Ecclesiastical History of England, Volume 2—The Church of the Commonwealth

by John Stoughton

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Sir Henry Vane retired to Raby Castle after Pride's purge, of which he thoroughly disapproved, and took no part in public affairs until February, 1649, when the execution of Charles had taken place. Mr. Forster remarks: "It is a profound proof of Vane's political sagacity, that he disapproved the policy of that great act. Upon the question of its abstract justice, he never delivered an opinion."—British Statesmen, iii. 125.

[2] Neither Cromwell nor Elizabeth in this respect must be measured by the standard of judgment respecting political morality which is commonly recognized in our day. The fable of Reynard the Fox, the Life of Louis XI., by Comines, and the writings of Machiavel, are proofs of the high repute in which dissimulation was held in the middle ages and after the Reformation, as a quality essential to the government of mankind. See also Bacon's Essays.

[3] Parl. Hist., iii. 1009, 1010.

[4] On the 9th of March, the Duke of Hamilton, the Earl of Holland, and Lord Capel, were executed on Tower Hill in consequence of the decision of the preceding year that all who took up arms in the second war were traitors, and should suffer the penalties of treason.

[5] Parl. Hist., iii. 1303.

[6] Parl. Hist., iii., 1267, 1276.

[7] The Essex Watchmen to the Inhabitants of the said County. London, 1649. This publication, referring to the clause in the agreement, "so it be not compulsory," declared that "this one little parenthesis was the fly in the box of ointment," which made it "an abhorring in the nostrils of every one who is knowingly judicious and pious." The ministers lamented that, in consequence of those five fatal words, heads of families would be prevented from obliging their children and servants to attend public worship; and thus, they said, an inlet was opened for domestic profanity. In their estimation, not to compel people to be religious was to grant them "liberty to apostatize, and cast off the profession of Christianity;" and before concluding their testimony, they denounced toleration as a satanic engine "for demolishing the beauty, yea, the being of religion."

[8] The Act for the abolition and sale is printed in Scobell, p. 16. Date, April 30, 1649. There were surveys and valuations made accordingly, of which some records are preserved in the Lambeth Library. As these surveys are often referred to, the following description of them is given from the Catalogue of the Lambeth MSS.:—

"Surveys of the possessions of bishops, deans, and chapters, and other benefices, were made in pursuance of various ordinances of Parliament during the Commonwealth, by surveyors appointed for that purpose, acting on oath, under instructions given to them, as may be seen in Scobell's Acts and Ordinances, A.D. 1649, p. 19, &c. The original surveys were returned to a registrar appointed by the ordinances, and duplicates or transcripts of them were transferred to the trustees or commissioners nominated for the sale of the possessions, who held their meetings in a house in Broad Street, in the City, where these documents remained until after the Restoration." It was afterwards ordered that these records should be delivered to Juxon, Archbishop of Canterbury, to take care of the same, and by him they were deposited in the Lambeth Library. "Some of them were afterwards sent by his Grace to the bishops and deans and chapters to which they belonged, so that the collection in the Lambeth Library is not complete. What remain are bound up in twenty-one large folio volumes, in alphabetical order, of the different dioceses or counties to which they relate. A minute index to the whole, in one folio volume, exhibits the name of every place surveyed. Besides the above, there are surveys of the possessions of the see of Canterbury kept separate from the possession of the other sees, deans and chapters, &c., with indexes in alphabetical order, which are bound in three volumes; of these the second contains original surveys, as far as folio 73, from thence to the end are copies."

Several interesting extracts from the survey are contained in Lyson's Environs. Take the following as illustrative of the religious affairs of the parish of Walthamstow:—

"The commissioners appointed to enquire into the state of ecclesiastical benefices, in 1650, found by their inquest that the vicarage of Walthamstow was worth £40 per annum, including the tithes and glebe. John Wood was then vicar; he had been put in by the committee of plundered ministers; 'but (says the inquest) he is now questioned for his abilities; and certain articles have been exhibited against him to the committee, and he is disliked by the greater part of the inhabitants, who will not come to church to hear him; whereby there is great distraction in the parish.' The jurors report that it was not known in whom the patronage of the vicarage was vested, it having been long in suit, and then as yet undetermined."—Lyson, iv. 221.

[9] See Bentham's Ely Cathedral, sect. vi.

[10] In the powers for sale of Deans and Chapter lands (passed July 31st, 1649), "rectories, parsonages, and vicarages" are excepted.—Scobell, 69. In connexion with this, however, may be mentioned "an Act" passed, April the 26th, "for settling the rectory or parsonage-house of Burford, Oxon., and some of the glebe land on W. Lenthall, Esq., now Speaker, and his heirs."—Parry, 504.

[11] Scobell, 40. One hundred pounds a year at that time was a large salary. It must have been as good as five hundred now, seeing that Sir Henry Slingsby kept an establishment of thirty servants on £500 per annum.—Brodie's British Empire, iv. 245.

[12] Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, i. 435. Whitelocke, 399.

[13] Parl. Hist., iii. 1305.

[14] Parl. Hist., iii. 1323, et seq.

[15] Scobell, 104.

[16] Ibid., 111.

[17] April 5, 1650. Scobell, 111.

[18] Ibid., 119.

[19] Scobell, 123. In the Windsor churchwardens' accounts for 1652-3 there are several entries of persons fined for swearing.—Annals of Windsor, ii. 268.

[20] Scobell, 124. Milton praises this Act in his Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes.—Political Works, i. 548.

[21] Scobell, 121. May 10, 1650. The Parliamentary History, vol. iii. 1347, states that on the 7th of June a bill was ordered to be read on the Friday evening ensuing against the vice of painting, the wearing of black patches, and the immodest dresses of women. But no mention is made of it in the Journal of that day nor in Scobell's Acts.

[22] Scobell, 131.

[23] From the same register may be added a few extracts illustrative of collections made at church in those times:—

"Divers ministers, and other distressed families, driven into the straitened garrison of Pembroke, and several imprisonments, most of them under the Earl of Carbery first, and now at last undergone the loss of all that they had by General Gerrard, only escaping with their lives, 1645. (Collected 8s. 10d.)

"Poor Protestants driven out of Ireland. 1647. (Collected on the thanksgiving-day for God's great blessing upon the Parliament's forces in Munster, under Lord Inchiquin, 5s.)

"John Cheynell, late minister of Beedon, Bucks, who had been continually plundered by both armies, 'and had lost two sons, gracious young men, cruelly murdered, himself having been sequestered by false information,' 1652. (Collected 15s. 8½d.)

"Mr. Philip Dandelo, a Turk by nation, by profession a Mahometan by God's gracious providence and mercy converted to the Christian faith, by the endeavours of Dr. Wild, Dr. Warmester, Mr. Christopher, and Dr. Gunning, 1661. (Collected 5s. 8d.)"—Lyson's Environs, iv. 285.

[24] Letters and Journals, iii. 66.

[25] Baillie, iii. 69, 74, 79.

[26] Letters and Journals, iii. 84-88.

"Dr. Bramble, of Derry, has printed the other day, at Delf, a wicked pamphlet against our Church. We have no time, nor do we think it fit to print an answer." The pamphlet was written by Bramhall, Bishop of Derry, entitled "A Fair Warning to take heed of the Scottish Discipline," and may be seen in his Works, iii. 237. Notwithstanding the remark just quoted, a reply appeared, entitled: "A Review of Doctor Bramble, late Bishop of Londonderry; his Fair Warning against the Scotch Discipline," by R. B. G., printed at Delf, 1649.

The following letter preserved amongst the State Papers (Commonwealth, Dom.) is worth introducing here:—

Most dear brother—We have not any news concerning Rupert the Devil, unless what comes out in print. No man receives any letter from you. My brother, the Prince Elector, is now here, and cares no more for those cursed people in England, for he hath done his duty to the King, which otherwise he might have avoided by reason of the affairs which required him at Cleare. Here, also, are the Scotch Commissioners, who every day bring some new proposal to the King, full of impertinency, for they would not that the King should keep about him any honest man, for which they are in great favour with the Princess of Orange, who declares herself much for the Presbyterians, and says that Percy is the honestest man the King has about him. But I believe you care not much to know the intricacies here, for which cause I shall not trouble you further, besides that you have other business to do than reading letters, only I entreat you to take notice.—I remain your affectionate sister and servant,

Sophia.

A Mons. le Prince Rupert, April 13th, 1649.

[27] State Papers, Dom., Commonwealth. 5th of March, 1649-50. Certain names are mentioned in the paper as desirable to be added to the King's Council.

[28] In the paper it is stated that arms and ammunition were already forwarded to the Scilly Isles for the purpose proposed.

There is a letter amongst the State Papers connected with this document and interlined with sympathetic ink, which interlining speaks of submitting to the engagement as necessary for his Majesty's service. It contains a request that his pleasure might be privately intimated with respect to religious parties generally.

[29] Erroneously placed under the month of May. The day is obliterated.

[30] State Papers Dom. Interreg. The last portion within brackets has been added by a later hand.

[31] To Sir E. Nicholas, from Mr. Nicholson, 1650, June 2, Jersey.—State Papers Dom., Interreg.

[32] State Papers, under date, Dom., Interreg.

[33] Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, by Carlyle, 20, 28.

[34] Carlyle, ii. 58, 64.

[35] Letters and Journals, iii. 112.

[36] An account of the coronation is given in Baillie's Letters and Journals, iii. 128.

[37] See Cunningham's History of the Church of Scotland, ii. 167, 168.

The following passages from Sir J. Turner's Memoirs throw light on the hypocrisy of this period:—

"Glasgow, being a considerable town, was most refractory to this Parliament; for Mr. Dick, whom they looked upon as a patriarch, Mr. Baillie, Mr. Gillespie, and Mr. Durhame, all mighty members of the Kirk of Scotland, had preached them to a perfect disobedience of all civil power, except such as was authorized by the General Assembly and Commission of the Kirk: and so, indeed, was the whole west of Scotland, who cried up King Christ and the kingdom of Jesus Christ, thereby meaning the uncontrollable and unlimited dominion of the then Kirk of Scotland, to whom they thought our Saviour had delivered over His sceptre, to govern His militant Church as they thought fit." (Page 53.)

"About this time, the monstrous Remonstrance was hatched; and if Lambert had not, by good fortune to us all, beaten Colonel Ker at Hamilton, I believe the King had been just as safe at St. Johnston as his father was at Westminster. The desperate condition of affairs moved some of the best natured of the Presbyterian clergy to think of some means to bring as many hands to fight against the public enemy as was possible; and therefore, notwithstanding all their acts of Assemblies and Commissions of the Kirk to the contrary, they declared all capable of charge in state or militia who would satisfy the Church by a public acknowledgment of their repentance for their accession to that sinful and unlawful engagement. The King commanded all who had a mind to serve him to follow the Church's direction in this point. Hereupon, Duke Hamilton, the Earls of Crawford and Lauderdale, with many others, were admitted to Court, and numbers of officers re-assured and put in charge, and entrusted with new levies. My guilt in affronting the ministry (as they called it), in the person of Mr. Dick, at Glasgow, and my other command in the west, retarded my admission very long; but at length I am absolved, and made Adjutant-General of the Foot, and, after the unfortunate encounter at Inverkeithing, had once more Lieutenant-General Holburn's regiment given me by his Majesty's command. Behold a fearful sin! The ministers of the Gospel regard all our repentances as unfeigned, though they knew well enough they were but counterfeit; and we, on the other hand, made no scruple to declare that Engagement to be unlawful and sinful, deceitfully speaking against the dictates of our own consciences and judgments. If this was not to mock the all-knowing and all-seeing God to His face, then I declare myself not to know what a fearful sin hypocrisy is." (Page 94.)

[38] Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, 759.

[39] The loyal Lancashire Presbyterians refused to join the Earl of Derby, because he would not take the Covenant and dismiss all Papists.—Hibbert's Manchester, i. 400.

[40] State Papers, Dom., Chas. II., Calendar by Mrs. Green, 1660-1661, Preface, xiii. These are Annesley's own words. It is difficult, however, to reconcile all he says with his sermon before the House of Commons in 1648; but then it was very difficult to be consistent in those days.

[41] The following entries appear in the Council Book:—

"7th May.—That it be referred to the Committee appointed for the examining of the London ministers to send for Mr. Jenkins according as they shall have occasion, and to examine him upon such matter as they shall have before them; the Council being satisfied, upon a certificate of the physicians, that he may be brought without prejudice to his health; and they are likewise to send for such other persons as they shall find concerned in that business, and examine them concerning the same, and report the state of the whole matter to the Council.

"10th May.—That Mr. W. Jenkins be committed close prisoner to the Tower, for high treason, &c." (This was William Jenkyn, lecturer at Blackfriars, and author of An Exposition on the Epistle of Jude.) "That he may speak to Dr. Dwight, Dr. Guarden, or Dr. Pagett, all or any of them, concerning his health, if he shall think fit.

"That Mr. Massey be committed close prisoner to the Tower of London, for high treason, in keeping correspondence with the enemies of the Commonwealth, and endeavouring to subvert the Government thereof, and in order to his further examination and trial, according to law.

"That Mr. Christopher Love be also committed prisoner to the Tower, in like manner, for the like crime.

"That Mrs. Jenkins, Mrs. Case, Mrs. Love, and Mrs. Drake, be permitted to come and abide with their husbands, now prisoners in the Tower, notwithstanding their close imprisonment.

"12th May.—That they shall have liberty to visit their husbands, provided they speak not to them but only in the presence and within the hearing of the Lieutenant of the Tower, or such, by his appointment, as he will answer for.

"10th June, 1651.—That it be referred to the Committee for Examinations to send for, in safe custody, and at such time as they shall think fit, the persons hereafter named, viz.: Mr. Jackson, Mr. Nolton, Mr. Robinson, Mr. Cawton, Mr. Blackmore, Mr. Herrick, Mr. Haviland, Mr. Watson, Mr. Crauford, Col. Souton, Lieut.-Col. Jackson, Mr. Cawdry, and to examine them concerning their having had a hand in the London conspiracy, and to report to the Council their several examinations, when they shall be taken."

Baxter, at this time, refused to keep the humiliation and thanksgiving days appointed by Government, and preached so as plainly to shew he disapproved of their proceedings. This brought him into suspension. He says: "My own hearers were all satisfied with my doctrine, but the Committee-men look sour; but let me alone. And the soldiers said I was so like to Love that I would not be right till I was shorter by the head. Yet none of them ever meddled with me further than by the tongue." He adds that he was never forbidden to preach but once, and that was an assize sermon.—Life and Times, i. 67.

[42] The letter is dated "from the Tower of London, August 22nd, 1651, the day of my glorification," and is preserved, with others from which we have quoted, in Love's Name lives. London, 1651.

Eachard tells a story of Cromwell having written to the Parliament, recommending Love's reprieve on security for good behaviour, and of the letter being stolen by some cavaliers.—Hist. of England, ii. 706.

[43] After the dissolution of the Long Parliament, Cromwell was supreme.

The following extract is curious, as indicating that when he had all power in his own hands, he must have connived at the revival of old church customs: "Living here, in the churchyard of St. Margaret's, in Westminster, which was the church proper to the Parliament, for here they kept their thanksgivings, their humiliations, and all other their solemnities; whereas in their time the font was pulled down, and so continued demolished and in ruins, it is now set up again in a most decent and comely manner; and I hope it will be an example for other churches to follow; so likewise they had a very solemn perambulation in Rogation week, according to the old manner, which had been omitted during the sitting of Parliament; and holidays begin to be kept."—From the Dedication to Goodman's Two Great Mysteries. June 4th, 1653.

[44] Quoted in Forster's English Statesmen, v. 139.

Thurloe gives one of the replies, dated 13th May, 1653. The Dutch deputies say, in a letter of the 12th of August, 1653, that "the Independent party" are spread through all England under the name of gathered churches. The word "Independent" was often used in a very wide and general sense.—Thurloe's State Papers, i. 395.

[45] The Broadmead Records, 43. A strong feeling against Cromwell and his policy is manifest throughout. The writer was evidently a prejudiced sort of person.

[46] Whitelocke observes that "it was much wondered at by some that these gentlemen, many of them being persons of fortune and knowledge, would, at this summons, and from these hands, take upon them the supreme authority of the nation." Memorials, 559.

[47] Carlyle, 187-217. Foster, v. 148-164.

[48] Exact Relation. Somers' Tracts.

[49] Notices of these persons may be found in Noble's Lives of the Regicides—not, however, a trustworthy book. The account of Tomlinson is very meagre.

[50] The Act was passed August 24th, 1653.—Scobell, 236. Mr. Forster, in his Statesmen, v. 195, informs us on the authority of the compilers of the Parliamentary History, that in the debates on this marriage law, it was proposed but not passed, "That if any person then married or to be married according to this Act, should make proof by one or more credible witness upon oath, that either the husband or wife had committed the detestable sin of adultery during such marriage, then the said parties might be divorced by the sentence of three justices of the peace." In Cobbett's Parliamentary History, iii. 1413, however, no notice is taken of this circumstance.

[51] Baxter mentions that Mr. Tallents, of Shrewsbury, and other clergymen, married persons in the presence of a magistrate, the magistrate only declaring that it was a legal union.—Calamy's Life of Baxter, 67.

[52] See Commons' Journals, under dates.

There is, under date 26th of August, 1653, in the Council Order Book, the following entry:—"That the draft of the Act for the abolishing of all rural prebends, which was in the hands of F. Chas. Wolseley to be reported to the Parliament, be humbly reported to the Parliament by Mr. Laurence." No such Act appears in Scobell.

[53] See Exact Relation and New Narrative of the Dissolution, and Forster's Statesmen of the Commonwealth, v. 218.

Thurloe's State Papers furnish illustrations of the difference of opinion in the Short Parliament, i. 368, 386, 387, 393.

[54] Commons' Journal, December 2, 1653.

[55] Exact Relation.

[56] We have endeavoured impartially to set down such facts as can be ascertained in reference to these important proceedings. What was done by the Little Parliament, or any other Parliament, in no wise affects the question as to the Scriptural mode of supporting religion. Many readers will have reached their own conclusions on that point. Some may believe the Bible favours the civil establishment of the Church; others that an establishment of this kind is inconsistent with the teaching and spirit of primitive Christianity. The author does not scruple to say that the latter is his opinion, though he has jealously watched lest the fact should prejudice any of his statements.

The above narrative points to the difficulties surrounding the controversy, when lifted out of the sphere of abstract truth, as studied by divines and philosophers in their closets, into the arena of political and financial debate; where practical men have to deal not only with first principles, or even with statute laws and long established usages; but also with a large amount of property which for generations the State has held in trust for religious uses.

[57] See Clarendon's statements in his Hist. of Rebellion, 795, and those of Baxter, in his Life and Times, i. 70. The question with regard to a Commission of Triers is thus unfairly represented by the latter: "It was put to the vote whether all the parish ministers of England should at once be put down or no. And it was but accidentally carried in the negative by two voices." Clarendon goes so far as to say: "They resolved the function itself to be antichristian, and the persons to be burdensome to the people."

[58] It was mooted at Norwich "whether it be fit to draw a petition to the Parliament that the cathedral may be given to the city for a stock for the poor."—Corporation Records, date 19th March, 1650.

From an extract of a petition in Manship's History of Yarmouth, p. 394, it appears that the townspeople "begged such a part of the lead and other useful material of that vast and altogether useless cathedral in Norwich, towards building a workhouse, to employ our starving poor, and repairing our piers."

[59] See Thurloe, i. 519, 523. We must leave the political historian to describe how far Cromwell influenced the resignation.

[60] Sterry was one of Cromwell's chaplains.

[61] Thurloe, i. 621.

[62] Cunningham's Handbook of London.

[63] State Papers, Dom., Interreg., Dec., 1653.

[64] Thurloe, i. 641. It is added in a postscript: "I am just now assured, and from one that you may believe, that Harrison, Vavasour Powell, and Mr. Feake, have been all this day before his highness and council; and that Powell and Feake are this evening sent to prison, and Harrison hath his commission taken from him."

[65] Thurloe, i. 442.—Allowance must be made for the prejudices of the reporter, and consequently some abatement from the violent charge. From the Council Order Books, (State Paper Office) we extract the following minutes:—

"Dec. 21st. 1653.—That Mr. Feake and Mr. V. Powell be sent for, in custody, to appear before the Council, at four of the clock, in the afternoon of this day, to answer such matters as shall be objected against them, and that warrants be issued and signed by the Lord President, for authorising Sergeant Dendy to take them into custody accordingly.

"That it be referred to Mr. Scobell and Scoutmaster General Downing to peruse the paper now read, of words spoken by Mr. Feake and Mr. Powell, and to extract and divide into heads the material passages therein; as also to take in writing the examinations of such witnesses to the same purport as shall be produced before them.

"23rd.—That Mr. Feake and Mr. Powell be kept severally in custody by the Serjeant-at-arms, and brought to the Council to-morrow morning.

"22nd of December.—The Lord Protector present.—Mr. Vavasour Powell and Mr. Feake brought before Council.

"That Mr. Feake and Mr. Powell be continued in the custody of the Serjeant-at-arms apart, as formerly, until to-morrow morning; that the Council give further order, and that no person be permitted to come to them but for their necessary provisions."

We have not noticed any further entries on the subject.

[66] Lingard's History of England, xi. 14.

Hugh Peters was an earnest advocate for peace with the Dutch.

"Mr. Peters prays and preacheth for peace, and exhorteth them to peace. On the last thanksgiving-day he told them, that God Almighty had punished them long enough for their sins, and especially for their pride, covetousness, ambition, discord, ingratitude, and unmercifulness, and hardheartedness to the poor, which are sins that do reign to some purpose in this nation."—From an intercepted letter in Dutch. Thurloe, i. 330.

Peters had become an important political personage. One of the Dutch deputies in treaty with England, observes, in a letter, November, 1653: "Mr. Peters hath writ a letter to the Queen (of Sweden) by the Lord Whitelocke, wherein he relates the reasons why they put the King to death, and dissolved this last Parliament; and withal sends to her Majesty a great English dog and a cheese, for a present."—Thurloe, i. 583.

[67] They are printed in the Parl. Hist., iii. 1417. They bear this simple title: "The Government of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belonging."

[68] Carlyle, ii. 227.

[69] Whitelocke, 571.

[70] The Acts and Resolves of Parliament for taking the Engagement were repealed the 19th of January, 1653-4, and the repeal was confirmed in 1656.—Scobell, 277.

The following letter is an example of the way in which Presbyterian ministers availed themselves of this change to recover benefices forfeited by refusing the Engagement:—

"Mr. Sympson,

"If the order (by colour of which you invaded my church) did give you (which I confess I could never understand) any power to do so, the late revolution hath made it void and null; and the Lord Protector having taken to his sword a sceptre, and consented and sworn to govern according to law, and not otherwise, I conceive it to be my duty to ... let you hereby know that ... I am legal incumbent of the place; in pursuance whereof, I am resolved to return on Lord's Day afternoon, at the usual hour of public worship, to my own church, and therefore desire you to cease your future pains in that place, and signify so much to your friends, that we may have no disturbance: and if you conceive you have any right in the place, commence your action; you shall receive in any court of judicature a plea from him who is resolved to defend his own just privilege, and give an account of his reasons to the world.

"Zach. Crofton.

"The next Lord's Day, being the 2nd of August, I intend to preach at my own church between one and two of the clock, afternoon."—State Papers.

Amongst petitions and other papers in the Record Office, Dom. Interreg., vol. 677, 371, is the following from the Earl of Worcester, shewing the style in which the Protector was addressed:—

"May it please your Excellency,

"The obstacle which hindered many your Excellency's just and laudable intentions for the common welfare being now by God's providence and your Excellency's unparalleled endeavours removed, I make these my most humble addresses to your Excellency (to whose ears were my condition rightly made known), not doubting of redress, and in deed and effectually to receive what the late Council of State put me in daily hopes [of], which my humble petition will in part declare. For I can aver that no subject in England hath been so hardly dealt with; but having recourse to the fountain head of mercy and nobleness, whose crystalline waters may now run without interruption, my heart is elevated with hopes, not only to receive obligations thereunto, but also an opportunity to make evident how much I am ambitious to appear your Excellency's most humble and obliged servant,

"Worcester."

There are several other petitions from this Earl and his Countess.

[71] I have honestly endeavoured to understand and describe this crisis in the Commonwealth affairs, uninfluenced by any ecclesiastical opinions of my own. But I must add that nothing said in these pages is to be taken as inconsistent with a firm belief that the voluntary support of religion is the Divine law of Christianity.

[72] Article xxxv., Parl. Hist., iii. 1425.

[73] "The clergy in Scotland refused to observe the fast day ordered by the Protector, it being their principle, not to receive any directions for the keeping fasts from the civil magistrates."—Whitelocke, 607.

[74] Harris, in his Life of Cromwell, 432, on Clarendon's authority, says that Cromwell, by a declaration, rendered all Cavaliers incapable of being elected, or of giving a vote.

[75] Scobell, 232, 288; Cromwellian Diary, i. cxviii., 17; ii. 253.

Respecting the administration of wills during the Commonwealth, we subjoin the following illustrations:—

In relation to a chasm in the Registry of Norwich between 1652 and 1660, the following passage is found in one of the indexes:—"Cætera ab hoc anno desiderantur testamenta. Cæpit jam Cromwelli usurpatoris istius ambitio rabide sævire; cujus sub vexillo grassabantur undique seditio, violentia, rebellio, sacrilegium, et quod (horrendum dictu est) regicidium. Huic sequuta sunt, confusio in ecclesia, in republica militum insolentia, in parochiis factio, in familiis atheismus. Et plebs miserrima cum maximo suo damno et detrimento (apud nescio quæ tribunalia Londinensia) ad Cromwelli libitum, coacta est se sistere ad testamenta proband."—Nicolas's Notitia Hist., 181.

Extract from Council Books, 14th July, 1653:—

"That it be referred to the Judges for Probate of Wills to appoint such persons as they shall think fit to be keeper of the records belonging to that court.

"That all those rooms formerly used for, or called the Star Chamber rooms, be appointed for the keeping of records belonging to the late Prerogative Court; and also for the records of the New Court for Probate of Wills; and for the erecting and establishing of an office there, and fitting places for the officers and clerks belonging thereunto, in such manner as the said judges, or any of them, shall direct."

"Patent Roll, 1655, p. 3, No. 46.—Mainby. Salary as a Commissioner for Probate of Wills."

"Patent Roll, 1654, p. 4, No. 46.—Lucy." Similar entry.

Amongst Petitions and Reports Intereg., W.Z. No. 246, there is a paper respecting probates, dated 9th of January, 1655.

[76] Scobell, 279.

[77] Yet they were constantly subject to the control of the Protector and Council of State; these without being formally constituted a court of appeal, were so in fact. Take the following instance from the council books:—

"October 5th, 1654.—Whereas, by a late ordinance of his Highness the Lord Protector and the Council, passed the 2nd of December last, it is ordained that the Commissioners for Approbation of Public Preachers shall not give admission to any person formerly sequestered from any ecclesiastical benefice, or promotion for delinquency, until, by experience of conformity and submission to the present government, his Highness and the Council shall receive satisfaction of his fitness to be admitted to ecclesiastical promotion within the Commonwealth, and the same shall be signified to the said Commissioners. Now, upon reading and consideration of a report from Mr. Sterry and Mr. Nicholas Lockier, made in pursuance of a reference to them from the Council concerning Mr. Bridge, of Petworth, it is ordered and declared by his Highness the Lord Protector and the Council, that they are so far satisfied thereby concerning the said Mr. Bridge, his submission and obedience to the said authority, that they do hereby refer it to the said Commissioners, to proceed to the trial of his fitness for preaching of the Gospel; and upon their satisfaction in that behalf, to give him their approbation and admittance, the said bar or restraint contained in the said ordinance notwithstanding."

[78] By the ordinance of January the 19th, 1653-4, (see Scobell), the Act for taking the Engagement was repealed. Some of the sequestered ecclesiastical clergy took advantage of this, appeared before the tribunal, secured their approval, and returned to their livings. But by another ordinance of the 2nd of September, 1654, the Commissioners were forbidden to admit any delinquents until they submitted to the existing government, so as to satisfy his Highness and the Council. The enforcement of subscription to the doctrines of Presbyterianism by ministers of the Establishment was contemplated by some members of Parliament in December, 1654. Cromwellian Diary, i. cxvii.

[79] August the 28th—Scobell, 335-347.

[80] Scobell, 347, 353.

Besides support from tithes there were proposals that ministers should be exempted from paying tenths and first-fruits, and one debate went so far as to suggest the exemption of ministers from all taxation whatever.—Cromwellian Diary, i. ciii.-cxxi.

[81] Scobell, 139. This Act has been referred to, vol. i., p. 487.

[82] Ibid., 353.

[83] Articles xxxvi., xxxvii.—Parl. Hist., iii. 1425.

[84] "Provided this liberty be not extended to Popery nor Prelacy, nor to such as under the profession of Christ hold forth and practice licentiousness."—Art. xxx. 61.

Short observes in his Sketch of the Church of England, ii. 189: "There was at one time a project for extending liberty of conscience to the Roman Catholics, and consultations were held among the members of the Government for the purpose of granting them security of person, and of the remainder of their property after composition, as well as for providing a safe living for a prelate who might execute his functions. But the loyalty of the Roman Catholics was alarmed at the idea of compounding with the usurper, and they communicated the circumstances to the exiled court, where a stop was put to the whole." He refers to Butler's Roman Catholics, 418, and Thurloe's State Papers, i. 740.

[85] Cromwellian Diary, i. cxiv. Dec. 12th, 1654.

[86] At an earlier period, it is remarked in a letter in the State Paper Office, dated 10th of May, 1650: "I received notice of a meeting of my Lord Beauchamp and Sir Arundell, and many others, at Salisbury, upon pretence of being at a race, but purposely to treat of the King's business."

[87] The dates of these ordinances are March 31st, July 4th, June 29th, 1654.—See Scobell.

[88] In these books there occurs an order for the enforcement of arrears of rent due to Dr. Wyniffe, Bishop of Lincoln, before the 9th of November, 1646;—and a reference of the petition of Mrs. Cosin, wife of the Dean of Peterborough, respecting her claims upon the fifths of the income of the rectory of Brancepeth, Durham, held by her husband, to Sir George Vane and others, who, if possible, were to adjust this dispute with the incumbent, Mr. Leaver. If not, they were to report to the Council accordingly.

There is an order on the 3rd of July, 1654 for exempting from excise duty so much paper used in printing the Bible, in the original and other learned languages, as "shall make up 7,000 pounds."

It is remarkable what an unusual number of orders belong to the 2nd of September, 1654, the day before Cromwell met his first Protectorate Parliament.

[89] Newspaper (1654); Cromwellian Diary, i. p. xvii.; Carlyle, ii. 254; Whitelocke, 599.

On this second day of meeting the following resolutions were passed:—

"September 4th, 1654.—Resolved, that the governors of the school and almshouse of Westminster do take care that such of the morning lecturers as preacheth on the respective days, do attend, each morning that they preach, to pray in this House.

"Monday, 11th.—The House being met, and opportunity taken about something that fell from the parson that prayed this morning, it was moved that something should be done as to matter of religion. And in order thereunto, it was resolved that the several members of each county should present the name of one godly and able minister of the Gospel for each county, to be approved of by the House, who should meet together, and present their advice to the Parliament, in such points only as the Parliament should propose to them; the names to be presented upon Friday next."—Cromwellian Diary, i. p. xxvii.

[90] Godwin's Commonwealth, iv. 129.

[91] Article xvii.

[92] Cromwellian Diary, i. p. xcviii. The drinking of healths, however, it should be remembered, "seems now to have been chiefly, if not entirely, confined to the convivial meetings of the Cavaliers, and employed to express their disaffection" to the Commonwealth government.

[93] November 27th, 1654, Journals. This resolution deprived Owen of his seat.

[94] November 17th, 1654. Cromwellian Diary, i. p. lxxix.

[95] Baxter's account of this committee betrays his dislike to the "over-orthodox Doctors Owen and Cheynell." He introduces a rather triumphant description of his own hair-splitting as "one merry passage which occasioned laughter."

Some were, he says, for making it "a fundamental that he who alloweth himself or others in a known sin cannot be saved." Baxter wagered he would make them strike that out. "I told them that the Parliament took the Independent way of separation to be a sin; and when this article came before them, they would say, 'By our brethren's own judgment we are all damned men, if we allow the Independents or any other sectaries in their sin.' They gave me no answer, but left out the fundamental."—Life and Times, ii. 197-9.

[96] Calamy's Abridgment, 121.

[97] Neal, iv. 98. Baxter says twenty propositions were printed, but in Neal's copy, taken from Scobell, there are but sixteen.

[98] Cromwellian Diary, i. p. cxix.

After a careful consideration of what Baxter says, compared with Goddard's Journal in Cromwellian Diary, vol. i. (Introduction), I am brought to the conclusion above expressed, notwithstanding the attempt of Mr. Orme in his Life of Owen, p. 115, to give a different version of the affair. John Goodwin attacked the principle involved in the measure in his Thirty Queries modestly propounded in Order to the Discovery of the Truth and Mind of God in that Question or Case of Conscience, whether the Civil Magistrate stands bound by Way of Duty to interpose his Power or Authority in Matters of Religion and Worship of God. 1653.

[99] Soon after the rising of the first Protectorate Parliament, Biddle was released, but getting again into trouble, after much suffering and imprisonment in Newgate, the poor man became an exile for life. The Protector allowed him a hundred crowns per annum for his subsistence, and in 1658 permitted a writ of habeas corpus in his favour. Notwithstanding his errors, Biddle seems to have been an honest and devout man, and certainly the treatment which he received was most unrighteous.

[100] Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, part i. 176.

In vol. xvii. of Petitions and Reports (State Papers) are the following memoranda:—

"Case tried at Worcester Assizes, 1656. Charge of defamation of character by ejected clergyman, against the person who prosecuted him before the Commissioners. Sued the person for damages. Judge Windham, in charging the jury, did urge very much the increase of damages as aforesaid, declaring that by such conduct as the defendant's honest men came to be sequestered, to the discouragement of many then present who had stated this to be the fact. The jury gave a verdict for the plaintiff—£80 damages."

[101] Some instances will occur in our account of the Episcopalians under the Commonwealth. Others beside Episcopalians were objected to before the Commissioners. In illustration of this, I subjoin the following document amongst the State Papers:—

"To the most reverend the Commissioners for approbation of public preachers.

"Articles that will be proved and deposed to upon oath against James Cockaine, of Tredsham, in the county of Chester.

"That Mr. James Cockaine denies the ministry as an office.

"That no Christian in these ages hath the Spirit of God in any measure.

"That the image of God in us doth not consist in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness.

"That Mr. Cockaine affirms in public, upon occasion, that the sacraments were Popery.

"That he disallows of catechising.

"That syllogisms are of the devil. Denies the Sabbath; saith all days are alike, and that it ought not to be called the Lord's Day.

"That several parishioners, eminent for religion and piety, have withdrawn themselves from his ministry in the said parish. He humbly prayed that as the witnesses are many who will ascertain these articles upon oath, there may issue a commission to justices of the peace for the said county, and ministers to examine the truth of the premises, and to certify thereon."

[102] So far as the law of the Triers were concerned, this is true; but it is right to add that the complaints of non-payment in many cases had a sufficient foundation.

[103] Compare Twell's Life of Pocock, 151, 175, with Thurloe, iii. 281. Owen says in the letter there printed—"There are in Barkshire some few men of mean quality and condition, rash, heady, enemies of tithes, who are the Commissioners for ejecting of ministers." He then refers to Pocock as a man of great learning and high character, as liable to be cast out "on slight and trivial pretences."

[104] These Royalists were religious men. Upon receiving sentence, they exclaimed: "Now, farewell world! welcome heaven! Oh! what a happy change shall we make from night to day! Oh! blessed Jesus and Saviour of the world, how wonderful are Thy mercies! Thy love is unspeakable!" This is reported in one of the newspapers of the day, dated April the 19th, 1655.

In the Perfect Proceedings of the 12th to the 19th of April, it is reported from Hereford that the governor had secured Colonel Birch, who affirmed that the plotters were not Cavaliers, but Ranters, Quakers, and Anabaptists.

[105] Letters from Secretary Thurloe and Mr. Pell in Vaughan's Protectorate of Cromwell, i. 145 and 165.

[106] Harris's Cromwell, 429. Cromwell attempted to vindicate himself on the ground that the Episcopal clergy "meant to entail their quarrel, and prevent the means to reconcile posterity" (435).

Amongst the State Papers is a petition to the Protector from Dr. Woolley, a schoolmaster, to be allowed to continue "his painful employment." There is also a certificate by his friends to the following effect:—"We, whose names are underwritten, do most humbly certify that, upon our knowledge, Edward Woolley, of Hammersmith, in the county of Middlesex, Doctor of Divinity, is a religious, learned, and sober person, and hath most quietly submitted to this present authority under his Highness's government, of whom he never speaks but with great honour and reverence, and so inclineth his scholars under his tuition. He hath a very excellent faculty in the education of youth in the Latin, Greek, and French tongues, with many other commendable exercises, beyond any whom we have seen besides in this nation.—Signed by Thomas Coxe, Doctor of Physic; John Hexing, Minister at Bride's, Fleet Street; and other persons."

[107] Derby, November 17th, 1655.—Thurloe, iv. 211.

[108] November 10th, 1655.—Ibid., 184.

[109] December 1st.—Thurloe, iv. 274.

[110] Ibid., 216.

[111] Thurloe, iv. 228.

[112] Ibid., 151.

[113] Thurloe, iv. 273.

[114] Ibid., 37. There is a curious letter from the same writer (p. 49) from which it appears that the policy of Cromwell's government in Scotland was not to interfere with religious peculiarities if they did not threaten any political disturbance.

[115] Thurloe, iv. 56.

[116] Ibid., 127, 128, 223, 250.

[117] Ibid., 700. The following is worth notice:—

"The other day a minister in a country church prayed for all the exiles and prisoners high, and low; and I being informed of it, caused the man to be brought before the council here, who not denying the words, we committed him, and afterwards he acknowledging his fault and promising never to be guilty of the like again, or using any indirect terms, which might keep up Charles Stuart in the memory of the people, we dismissed him from his imprisonment and from ever preaching again in that church."—Ibid. 558.

[118] History of Nonconformity in Wales, by T. Rees. Appendix, 501. This act is not given in Scobell.

[119] Thurloe, iv. 334.

[120] Thurloe, iv. 565.

[121] Ibid., 380, 505.

[122] Thurloe, iv. 314, 348.

[123] Ibid., 450.

[124] Ibid., 447.

[125] Forster's Statesmen of the Commonwealth, iii. 365.

[126] State Papers, Dom. Interregnum, August the 26th, 1656.

We find the author of the Christian Armour giving advice before the election.

The Magistrates' Portraiture: a Sermon at Stowmarket, in Suffolk, upon August the 20th, 1656, before the election of Parliament-men for the same county, on Is. i. 26: "And I will restore thy judges as at first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning;" by William Gurnall, of Lavenham. 1656.

The preacher expresses a fear of the letting in of Popery through the sects, Anabaptists, Seekers, Quakers, &c., and recommends his hearers to seek out men faithful to the ministers of the Gospel.

[127] Carlyle's Cromwell, ii. 416, et seq.

The following document is in the State Paper Office, 17th of September, 1656:—"We whose names are subscribed, with others, being chosen and accordingly returned to serve with you in this Parliament, and in discharge of our trust offering to go into the House, were at the lobby-door kept back by soldiers, which, lest we should be wanting in our duty to you and to our country, we have thought expedient to represent unto you to be communicated to the House, that we may be admitted therein."—Subscribed by Sir Ralph Hare and 160 others.

September 22.—Resolved, that the persons which have been returned from the several counties to serve the Parliament, and have not been approved, be referred to their application to the Council for their approbation, and that the House do proceed with the great affairs of the nation.

The Committee's answer is, that they have refused none that to them have appeared to be men of integrity, and according to the qualification of the Instrument. And therefore his Highness and the Council have given orders to the soldiers to keep those persons out.—State Papers Dom.

[128] This was Henry Laurence, Lord President of the Council, member for Westmoreland in the Long Parliament, and for Colchester in the Parliament of 1656.

[129] Member for Bedfordshire in the Parliaments of 1654 and 1656.

[130] This was Major-General Lambert, called Lord Lambert, from his being the first president of the Protector's Privy Council. He was member for Yorkshire in 1654 and again in 1656.

[131] Member for Somersetshire in 1654 and in 1656.

For all these speeches see Cromwellian Diary, i. 62, 28, 33, 55.

[132] Ibid., 158.

[133] Carlyle, ii. 470.

[134] Carlyle, ii. 473.

[135] Cromwellian Diary, i. 359.

Mr. Gillespie is no doubt intended. The editor says:—"Notes were expressly prohibited by a direction in the Covenant." I do not find this to have been the case. Nothing is said upon the subject in the Directory.

[136] The petition and advice was first presented to Cromwell, March the 31st, 1657. It was accepted by him May the 25th.

[137] It is related by Henry Neville, member for Reading, in Richard's Parliament, and the author of Plato Redivivus—That "Cromwell, upon this great occasion, sent for some of the chief city Divines, as if he made it a matter of conscience to be determined by their advice. Among these was the leading Mr. Calamy, who very boldly opposed the project of Cromwell's single government, and offered to prove it both unlawful and impracticable. Cromwell answered readily upon the first head of unlawful, and appealed to the safety of the nation being the supreme law. 'But,' says he, 'pray, Mr. Calamy, why impracticable?' Calamy replied, 'Oh, 'tis against the voice of the nation; there will be nine in ten against you.' 'Very well,' says Cromwell, 'but what if I should disarm the nine, and put the sword in the tenth man's hand; would not that do the business?'"—See Critical Review of the Life of Oliver Cromwell, p. 149, note. Cromwellian Diary, ii. 321.

[138] Parl. Hist., iii. 1508 and 1425.

[139] Carlyle, ii. 567.

[140] Carlyle, ii. 579-581.

[141] Ibid., 497.

[142] In 1651 "their High Mightinesses decreed that the sects should be restrained, and not suffered to spread. Sectas cohibendas et in ordinem redigendas, neque permittendum ut in plura loca quam hodie sunt diffundantur."—Bayle's Dict., Art. Anabaptists.

[143] Whitelocke, when Ambassador to the Court of Sweden, had the following conversation with the Archbishop of Upsala. Archbishop: "No one must vent his private fancies or new opinions contrary to the doctrine of the Church. If he does, we severely punish it." Whitelocke: "That is somewhat strict, and may be construed to a kind of assumption of infallibility." Archbishop: "We take no such thing upon us, but desire to preserve peace and unity in the Church and its members." Whitelocke: "Those are good things, but I doubt hardly to be settled in this world, where offences must come." Archbishop: "But woe to those by whom they come." Whitelocke: "They may possibly come by imposing too much on men's consciences as well as by new opinions."—Memoirs of Whitelocke, 375.

[144] April 28th. Cromwellian Diary, ii. 55, 58, 60., and Journals of the House of Commons.

[145] Cromwellian Diary, ii. 149-152.

[146] Faulkner's History of Brentford and Chiswick.—The minutes of the Commissioners are cited as authorities.

[147] Cromwellian Diary, ii. 165, 166.

[148] Neal, iv. 135.

[149] Cromwellian Diary, ii. 202-206.

[150] Journals, 11th of June, 1657.—In the report of the Committee, it is stated, that in the said Bibles there are already discovered these omissions and misprintings, i.e., "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God," for "shall not inherit."—John ix. 21; these words wholly left out: "Or who hath opened his eyes we know not."—Rom. vi. 13; "Neither yield ye your members as instruments of righteousness unto sin," for "unrighteousness."

On the 16th of January this year, 1657, the Grand Committee for Religion had ordered a sub-committee to advise with Drs. Walton, Cudworth, and others, respecting translations and impressions of the Bible. In consequence, there was a meeting at Whitelocke's house, at Chelsea, upon the 6th of February following. The Committee often met, "and had the most learned men in the Oriental tongues to consult with in this great business, and divers excellent and learned observations of some mistakes in the translations of the Bible in English, which yet was agreed to be the best of any translation in the world." Great pains were taken in it, "but it became fruitless by the Parliament's dissolution."—Whitelocke's Memorials, 654.

[151] Cromwellian Diary, ii. 261-269.—The following instance of Parliamentary interference with the ministers of St. Margaret's church occurs in the Journals just after the debate on the Sabbath:—

"Tuesday, June 23rd, 1657.—Ordered, that the Lord Strickland and Major-General Whalley do represent it unto his Highness the Lord Protector, as the desire of the Parliament, that his Highness will be pleased to remove from Margaret's, Westminster, the present preacher, being a prisoner to the Upper Bench; and also one Warmstree, who is employed as a lecturer there, being a notorious delinquent; and to appoint some person of eminent godliness and abilities to be public preacher there; which the Parliament doth apprehend to be a matter of very great concernment to the good of this place."

This probably was Thomas Warmestry, who, though a Puritan, retired to Oxford during the Royal residence there. After the Restoration he was made Dean of Worcester.

[152] Scobell, 438. He places it under 1656.

[153] "It was moved that the sword to be delivered by way of investiture might not be left out.

"Mr. Lister: His Highness has a sword already. I would have him presented with a robe.

"Some understood it a rope, and it caused altum risum. He said he spoke as plain as he could—a robe.

"You are making his Highness a great prince—a king indeed—so far as he is Protector.

"Ceremonies signify much of the substance in such cases, as a shell preserves the kernel, or a casket a jewel. I would have him endowed with a robe of honour."—Cromwellian Diary, ii. 303.

At length it was "Resolved that there be a purple robe lined with ermine, a Bible, a sceptre, and a sword, provided for the investiture of the Lord Protector." Thursday, 25th June, 1657.—Post-meridian Journals.

[154] Mr. Lockyer, chaplain to his Highness, made an exhortation at the Banqueting House, Whitehall, after the Westminster Hall solemnity.

[155] Parl. Hist., iii. 1514-1518.

The following story is told:—"When Cromwell took on him the Protectorship, in the year 1653, the very morning the ceremony was to be performed, a messenger came to Dr. Manton to acquaint him that he must immediately come to Whitehall. The doctor asked him the occasion. He told him he should know that when he came there. The Protector himself, without any previous notice, told him what he was to do, i.e., to pray upon that occasion. The doctor laboured all he could to be excused, and told him it was a work of that nature which required some time to consider and prepare for it. The Protector replied that he knew he was not at a loss to perform the service he expected from him, and opening his study-door, he put him in with his hand, and bid him consider there—which was not above half an hour. The doctor employed that time in looking over his books, which he said was a noble collection."—Harris's Life of Cromwell, p. 4.

If the story be true, the date is incorrect; and the ceremonial of 1653, when Lockyer gave an exhortation at Whitehall Banqueting House, is confounded with the ceremony of 1657, when Manton prayed in Westminster Hall. It would look as if the devotional part of the service had not been contemplated in the original arrangement, but was afterwards introduced by the express desire of Cromwell.

[156] A report of this speech is given in the Journals of the Commons, under date January the 25th, 1657-8.

[157] In connection with this notice of a godly ministry at the re-opening of Parliament, it may not be irrelevant to mention that the daily meetings of Cromwell's Parliament commenced with prayer; and that whereas in the Little Parliament the members turned the legislative assembly into a prayer-meeting—and "engaged" one after another in devotional exercises—in the Parliaments which followed, no such custom obtained; but some regular minister officiated each morning. So scrupulous did the Commons become in confining the performance of Divine worship to the Clergy, that in the last of Oliver's Parliaments, the House on one occasion waited half an hour for the minister, and because he did not make his appearance proceeded without prayer.—Cromwellian Diary, i. xxvii., and Parry, 522.

[158] The Republicans at first rejected had been now admitted.

[159] "Il Signor Protettore col consenso del suo consilio di stato ha questa settima banito per una sua proclamatione di Londra tutte Cattollici e Roalisi alle lor proprie stanze di campagna, o al luogo della lor nascita, prohibendo li sotto pena di incarceramento di allontanarsi di detti luoghi più de cinque miglia, e questa proclamatione commencia a essere in vigore li venti-dui di Marzo, e dura fin alli otto di Maggio." Di Londra, 14mo. Marzo, 1658.—Thurloe, vi. 841.

[160] Carlyle's Cromwell, ii. 634.

[161] Carlyle, ii. 651.

[162] The question of augmentations of livings had been brought before the Council in the month of October, 1656: it was referred to the Lord Deputy and others to speak with Dr. Owen and Mr. Nye upon the subject, and to report their opinions to the Council.

Some points respecting ministers in later entries were referred to Nye, Caryl, and Peters.

[163] The last three minutes belong respectively to May, 1658, June, 1658, and March, 1656.

[164] The authorities for this sketch of Presbyterianism are the Westminster form of Presbyterian government, Parliamentary ordinances, and the account of the particular form under which Presbyterianism appeared in Lancashire, as given by Hibbert, in his History of the Foundations of Manchester.

It should be borne in mind that, while the law, as it regarded the civil enforcement of Presbyterian discipline, remained a dead letter, there was nothing to prevent the carrying out of its purely ecclesiastical arrangements.

[165] In the eighth chapter of the Second Book of Discipline, it is said of Deacons: "To them belongs the collection and distribution of the ecclesiastical property; and in this they must be subject to the presbytery, though they are not members of it."

[166] Members liable to be brought before their several Presbyteries adopted measures of retaliation. Accusations were preferred against church officers. They were accused, for instance, of being present at horse-races, or at ale-feasts, where there was fiddling, bowling, or tippling going on; of neglecting to sing psalms in the family; of entertaining Cavaliers; of affirming that the Parliament was a body without a head; of appealing to the authority of Scripture in support of the royal cause; and of never having publicly manifested any sorrow for malignancy. These accusations were followed by recriminations on the opposite side.—Hist. of the Foundations of Manchester, i. 276.

[167] The following passage with respect to him occurs in the Life of Adam Martindale, p. 61:—

"Mr. Heyrick was then up at London, and after his coming down, I heard him, on a fast day, in a great congregation at Manchester, declare himself (before the ministers of the classis then just setting up) so perfect a latitudinarian as to affirm that the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Independents, might all practice according to their own judgments, yet each by Divine right. How his brethren liked this I know not; but I am sure so he said, his text being: 'The government shall be upon his shoulder' (Isaiah ix. 6). And Mr. Harrison did little less than contradict him, following him upon that text (Zechariah iv. 9), making it his great business to reprove the Independents for not laying a good foundation."

[168] Hist. of Manchester, i. 238.

[169] The Diary and the Autobiography of Newcome, and the Life of Adam Martindale, have been published by the Cheetham Society.

[170] It may be seen in Sion College Library. I feel much pleasure in here expressing my thanks to the librarian for the courteous aid he has afforded me in my researches.

[171] "In regard there was no more ministers present by reason of the Act at Oxford, the further consideration was deferred."

[172] 16th February, 1656.—"The question of the Fifth Monarchy being propounded, it was debated whether there shall be a more glorious time for the Church of Christ before the end of the world. Ordered that this branch of the question be further debated the next meeting."

[173] The title of Saint is carefully dropped.

[174] Some portions of the minutes of meetings held at Sion College are preserved in Dr. Williams's Library. From them we extract the following:—

"Die Lunæ, Dec. 30, 1650.

"Present, Mr. Bedford. The first proposition.—'The ministers that undertook this not yet met.'

"The second proposition.—'None met of this company.'

"Present, Mr. Drake, Mr. Robinson, Mr. Watson. The third proposition.—'Something prepared, but the company have not yet met.'

"Present, Mr. Sheffield, Taylor, Blackwell, Wickens, Blackmer. The fourth proposition papers delivered upon this question.

"Present, Dr. Seaman, Mr. Jackson, Mr. Tawler, Mr. Poole. Fifth proposition.—'One paper delivered about this question.'

"Two papers brought in concerning the fourth proposition at this meeting.

"The paper delivered in about the fourth proposition was read."

These notes seem to refer to heads of debate, prepared at a committee, December the 4th, 1650.

"1. That there is an office of the ministry instituted by Christ.

"2. That this office is perpetual.

"3. That Christ hath appointed in His word the way of separating men to the office of the ministry.

"4. That election and ordination is that way of Christ.

"5. That this ordination——"

Here the MS. abruptly breaks off.

References to these propositions in subsequent minutes are of frequent occurrence.

[175] The county of Essex was formally divided into classes; and the particular arrangement of them, with the names of the ministers as approved by the Committee of Lords and Commons, still exists, but beyond that, I am ignorant of what was done.

The document entitled, The Division of the County of Essex into Several Classes, &c., 1648, is printed at length, with numerous curious annotations in David's Annals of Evangelical Nonconformity in the County of Essex.

[176] See Johnson's English Canons, Oxford Edit., ii. 325.

[177] Coleridge's remark is worth remembering in connection with the Presbyterian endeavours after discipline: "With regard to the discipline attempted by the Antiprelatic Episcopalian (?) clergy, let it not be forgotten that the Church of England has solemnly expressed and recorded her regret that the evil of the times had prevented its establishment, and bequeaths the undertaking as a sacred trust to a more gracious age.—Notes on Southey's Life of Wesley, i. 199. But is discipline a possible thing in a State-established Church.

Keble, in his Life of Wilson, Bishop of Sodor and Man, speaks of the "nation's general hatred of ecclesiastical discipline;" and after giving an account of the ecclesiastical courts in the Isle of Man, says: It was a reality there "for years after it had come to be a shadow in the whole Anglican Church elsewhere," p. 140. He justly remarks that the Manx code implies faith on the part of the people. Some of the laws are curious enough, (see i. 204), and present a chapter in ecclesiastical history worth studying. The sanction and enforcement of such a scheme by the civil power is utterly opposed to the principle of toleration.

[178] See accounts of this church in Strype's Stow, i. 583. Stow mentions as hung up in the cloisters a gigantic shank-bone of a man.

[179] Account of the Ejected, p. 5.

[180] A copy of this is entered in the MS. volume of minutes of the London Synod, Sion College Library.

[181] Strype's Stow, i. 381.

[182] Howe's Works, vi. 298.

[183] Clarke's Lives, preface, p. 8.

[184] See Howe's Funeral Sermon (Works, vi. 349), in which he speaks of Vink as endowed with singular parts.

[185] All this and much more is said to his honour by Calamy in his funeral sermon.

[186] "In Worcestershire," says Baxter, "they attempted and agreed upon an association, in which Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Independents, and the disengaged, consented to terms of love and concord in the practising so much of discipline in the parishes, as all the parties were agreed in (which was drawn up) and forbearing each other in the rest. Westmoreland, and Cumberland, and Essex, and Hampshire, and Wiltshire, and Dorsetshire, quickly imitated them, and made the like association, and it was going on, and likely to have been commonly practised, till the return of the bishops after brake it." This is taken from a paper among the Baxter MSS. (Red Cross-street), vol. ii., No. 28.

When Baxter became acquainted with Ussher, he treated with him about terms of union "between Episcopalians and Presbyterians and other Nonconformists."

[187] "This magnificent structure, sharing the common calamity of civil war, the west part thereof was converted into a stable, and the stately new portico into shops for milliners and others, with rooms over them for the convenience of lodging: at the erecting of which the magnificent columns were piteously mangled, being obliged to make way for the ends of beams which penetrated their centres."—Maitland's London, vol. ii. 1165.

[188] Vain Religion of the Formal Hypocrite.—Baxter's Works, xvii. 80.

The authorities for our account of Baxter are his Life and Times, and the MSS. in Dr. Williams' Library.

[189] Swinnock's Life of Wilson.

[190] Gataker's remarkable book, On the Nature and Use of Different Kinds of Lots, 1619 (in which he maintains that lots are regulated by natural laws) abounds in out of the way learning.

[191] A Discourse Apologetical, wherein Lilies' Lies in his Merlin, or Pasquil for 1654, are laid open.

[192] Gataker's Discours Apologetical, 33-49.—In this amusing history he tells the following story:

"A gentleman being missed at chapel by some of those that used there to meet him, and coming late into the hall at dinner, and being thereupon demanded by one of them where he had been straying abroad, 'I have been,' quoth he, 'at Paul's Cross.' 'Thou wentest thither sure to hear some news,' said the other. 'No, truly,' replied he, 'I went upon another occasion, but I learned that indeed there, which I never heard of before; how the ass came by his long ears. For the preacher there told us a story out of a Jewish rabbin, that Adam, after he had named the creatures, called them one day again before him to try whether they remembered the names that he had given them; and having by name cited the lion, the lion drew near to him, and the horse likewise; but then calling to the ass in like manner, the ass having forgotten his name, like an ass, stood still; whereupon Adam, having beckoned to him with his hand, so soon as he came within his reach, caught him with both hands by the ears, and plucked him by them so shrewdly, that for his short wit he gave him a long pair of ears. Upon this story being told them, one of them told him he was well enough served for his gadding abroad; he might have heard better and more useful matter had he kept himself at home."

[193] This seems an imitation of the mediæval joke, "Although Canterbury had the highest rack, yet Winchester had the better manger."—Hook's Archbishops of Canterbury, iv. 198.

[194] Life and Times, p. ii. 363.

[195] This sermon contains a touching account of the character and death of the young nobleman.

Gauden, in 1659, published The Tears, Sighs, Complaints, and Prayers of the Church of England, setting forth her former Constitution, compared with her present Condition; also the Visible Causes and Probable Cures of her Distempers.

[196] Memorials of Fuller, by Russell, 220, 163.

At the same time Fuller animadverts on the Presbyterians and the Sectaries, 222.

[197] The authority for this story is Calamy, in his Life of Howe.

Fuller had a marvellous memory; and Pepys tells a story of his dictating, in Latin, to four persons together, faster than they could write.—Diary, 22nd January, 1660-1.

[198] Lyson's Environs, iv. 530.

[199] Whitaker's Hist., p. 7.

[200] This notice of the appointment of a pastor is founded upon an entry in the Church Book at Bury St. Edmunds, which, on account of the rare occurrence of such a record, we shall give at length in the Appendix. It should be remembered that this was not an ordination to preach, but simply an ordination to the exercise of pastoral authority in a particular Church. Ordinations and recognition services amongst Independents are not conducted in the present day after the manner just described.

[201] There are letters and resolutions on this subject in the Norwich and Yarmouth Church Books, but they are too long to be inserted here.

[202] These illustrations are chiefly taken from the Yarmouth Church Book.

[203] In some cases loans were sought to meet expenses connected with religious worship. In the Corporation Books at Norwich, it is ordered "that the mayor, sheriffs, and aldermen should every of them lend forty shillings a man, and every of the common council twenty shillings a man, for the building of the seats in the Dutch chapel for the corporation and their wives." It is naïvely added—"If any man will give half, rather than lend the whole, let it be accepted."

[204] The use in some cases of parochial edifices for church-meetings could hardly be considered an exception to this rule. In the Canterbury Church Book this passage occurs:—"The 5th day of the fifth month, this day the Church did unanimously agree to break bread in the Sermon-house, and ordered that henceforth it should be there."—Timpson's Church Hist. of Kent, 307.

The Sermon-house was in the crypt where Henry II. did penance after the assassination of Thomas à Becket. It was granted to the French and Flemish refugees by Elizabeth, in 1561. It is still used for French worship. The long table is that at which the worshippers sit to receive the Sacrament.

[205] He had been minister of St. Laurence, Poultry, London, whence he removed to Aston. He held religious meetings at Nottingham after the Restoration, and was imprisoned for it. Mr. McAll, formerly pastor of Castle Gate, Nottingham, in a sermon he preached on the Bicentenary Celebration of the Church there, in 1862, distinguishes between this Thomas Palmer and the Thomas Palmer at Nottingham, who is described as a military chaplain by Lucy Hutchinson.—Bicentenary of Castle Gate Meeting, p. 73.

[206] His Lordship on another occasion, when on the Western Circuit, remarked in a charge which he delivered to the jury:—"That in case any ministers did not do the duties of their office, as particularly to baptize their children, and to administer the Sacrament to all but such as were ignorant and scandalous, they might refuse to pay them their dues, and they should present such ministers, which was agreeable to the law, and if they were by them presented, they should be dealt withal."

The same Judge also observed that the payment of tithes was in return for the performance of religious service by the minister, and if he did not perform his duty he could not claim his rights. The ministry, he said, in many places now dealt worse with the people than did the Popish priests. They gave the laity one element, but these would not allow them bread or water.

These documents are in the State Paper Office, Dom. Interreg., petitions, &c., vol. xiv., p. 313. Connected with them is a petition to Oliver Cromwell from several ministers, complaining that they had been presented at the assizes for not administering the Lord's Supper, and praying for protection.

[207] The notice which some Congregational societies took of public affairs under the Commonwealth, particularly on days of special humiliation, appears from entries in their records. When, for example, in the year 1652, Admiral Blake met with a defeat in the Downs, and Van Tromp, with a broom at his topmast, vauntingly threatened to sweep the seas of the British flag, the Independents at Yarmouth (who probably had relatives on board Blake's ships, and who had often, on the sands, watched the flotilla which just then was freighted with the hopes of England, as it sailed through Yarmouth Roads)—agreed on the 7th of December, that on the following Thursday, "at ten of the clock, the Church should meet to seek God for the navy at sea." Again, on the 5th of December, 1656, "being appointed by the Governors of this land for a day of fasting and humiliation—to be humbled for the rebuke the Lord gave this nation at Domingo, and that the Lord would discover the cause of that stroke, that every one might find out the plague of his own heart, and that the increase and kingdom of Christ might be promoted, and that our Governors might be faithful in all that is committed to them—the Church hereupon agreed to take the opportunity to seek the Lord upon the forementioned grounds." Threatenings of the plague, breaches and divisions in Churches, brought these earnest Independents together for special intercession.

[208] Poor Churches craved help from sister communities in better circumstances, and did so with signal success. Whilst the spirit of brotherly affection was seen in the bestowment of liberal contributions to the necessitous, it was shewn also in the considerate manner of dismissing members from one neighbourhood to another. We find the following quaint record in the Yarmouth Church Book.

Upon "Brother Staffe" desiring his dismission through "Brother Gideney," "the brethren desired rather that he would come down, for they had something to communicate unto him, and that our parting might not be with bare paper."

[209] Commentary on Ezekiel, p. xii.

[210] Works of Howe, vi. 340.

Thomas Brooks was a Divine, endowed richly with that quaint and curious kind of learning which sparkles so brilliantly in the writings of Jeremy Taylor; and though inferior to his great Church contemporary in point of diction he surpassed him far in the sympathetic and loving exhibition of those sentiments which are most distinctive of the Gospel. After being minister of the parish of St. Thomas the Apostle, he became Rector of St. Margaret's, Fish Street Hill; where, according to Calamy, he gathered a Congregational Church, against which proceeding some of his parishioners presented a petition. But it appears that this is a mistake, and that he did not form an Independent Society until after the Restoration.—Brooks's Complete Works, vol. i.—Memoir by Grosart.

[211] Roger's Life of Howe, 18. This interesting book is our authority for what follows.

[212] Lord Broghill, in a letter to the Protector, Edinburgh, Feb. the 26th, 1655, speaks of "putting no small confidence in Mr. Gillespie and Mr. Levingstone."—Thurloe, iv. 558.

[213] Caldewood, Spalding, Whitelocke, and Sewel.—Orme's Life of Owen, 404-406.

[214] Preface to Death of Christ. Dublin Castle, December 20th, 1649.

"How is it that Jesus Christ is in Ireland only as a lion staining all His garments with the blood of His enemies, and none to hold Him forth as a Lamb sprinkled with His own blood for His friends?"—Owen's Sermon before Parliament, February 28th, 1650.

[215] Quoted in Urwick's Independency in Dublin in the Olden Time, 12.

[216] Dr. Winter speaks of Murcot in strong terms as "an earthly angel," and "a heavenly mortal," and his funeral shewed the estimation in which he was held. "Great was the confluence of people who attended the corpse to the grave. The Lord Deputy Fleetwood followed the body; after him the Council, then the Lord Mayor, &c. Dr. Winter preached his funeral sermon on Hebrews xiii. 7. Upon the face of the whole congregation sat a black cloud of sorrow and disconsolation. The body being brought unto the place of burial, the saddened spectators and standers-by sighed him into his grave, and mingling his dust with their tears, departed and left him in his bed of rest." Quoted from Moses in the Mount.—Urwick's Independency in Dublin, 15.

[217] Orme's Life of Owen, 403.

[218] "I wish I could as truly tell you that the Independents are not dissatisfied. It may be some of them thought they should ride, when they had thrown the Anabaptist out of the saddle."—Thurloe, vii. 161, see also 199.

[219] The following items are extracted from a minute book of Commissioners preserved in Sion College:—

"March 12th, 1650-1. £200 to Mr. Lewis Stewkley, this day approved by this Committee for his preaching in Exeter Cathedral.

"Hereford Cathedral. £50 granted to three ministers out of the revenues of the Dean and Chapter for their preaching in the cathedral. Mr. Ralph London, approved by this committee upon a good testimony, ordered that the sum be paid him, Mr. Smith, the same.

"£200 was voted to the Divinity Lecturer in Canterbury Cathedral."

July, 1656. There was a dispute about the use of Wells Cathedral. It had been ordered that the cathedral should be used for public worship by the inhabitants of the parish of St. Cuthbert, but this was impeded by Dr. Cornelius Burgess, who had got himself into the actual possession of the church, locking and barring the doors, so that no entrance could be obtained; in consequence of which many gentlemen had refused to pay subscriptions promised for the repair of the cathedral.—State Papers Dom. Interreg. Council Book.

[220] Arrangements made with regard to Westminster Abbey at an earlier period appear in the first volume. There are entries in the minute book of the Parliamentary Committee preserved in Sion College Library, relating to the appointment of Obadiah Sedgwick, December, 1649, in the room of Mr. Marshall; to the payment of arrears of salary to Nye as Sunday morning Lecturer, Term Lecturer, and Weekly morning Lecturer, and to Mr. Strong as minister of the abbey. It is to be remembered that Owen, Goodwin, and Baxter preached on certain occasions in the same edifice.

[221] Foxe.

[222] Strype's Annals, iii., part ii. 106.

[223] Ivimey's History of the Baptists, i. 109.

[224] Tracts on Liberty of Conscience, ii. 24, 51.

[225] I have introduced this letter, and other particulars, from the "Yarmouth Corporation Records," because, so far as I am aware, they have never before been published.

[226] Mr. Gould, in the introduction to his Report of St. Mary's Chapel Case, supplies an interesting instance in his account of the Church at Norwich. See p. xv.

[227] Helwisse, (or Helwys), the author of this document, was at the time living in Holland. Soon afterwards, Crosby tells us he and his Church left Amsterdam, and removed to London.—History of English Baptists, i. 272. They are believed to have constituted the first Arminian or general Baptist Church in England.—Evan's Early English Baptists, i. 225. These persons do not appear to have regarded immersion as the proper and only mode of administering the ordinance. Robinson's Works, iii. 461. Two sorts of Baptists are alluded to in the Mercurius Rusticus, the Aspersi and the Immersi.—Evans, ii. 53.

[228] Crosby, vol. i., appendix 7, gives 1646 as the date, but at p. 66 he says it was published in 1644. A second edition appeared in 1646, from which, probably, Crosby took his copy.

[229] The Scottish Dove (November, 1646), relates the commitment of an Anabaptist at Coventry, for preaching up and down the country, and dipping scores of men and women.

[230] "Whereas, at the entreaty of Mr. Calamy and other ministers, as it was represented unto me by certain citizens, I did lately give an allowance to them to meet and dispute with certain Anabaptists; and whence, I understand you, in pursuance of that allowance, there is a public dispute intended on Wednesday next, December 3rd, in the church of Aldermanbury, and there is likely to be an extraordinary concourse of people from all parts of the city, and from other places; and that in these times of distraction there may be hazard of the disturbance of the public peace, I have therefore thought fit, upon serious consideration, for prevention of the inconveniences that may happen thereby, to forbid the same meeting upon Wednesday next, or at any other time, in a public way before I shall receive the pleasure of the honourable House of Parliament touching the same, which, with all conveniency, I shall endeavour to know.

"Thomas Adams,

"Dec. 1st, 1645.  Lord Mayor."

Placard in the British Museum.

[231] Bayle's Article on Anabaptists is worth reading.

Bossuet remarks that Socinians and Anabaptists were the only persons who disputed the right of the magistrate to punish men for religious error.—Variations Protestantes, liv. x., c. 56.

Socinus and Zuinglius, besides the Anabaptists, were the principal, if not the only apostles of religious liberty, at the time of the Reformation.

[232] So he is described by Crosby and Palmer. We may presume Allhallows Staining, Fenchurch Street, is meant.

[233] Crosby's History of the English Baptists, i. 288, 289.

[234] Crosby, i. 312-314.

[235] The following is a list of Baptist ministers who were in possession of livings at the Restoration of Charles II:—

Henry Jessey, A.M.

Thomas Ewins. Bristol.

Edward Bagshawe, A.M. Ambrosden, Oxfordshire. Died in prison, December 28th, 1671.

John Tombes, B.D. Leominster, Herefordshire.

George Fownes, A.M. High Wycombe, Bucks. Afterwards pastor of the Church in Broadmead, Bristol. Died in Gloucester jail, November 25th, 1686.

Jeremiah Marsden. Ardesley Chapel, near Wakefield, Yorkshire.

Robert Browne. White-Lady Aston, Worcestershire.

Daniel Dyke, A.M. Hadham Magna, Herts. He was one of the "Triers." In 1668 he became co-pastor, with the celebrated William Kiffin, of the Church in Devonshire Square, London. He died in 1688.

Richard Adams. Humberstone, Leicestershire. He succeeded Mr. Dyke at Devonshire Square, and lived to a very great age, being disabled from preaching for several years before his death, which took place in 1716.

Thomas Quarrel. Some place in Shropshire. Died in 1709.

William Dell, A.M. Yeldon, Bedfordshire, and Master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

Paul Hobson. Chaplain of Eton College.

Thomas Jennings. Brimsfield, Gloucestershire.

Paul Frewen. Kempley, Gloucestershire.

Joshua Head. Some place in Gloucestershire.

John Smith. Wanlip, Leicestershire.

Thomas Ellis. Lopham, Norfolk.

Thomas Evans. Maesmynys, Brecknockshire.

Thomas Proud. Cheriton, Glamorganshire.

John Miles. Ilston, Glamorganshire.

Thomas Joseph. Llangyner, Glamorganshire.

Morgan Jones. Llanmodock, Glamorganshire.

—— Abbot, Abergavenny, Monmouthshire.

William Woodward. Probably of Southwold, Suffolk.

Gabriel Camelford. Stavely Chapel, Westmoreland.

John Skinner. Weston, Herefordshire.

John Donne. Pertenhall, Bedfordshire. He was a fellow-prisoner with John Bunyan.

John Gibbs. Newport Pagnell, Bucks.

Walter Prossor, William Millman, Watkin Jones, Morgan Jones, Jenkin Jones, Ellis Rowland, and Roderick Thomas, were ministers in various parts of Wales.

The following ministers, whose names are inserted by Mr. Ivimey in his list of ejected Baptists (History of Baptists, i. 328), did not become Baptists till after their ejectment; viz., Francis Bamfield, A.M., John Gosnold, Thomas Hardcastle, Laurence Wise, and Thomas Paxford.—The Great Ejectment of 1662, by Dr. Cramp.

[236] Not exactly the same controversy as that about open and strict communion.

[237] These statements are made on the authority of a speech delivered before the Master of the Rolls, in the important case reported in a volume compiled by the Rev. George Gould, and entitled Open Communion and the Baptists of Norwich. This book is full of curious information.

[238] For a vindication of Vavasour Powell's religious character—who, with all his extravagant opinions on prophecy, seems to have been a most disinterested and zealous man—see Rees' Nonconformity in Wales, and the authorities to which he refers, 114.

[239] Evan's Early English Baptists, ii. 183.

[240] Burnet's Own Times, i. 58.

[241] Perfect Diurnal. Oct. 25th, 1652.

[242] Whitelocke. A. D. 1652, p. 553.

See Evan's Early English Baptists, ii. 215.

[243] Hanbury's Memorials, iii. 475.

The voluntary principle had been clearly laid down during the civil wars, and in addition to proofs of this already adduced, we may add the following:—

Henry Burton, in his Vindication of the Independent Churches, written in 1644, observed:—"What serveth the magistrate and the laws of a civil State for but to keep the peace? And as for parishes, will you allow no churches but parishes? or are parishes originally any other but of humane, politic, and civil constitution, and for civil ends? Or can you say that so many as inhabit in every parish respectively shall be a Church? Should such Churches and parishes then necessarily be Churches of God's calling and gathering? Are they not congregations of man's collection, constitution, and coaction merely? What Churches, then? And as for tithes, what tithes, I pray you, had the Apostles? Such as be faithful and painful ministers of Christ, He will certainly provide for them; as when He sent forth His disciples without any purse or provision, He asked them, 'Lacked you anything?' They said, 'Nothing.' Surely the labourer is worthy of his hire." And as for ministers' maintenance by tithes, Robert Baillie stated in his account of the Independents in 1646:

"The ancient way of maintenance by tithes, or lands, or set stipends, they do refuse, and require here the reduction to the apostolic practice. They count it necessary that all the Church officers should live upon the charge of the congregation,—the ruling elders and deacons, as well as the pastors and doctors; but all they will have them to receive is a mere alms, a voluntary contribution, laid down as an offering at the deacon's feet every Lord's Day, and by him distributed to all the officers and the poor of the congregation as they have need."

A series of propositions is contained in a document presented to the Parliament in the year 1647 (Hanbury, iii. 247) and one of the propositions is to the effect that the officers of the Church ought to be maintained by the free contributions of the people. The same opinion is expressed in Hooker and Cotton's Survey of Church Discipline, a publication reprinted in London in the year 1648. Though, under the Protectorate, times had changed, and the political relations of the Independents and Baptists had changed too, it cannot be doubted that many throughout the Commonwealth maintained the principle expressed in the extracts just given.

[244] From a MS. Life of Owen in the possession of the late Dr. Raffles.

[245] The Oxford Vice-Chancellors, though they hold office for four years, are re-elected each year of the four, and at each re-election make an official speech.

[246] Oratio ii.—Owen's Works, xxi. 581.

[247] Oratio v.—Owens Works, xxi. 611.

[248] Cromwell's Speeches, Carlyle, ii. 559.

[249] See Baxter's Life and Times, i. 70.

[250] Oxoniana, iv. 206.

[251] With respect to regulations of this sort in 1650, before Owen's Vice-Chancellorship, it is said, Oxoniana iv. 210, "Gowns also had now lost their usual fashion, by others introduced by the Cantabrigians, especially that belonging to a bachelor of arts, the sleeves of which were wider than those of surplices, and so continued in fashion not only till the Restoration of Charles II., but the Vice-Chancellorship of Dr. John Fell."

[252] Athen. Oxon., ii. 738.

[253] See Grainger's Biographical History, iii. 302.

[254] Owen was the other.

[255] Howe became minister of Torrington about the year 1650. Goodwin was appointed President of Magdalen in the January of that year. We know that Howe was a Fellow after Goodwin's appointment, from the circumstance of his joining the religious society which the President established in the College. At first Howe objected to unite, because he thought too much stress was laid upon indifferent things. Afterwards he joined upon "Catholic terms."

[256] Preface to De Divinia Justitia, Works, ix., 339. It contains a defence of what he called "his darling university." Burnet, in the History of his own Time, (i. 192.) says, learning was then high at Oxford, chiefly the study of the Oriental tongues, much raised by the study of the Polyglott Bible. They read the Fathers; and mathematics, and the new philosophy, were in great esteem.

[257] Ath. Ox., ii. 562.

[258] "July 11, 1654, Oxford:—After dinner I visited that miracle of a youth, Mr. Christopher Wren."—Evelyn's Diary, i. 306.

[259] "Oxoniana," edited by the Rev. John Walker, vol. i. 98.

[260] For many particulars and sources of information on the subject of Oxford University, I am indebted to Mr. Orme's Memoir of Owen, chap. vii.; but Wood's Athen. Oxon. is the principal authority.

[261] Thorndike, a Cambridge man, noticed in another part of this volume, took an active part.

[262] Twell's Life of Pocock, 209.

"3rd July, 1654.—That the order of the late Council of State, dated 15th July, 1653, for freeing the paper which is to be used for printing the Bible in the original and other learned languages, from the payments of customs and excise, be confirmed, and that according Dr. Bruno Ryves be permitted and suffered to import into this Commonwealth, free from customs and excise, so many reams of paper for the use aforesaid, as with that which is already imported and discharged of duties, shall make up 7,000 pounds, being the total allowed by the said former order to be so imported."—State Papers Order Book of Council.

The handsomer copies were printed on Avergne paper, at that time considered the best.

[263] The price of one copy to a subscriber was £10; of six copies, £50. To others the cost seems to have been from £15 to £18.—Thorndike's Works, vi. 203, note. In Jacobson's edition of Sanderson's Works, vol. vi. 375, is a list of subscriptions amounting to £560. Walton's Polyglott is said to be the first book published in England by subscription.

[264] Owen's Works, iv. 450.

[265] The spirit in which Owen composed this treatise has often been misrepresented. It is probable that some who have condemned have never read it. The work on the Divine Original Authority, Self-evidencing Light and Power of the Scriptures—to which the treatise is an appendix—is also worth studying in connexion with theological controversies at the present day. The third chapter is very remarkable, and the last paragraph moves in a direction which Owen's disciples now would be very unwilling to follow. It shews how the habits of thought alter even in the same school, and should teach us all a lesson of charity.

[266] Thus, the editor of Thorndike, vol. vi. 170, speaks of Cambridge between 1613 and 1646. It applies up to the year 1654, when the regular post began. The first coach from Cambridge to London was set up in 1653. It is scarcely needful to say that the well-known carrier was Hobson, who died of the plague in 1630; but carriers afterwards would convey letters.

From Antony Wood's Diary, 1667, it appears that the Oxford coach took two days to get to London.

[267] Carey's Memorials of the Civil Wars, ii. 224.

[268] Life of Sancroft, by D'Oyley, I. 57. Cooper's History of Cambridge.

[269] Hamilton's Memoir of Barrow, prefixed to his works, vol. i. xv.

[270] Cooper's Hist. of Cambridge.

[271] Dell is sometimes called a Baptist, but he appears from his Doctrine of Baptisms to have set aside water baptism, pp. 11, 16, 19.

[272] Dell complains that men famous for preaching, on coming to Cambridge, ceased from that sense of the Gospel which they once seemed to have. "How suddenly have they been entangled and overcome with the spirit of the enemy!"

Samuel Hering made certain proposals in 1653, and amongst others that two colleges should be set apart, in each University, to such as should solely apply themselves to the attaining the spirit of Jesus, which study needs few books; the works of Behmen, however, he mentions as a furtherance thereto. Such colleges he suggested should have the power of sending forth men to preach. "All teachers," he adds, "without God's hammer are but, in the history of the letter, hammers for the belly and ears, but not for the soul."

He wished that churches should be painted black outside, to remind people of the darkness within.—Nickoll's Letters of State, 99.

[273] Dell's Trial of Spirits, noticed in Godwin's Commonwealth, iv. 97.

If we are to believe Carter, History of University, p. 232, Dell did not practically carry out his liberal principles, for Carter says: Moore, fellow of Caius, and keeper of the University Library, desired to be buried in his own College-chapel; but being refused by Mr. Dell, the master, the use of the Liturgy, which was his last request, he was laid in St. Mary's church, under the stone he used to kneel on. Moore spent seven years in making a catalogue of the library (see Book Rarities of Cambridge, by Hartshorne, p. 16.) Work of that kind Dell would not appreciate.

[274] In this notice of Webster I have followed Godwin, (Commonwealth, iv. 96-100) not having been able myself to look into Webster's writings. It may be stated that Erbery denied original sin, and was "an advocate for universal restoration, and that all men should finally be made partakers of eternal felicity in heaven."

[275] Thurloe, ii. 463.

[276] Thurloe, ii. 464.

This letter is subscribed "James Jollie, who heretofore presented thy Excellency at the Cockpit with a paper to the Parliament of England." Cambridge, July 17th, 1654.

Who this Jollie was we cannot tell; perhaps a man like Akehurst, not understood by many, and charged with being a mystic; but his letter shews an insight into spiritual perplexities, and a fidelity to his suffering friend, alike creditable to his head and his heart.

[277] Diary, i. 318-320.

The volume preserved in Sion College, which records the augmentation of Oxford masterships, contains similar entries relative to Cambridge. Two hundred pounds a year was settled on St. John's and Emanuel for increasing the maintenance of the masters, a larger amount than we have noticed in connexion with Oxford. Ninety pounds was the sum fixed for Jesus College, and the trustees were directed to pay the same accordingly out of the accruing rents and revenues vested in them, to Mr. John Worthington, Master of the College, till they should receive further notice from the Committee.

[278] Whitecote's Aphorisms, by Salter.

[279] Burnet's History of his own Times, i. 187.

[280] Dr. Spurstow has been mentioned before as chaplain to Hampden's regiment. He was one of the Assembly of Divines, and, after his ejectment from Cambridge, enjoyed the vicarage of Stepney.

[281] See list of his works, and also an article on Lightfoot, in Kitto's Cyclopædia, edited by Dr. Alexander.

I am indebted to the Dean of Westminster for some friendly suggestions relative to the character of Witchcot and Lightfoot.

[282] Burnet's Hist. of his own Times, i. 188.

[283] The Greek studies at Cambridge in the first part of the seventeenth century are noticed in the Life of Thorndike, appended to his works vi. 167, 168.

[284] I have seen a petition amongst the State Papers belonging to the year 1653, to the Protector from John Worthington, Master of Jesus College, in Cambridge, complaining of some restraint upon the payment of the augmentation annexed to the mastership of that college (as also of the augmentations annexed to some other masterships.)

[285] Pages xviii., xix.

[286] See Southey's Life of Wesley, ii. 380, and Stanley's Eastern Churches, Introduction, p. vii.

[287] Calamy's Account, ii. 755. Wood (Ath. Ox., ii. 710) says that the proposition in the book condemned by Convocation was that the sovereignty of England is in three estates, King, Lords, and Commons. This decree of Convocation was itself burnt in Palace Yard, Westminster, by order of the House of Lords, March the 27th, 1710.—Calamy's Cont., 865.

[288] Calamy's Account, 761, 81, 105. Continuation, 137.

[289] Calamy gives an interesting account of Gilpin's preaching, which must have been of a very effective kind. He mentions his delivering sermons without the use of notes as something remarkable.—Account, 154.

[290] It is printed in the Cromwellian Diary, ii. 531, from which these particulars are gathered.

[291] See Surtee's History of Durham, i. 106. Also MS. collections of the Rev. T. Baker, quoted in notes to Cromwellian Diary, ii. 542.

[292] "Since the installation of Prince Charles, in 1638, and until the Restoration, the registration of the annals had been suspended; and the order is solely indebted to the care and zeal of Edward Walker, Garter King-at-arms, for the record of the exertions which were made chiefly by the instrumentality of that faithful officer, and amidst difficulties of every kind, to save the institution from absolute decay."—Beltz' Memorials of the Order, cxii.

[293] Annals of Windsor, ii. 185.

[294] Whitelocke's Memorials, 665.

[295] Scobell, 18.

[296] In the summer of 1657, "a hot and sickly season," Busby and some of the boys resided at Chiswick, where was a manor-house founded for the use of the school in times of sickness by Goodman, Dean of Westminster, 1570. The names of the Earl of Halifax, John Dryden, and other pupils of Busby might be seen on the walls at the close of the last century.—Lyson's Environs, ii. 191.

[297] Athen. Oxon., ii. 491.

In the memoir of South, prefixed to the vol. of his posthumous works, 8vo., 1717, p. 4 (it does not appear by whom this memoir was written), it is stated that South "made himself remarkable" by reading the Latin prayers in Westminster School on the day of the King's "martyrdom, and praying for his Majesty by name." But what was there remarkable in that? He, no doubt, read the ordinary prayers used in the school, and as they contained a prayer for the King, he read it as of course. Had he deviated from the prescribed form, Busby would have been down upon him, not with a witness, but with his rod.

[298] Dr. Rainbow, afterwards Bishop of Carlisle, is said to have adopted a practice similar to that of Bull.—Zouch Edit. of Walton's Lives, 461. Thorndike's Works, vi. 117. Note.

[299] Lyson's Environs, i. 148.

[300] Disputation at Winchcomb, 1653. Commonwealth Pamphlets, British Museum.

Barksdale expressed admiration of the "learned and pious Dr. Hammond," which aroused the cry, "An Arminian! an Arminian!"

[301] Walker's Sufferings, p. ii., 142.

[302] On his tomb, in Ely Cathedral, it is said:—"Exulans ab Academiâ Ecclesiam Anglicanam inter schismaticorum furias, coram ipso Cromwello concionibus disputationibus publice asseruit tantum non solus sustinuit, vindicavit."

[303] Wood's Ath. Ox., vol. ii., fasti, 132.

[304] Farindon's Works, i. Memoir, xlii.

[305] These sermons are given in Farindon's Works, iii. 361.

[306] See his Sermons, vol. iii. 399.

[307] Abridged from the Autobiography of Sir John Branston, quoted in the Ecclesiastic, October, 1853.

[308] Aubrey's Letters, iii. 363.

[309] Wood's Ath. Ox., ii. 465.

[310] Life prefixed to Sherlock's Practical Christian, p. 24, 25.

[311] Hand-Book to Western Cathedrals, p. 56.

[312] The letter, dated September 13th, 1634, (State Papers,) published in Laud's Works, vii. 88, is a very curious one, and expresses strong disapproval of Goodman's conduct.

[313] See Laud's Works, iii. 287.

[314] Church Hist., iii. 409.

[315] Nalson's Col. i. 371, 372.

There is an interesting account of Goodman in the Ecclesiastic, November, 1852, with extracts from his writings. He wrote a book on the Two Great Mysteries, The Trinity and the Incarnation, which, strange to say, he dedicated to Oliver Cromwell,—"with flattery," observes Echard "and a servile petition for hearing his cause and doing justice to him."

[316] Elrington's Life of Archbishop Ussher, 244.

[317] "The poor orthodox clergy have passed one Sunday in silence. The Bishop of Armagh hath been with Cromwell about them, it is feared to little purpose, yet some Court holy water was bestowed on the old man, besides a dinner and confirmation of Church leases to him in Ireland."—State Papers Dom., 1655-56, 10th-20th January.

[318] Elrington's Life of Ussher, 279.

[319] When visiting it in 1864, I found the exterior, and one of the apartments, in much the same state as when Hall lived there.

[320] Walker's Sufferings, p. ii. 18.

Mention is made of Morton's daily alms, his single meal, his straw bed at eighty years of age, his hospitality, and his rising at four o'clock in the morning.—Biograph. Brit.

[321] Worthies, iii. 172.

[322] "He was observed to run (with emulation without envy) in the race of virtue even with any of his order, striving to exceed them by fair industry, without offering proudly to justle their credit, much less falsely to supplant their reputation."—Fuller's Worthies, i. 456.

[323] Fuller says of Owen: "He was bred a fellow in Jesus College, in Cambridge, where he commenced Doctor of Divinity, and was chaplain to King Charles whilst he was a prince. A modest man, who would not own the worth he had in himself, and therefore others are the more engaged to give him his due esteem. In the vacancy of the bishopric of St. Asaph, King Charles, being much troubled with two competitors, advanced Doctor Owen (not thinking thereof) as an expedient to end the contest. Indeed, his Majesty was mistaken in his birth, accounting him a Welshman, but not in his worth, seeing he deserved a far better preferment."—Fuller's Worthies, ii. 506.

[324] Tanner MSS., vol. lii., 1653-8, 41. This letter is addressed to Sheldon. There is another in the same volume from Dr. Ferne, lamenting that churchmen "were wanting to see what those in power would do, as if there could possibly be any expectation of advantage either from them," or from "delay." Both letters are printed in the Ecclesiastic, October, 1853.

[325] Life of Bramhall, prefixed to his Works, i. x., xxii.

[326] Bramhall's Works, i. 276, 277.

Yet here it should be remembered that, under date May the 23rd, 1658, Evelyn says: "There was now a collection for persecuted and sequestered ministers of the Church of England, whereof divers are in prison. A sad day! the Church now in dens and caves of the earth."

Kennet in his Historical Register, 861, refers to the Lord Scudamore's charity to the distressed clergy.

[327] It was not published till after the author's death, when it appeared with a violent and foolish preface by Dr. Samuel Parker.

[328] Bramhall's Works, iii. 579.—The whole tract is worth reading as an example of the way in which Episcopalians met the charge of favouring Popery. It is an answer to Baxter, who had brought the charge against Grotius and against Bramhall also. While Baxter accused Grotius of helping the Papists, Owen accused him of Socinianism. Thorndike, in the preface to his Epilogue, defends Grotius against both.

[329] Ibid., 582.

[330] For Milletiere's epistle and Bramhall's reply, see Works, vol. i. cxxi. and 7.

[331] The careful editor of Bramhall's Works has appended a table, with extensive notes, of Acts and dates relative to the admission into their new sees of the bishops consecrated or confirmed in the second and third years of the reign of Elizabeth.—Vol. iii. 216.

[332] Bramhall's Works, i. xcv.

[333] 25th of May, 1651.—Vol. i. 278.—A son of Cosin became a Roman Catholic. A letter of his, in self-defence, to John Evelyn is given in the Diary and Correspondence of Evelyn, iii. 58. The father was greatly annoyed at his son's conduct, though he had himself, no doubt, to thank for it. "His indignation," says the editor, "is very much what Dr. Pusey may be supposed to have felt at Mr. Newman's departure for Rome." In Evelyn's Diary, i. 282, is an account of the origin of those "offices, which among the Puritans were wont to be called Cosin's cozening devotions."

Dr. Cosin, both in his letters and more solemnly in his last will, laments over his lost and only son John. In a letter, January 22nd, 1661, he says: "Let him go, he is not worth the owning, nor any further seeking after him. In the meanwhile they that have thus lured him and conveyed him away are most unworthy persons."—Surtees, i. cxii.

[334] Evelyn's Diary, i. 285.

[335] D'Oyley's Life of Sancroft, i. 89.

"At Paris our countrymen live peaceably and enjoy our religion without disturbance. There is a place allowed them, with necessary accommodations for the exercise of religion. Dr. Stewart did often preach to them; and for their form of worship, it is the same that was formerly in England, with the Book of Common Prayer, and the rites therein used; and also they continue the innovations that were practised by many of our clergy—as bowing at the name of Jesus towards the altar, &c.—which I know giveth offence to the good French Protestants, who, to me, did often condemn those innovations for Roman superstitions. As for the French Papists, truly they are more civil to them than was expected."—By Samuel Brett, there present, 1655.—State Papers.

[336] There were, besides Morley, the Bishop of Galloway, Stewart, Dean of St. Paul's, Drs. Earle, Clare, Wolley, Lloyd, Duncan, and Messrs. Crowder and Hamilton.

We may add that Honywood, who, after the Restoration, became Dean of Lincoln, remained abroad from 1643 to 1660. His pleasant portrait is engraved in Dibdin's Decameron, and for his library, his learning, and his love of books, he is worthy of a place there.—Vol. iii. 261.

[337] Ecclesiastic, April, 1852. Grainger's Biog. Hist., iii. 236; Burnet's Hist. of his own Times, i. 177.

Baxter tells us "he was the chief speaker of all the Bishops, and the greatest interrupter of us, vehemently going on with what he thought serviceable to his end, and bearing down answers by the said fervour and interruptions."—Life and Times, part ii. p. 363. Of course I do not forget that in this quotation from Baxter we have the report of an antagonist; but the readiness and candour with which he allows moderation and other virtues where they existed on the part of any of the Episcopalians, give weight to his estimates of character.

[338] Anderson's Colonial Church, ii. 132.

The following letter from Isaac Basire to Charles II., dated Alba Julia, (synonyme for Weissenberg, in Transylvania, the same as is now called Karlsburg,) Easter Tuesday, 1656, is in the State Paper Office.

He says:—"When the whole nation was represented, and met here at their diet, and it was noised that by reason of a public act, some months since performed by one in this university, before the Prince, and with his approbation, against both Independency and Presbytery (flown over hither out of England), and for Episcopacy—that crew grew so incensed against me, that they did then threaten to cite me before the National Assembly, as now; and having missed that first plot, they pretend to renew their persecution against me at their next general synod, now at hand; where yet, by the better though not the bigger part, I am chosen to preside, and undoubtedly do expect the shock, trusting with the whole success God Almighty, who is thus pleased still to place me on the militant side. (His holy will be done)."

[339] Life of Jeremy Taylor, by Willmott, 129-154, 190.

Dr. Peterson, Dean of Exeter, met with an adventure which ought to be recorded as an illustration of that generosity to an enemy which often cheeringly flashes up in such times, relieving the shadows of persecution. Cromwell one day saw the doctor in the streets of London, looking like a distressed cavalier. "There," he exclaimed, "goes a Church of England man, who I will warrant you has courage enough to die for his religion." That very day a stranger traced the Dean to his lodgings, invited him to dinner, and presented to him a purse of money. Help afterwards came again and again through the same channel, the bounty of the magnanimous usurper being the source.—Walker, part ii. 24.

[340] In a paper dated November 2nd, 1652 (printed in Jacobson's Edition of Sanderson's Works), he describes fully his mode of procedure; and the sort of verbal alterations he made in the forms of Common Prayer may be seen in his "Confession," given by Walton (Lives, 394). Thorndike observes: "I cannot approve it upon this score that (besides his prayer before sermon, which custom and former practice if not the canon itself, allowed as lawful) he hath several parts of service of his own making; and, though mostly formed out of the Common Prayer Book, yet certainly varied from thence, and so directly against the negative command which prescribes this and no other."—Letter in the Bodleian Library, printed in Thorndike's Works, vi. 117.

See page [340], in this vol.

[341] Fell's Life of Hammond, 263, 173.

[342] Walton's Lives, 396.

[343] Walton's Lives 405-408.

[344] Fell's Life of Hammond, 241, 262, 203, 279.

[345] Quoted in Thorndike's Works, vi. 212.

[346] Harl. MSS., 6942, 77, British Museum.

[347] Harl. MSS., 6942, 18. April 30, 1654. This I find, since I copied it from the original, is printed in the Ecclesiastic, April, 1853.

[348] Harl. MSS., 6942, 120.

[349] Amongst the State Papers, is a Letter from Thorndike to Mr. Joseph Wilkinson, April 21st, 1656, respecting Walton's Polyglott. "You know," he says, "the government of the work is in Dr. Walton, who set it on foot. Correctors of the press he hath, for the Hebrew and Chaldee, Mr. Clarke; for the Syriac and Arabic, Mr. Castle; with a third for the Greek and Latin. The purpose is to give what England affords for the verifying of the several copies."

[350] Thorndike's Works, vi. 125.

He is to be ranked amongst the most able defenders of the great catholic doctrines of the Divinity and Incarnation of our Lord Jesus.

[351] Sanderson is said to have before found fault with Thorndike's manner of conducting worship at Claybrook.—Works, vi. 181.

[352] Works, vi. 118.

[353] Thorndike's Works, vi. 125.

See also Letter concerning the Present State of Religion. Vol. v. 5.

[354] The following is another instance:—

"During the usurpation the Latin prayers were discontinued; but some of the members, John Fell, John Dolben Allestree, and others, afterwards men of eminence in the Church, performed the Common Prayer in the lodgings of the celebrated Dr. Willis, in Canterbury Quadrangle, and afterwards in his house, opposite Merton College Chapel, and the practice continued until the Restoration. Dr. Willis's house afterwards became an Independent meeting. In the museum of the Dolby family, in Northamptonshire, is a fine painting, by Sir Peter Lely, grounded on the above circumstance. A copy of this picture was presented to the society, and placed in the hall."—Chalmer's Oxford, vol. ii. 311.

[355] Evelyn's Diary, 1649, March 18th and 25th. 1652, December 25th.

[356] January 30th, 1653. January 28th, 1655. It appears from Patrick's Autobiography that all through the troubles he received the communion kneeling, p. 37.

April 15th, 1655. "Dr. Wild preached at St. Gregory's, the ruling powers conniving at the use of the Liturgy in that church alone."—Evelyn's Diary.

[357] Kennet says: "The prejudice Cromwell had against the Episcopal party was more for their being Royalists than for being of the good old Church," and the Bishop relates that the Protector said: "To disturb them is contrary to that liberty of conscience which he and his friends always acknowledged and defended."—Kennet, iii, 206.

[358] Quoted in Keble's Life of Wilson, Bishop of Sodor and Man, 407.

[359] I am indebted to Mr. Clarence Hopper, to whom the valuable manuscript volume belongs, for permission to make extracts from its pages.

[360] I do not see that a second lesson is any where mentioned. Perhaps the service is not complete.

[361] These particulars occur in petitions to Charles II. after the Restoration. They are all specified in Mrs. Green's Calendar of State Papers, Dom., 1660, 1661.

[362] Hallam observes: "It is somewhat bold in Anglican writers to complain, as they now and then do, of the persecution they suffered at this period, when we consider what had been the conduct of the Bishops before, and what it was afterwards. I do not know that any member of the Church of England was imprisoned under the Commonwealth, except for some political reason; certain it is the jails were not filled with them."—Const. Hist., ii. 14.

Distinction must be made between the sufferings of the Episcopalians during the Civil Wars and under the Protectorate. I am persuaded, after a long and careful enquiry into the subject, that the suffering during the latter of these periods has been immensely over-estimated.

[363] Justice Bennet, of Derby, "was the first that called us Quakers, because I bid them tremble at the word of the Lord. This was in the year 1650."—Fox's Journal, i. 132.

[364] See the very interesting Memoirs of Stephen Grellet, by B. Seebohn.

[365] See Journal, and Sewel's History of Friends.

[366] He supplies numerous instances of this in his own Journal.

[367] Sewel's History of Friends, i. 15.

[368] George Fox's Journal, i. 104.

[369] Penn's Preface to Fox's Journal, i. xl.

[370] Penn states the doctrines of Quakerism in his preface, xiii. et seq.

[371] "They asked me if I had no sin? I answered, 'Christ my Saviour has taken away my sin, and in Him there is no sin.'" "They pleaded for imperfection, and to sin as long as they lived, but did not like to hear of Christ's teaching His people Himself, and making people as clear, whilst here upon the earth, as Adam and Eve were before they fell."—Journal, i. 124, 288.

[372] Fox had an intense aversion to all Gnosticism.—See Journal, i. 143. I do not ascribe mysticism to him in any bad sense of the word.

[373] He describes himself as passing through strange states of extasy, (Journal, i. 144) and even claims gifts of prophecy and miracle, (i. 219.) He had a habit of comparing sinners to different sorts of animals, Journal, i. 190, &c. A curious parallel to this is found in Athanasius, who describes heretics in a similar way. Comp. Athan. Orat. iii. contra Arianos. Athanasius's Treatises against Arianism, p. ii. 484, Oxf. Edit.

For authorities respecting Quakerism see a good note in Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, 846.

[374] Journal, i. 151.

[375] A Collection of many select and Christian Epistles, written by George Fox, p. i.

[376] See Fox's Epistles, p. 2.

"There is an English ship come in here from Newfoundland. The master hath been on board of us. There is not, they say, one person in the ship, officer or mariner, but are all Quakers."—Thurloe, v. 422.

There are references to the spread of Quakerism in the same collection, iv. 333, 408, 757.

[377] Sewel's History of Friends, i. 105.

[378] Journal, i. 213.

[379] Two striking cases, however, occurred in New England. See Besse's Sufferings, 235.

[380] Sewel's History, i. 112.

[381] In a Diurnal, February 16, 1654-55, mention is made of letters from several places, which speak of Quakers and Ranters, and others that disturb ministers in their sermons in public churches, and the meetings of ministers and other Christians in private, in several places of England. The Quaker meetings are said to be receptacles for Papists, and Popish priests and friars.

In another Commonwealth newspaper it is said: "Some think this Fox is a Popish priest, because of his tenets of salvation by works." Most absurd and incredible stories are told of Fox and Mr. Fell.

The monstrous things related in these newspapers defy belief. What was thought of Quakers in high quarters may be seen in the Pell correspondence.—Vaughan's Protectorate, ii. 309.

[382] The difficulty in believing these stories does not arise from what we know of the moral character of the Jesuits, but only from their reputation for cleverness, and from what we know of the shrewdness of the Quakers. The Quakers were not likely to be so deceived by the Jesuits, and the Jesuits were not likely to adopt a scheme of action which promised so little success. But the Provincial Letters of Pascal, written during the Protectorate, prove that Jesuit morality placed no bar in the way of such dishonest intrigues.

[383] Abstract of the Sufferings of the People called Quakers, i. 216, 222, 223. See also Evelyn's Diary, i. 332.

The Quakers were often very violent. There is a very intemperate and foolish pamphlet, entitled, A True Testimony against the Pope's Ways, in a Return to that Agreement of '42 of those who call themselves Ministers of Christ (but are proved to be wrongers of Men and of Christ), in the County of Worcester: by Richard Farnsworth, a Quaker, 1656. Richard Baxter is first on the list of persons attacked.—See also Sussex Arch. Collections, vol. xvi. The Quakers were assailed in their turn most furiously. For example, there is a tract entitled, The Deceived and Deceiving Quakers discovered; their Damnable Heresies, Horrid Blasphemies, &c., laid open, by Matthew Caffin, a Servant of the Lord, related to the Church of Christ, near Worsham, in Sussex, 1656. This was answered by James Nayler, with like scurrility. It is curious that Caffin denies the man of sin to be Popery, and maintains that he is a person yet to appear. Nayler sets Caffin down as Antichrist.

[384] Quakers' Sufferings, i. 70.

[385] Cromwellian Diary, ii. 112.

[386] Sewel, i. 158.

[387] Cromwellian Diary, i. 46. His trial has been already mentioned in this volume, p. 133.

[388] His dying words place him in a much better light than that in which he is commonly viewed.—See Sewel's Hist., i. 207.

[389] Cromwellian Diary, i. 216. The petitioners were called in, to the number of thirty, and Mr. Sprigg made a short speech, saying that they did not countenance the wicked, and were no partakers of their crime; but upon the common account of liberty, found it upon their spirits to become petitioners in this thing, leaving it to God to direct the House.

See the beautiful apology for Nayler in Lamb's Elia, Quakers' Meeting.

[390] p. 16.

[391] Baxter says Sir H. Vane spoke against him in the House of Commons; and he adds, "I confess my writing was a means to lessen his reputation."—Life and Times, p. i. 76.

[392] Baxter's Life and Times, p. i. 77.

[393] The Life of one Jacob Bœhmen, wherein is contained a perfect Catalogue of his Workes. London, 1644.

[394] "I have seen myself," says Baxter, "letters written from Abingdon, where among both soldiers and people, this contagion did then prevail, full of horrid oaths and curses, and blasphemy, not fit to be repeated by the tongue or pen of man; and this all uttered as the effect of knowledge and a part of their religion, in a fanatic strain, and fathered on the Spirit of God."—Baxter's Life and Times, p. i. 77.

It must be remembered Baxter would make the most of all this.

[395] Such things may be found by those who search after them. Historically they are of little worth; in other respects worse than worthless.

[396] The following are titles of books by Muggleton: The Answer to William Penn, Quaker, his book, entitled The New Witnesses proved Old Heretics, wherein he is proved to be an ignorant spatter-brained Quaker, &c. Looking-Glass for George Fox, and other Quakers, wherein they may see themselves to be right Devils, &c. The Neck of the Quakers Broken, &c.

[397] Ministers in Edinburgh had a basin and ewer placed in a frame of iron fastened to the pulpit, and there performed the ceremony.—See Travels by Sir W. Brereton, p. 110, published by Cheetham Society. Bishop Wren, in his injunctions, orders that "the fonts at baptism be filled with clean water, and no dishes, pails, nor basins, be used in it, or instead of it."—Cardwell, ii. 204.

[398] Gillingwater's History of Lowestoft.

[399] Hanbury's Memorials, ii. 568, i. 536.

[400] Martindale's Autobiography, quoted in Hunter's Life of Heywood, 42.

[401] Hall's Works, 555.

[402] Dedication to his Commentary on Ezekiel.

[403] As it is our object to afford glimpses of domestic life, it is worth while to insert the following letters, trivial though they be, preserved in the State Paper Office. They are from parents to their son at school, and present an odd and amusing jumble of advice:—

"London, 16th Nov., 1641.

"Son John, the Lord bless thee, and these are to let you know that, thanks be to God, we are all now indifferent well. I have had a great desire, this long time, to come into the country to see you; but I have been very ill of a pleurisy, which hindered me, and now the ways are deep and the days are short, and your mother and sisters long to see you. Therefore I have desired your master in the enclosed to let you come up to London upon Friday next, at the return of this carrier. You may come up in the waggon, which if you do, your mother would have you keep on your coat to keep you warm. I would have you the rather come upon Friday next, because the next week we have a great feast at the Hall, and your mother would have you there. When you come up, bring with you both your coats and your two best suits of apparel, and your mother would have you bring up your writing book, and the book wherein you take the heads of your master's sermons in; and this is all I have to say till I see you, which I expect will be on Friday night next.

"Your loving Father,

"George Willingham.

(Addressed) "To his loving son John Willingham, at Mr. Herring's house, in Duddinghurst, these."

The following letter is written to the boy by his mother:—

"John, think it not strange that you have not received your clothes before. The reason you may well know, which was the vexation you put me and your father to at your departing, which lets us understand that your heart is not reformed, notwithstanding all your good education. I have sent you your clothes—a pair of stockings, a pair of gloves. I would have you wear your fres jump (freize jacket) every day and your waistcoat a'nights, and have a care of your clothes, that you keep them in your trunk, and above all look to your heart in all the duties that you perform, and improve the day of grace, which God yet affords you, and improve your time, that you spend it not in play, and neglect your learning, and labour to be a comfort to your parents and not a grief. I have sent you some plums, of your brother's christening. Had I sent them as you did your father's nuts they would come short to you. You sent your father a pint of nuts which cost him eightpence. Had you regarded your father, you would have tied and sealed them up. Your brother Samuel and sister is well and remember them to you, and remember me to your master Herring, and Mrs. Herring, and your old Mistress and Mr. Chadley. Thus I rest praying to God, for I rest your careful mother,

"Anna Willingham.

"Your brother's name is Ebenezer.

(Addressed) "To John Willingham, living at Mr. Herring's, at Duddinghurst, deliver these."

There are also letters, &c., endorsed, "Intercepted, 1641, to Willingham." Probably it was suspected they were letters of political significance.

[404] As to Lancashire, Dr. Hibbert observes, in his History of the Collegiate Church of Manchester, i. 272:—"The greatest discontent was excited at the mode of solemnizing marriages, which was no longer before the altar, or accompanied with the pledge of the ring, which had been hitherto considered essential to the contract. This meanness of ceremony was so ill relished, that many clandestine marriages were celebrated by unauthorized persons, or ejected clergymen." The author mentions the case of a woman who refused to submit to Presbyterian rites, but asserted herself a "wife before God."

[405] Many Independents, it should be remembered, treated marriage as a civil contract, and had no religious service.

[406] These particulars are gleaned from Brand's Popular Antiquities.

[407] Hunter's Life of Heywood, 33.

[408] Autobiography of Joseph Lister.

[409] According to Archbishop Islep's Constitutions (1362), the observance of the Lord's Day was to begin at Saturday vespers, like the feasts that have vigils.—Johnson's English Canons, ii. 426.

Eustace, abbot of Flay (1201), went beyond the Puritans in his Sabbatarianism, and sought to terrify people into a cessation of labour from three o'clock on Saturday afternoon until Monday sunrise, by relating all sorts of miracles. A woman, for weaving on Saturday afternoon, was struck dead with palsy; another woman, who kept her paste wrapped up in a cloth until Monday morning, found it then ready baked.—Johnson, ii. 95.

[410] Baxter's Works, xiii. 457.

[411] Professor Kingsley, in his Lectures on the Roman and the Teuton, ascribes the spread of witch-mania to the influence of the Romish clergy (p. 293).

[412] In an instructive article respecting Witchcraft, in Charles Knight's Cyclopædia, it is remarked "that a large portion of the witchcraft superstition was propagated by means of books, or through the tuition of men of letters."

[413] Enquiries about sorcerers, incantations, and witchcraft occur in the Visitation Articles of Laud.—Works, v. 417, 432.

[414] There are numerous stories of Lancashire witches in the State Papers. See, for example, Calendar Dom., 1634-1635, p. 78.

[415] Gaule's Select Cases of Conscience touching Witches, 1646. See also Hale's Tracts, containing Trial of the Witches at Bury St. Edmunds.

[416] Widdrington, in a letter to Whitelocke (Memorials, 424), says: "I met at Berwick with a discovery of witches by a Scotchman, who professeth himself an artist that way. I know not whence he derives his skill. His salary was twenty shillings for every witch. He got thirty pounds after that rate." Of the burning or imprisonment of witches, cases are mentioned by Whitelocke, in pp. 412, 423, 450, 570.

[417] In the Assembly Books of the Corporation of Yarmouth is this entry:—"August 15th, 1637. That the gentleman, Mr. Hopkins, employed in the country for discovering and finding out witches be sent for to town, to search for those wicked persons, if any may be, and have his fee and allowance for his pains, as he hath in other places."

[418] There is amongst the Baxter MSS. in Dr. Williams's Library, a long letter respecting something of this kind, which I remember noticing many years ago.

[419] "During the few years of the Commonwealth, there is reason to believe that more alleged witches perished in England than in the whole period before and after."—Lecky's Rise and Influence of Rationalism, 116; Hutchinson's Historical Account of Witchcraft, p. 68.

[420] This is stated on the authority of the article on Witchcraft in Knight's Cyclopædia.

Hutchinson says, of the thousands of executions for witchcraft in 250 years, he had ascertained only about 140 cases in England. Other writers placed the numbers higher. Some estimates appear absurdly extravagant; for example, that in Barrington's Observations on the More Ancient Statutes.

[421] I do not profess to be learned in these matters, but I would just add that caps fitting close to the head were not necessarily badges of Puritanism; for, to mention no other instances, they may be seen in the portraits of Andrewes and Taylor. Bands are said to have been introduced in 1652, but I do not know on what authority the statement rests. In the portrait of William Jenkyn, already noticed, an indescribable piece of ornamentation appears in the front of his dress. Caryl's portrait shews no gown at all, only a plain, tight dress. I mention these trifles simply to indicate that there was a variety of costume amongst the Puritans. They were firm in resisting the use of Popish vestments; but they do not seem to have maintained anything like uniformity amongst themselves. I may add that the authors of the Seventy-fourth Canon could have had no such childish ideas about clerical costume as many express in the present day, for they distinctly declare: "In all which particulars concerning the apparel here prescribed, our meaning is not to attribute any holiness or special worthiness to the said garments, but for decency, gravity, and order, as is before specified."

[422] Weever, writing in 1631, complains of pews as a novelty. "They are made high and easy, for parishioners to sit or sleep in, a fashion of no long continuance, and worthy of reformation."

In the Visitation Books of the Archdeacon of Norfolk there are many presentments in the reigns of James I. and Charles I. against high-backed pews as nuisances. In 1638, some of the parishioners of Great St. Andrew's Church, Cambridge, were presented for not kneeling at the Sacrament, and excused themselves by saying their seats were so straight that, being filled, they could not kneel.—Hist. of Yarmouth, by C. J. Palmer, 127.

[423] The purchasing of hour-glasses is an item occurring in the Windsor Churchwardens' accounts. In the same records are the following curious entries for 1652-3:—

"Paid for fastening the paraphrase of Erasmus to the desk, viii. d.; for nine pounds of candles, for the use of morning prayer, vs. id." The charges for sack after preaching are numerous.—See Annals of Windsor, ii. 266, et. seq. "For one pint of sack, given to a merchant of Bristol who preached in the parish church, by William Myelles, Mayor, his appointment, 8d."

The church plate at Windsor was for safe custody deposited in the Guildhall. It consisted of two silver flagons, two chalices, one silver cover, and one bread-plate.—Annals, ii. 271.

[424] It has been stated, but I do not know on what authority, that Baxter read his sermons. Altogether, the advice given in the Directory, under the head "Of the Preaching of the Word," is so admirable that it deserves to be studied by every Christian minister.

[425] Oxoniana, i. 64; Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, lib. xx.; Stanford's Life of Joseph Alleine, 113. In some parts of Switzerland, the practice of wearing hats at sermon time is still maintained.

[426] Perfect Occurrences, June 22nd, 1644.

[427] Baillie, ii. 149.

[428] Hanbury's Memorials, ii. 105, 111.

[429] The omission of singing in public worship was continued in the Baptist church at Maze Pond, Southwark, until the year 1733.—Ivimey's Hist. of Baptists, Sup., 432.

[430] Sternhold's version was first published in 1548 or 1549, and was dedicated to King Edward VI. Hopkins' additions appear in 1551.

The following may be mentioned as of a Puritan character:—

Dod's Psalms of David; with a Public Thanksgiving on the Fifth of November, composed into Easie Meter, a Song meete for Young and Old. 1620.

Psalms of David, by George Wither, 1632, printed in the Netherlands; dedicated to the Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia.

The Psalms, in prose and metre, by H. A., Amsterdam, 1612. H. A. means Henry Ainsworth, the Nonconformist.

For a list of versions, see Lownde's Bibliographers' Manual (Bohn's edit.)

[431] Humble Advice; or, the Heads of those Things which were offered to many honourable Members of Parliament, by Richard Baxter, at the End of his Sermon, December 24th, at the Abbey in Westminster. 1655.

Baxter recommends the version "first approved of by the late Assembly of Divines, and, after, very much corrected and bettered in Scotland." This was Rouse's. Mr. Lathbury, to whom I am indebted for the reference, incorrectly supposes it to be Barton's.—Hist. of Convocation, 510.

[432] Weekly Account, 1643, October the 4th.

Substitutes for theatrical entertainments were ingeniously contrived under the Protectorate, of which a curious example is afforded in a description of a public amusement upon Friday, May the 23rd, 1656, which I find amongst the State Papers.

[433] The following extract is worth notice:—

May the 1st, 1654, Moderate Intelligencer.

"This day was more observed by people's going a-maying than for divers years past, and indeed much sin committed by wicked meetings, with fighting, drunkenness, ribaldry, and the like. Great resort came to Hyde Park; many hundred of rich coaches, and gallants in rich attire, but most shameful powdered hair men, and painted and spotted women.

[434] Macaulay says: "If the Puritans suppressed bull-baiting it was not because it gave pain to the bull, but because it gave pleasure to spectators." Is this a fair statement? I do not discover in Scobell any act or ordinance against bull-baiting at all. There is one against cock-fighting, and the reason alleged for suppressing the practice is, that it disturbed the public peace, and was connected with dissolute practices to the dishonour of God. The prohibition of races, and the grounds of the prohibition, have been already noticed.

[435] Scobell.

[436] The following is extracted from the biography of John Bruen.—Nonconformity in Cheshire, 56:—

"Master Done being young and youthly, yet very tractable, could not well away with the strict observation of the Lord's Day, whereupon we did all conspire to do him good, ten of my family speaking one after another, and myself last, for the sanctifying of the Lord's Day. After which he did very cheerfully yield himself; blessed be God." ... "I [John Bruen] coming once into his chamber and finding over the mantel-piece a pair of new cards, nobody being there I opened them, and took out the four knaves and burnt them, and so laid them together again; and so for want of such knaves his gaming was marred, and never did he play in my house, for aught I ever heard, any more." Puritans played at billiards, bowls, and shuffle-board.—See Newcome's Diary.

[437] A curious description of the prevalent fashions of the day is found in Fox's Journal, i. 274:—

People "must be in the fashion of the world, else they are not in esteem; else they shall not be respected, if they have not gold or silver upon their backs, or if the hair be not powdered. But if he have store of ribands hanging about his waist, and at his knees, and in his hat, of divers colours, red, white, black, or yellow, and his hair be powdered, then he is a brave man; then he is accepted, he is no Quaker, because he hath ribands on his back, and belly, and knees, and his hair powdered. This is the array of the world. But is not this from the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, or the pride of life? Likewise the women having their gold, their patches on their faces, noses, cheeks, foreheads; having their rings on their fingers, wearing gold, having their cuffs double, under and above, like unto a butcher with his white sleeves; having their ribands tied about their hands, and three or four gold laces about their clothes, this is no Quaker, say they. This attire pleaseth the world; and if they cannot get these things, they are discontented."

[438] Bastwick, quoted in Hanbury's Memorials, iii. 81.

[439] Whitelocke's Memorials, 628.

[440] Oldmixon's History of England, 426.

"I knew them both," he says, "and heard this story told when Mrs. White was present, who did not contradict it, but owned there was something in it."

[441] Rogers' Life of Howe, 69, 72.

[442] Mr. John Nelson, father of "the pious Robert Nelson," dying in 1657, having "a distaste" "for the intruding ministry of the time," requested to be "privately buried by an orthodox minister in the evening."—Nelson's Life, by Secretan, p. 2.

[443] Harl. MSS., 5176, 15, quoted in Lyson's Environs, i. 42.

[444] Brook, iii. 290.

[445] Baxter's Poetical Fragments.

[446] Fell, p. 230.

[447] Essays, by Henry Rogers, 17.

[448] Taylor's Works, vi. 564-566.

[449] Life of Quarles, in Sacred Poets, by Willmott.

[450] Dixon's Life of the Earl of Manchester.

[451] Memorials of John Hampden, by Lord Nugent, 336.

[452] Evelyn's Diary, i. 342.

[453] Howe's Works, vi. 233. Fairclough was Rector of the parish of Wells, in the county of Somerset. He was one of the ejected ministers; he died July 4th, 1682, and is buried in Bunhill Fields. Howe gives an account of his indefatigable diligence in the discharge of his ministry.

[454] Clark's Lives, 103.

[455] Samuel Fairclough. He held the living of Banardiston in Suffolk, and afterwards became Rector of Keddington, in the same county. There is a remarkable memoir of him in Clark's Lives.

[456] Clark's Lives, 114.

[457] Works, vi. 476.

[458] Memorable Women of the Puritan Times, i. 105-116.

[459] These notices are taken from Dr. Gibbons Memoirs of Eminently Pious Women. We have purposely retained some forms of phraseology which are employed in the original narrative. It would be easy to add to these illustrations. Some interesting ones are given in Pattison's Rise and Progress of Religious Life in England, chap. xii. See also Tomkin's Piety Promoted. Even amongst the Fifth Monarchy men there were instances of genuine piety; nor do we doubt that the persecuted Roman Catholics furnished examples of devotion and beneficence.

[460] Morley stated at the Savoy Conference "that some places had no ministers at all through all those times of usurpation," and instanced Aylesbury. Baxter told him: "I never knew any such; and therefore I knew there were not many such in England." With regard to Aylesbury, he says the story was false, as he ascertained there were usually in that town two at a time.—Life and Times, part ii., 340. Some poor parishes might, during a part of the period, be without ministers.

[461] Life and Times, part i., 96.

[462] Even what was said by the scoffers is worth noting:—

"Here's now no good action for a man to spend his time in; taverns grow dead; ordinaries are blown up; plays are at a stand; houses of hospitality at fall; not a feather waving, nor a spur jingling anywhere. I'll away instantly."—Eastward Ho! 228.

This testifies to an extensive outward reformation.

[463] Works, ii. 251.

[464] Communion with God: two Sermons preached at St. Paul's, by Saml. Annesley, LL.D., 1654-1655, minister of the Gospel at St. John the Evangelist's, London.

[465] Owen's Works, vol. vii. ccccxxxiv.

[466] The one called Germany worse than Sodom, and the other declared the waters of the Elbe would not suffice for tears to weep over those dissensions.—Hase's History of the Church, 439.

[467] For extract from Becon, see Strype's Cranmer, i. 417.

[468] See Strype's Parker, i. 465.

[469] These are expressions used in the Account of Twiss.—Clark's Lives, 18.

[470] See Hase, 485.

[471] Bishop Burnet, in the History of his own Times, says of the year 1680, (and his words are true of the times just before), "I was indeed amazed at the labours and learning of the ministers among the Reformed. They understood the Scriptures well in the original tongues, they had all the points of controversy very ready, and did thoroughly understand the whole body of divinity. In many places they preached every day, and were almost constantly employed in visiting their flock. But they performed their devotions but slightly, and read their prayers, which were too long, with great precipitation and little zeal. Their sermons were too long and too dry. And they were so strict, even to jealousy, in the smallest points in which they put orthodoxy, that one who could not go into all their notions, but was resolved not to quarrel with them, could not converse much with them with any freedom." In reference to the French refugees, he observes: "Even among them there did not appear a spirit of piety and devotion suitable to their condition, though persons who have willingly suffered the loss of all things rather than sin against their consciences, must be believed to have a deeper principle in them than can well be observed by others."

Archbishop Trench has drawn an instructive and admonitory parallel between this condition of things on the Continent, in the 17th century, and the picture of the Church at Ephesus in the Book of Revelation.—Commentary on the Epistles to the Seven Churches, 73.

[472] Quoted in Anderson's History of the Colonial Church, i. 25-27.

Worthies of England, Derbyshire, i. 373.

[473] Anderson, i., 46-56.

[474] Advertisement for the Unexperienced Planters in New England, &c., p. 32, quoted in Anderson's Colonial Church, i. 180.

[475] Anderson's History of the Colonial Church, i. 217, 231.

[476] Ibid., i. 267.

Bancroft, i. 178, 206.

Even Mr. Anderson, who praises Virginia for its tolerance, acknowledges, "that if the enactments concerning the Church had been literally enforced, the Puritan would have found no resting-place within its borders."—i. 270.

[477] Anderson, i. 461-2.

[478] See Articles Subscribed by the Colonists.—Ibid., i. 301.

[479] Anderson, i. 308. This was a French translation of Edward the Sixth's Prayer Book. Edward the Sixth's first Prayer Book (1549) was translated into French for the use of the King's subjects in Calais and the Channel Islands, by command of Sir Hugh Paulet, Governor of Calais. This book was corrected, according to the revision of the second Prayer Book, in 1532.—Procter on the Book of Common Prayer, 37.

[480] Anderson, i. 488.

[481] Bancroft, i. 248. Afterwards it was declared that "Holy Church" should enjoy all her liberties and rights.—Bacon's Laws of Maryland.

[482] Ibid., i. 272.

[483] Holme's American Annals, i. 163. Bancroft, i. 305.

[484] Anderson, i. 359.

[485] A copy of the Charter may be found in the State Paper Office, Col. Series, under date 1629, March 4th. An account of it is given in Bancroft, i. 342.

[486] Cotton Mather's Magnalia, i. 66. The distinct origin of the Massachusetts colony has been overlooked by some historians. The Pilgrim Fathers of New England have been confounded with the planters of the neighbouring state.

[487] Baird's Religion of the United States, 107, 108.—Anderson, ii. 156, 157.

[488] Bancroft, i. 349.

The treatment of Roger Williams, who, with all his folly and rashness, blended qualities of the noblest kind,—can never be justified.

[489] Heylyn's Life of Laud, p. 369.

[490] Heylyn's Life of Laud, 276.

[491] Hazard, i. 344. Anderson, i. 412.

[492] December, 1634. State Papers, Colonial.

"The question about the lawfulness of the cross was warmly agitated at the time, and the matter was finally settled by the magistrates commanding that the cross be struck out of the colours for the trained bands, but retained on the banners of the castle and of vessels in the harbour."—Elton's Life of Roger Williams, 23.

[493] 1634, No. 41, State Papers, Colonial; 1637, October 7th and 15th, Ibid.; 1637, No. 73, Ibid. These are all described in Mr. Sainsbury's Calendar, Col. Series, 1574-1660.

[494] 1637, October 6th, State Papers, Colonial.

[495] Ibid.

[496] Anderson, ii. 18.

The Council of State, 1649, were informed, by a petition of the congregation of Nansamund, in Virginia, that their minister, Mr. Harrison, an able man of unblameable conversation, had been banished the Colony because he would not conform to the Prayer Book. The Prayer Book being prohibited by Parliament, the Council directs that Mr. Harrison be restored, unless there be a cause for his removal satisfactory to Parliament.—State Papers, Colonial, October, 1649; Entry Book, cxv. p. 482.

In the Bermudas, or Somers Isles, Puritanism had become prevalent in 1642. Richard Norwood, a Puritan minister, writes thence, February 28th:—"We have seen an experiment here of that which very few, I suppose, in England have seen, namely, of the superiority or government of ministers, or an assembly of ministers esteeming the government to be theirs, who have the most sway in it." He expects the Government at home will receive complaints of arbitrary proceedings. The same writer, May 14th, 1645, speaks of "diversity of opinions touching ecclesiastical discipline." There were two parties, he says, one under Mr. White, adhering to the Independent way; the other, and the larger number, holding to the former discipline used there until Parliament should order otherwise.

Again, in May, 1647, he speaks of "bitter acrimony" between the two Independents and two Presbyterian ministers. The reins of government were slack.—State Papers, Colonial, under dates.

[497] Anderson, i. 373.

[498] Anderson, ii. 57-59.

[499] This Act, passed in 1649, may be seen in Bacon's Laws.

[500] Bancroft, i. 421.

[501] Ibid., i. 432.

[502] Bancroft, i. 448.

[503] Ibid., 441. See also his preceding pages.

[504] See Scobell, July the 27th, 1649, p. 66.

[505] Some in New England held back from this kind of missionary work,—Anderson, ii. 195.

Just on the eve of the Restoration this entry occurs in the minutes of the synod at Sion College, the 19th March, 1659-60.

"There was then propounded by some of the Corporation for New England that our help should be administered for the printing of the Bible in the Indian languages. It was then ordered that the design propounded was eminently acceptable, and that the ministers would engage that they would promote the design to their utmost capacity."

[506] Bancroft, i. 445.

[507] Thurloe, v. 147. We can trace this Gookin in the Colonial State Papers as admitted a patentee under a grant from the New England Company (July the 5th, 1622); as praying Charles I. for a patent in the capacity of planter and adventurer (March the 1st, 1631); as receiving a warrant to export to New England powder and shot (July the 24th, 1650); as receiving £300 to defray charges of service (September the 21st, 1655); and as passing from Jamaica to New England on board the Fraternity (December the 19th, 1655).

[508] Life of Williams, 111.

[509] Bancroft, i. 425.

[510] Bancroft, i. 428.

[511] Whitelocke, 474.

[512] Scobell, 1650, Oct. 3rd.

[513] State Papers. Colonial. Feb. 1st, 1651.

[514] Ibid. Colonial. Oct. 31st, 1651.

[515] State Papers. Colonial. Nov. 13th, 1651.

[516] Ibid., Dec. 14th, 1651.

[517] State Papers. Colonial. Dec. 27th, 1651.

[518] State Papers. Colonial. 1651, Dec. 26th: 1652, Jan. 9th.

[519] Ibid. 1653, Aug. 28th, Sept. 19th. Calendar, 408.

A large mass of correspondence respecting Barbadoes may be found in the Record Office. Barbadoes had been a place of banishment for the Irish taken at Drogheda, and thither were also sent the Royalists who were made prisoners at Exeter and Ilchester. In a Royalist pamphlet entitled, England's Slavery, or Barbadoes Merchandize, (1659,) a melancholy account is given of the barbarous treatment of seventy-two freeborn Englishmen who uncondemned had been sold into slavery.

[520] State Papers. Colonial. Sept. 26th, 1651. Thurloe, i. 197.

[521] Anderson, ii. 19-21.

"In Virginia's Cure the Colony is represented as bearing a great love to the stated constitutions of the Church of England in her government and public worship, which gave us (who went thither under the late persecution of it) the advantage of liberty to use it constantly amongst them, after the naval force had reduced the Colony under the power (but never to the obedience) of the usurpers."—Quoted in Wilberforce's History of the American Church, 38.

[522] Anderson, ii. 20-23.

Bancroft paints a glowing picture of Virginia under the Commonwealth.—i. 224.

[523] Mr. Anderson, in his History of the Church of England in the Colonies, ii. 36, speaks of the paucity of his materials respecting the Bermudas. The particulars given above are picked out of the State Papers, Colonial Series (see Calendar), 1652, Jan. 1st; 1653, June 25th; 1656, Oct. 7th, Nov. 18th; 1658, March 25th, Sept. 7th. It is stated in the Report, 1656, Oct. 7th, that the islands for the most part were naturally fortified or otherwise secured by four forts with sixty guns and five companies; 1,500 men were able to bear aims. About 3,000 inhabitants were without a minister. The charges of Government were £500 a year, and the tobacco duties amounted to £800.

[524] Thurloe, ii. 126.

[525] State Papers. Colonial. July 25th, 1657.

[526] Thurloe, iii. 497. Long's Hist. of Jamaica, i. 239, quoted by Anderson, ii. 75.

[527] State Papers. Colonial. Sept. 26th, 1655.

[528] Thurloe, iii. 650, iv. 4.

[529] There are several letters by D'Oyley in Thurloe.

[530] See papers in Thurloe, v. 482-487.

Puritan emigrants from Virginia are charged with fomenting quarrels in Maryland.—Leah and Rachel, quoted in Anderson, ii. 32.

[531] The persecution of the Roman Catholics in England has been noticed already. We may add, that in 1656-57, a new oath of adjuration was prescribed for discovering Papists, and a penalty of £100 was to be inflicted on any one who attended mass. The ordinance altogether was very severe.—Scobell, 443. Butler, (Rom. Cath., ii. 407,) mentions the execution of a priest for the exercise of his functions.

[532] Thurloe., iv. 55. Bancroft, i. 261, on the authority of Chalmers.

[533] Bancroft, i. 263.

In a pamphlet, entitled Hammond versus Heamans, preserved in the State Paper Office, there is published what is said to be "His Highness's absolute (though neglected) command to Richard Bennet, late Governor of Virginia, and all others, not to disturb the Lord Baltimore's plantation in Maryland."—1655, vol. xii. 59.

[534] Vol. i. p. 340.

[535] Anderson, ii. 272.

[536] Ibid., 271.

[537] Durie gives long and amusing accounts of his conversations with Archbishop Laud. Laud promised to use his influence with the King to procure him a living. He did so, and Durie went down into Devonshire, where the living was situated, to take possession, but he found it occupied by some one else. Laud paid Durie's travelling expenses. The letters are given in Mr. Bruce's interesting preface to the Cal. Dom., 1633-1634.

[538] Calendar Dom., 1633-34, 525.

[539] Calendar, Dom., 1633-34, p. 562.

[540] Ibid., p. 565, 566.

[541] Calendar Dom., 1634-35, p. 148.

A number of other interesting letters from or respecting Durie are condensed by Mr. Bruce in his Calendar.—See pp. 89, 96, 195, 204, 530.

[542] Harris's Cromwell, 304.

[543] See letters illustrative of Durie's efforts abroad in Vaughan's Protectorate of Cromwell, i. 48, 104, 117.

[544] Notices of Durie may be found in Bayle's Dict., in Biog. Brit., in Brook's Lives, and in Herzog's Encycl.

[545] Vaughan's Protectorate, i. 136.

[546] Thurloe, iii. 362.

[547] Vaughan, i. 169, 170, 175.

[548] Original Papers illustrative of the life and writings of John Milton, Camden Society; the translation is taken from the Athenæum, Dec. 17th, 1859.

[549] Thurloe, iii. 476.

[550] Ibid., 558-568.

[551] Ibid., 623.

This, however, was an exaggeration. See page 498.

[552] The names of the Committee are given, including Nye, Caryl, Calamy, Jenkyn. Additions were afterwards made by order of his Highness and the Council, including the names of Lockier and Sterry.

[553] All the foregoing particulars on this subject are found in a bundle of papers relative to the Vaudois, preserved in the State Paper Office.—Dom. Interreg.

[554] Vaughan, i. 260.

Commissioners must content themselves to give "some means of subsistence to feed and clothe them, with some small sum of money to those whose houses have been burnt, to enable them to provide timber against the spring time, that they may build them some small cottages to shelter."—Public Intelligencer, October 13th, 1655.

"The last letters out of Dauphine advise that there is a provincial synod of them of the reformed religion, where, after they had taken a view of their own particular affairs, it was resolved that they would send a deputation to their brethren of the valleys of Piedmont, consisting of four ministers, two of which are to be of the most eminent, learned, and zealous men of that province, to be joined with two younger, and two gentlemen of the country most noted for their affection to the Protestant religion, and for purity of life and conversation, who are to go as deputies to see to the distributing of the moneys collected in this kingdom for relief of our poor brethren according to the necessity of their conditions and families."—Ibid., October 15th to 22nd.

[555] Milton's Prose Works, ii. 220.

In an Order Book (State Paper Office) there is, under date May 18th, 1658, an order for £3,000 to be paid to the suffering Vaudois.

[556] Upon the 2nd of September, 1658, £3,700 was ordered to be paid to the merchant adventurers at Hamburgh on behalf of the Polish Protestants.

A petition for assistance by Polish exiles appears under date November 18th, 1658, with the endorsement:—"I know this petition to be true, and know the petitioners to be very deserving, learned, godly persons, members of the Churches for whom the collection was made, as are also some others living with us on our charity, in the same condition with those petitioners. John Owen."

The bundle in the State Paper Office, containing the documents from which we have taken the foregoing particulars, is endorsed, Papers relative to the Protestant Exiles from Poland and Bohemia, &c., 1657, 1658.

[557] Clarendon's Hist., 863, and Burnet's Hist. of his Own Times, i. 77.

[558] Ibid. Stoupe was minister of the French Reformed Church in London, and was sent to Geneva in 1654 to negotiate affairs relative to Protestantism. There are several allusions to him in Pell's Correspondence. In one letter he is spoken of as a man "with good zeal, but little policy."—Vaughan's Protectorate, i. 48.

[559] King James's College, at Chelsea, was founded by Dr. Matthew Sutcliffe, Dean of Exeter, "to this intent, that learned men might there have maintenance to answer all the adversaries of religion."—Alleyn's Life, quoted in Cunningham's Hand-Book of London.

[560] The Public Intelligencer, of December 10th-17th, 1655, speaks of "a conference held concerning the Jews in a withdrawing-room, in the presence of his Highness, between the Committee of the Council and the ministers and other persons approved by his Highness. Among these present Mr. Bridge was one." There is a letter on the subject of the Jews in Thurloe, iv. 321.

[561] Even Burnet thought Cromwell meant to employ the Jews as spies.

[562] Samuel Brett has left "a Narrative (dated 1655) of the proceedings of a great council of Jews assembled in the plain of Ageda, in Hungaria, about thirty leagues distant from Breda, to examine the Scriptures concerning the Messiah." The narrative is in the British Museum.

[563] In addition to what has been stated before on this subject, notice may be taken of a conversation which Cromwell had with a minister named John Rogers (see Brook's Lives, iii. 328), who spoke against a National Church—calling it anti-Christian—applying what he said to the Commonwealth. Cromwell answered that the Commonwealth Church was not a National Church, "for a National Church endeavoured to force all into one form."—See also Wood's Ath. Ox., ii. 594.

[564] Yet Bates, the physician, who says this, also says she often mentioned the blood her father spilt. How did he know this, if nobody was near enough to hear what was said? We cannot help thinking that imagination has been very busy with the latter part of Cromwell's life. Elizabeth Claypole has been represented as having pleaded with her father to spare Dr. Hewit's life. However that might be, certainly this very lady, in her own handwriting, within two months of her death, expressed her satisfaction at the discovery of the plot, as of one which, had it taken effect, would have ruined her family and the whole nation.—Thurloe, vii. 173.

[565] Thurloe, vii. 320; Ludlow's Memoirs, i. 609.

[566] The account which follows is taken from "A Collection of Several Passages concerning his Late Highness Oliver Cromwell in the Time of his Sickness, written by one that was then groom of his bedchamber." The gentlemen of the bedchamber were Mr. Charles Harvey and Mr. Underwood. This pamphlet is in the British Museum. There is also another copy of it, with a somewhat different title, as follows: "An Account of the Last Hours of the Late Renowned Oliver, Lord Protector—drawn up and published by one who was an eye and ear witness of the most part of it."

"The Portraiture of his Royal Highness Oliver in his Life and Death," contains no information respecting his sickness. It has a curious frontispiece, exhibiting Cromwell's effigy crowned, and clothed in royal robes.

[567] "As near as I can remember them," says the writer of the Collection, &c.

[568] Fox's Journal, i. 477.

[569] Journal, 485. Fox says, immediately afterwards:—"From Kingston I went to Isaac Pennington's, in Buckinghamshire, where I had appointed a meeting, and the Lord's truth and power were preciously manifested amongst us." This was the celebrated Isaac Pennington repeatedly noticed in the first volume of this history.

[570] Thurloe, vii. 354.

[571] Bates' Elenchi, ii. 215.

Fleetwood and Thurloe both speak of divine assurances of Cromwell's restoration.—Thurloe, vii. 355, 364.

[572] The Royalist historians abound in stories of Cromwell's terror lest he should be assassinated, and of frightful remorse mixed with that terror. Yet Clarendon, (Hist., p. 861,) most inconsistently says: "He never made the least shew of remorse;" and Ludlow, the republican, remarks: "He manifested little remorse."—Memoirs, ii. 612.

[573] The letters are in Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, ii.

[574] This is stated on the authority of Eachard. Neal adopts it, (Hist. iv. 188.) I must confess I do not feel much confidence in such a report of Cromwell's last sayings.

[575] Neal mentions Goodwin as the person who said this, (Hist. iv. 197,) and in so doing he is followed by Godwin and others. But Goodwin was not a chaplain of Cromwell's, nor was he likely to say what is thus ascribed to him. Neal gives no authority for his story. Baxter makes no mention of such an incident. Foster, in his Life of Cromwell, says it was Sterry who answered Cromwell, and he refers generally to the Collection of Passages; but in that collection Sterry's name does not occur, nor is there one word about this conversation. Baxter states that an Independent praying for Cromwell, said: "We ask not for his life, for that we are sure of, but that he may serve Thee better than ever he had done."—Life and Times, part i. 98. The author adds in the margin, "as it is currently reported without any contradiction that ever I heard of." There is no allusion to any such circumstance in the Collection of Passages. Ludlow, (Memoirs, ii. 610,) ascribes the prayer to Goodwin, but Ludlow was evidently prejudiced against both Cromwell and Goodwin. Tillotson, according to Birch, (Life, 16,) and also according to Burnet, (Hist. of his own Times, i. 82,) reported that he heard Goodwin say, a week after Cromwell's death: "Thou hast deceived us, and we were deceived." Tillotson also alluded to Goodwin's pretended assurance in prayer, before Cromwell expired. Tillotson would not fabricate the report, but might he not misunderstand what Goodwin meant? Eachard and Kennet, in relating the story, do not supply any corroboration of it. Tillotson is the only authority.

[576] Carlyle, iii. 151.

[577] Collection of several Passages, &c.

[578] "He did not mean," says the author of the Collection, "that it was safe to sin. No, the laying hold of the Covenant implies faith and repentance, which the Gospel requires with new obedience."—p. 6.

Throughout this paragraph we adhere to the words in the Collection.

[579] P. 7.

[580] P. 12.

[581] "Some variation," says the writer of the Collection of Passages, "there is of this prayer, as to the account divers give of it, and something is here omitted. But this is certain, that these were his requests, wherein his heart was so carried out for God and his people, yea for them who had added no little sorrow to his grief and afflictions, that at this time he seems to forget his own family and nearest relations."—13.

The statement that Sterry exclaimed after Cromwell's death, that he was of great use to the people of God whilst he lived, and that he would be much more so interceding for them at the right hand of Christ, rests mainly on the authority of Ludlow (Memoirs, ii. 612) who was not present, and in this instance could only repeat a rumour. He was as prejudiced against Cromwell and his court as any Royalist could be.

[582] Commonwealth Mercury, Sept. 2nd to Sept. 9th. The Protector's funeral was very magnificent, of which a minute account is given by the Rev. John Prestwich, of All Souls, Oxford, in a document preserved amongst the Ashmolean MSS. It is printed in the Cromwellian Diary, ii. 516.

In the newspaper announcing Cromwell's death, there occurs this amusing advertisement:—"That excellent, and by all physitians approved China drink, called by the Chineans, Tcha, by other nations Tay, or Tee, is sold at the Sultaness-Head, a cophee-house in Sweetings Rents, by the Royal Exchange, London."

[583] Clarendon (Hist., 862), says that the day of Cromwell's death was memorable for a storm, which he describes as very violent. Heath says it was reported that he was carried away in the storm the day before. (Chronicle, 408.) The fact is, that this storm, of which both the friends and the enemies of Cromwell made so much, really occurred on Monday, the 30th of August, four days before his death. Barwick, in a letter to Charles II., mentions it as occurring on the 30th. Thurloe, vii. 416. Ludlow, in his Memoirs, does the same, ii. 610. In the title to Waller's poem on the Protector, it is said that it alludes "to the storm that happened about that time."

[584] Particular notice is taken of the prayers offered for Oliver's recovery in letters of the period.—See Thurloe, vii. 364-7.

[585] Art. II. charged him with saying "that some of the Justices were all for law, and nothing would please them but law; but they should find that the King's little finger should be heavier than the loins of the law."

Art. XXI. charged him with counselling his Majesty to call a Parliament in England with a design "to break the same, and by ways of force and power to raise monies upon the subjects of this kingdom."

Art. XXIII. charged him with saying "that his Majesty having tried the affections of his people, he was loose and absolved from all rules of Government, and was to do everything that power would admit."—Rushworth's Trial of Lord Strafford, 62, 71, 72.

[586] Sufferings of the Clergy, part i. 199-200.

The subject of martyrology strongly tempts to exaggeration. Certain writers on the catacombs are examples. A curious instance of the tendency occurs in Donne's Sermons, i. 328.

[587] Baxter, and the Presbyterian ministers at the Savoy, speak of "many hundreds," "several hundreds," and "some hundreds." Hook, in a letter in the State Paper Office (March 2nd, 1663) says: Of the ejected Puritans, they were "about 1,500 or 1,600 in the nation, besides as near as many before upon the point of title." All this is indeterminate, and in Hook's statement there must be exaggeration.

[588] The Perfect Diurnal, July, 1646, states that it was complained of in the House of Commons, that sequestered malignant ministers in London and other places were admitted to pulpits where they preached sedition.

On March the 1st, 1647, notice was given the Earl of Chesterfield not to entertain malignant preachers, nor use the Book of Common Prayer.—Ibid.

[589] Spittle Sermon on Eph. iv. 15.—"Speaking the truth in love," p. 24-25.

[590] Pagninus et Arias Montanus.

[591] Tromolius (Tremellius?) Junius, Beza, &c.

[592] First printed anno 1612.

[593] The name of Dr. Thomas Goodwin is altered into that of John Owen; Caryl's name is struck out.

Transcriber's Note:

1. Original spelling has been retained.

2. Obvious spelling, punctuation and typographical errors have been silently corrected.