CHAPTER I.
All ecclesiastical power in England having been long before snatched from royal hands, the death of Charles I. produced no effect upon the condition of the Church. The control of its political destinies had from the year 1641 rested with the House of Commons; and with the remnant of that assembly the control continued, when the kingdom became a Commonwealth in name as well as in fact.
1649, February.
The Presbyterians, immediately after Pride's purge, lost their place in the government of this country, upon which the political Independents at once assumed supremacy in the State. Of the old ecclesiastical reformers who belonged to that party, and had made themselves conspicuous in the year 1641, the chief now remaining in power were Oliver Cromwell, Sir Henry Vane,[1] Henry Marten, Oliver St. John, and Sir Arthur Haselrig; and these remarkable men all took their seats at the table of the new Council of State, being installed as members of it in the month of February, 1649. The other persons occupying places beside them were nothing more than satellites. Neither St. John nor Haselrig held any leading position. The former was more a lawyer than a statesman, and his cold nature and reserved disposition gave him neither influence with his equals nor popularity with his inferiors. Haselrig was no less distinguished by his rashness. Having been simply a follower of Pym, he had not, since his master's death, acquired sufficient influence to make himself a leader; and his want of judgment, though it did not exclude him from the council board, left him without much weight in its deliberations.
Cromwell, Vane, and Marten.
Vane, Cromwell, and Marten, therefore, were now the English triumvirate. Vane and Marten were staunch republicans. Staunch republicans they had been from the beginning. How far Cromwell was really so—whether indeed he ever could be considered one at all—are questions on which much may be said; but at any rate, the government which he now joined was republican in fact, and to that government, for the present, the majority of Englishmen felt compelled to submit. The patriotism of the new rulers cannot be fairly questioned. The vulgar notion of their selfish ambition appears, when we consider the circumstances in which they were placed, little short of an absurdity; yet there can be no doubt that the majority of the people did not sympathize with them, but only tolerated for a season what they could not altogether prevent.
1649, February.
Before recording what was done by the Council of State, it is fitting to notice somewhat further the character and opinions of the men who mainly guided its deliberations and plans. Marten, who was as distant as possible from being a Puritan, had little liking for the sermons and prayers which at times would be forced upon him, and he most enjoyed himself whilst entertaining friends in the Vale of the White Horse, with hospitalities which must have appeared scandalous in the eyes of his staid and sober compatriots. A man of the world, and, if report speaks justly, a man of licentious habits, he was at the same time honest and genial, and, like many shrewd folks of his class, knew how to behave in the presence of religious people so as not to shock their sensibilities. Cromwell and Vane—in this respect the opposite of Marten—were sincerely religious. The question in reference to the former has been set at rest by the publication of his speeches and correspondence, all of which are plainly animated by a spirit of devout earnestness. Not only on state occasions, when performing his part before the world, not only in intercourse with men of strong puritan feeling, from whom it might be supposed he had some point to gain, but also in the most retired privacies of domestic life, Cromwell expressed sentiments of evangelical piety. That hypocrisy should be carried to such a length, that a man should be so cunning as always to wear a veil of apparent religious sincerity in his most private correspondence, without ever betraying himself, is simply incredible; and besides, the incidental way in which religion is introduced into his letters, shews that it was nothing patched upon a character of a different kind, but something which was part of the very texture of his whole being and his entire life. It is not our province to solve the problem, how certain acts of the puritan general and certain habits of the puritan statesman are to be reconciled with the possession of sincere Christianity; yet we may be allowed, in passing, to observe that such an ugly fact as the Drogheda massacre would be less terrible to Cromwell's contemporaries—to men familiar with the barbarities of the Thirty Years' War and the exploits of Count Tilly—than it is to us. Fanaticism, and what may be termed a fierce prudential policy, had, doubtless, more to do with Cromwell's deeds in Ireland than cruelty of disposition. "I am persuaded," he says, "that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood, and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future." No one can help seeing in these words a revengeful justice excited by the Popish massacres of 1641, like that which would nerve the arm of an English officer when fighting with Sepoys by the well of Cawnpore. There are some parts of Cromwell's political conduct which we will not attempt to defend; we would not avail ourselves for that purpose even of what is said by Lord Bacon on "simulation and dissimulation;" but we do think that, whilst condemning certain forms of statecraft in the policy of the great statesman of the Commonwealth, we ought to allow him the benefit of a comparison with preceding rulers. To mention only Queen Elizabeth, accounted by the Puritans of Cromwell's day as one of the most illustrious sovereigns that ever sat on the throne of England, it may be maintained that her diplomacy, in its strategic cunning, went beyond anything recorded in the life of Oliver Cromwell.[2]
Vane's sincerity cannot be questioned. He might be an enthusiast. His religious opinions might be visionary and wild. A cloudy mysticism might belong to his theology, and enthusiasm might mingle with his devotion; but as to the genuineness of his character, the transparency of his ways, and the pure truthfulness which lived in the centre of his soul, no one acquainted with his history can have any reasonable doubt.
Cromwell, Vane, and Marten.
The religion of these two men, however, presented very different aspects. A tinge of mysticism, indeed, is to be detected in the colour of Cromwell's piety; but it is the predominant hue of Vane's whole life. Vane could rise to heights of philosophical speculation, which Cromwell had no power and no desire to reach. Nothing strikes us more than the robust English common sense of Cromwell's mind, compared with which that of Vane appears full of German transcendentalism. Vane, no doubt, had a theory of church polity, as well as of secular government, more complete, more consistent, and more accurately wrought out than Cromwell ever held; but he had far less of that inward mysterious force which, working outwardly, wins the mastery over others—far less of that inexplicable secret which makes a man, in the judgment of posterity, a king of men.
1649, March.
In ecclesiastical politics, Cromwell and Vane were agreed; and, so far as they walked in that path, Marten accompanied them. All three were as anti-presbyterian as they were anti-episcopal, and hated the spiritual despotism of synods as much as they did the rule of Archbishop Laud. They were pledged to toleration, and wished to give full play to the activity of the sects, so far as was consistent with the stability of the new government. Vane could well elaborate the philosophy of religious freedom; but Marten, perhaps, advanced still further in relation to its exercise. He reached practical conclusions which were thought to imply religious indifference, though the same conclusions are now firmly held by many, the earnestness of whose piety none would question. In a petition presented to the House of Commons in 1648, and generally attributed to his pen, these passages occur: "That you would have exempted matters of religion and God's worship from the compulsive or restrictive power of any authority upon earth, and reserved to the supreme authority an uncompulsive power only of appointing a way for the public, whereby abundance of misery, persecution, and heart-burning would for ever be avoided." "That you would have removed the tedious burden of tithes, satisfying all impropriations, and providing a more equal way of maintenance for the public ministers." In the same tone reference is made to the laws against blasphemy and heresies; men, it is said, being easily mistaken, and Divine truths not needing human support.[3]
An extraordinary crisis had now arrived in ecclesiastical affairs. The fate of the Church had become subject almost entirely to the will of three men, one of whom was an utter worldling, another a spiritual theorist, and the third an evangelical Independent, and at the same time a man full of political sagacity.
Question of Toleration.
A declaration of Parliament, stating the grounds of their late proceedings, and the republican nature of the present government, appeared in the month of March.[4] The document entered fully into a defence of the measures which had issued in this result; but the authors were exceedingly cautious in their ecclesiastical references. They state that their design had been to deliver England from tyranny, to prevent a new war, to establish a safe peace, and to provide for the due worship of God according to His word, the advancement of the true Protestant religion, the maintenance of godly ministers, and "a just liberty for the consciences, persons, and estates of all men, conformable to God's glory and their own peace."[5]
1649, April.
These vague expressions are remarkable, especially when it is remembered that the declaration, though published by Parliament, must have emanated from the Council of State. In reference to the doctrine of toleration, it lagged behind the "Agreement of the People of England," a document which is ascribed to General Ireton, and which was presented in the name of the army to the House of Commons in January, a few days before the King's execution. For that political and ecclesiastical manifesto, whilst it recognized the national profession of Christianity and the duty of publicly instructing the people, adds the significant words, "so it be not compulsive;" and also, whilst it excluded Popery and Prelacy from toleration, and approved of the maintenance of religious teachers out of the public treasury, it also protested against perpetuating tithes, enforcing religion by penalties, and the disturbing of those who "profess faith in God by Jesus Christ, however differing in judgment from the doctrine, worship, or discipline publicly held forth," provided they did not disturb the public peace.[6]
Spoliation of the Church.
To such lengths Ireton and certain other officers wished to push the new government; but extreme men in the army were not then, as is often supposed, the rulers of the country, either in religious or in secular affairs. The statesmen possessed the supreme power, and of that power Cromwell exercised the largest share, simply because he possessed as much of the sagacity and wisdom required for the cabinet, as of the valour and generalship needed in the field. And hence it was, that although the army rushed forward towards extreme ecclesiastical measures, the government paused, and declined to adopt any plan for the abolition of tithes; and also maintained so much reticence in expressing what was designed in relation to the extent of religious liberty. The Presbyterians had become alarmed at the paper drawn up by the army, and the ministers of the county of Essex had plainly declared what were the evils which they apprehended in consequence.[7] In their worst apprehensions, many other clergymen throughout the country deeply shared; and the new rulers were not so firmly seated on their thrones that they could afford unnecessarily to provoke the anger of such a number of influential persons. To expound fully at that moment their ecclesiastical policy would inevitably have exasperated their opponents; and therefore they maintained a prudent reserve, and acted with extreme caution.
What the Council said is recorded in their Declaration, what they did may be traced in the Acts of Parliament passed at that time. The new financiers of the State, in order to meet the pressing necessities of the Commonwealth, availed themselves of cathedral property. The ordinance of 1646 for abolishing Bishops, and selling their lands, had taken no notice of the titles and of the possessions of Deans and Chapters. These possessions presented a rich quarry to the needy masters of the realm; consequently, at the end of April, the House of Commons was found at work upon this new spoil.[8] An Act was passed for abolishing the offices of Deans and Prebendaries and Archdeacons, and for investing the endowments of cathedral chapters in the hands of trustees, for the supply of the necessities of the Commonwealth. Other Acts followed for the purpose of removing obstructions to the sale of these estates, and affording encouragement to purchasers. Yet, we may add, that although the stalls of cathedrals were swept of their occupants, with no legal authority remaining for the appointment of successors, Bishop Wren continued the forms of presentation to prebends at Ely, as he had done all along from the commencement of the civil wars. His regular collations to preferments, as they fell vacant, appear in the records of his see.[9]
1649, June.
Amidst this wholesale spoliation of the Church it must be remembered the public support of religion was not neglected. An Act of the 8th of June provided maintenance for preaching ministers and other pious uses out of the appropriate tithes belonging to the late hierarchy. No charge remained on cathedral estates for the service of religion. Such property had undergone a thorough secularization;[10] but the appropriate tithes pertaining to the Bishops were reserved and placed under trustees for the support of the Christian ministry. From that source, according to the Act, salaries and augmentation of salaries were to be supplied; so that every minister should eventually receive £100 a year. The sum of £18,000 per annum was at once to be raised for this purpose, and £2,000 per annum was added for increasing the maintenance of the masterships of colleges.[11]
Opposition to the New Government.
The Council of State and the House of Commons found it hard work to defend their authority. To silence groans of discontent, uttered in divers publications, they had recourse to the common expedient of revolutionary governments, and passed an Act against the licentiousness of the press. The army discontents also rose alarmingly around the new rulers. Levellers, with their wild schemes, were very busy. A trooper, described as a religious man "of excellent parts and much beloved," but tinctured strongly with fifth monarchy notions, had to be shot for his share in a mutiny. Yet, such was the view taken of his case by the people, that at his funeral, "the corpse was adorned with bundles of rosemary one-half stained in blood." Sea green and black ribbons were tied to the hats and breasts of the thousands who followed the coffin rank and file; and many even of the better sort met the procession at the churchyard.[12] It was a serious sign of disaffection for so many persons to shew sympathy with a leveller.
1649.
But the opposition made in the pulpit to the new rulers constituted a still more formidable difficulty. Presbyterian preachers, who at the beginning of the war had defended the army, could not be silent, now that the war had led to results so very different from what they had contemplated. No wonder then that many of them denounced what had been done at Westminster and Whitehall. They accused the usurpers of blood-guiltiness, and regarded the High Court of Justice as "framing iniquity by law." They held themselves bound, they said, in duty to God, religion, the King, the Parliament, and the kingdom, to profess before angels and men, that they verily believed the taking away the life of Charles was opposed to the teaching of the Bible, and the spirit of the Protestant religion. The whole business they declared to be inconsistent with the oath of allegiance, and contrary to the solemn League and Covenant. Accordingly, they prayed for the Prince of Wales as Charles II. Mr. Cawton, a Presbyterian minister, did so before the Lord Mayor of London. While all this is not to be wondered at, and the men who so acted for conscience' sake are commendable for their courage, it is no matter of surprise that the new government, in self-defence, should strive to put an end to such dangerous proceedings. Therefore, in March, an Act appeared, forbidding ministers in their pulpits to meddle with affairs of State, or to hold correspondence with foreign powers. They were ordered to apply themselves simply to the preaching of the Gospel for the edification of their hearers.[13]
Declaration of Parliament.
It became necessary for Parliament to vindicate its conduct. It did so, and, in the declaration published with that view, passages appear relating to religion, in which is recapitulated what had been accomplished in the way of reformation; and desires are avowed for the furtherance of the same object. The rulers profess their wish to suppress Popery, superstition, blasphemy, and profaneness; but they also express their desire to remove such acts and ordinances as coerce conscience, "which have been made use of for snares, burdens, and vexations to the truly sincere-hearted people of God, that fear Him and wait for the coming of His Son Jesus Christ." This last clause of course would please the army. The sheets containing it, wet from the press, would be despatched to the camp, and eagerly would soldiers gather round some comrade sitting by his tent door, to read the new proclamation. The millenarian leveller would take comfort from these words, whether they were meant for him or not. But what would the Presbyterians think? The next sentence seems intended to soothe their fears—and, if it did so, it would rouse alarm in the minds of extreme men, just elated by the tenor of the preceding paragraph. "And because we are not ignorant how injuriously our proceedings herein are charged upon us, as if we were setting up and countenancing an universal toleration, when our true aim in the liberty we give is only the necessary encouragement we conceive due to all that are lovers of God, and the purity and power of religion, we can and do therefore declare, in the sight of God and man, that by whomsoever we shall find this liberty abused, we shall be most ready to testify our displeasure and abhorrency thereof by a strict and effectual proceeding against such offenders."[14] Here the countenance of the Presbyterian would brighten, and that of the wild sectary would fall.
1650.
As protestations and covenants had been the order of the day, a new test of obedience was now contrived under the name of an Engagement. The security of the State demanded something of the kind, for authority cannot exist without allegiance. Reference to religion is indeed avoided in the Engagement, and by the terms used in it no spiritual supremacy whatever is claimed; Presbyterians nevertheless considered the new oath to be inconsistent with their Covenant engagements; and, taking this view, they gave a religious character to that which had been carefully framed in order to prevent any such construction. The new political test appeared to them a snare to catch consciences, and a sword to wound them. Transformed into an anti-covenant pledge, it kindled throughout England the fire of a fierce indignation.
On the 22nd of February, 1649-50, the House passed a law for the better propagation of the gospel in Wales, and on the 8th of March, another for the better advancement of religion and learning in Ireland. The latter provided for the maintenance of seminaries in and near the city of Dublin. Archiepiscopal manors and lands were vested in trustees for the use of Trinity College, and for the erection and maintenance of a free-school; the appointment of governors and masters being vested in the Lord Lieutenant; and the trustees, with his consent, having authority given them to make rules and ordinances subject to confirmation by Parliament.[15] The same month saw a statute for the more frequent preaching of the gospel, and for the better maintenance of ministers in the city of Bristol.[16]
Religious Legislation.
In the spring of 1650, Parliament resumed the question of ministerial support, and a new Act was passed for pious uses,[17] for the augmentation of livings and for the payment of heads of houses in the Universities; £80 per annum being specially provided for "the Margaret Lecturer of Oxford."
Other characteristic instances of religious and moral legislation appear in the statute book for the year 1650. By virtue of an Act passed the 19th of April, penalties were to be levied for the desecration of the Sabbath, and for the non-observance of thanksgiving and humiliation days. Seasons of both kinds were put on a level, which was a position of things not at all consistent with puritan ideas of the Divine authority of the Lord's Day, Goods carried in the streets at such times were liable to seizure; travellers and waggoners, if they performed a journey during the hours of holy rest, were to be fined ten shillings. Writs and warrants executed on a Sunday were to lose their effect, and persons serving them were exposed to the payment of a fine of five pounds. Nobody was to use a boat, a horse, a coach, or a sedan, except for going to church, upon pain of forfeiting ten shillings. The like penalty was to fall on those who visited taverns and alehouses. Authority was given to officers to search for offenders, and justices and constables were made liable to penalties if they neglected their duties. The Act was to be read in all the churches yearly upon the first Lord's Day in the month of March.[18]
1650.
Profane cursing and swearing were prohibited by an Act passed the 28th of June, with a curiously graduated scale of penalties, arranged according to the rank of the offender. A lord was to be fined thirty shillings; a baronet or knight, twenty; an esquire, ten; a simple gentleman was to pay six and eight-pence, and people of inferior quality, three and fourpence. A double fine followed a second offence; and after a tenth instance of transgression the culprit was to give a bond for good behaviour. The law made no distinction between men and women, and gave charge to all constables vigilantly to hunt out all offenders.[19]
There followed, on the 9th of August, a statute against certain atheistical, blasphemous, and execrable opinions derogatory to the honour of God, and destructive to human society, the enumeration of which includes the most monstrous opinions, such even as the following:—that a human being might proclaim himself to be God, to be infinite, to be almighty; that the blasphemy of the Most High, and other horrible acts are not in themselves shameful; that murder, adultery, and the like, are in their own nature as righteous as the duties of prayer; that happiness consists in sensual indulgence; that there is no such thing as sin, or salvation, or damnation, or heaven, or hell. Persons holding such opinions were to be punished by six months' imprisonment, or, on a second conviction, by banishment out of the Commonwealth. A return without licence incurred the consequences attendant on felony.[20]
Moral Legislation.
We have given this specification of opinions as we find it in the Act, because no general description of it could convey an idea of the extraordinary vagaries of thought to which it points. Taken as they nakedly appear in this unique schedule, they must have been of an ultra-fanatical kind, such as we should suppose only madmen would entertain. But, upon a little reflection, it appears not unlikely that some of the opinions pronounced execrable were, by those charged with holding them, expressed in a different form of words from that given in the Act, and that they really consisted only in those wild pantheistic speculations to which transcendental thinkers of a certain description have always been addicted. Amidst excitements which moved human nature to the loftiest heights and the lowest depths, which brought out conspicuously what was in man, both of good and evil, it was not strange that the ignorant should bluntly say some of the same absurd things which the learned have been wont to convey in specious phrase and polished diction. At all events, there must have been a large amount of very objectionable, and even monstrous teaching in those days, to have called forth such minute notice and such terrible denunciation.
1650.
Private morals likewise were scanned and marked by these vigilant legislators.[21] Their policy, as we have said before, was intended to supply a defect consequent upon the abolition of the old Church courts, proceeding as it did upon the idea handed down for ages, that penal laws sufficed to extinguish individual vice, as well as to suppress social crime—an idea now, after an uninterrupted continuance of failures, almost universally regarded as utterly delusive. The Long Parliament in these, its last days, threatened incest with death without benefit of clergy; it marked adultery as felonious, and it punished fornication with three months' imprisonment. A common bawd was to be whipped, set in the pillory, branded with a hot iron, and committed to the House of Correction for three years: a repetition of the offence was to be treated as a capital crime. Henry Marten, looking at the subject from what was then the common point of view, justly observed, in the course of the debate to which the measure gave rise, that such severity only served to increase transgression, inasmuch as merciful people would shrink from bringing offenders to justice, and offenders escaping with impunity would be encouraged in sin.
The laws which we have just enumerated were passed in the spring and summer of 1650; and it was about that time, indeed shortly before the speech just noticed, that the influence of Marten passed its zenith, and he descended from the high position he had occupied in the rule of the Commonwealth. The cause of that event, partly political and partly personal, is to be found in his stern republicanism, and in his disputes with Oliver Cromwell. An enquiry into that subject does not come within the scope of our history, nor do the consequences of it concern us further than this, that they indirectly touched the state of ecclesiastical affairs: for Marten's exclusion from the Council of State in February, 1650, and the inconsiderable part which he took in public business after his re-admission, amounted, according to the view which we have taken, to the dismissal or the withdrawal of one of the memorable triumvirate who had wielded for a time supreme authority in the Church as well as the State. Vane's power was of longer duration, but his disappearance from the lofty sphere he had occupied is an event which we shall speedily have to notice—an event which will be found to have left the government of England in the hands of that one man, who, as the greatest general and statesman of his age, was alone competent to rule his country in the hour of its peril, and the crisis of its fate.
Moral Legislation.
An Act of the 27th of September, 1650, places the religious policy of Parliament in a very doubtful light.[22] It repealed old acts of uniformity. It professed to relieve the religious and the peaceable from the rigour of previous intolerance. Yet this very law goes on to say, that it does not interfere with existing acts and ordinances for the due observance of the Lord's Day, and days of public thanksgiving and humiliation; and it therefore requires that on all such days, every person within the Commonwealth shall resort to some public place, where the service and worship of God is exercised, or shall be present at some other place, in the practice of religious duty. Latitude seems to have been given to the mode of obedience, for people were not tied up to any set form—so far they were released from the bonds of Elizabeth's statute. Still religious worship of some kind continued compulsory, and those who neglected religious duties altogether were to be proceeded against as criminals. No penalty indeed is specified—it is only declared that such as broke this law should be proceeded against accordingly—and probably the statute proved a dead letter; but such an enactment, although it might commend itself to the Puritan, was utterly inconsistent with religious liberty, as expounded by Marten, Vane, and others of the republican school.
