two Houses of Parliament, the map of all England in two globes, pouring out their sorrows, and paying their kisses of honourable farewell to his tutelar sword."

[642] History of Rebellion, 610.

[643] After leaving Holdenby, during the three days the King tarried at Childerley, many doctors, graduates, and scholars of the University repaired thither, "to most of whom the King was pleased to give his hand to kiss; for which honour they returned their gratulatory and humble thanks with a Vivat Rex." He was also visited by Fairfax, Cromwell, Ireton, Skippon, Lambert, Whalley, and other officers of the Parliament army, some of whom kissed his hand.—Wood's Ath. Oxon., ii., fasti 81.

[644] Clarendon, 613.

[645] Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. i. 240.

[646] Ludlow, vol. i. 207.

[647] Clarendon, 616.

[648] Blomefield's Hist. of Norwich, i. 394, 395.

[649] Journals of Lords, May the 19th. Rushworth, vii. 1119. At Bury, the cry was "For God and King Charles."

[650] 1648, 26th of April.—"It is thought fit and agreed that Tuesday next shall be set apart and kept as a solemn day of thanksgiving for God's deliverance of this city from the rebellious company of people that did rise against them upon Monday last, and that Mr. Carter be desired to preach in the forenoon, and Mr. Collings in the afternoon, both at the Cathedral, and that they shall have 20s. a piece, and that the great guns shall be shot off, and that the aldermen shall be in scarlet and attended with the livery, and that the churchwardens and overseers of every parish do go from house to house to take the benevolence in writing of every person that will give for the relief of the poor who are in want, to be delivered unto the Court of Mayoralty, to be by them distributed."—Corporation Records.

[651] Scobell, 149.

[652] Vindication of the Ordinance against Heresies, &c., 1646.—In which the example of Geneva in putting Servetus to death is cited with approval, and is adduced as an argument in defence of the ordinance.—

The Scottish Dove defends the Ordinance against Heresies, &c., as a great work, very necessary, heresy being of the flesh, and therefore to be punished by the magistrate. A complaint is made in a pamphlet entitled, Oaths unwarrantable, (June, 1647,) that multitudes of men well-affected to the Parliament were indicted and punished for not coming to their parish churches, though there were no statutes to authorize punishment for such neglect, except the act of uniformity, which had been repealed. "Though I stay seven years from church," says the writer, "and constantly meet in private houses, there is by Parliament's principles neither law nor ordinance in force for any judge or justice of the peace to indict me, or any other, or any otherwise to molest or trouble me."

[653] The following prayer for the King was used at Paris, September, 1648:—

"O Almighty and most gracious Lord God, the Ruler of princes when they are on their thrones, and their Protector when they are in peril, look down mercifully from heaven, we most humbly pray Thee, upon the low estate of thine anointed, our King. Comfort him in his troubles, defend him in his danger, strengthen him in his good resolutions, and command thine angels so to pitch their tents round about him, that he may be defended from all those that desire his hurt, and may be speedily re-established in the just rights of his throne, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." Made by Dr. Steward, 1648. MS. copy in Pamphlets, vol. xxxv.

[654] See Short's Sketch of the Church, ii. 154.

[655] Rushworth, vii. 1302, 1321. Godwin, in his History of the Commonwealth, ii. 481, has exposed with unsparing justice the duplicity of Charles at this moment in the treaty which he was then forming with the Scotch.

[656] Rushworth, vii. 1334.

It is unnecessary to do more than indicate that the Commissioners replied to this document, (November the 20th, 1648,) still urging the three points, but explaining the Directory, as setting down the matter of prayer, only leaving words to a minister's discretion. To this Charles gave a final reply, November the 21st, adhering to Episcopacy and the inalienability of church lands. As to the Directory—having observed its latitude according to their explanation—he was willing to waive his objections. The King's final reply is not given in Rushworth, but it may be found in the Parl. Hist., iii. 1130.

[657] Parl. Hist., iii. 1077.

[658] The speech is given in Parl. Hist., iii. 1152-1239; the pages are closely printed. Though so very long it is well worth reading.

[659] Memoirs of the Two Last Years of K. Charles I., by Sir Thomas Herbert, 124.

[660] Whitelocke, 375. It has been stated that Juxon's spiritual assistance was permitted at the intercession of Hugh Peters—a thing in itself very unlikely. Godwin asserts it, and refers generally to Whitelocke and Rushworth as his authorities; I suppose p. 370 of the Memorials is intended. Rushworth ascribes the intercession to a member of the army.—Vol. vii. 1421. In most accounts of the last days of Charles, the references are unsatisfactory.

[661] Prefixed to Ussher's Letters, p. 72.

[662] Life of Philip Henry, by his son. There is amongst the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum an affecting letter on the subject, by Dr. Sanderson, written a few days after the King's execution.

[663] It must be remembered that Vane, St. John, and Algernon Sidney, were of opinion that to depose Charles would be better than to behead him.

[664] Bradshaw was a member of the Church under the pastoral care, first of Mr. Strong, and then of Mr. Rowe, ministers of Westminster Abbey. Miles Corbet was member of the Church at Yarmouth, under the pastoral care of William Bridge.

[665] Neal, iii. 537. See what he says, 547-554, respecting the authors of the King's death.

[666] The Governor's name is spelt in at least six different ways by various historians. We have adopted the spelling of Clarendon.

[667] See Fuller's Church History, iii. 502; Herbert, in Wood's Ath. Oxon., ii. 705; Clarendon's Hist. of Rebellion, 692; and Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xlii.

Transcriber's Note:
1. Spelling errors have been silently corrected.
2. The Corrigenda for this volume have been corrected.