Ecclesiastical History of England, Volume 4—The Church of the Restoration [part 2]

by John Stoughton

CHAPTER XII.

IX. Family life amongst the Nonconformists, in the reign of the later Stuarts, framed itself after the Puritan model; and in the memoirs of Oliver Heywood and Philip Henry, windows are open through which we discover their domestic habits. Saint Bartholomew’s Day became a solemn fast in commemoration of the ejectment,—sometimes held in fellowship with a neighbouring minister or ministers,—when “the Lord helped His servants, with strong cries, many tears, and mighty workings to acknowledge sin, accept of punishment, and implore mercy.”[323] Sometimes, when none but the family were present, each person prayed in turn, the minister, the wife, the two sons, and the maid, beginning with the youngest. Heywood, in his Diary, alludes to a particular friend—“a solid, gracious, useful, peaceable, tender-hearted Christian,” with whom he had “many a sweet day of prayer; and,” he says, “a few days before he died, we were at a private fast together in Ovenden-wood; and, oh! oh! how melting and affectionate was his heart for his children, a son and daughter, both here this day!” At another time, the same minister speaks of a private fast with two of his brethren, “about a special business, and our judgment was desired in an intricate matrimonial case, which seems something dark.”[324]

It is said of Thomas Aquinas that he had “the gift of tears;” and his weeping at church is mentioned amongst the signs of his saintship. The same gift seems to have been possessed by this Nonconformist family. When Heywood’s two sons devoted themselves to the work of the Christian ministry, and a solemn domestic service of worship celebrated the event, as one of the ministers read the 48th chapter in Genesis, and came to the words, “The angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads,” tears stopped him; all wept. He says in prayer “God helped all;” and he adds: “God wrought strangely in my heart; oh! what a flood of tears, what pleadings with God! I can scarce remember the like.” At night again, they prayed, “sobbing and weeping,” like David and Jonathan, “until David exceeded.”[325]

Loyalty to the Stuarts beat in the bosoms of these Nonconformists, notwithstanding the treatment which they received; for we learn that, in the month of May, Mr. Heywood, his children, and his servant, spent several days with Mr. Angier at Denton, one of which days was the anniversary of Charles’ return, when there was a service in which Heywood took part.[326]

FAMILY LIFE.

They had their family meetings. Nathaniel Heywood, with his wife and his sons, visited Oliver; and the brother and uncle felt it a comfort to have “these three couples of Heywoods to meet together”—“a rising generation, all very hopeful.”[327] We fancy how they talked that April time—in the oak parlour, as the window was thrown open, during a burst of sunshine, after a shower which had drenched the fruit-blossoms and the rose-buds. We may guess the topics from incidents in connection with the Stanley family: Nathaniel might relate the story of his being taken by a party of soldiers, while preaching in the chapel at Bickerstaff, when Lady Stanley, who attended the service, came out of her gallery, and placed herself near the pulpit door, hoping to overawe their spirits and obstruct their designs; and how, when he attended the sessions at Wigan, Lady Stanley came with her husband, and others, to speak on behalf of the persecuted clergyman.[328] And Oliver might be led to recur, by the force of association, to the visit of himself and Mr. Angier to Sir Thomas Stanley of Alderley, when, being requested to pray in that large family, the first morning he was tempted to study and speak “handsome words from respect to the company;” but, reflecting to whom he prayed, and that it was no trifling matter, he set himself to the exercise in serious earnestness, and God helped him to speak devoutly, with respect to the state of their souls.[329] The hospitalities of Broad Oak were the praise of all the country round. The dwelling stood by the roadside, and any one travelling that way met with a cordial welcome at the bright fire-side, where the silenced Presbyter, Philip Henry, exemplified the virtues of a Bishop, “like Abraham sitting at his tent-door in quest of opportunities to do good. If he met with any poor near his house and gave them alms in money, yet he would bid them go to his door besides, for relief there. He was very tender and compassionate towards poor strangers and travellers, though his charity and candour were often imposed upon by cheats and pretenders.”[330] “This man,” says a competent witness, “(ever since I knew him, and whilst I was his neighbour) was careful to rise early on Sunday mornings, to spend a considerable portion of his time in his private devotions and preparations, then to come down and call his family together, and, after some short, preparatory prayer, to sing a Psalm (commonly the 100th), and then read some part of the sacred Scripture, and expound it very largely and particularly, and at last kneel down with all his family and pray devoutly; with particular references to the day and duties of it, and the minister that was to officiate. After which a short refection for breakfast, he made haste to church, and took care that all his family that could be spared, should go in due time likewise: sometime he was before the preacher, and often before the rest of the congregation; (as once particularly, when I gave them a sermon in that place, he and I walked together a considerable time before the people came;) he behaved himself reverently and very gravely in the church during the service; stood up commonly at prayers, and always, in my time, wrote a sermon after the minister. When the morning service was ended, he commonly invited the minister to dine with him, who seldom refused; and many others, who either lived at a distance, as Mrs. Hanmer, Sir Job Charleton’s daughter, married to a Justice of Peace in that country, or else such as were poor and needy. His discourse homewards was sweet and spiritual; at table it was seasoned as well as his meat; edifying, and yet pleasant, and taking; never wild or offensive. After meat and thanks returned, they commonly (I think constantly) before departure from table, sung the 23rd Psalm. Sometime after, when the servants had dined, he propounded to such guests as he thought in prudence he should not be too free with, to retire into the parlour for a while, till he had attended upon his family, repeated over the sermon and prayed with them; after which he returned to his guests again, and having entertained them with some short discourse, he retired awhile himself, and by and by, called upon his family to go to church. After evening service and sermon ended, he retired again till six o’clock (then called for prayers, catechised, took an account of children and servants of what they remembered at church, which accounts were given sometimes very largely and particularly), sung a Psalm, kneeled down to prayers (which consisted more of praise and benediction than at other times), and at last, his children kneeling down before him (to beg his blessing), he blessed them all, and concluded the service of the day with the 123rd Psalm; save that after supper, he retired for about half-an-hour more into his study before bed-time. Sometimes after the public service ended at church, he gave some spiritual instructions, and preached in his house to as many as would come to hear him; and in his last years, when the Incumbents grew careless in providing supplies for two or three neighbouring churches and chapels, and the people cried out for lack of vision, he set up a constant ministration and preaching at home, never taking anything by way of reward for his pains, unless with a purpose to give it away to those who were in greater necessities.”[331]

FAMILY LIFE.

That a sad colour tinged the joys of the Nonconformists must be confessed. How their Anglo-Saxon gravity might become more grave, and the light which sparkled over the home-life of their neighbours, might, in their own case, be darkened,—we see plainly enough when we recollect the perils which brooded over them even in seasons of calm, and the cruel interruptions which they suffered in the cloudy and dark day. Heywood speaks of officers sweeping away his chests, his tables, his chairs, his bed,—in short all his goods, except a cupboard and a few seats; and the same person was, for holding a religious meeting, imprisoned in York Castle.[332] How could such men, with all their tenderness, help being stern in their faith, and solemn in their pleasures? If genial they could not be light-hearted. They did not weep, as their enemies often said of them that they did, with a hypocritical whine; nor did they laugh, as some of their enemies really did, with affected glee,—their tears and smiles were genuine as the rain and the sunshine from heaven. Life was not to them, as to some others, a gay comedy,—it had in it a tragic cast; yet they never regarded it as a drama acted on the stage, but always as a real, earnest battle, fought in the open field, under the eye of God.

FAMILY LIFE.

Let us pass from the homes of Oliver Heywood and the two Henrys to the mansion of a Nonconformist nobleman already noticed—Philip Lord Wharton, the good Lord Wharton, as he is called, to distinguish him from a descendant of a far different character. In the pleasant village of Woburn, in Buckinghamshire, situated on the river Wick, a tributary to the Thames,—which in its course through a delightful district, turns the wheel of many a paper mill,—there stands, under the shadow of richly-wooded hills, and adorned by a stately row of poplars, a goodly house; connected with which are stables and fish-ponds, pertaining to a far nobler residence which once occupied the site. The estate, before it came into the possession of the Whartons, exhibited much magnificence, of the feudal stamp, containing a palace for the Bishops of Lincoln, and a chapel with a small cell adjoining, called Little Ease,—where Thomas Chase, of Amersham, was, in 1506, privately strangled for heresy, and where Thomas Harding, of Chesham, was confined in 1532, previously to his being burnt at the stake. This ancient and stately house became a great place of resort for Nonconformist Divines. Manton and Bates, Howe and Owen, were often entertained under the hospitable roof, and the shadows of these departed ones still pleasantly haunt the spot, as the Puritan residents of the neighbourhood conduct strangers through the gardens, and relate to them the legends of the old dwelling. There—during one of the severe attacks of his fatal malady—Owen wrote his last and justly admired letters to his Church; and there, under the operation of the Five Mile Act—the house being above that distance from High Wycombe—the Nonconformists of the neighbouring town used to assemble for worship. The chapel formed a convenient place for the purpose; and within its walls the voices of eminent Divines, Owen and Howe, for example, might be often heard. Thither came Puritans from Wycombe and Farnham, and Langley and other places; and one can see them in the dress of the period, with their steeple-crowned hats, and their short cloaks, coming down the hill-side, or crossing the green—not in large groups, but singly, stealthily picking their way to avoid observation, a peasant from a neighbouring farm wading on foot, a burgess from the good town of Wycombe, riding his little cob. When the service was over on Sunday forenoon, and the Wycombe people and other folks from Marlow and Beaconsfield, and stragglers from a greater distance, were putting on their hats and cloaks, and preparing to unfasten their nags and to turn homewards, the noble host would invite the people, in Buckinghamshire phraseology, “to stop and take a sop in the pan,” that they might avail themselves of the privilege of attending worship again in the afternoon.[333]

FAMILY LIFE.

The curious and quaint structure of Hoghton Tower, in the County of Lancaster, is also connected with the Nonconformist memories of the seventeenth century; for there Howe preached a part of his sublime discourse concerning “The Redeemer’s dominion over the invisible world.” And from the exquisitely tender dedication prefixed to it, we gather that it was occasioned by the death of the eldest son of Sir Charles and Lady Hoghton, to whom the tower belonged. The dedication indicates that the bereaved parents had sprung from “religious and honourable families, favoured of God, valued and beloved in the countries where He had planted them;” and that their early homes had been “both seats of religion and of the worship of God, the resorts of His servants; houses of mercy to the indigent, of justice to the vicious, of patronage to the sober and virtuous; of good example to all about them.” Addressing her ladyship, the preacher says: “Madam, who could have a more pleasant retrospect upon former days, than you? recounting your Antrim delights; the delight you took in your excellent relations, your garden delights, your closet delights, your Lord’s Day delights! But how much a greater thing is it to serve God in your present station, as the mother of a numerous and hopeful offspring; as the mistress of a large family; where you bear your part, with your like-minded consort, in supporting the interest of God and religion, and have opportunity of scattering blessings round about you.”[334] The graceful allusions, which the author makes to the family circle at Hoghton, brings before us a domestic picture, which may serve as a pendant to that of Broad Oak, the accessories of a Nonconformist minister’s household being alone exchanged for those of a baronet. From the title and dedication of another sermon by the same Divine, “Self-dedication discoursed in the anniversary thanksgiving of a person of honour for a great deliverance,”—namely, the preservation from death by a fall from a horse of “John, Earl of Kildare, Baron of Ophalia, first of his order in the kingdom of Ireland,”—we gather that it was a Puritan practice to celebrate distinguished family mercies by annual religious solemnities. Two sermons by the same writer on the words, “Yield yourselves unto God,” are inscribed “To the much-honoured Bartholomew Soame, Esq., of Thurlow, and Susanna his pious consort;” with the notice, that one day in the previous summer the author preached the sermons under their roof.[335] The circumstance shows, that sometimes elaborate addresses, fitted for public audiences, were carefully prepared for a small number of persons, such as could be accommodated within the entrance-hall, or in one of the apartments of a country gentleman’s house.

In some Nonconformist families, as was quite natural, romantic incidents occurred. Major-General Lambert, who figured prominently in connection with Cromwell, and who was kept a prisoner in the days of Charles II., had a son very unlike himself as it regards religion. This gentleman became acquainted with the widow of Charles Nowel of Merely—a lady who was of the family of Lister, of Arnoldsbiggen. The union with her first husband had been a runaway match, contracted in a covered walk within her father’s grounds; after which the bridegroom fell into the water, and was drowned, in returning home with the license of marriage in his pocket, so that he and she never met again. Young Lambert married this ill-fated maiden-widow; and then it turned out that the tastes of the couple were utterly unlike—he much addicted to pleasure, she against it; he going to church at Kirkby, Malham-dale, she walking every Sunday to the Dissenting meeting-house at Winterburn. His father, the Major-General, wrote a letter, rebuking him for his extravagance; and his wife invited Mr. Frankland, the Nonconformist pastor, to come and preach in Craven, with a view to his benefit; this the gay sportsman at first opposed. But a change came over him; he himself invited Oliver Heywood to be his guest, and showed him his pictures—“he being an exact limner:” one would hope he also became a penitent Christian. Lambert was seized with palsy in January, 1676, about which time his mother died in Plymouth Castle.[336]

During the first three centuries of the history of Christianity, and the more than ten persecutions which annalists have numbered, the professors of the Divine faith had to suffer, far beyond what the laws in their utmost severity could inflict. Imperial rescripts carried out to the letter, or magisterial commands going further, were terrible beyond description; and popular fury shouting, “The Christians to the lions,” became more cruel still. But another source of suffering, to minds of sensibility exceeding the rest in the bitterness of anguish which it produced, was when the husband persecuted the wife, and the father the child. Tertullian tells us that there were many such cases. The annals of the Church of the Restoration afford parallels in this last, as in other respects, to the records of older times.

FAMILY LIFE.

Agnes Beaumont, the daughter of a Bedfordshire yeoman, lost her mother when very young. Her father sometimes went to hear the preaching of John Bunyan, but he afterwards conceived a strong antipathy to that famous minister. The girl manifested religious feeling, and joined Bunyan’s Church, when a lawyer, who had wished to marry her for the sake of her father’s property, became her inveterate foe. But the daughter remained faithful to her convictions; and this circumstance so provoked her father’s irritable temper, that he opposed her going to hear the favourite preacher any more. On a particular occasion, however, she extorted his consent to attend once. It was the depth of winter. Weary of wading through the mud, and overtaken by Bunyan riding on his way to the place of worship, she was reluctantly permitted by him to sit, pillion-fashion, behind him on horseback, when the two were met by a clergyman, who immediately invented a scandalous report respecting the minister and the maid. Agnes, after attending the meeting, found the door of her house barred against her admission. “Who is there?” asked Beaumont, as she knocked. “’Tis I, father, come home wet and dirty: pray let me in.” “Where you have been all day, you may go at night,” was the answer from the other side of the bolted entrance. She went and sought shelter in a barn. The morning brought no relenting to the heart of her unnatural parent; and he declared that she should not enter the house, unless she promised never to go to a meeting again so long as he lived. “Father,” she answered, “my soul is of too much worth to do this. Can you stand in my stead, and answer for me at the great day? If so, I will obey you in this demand, as I do in all other things.” Much painful excitement followed. At last, fearful of being disobedient, the young woman promised never to go to a conventicle as long as he lived, without his consent. This softened him a little, and they were reconciled; but as she reflected upon her promise, it struck her that she had been unfaithful to her conscience, and she passed through great spiritual distress. Soon afterwards Beaumont fell ill, and retired to rest. His daughter, hearing him moaning in his chamber, rushed to his assistance, and found him struck with death. Fatal disease had been brought on, most likely by violence of temper; and the poor girl, through the villany of her pretended lover, now had to face the accusation of having murdered her parent. Though, on the coroner’s inquest, her innocence was established, her implacable enemy perseveringly maintained, that she had privately confessed the crime, the object of which was to marry Bunyan, who had a wife living at that very time; the villain also, without one atom of evidence, charged her with committing arson.[337] More of revenge than persecution entered into the conduct of this man; yet, for a while, Agnes Beaumont, for her religious constancy, endured the most violent parental anger, probably not uncommon in those days, and akin to that which fell upon many a pure-minded maiden in Carthage or in Rome.

FAMILY LIFE.

The domestic and private life of the Established clergy and their friends, as they appear in the biographies and gossiping literature of the day, assume a rather different aspect from that of the Nonconformists. Such a dignitary as Reynolds, who had been a Presbyterian, would no doubt preserve, in his palace at Norwich, many of the Puritan habits of the Commonwealth—would gather around him, as far as possible, a godly household, in sympathy with him in his spiritual tastes—would continue to converse much after the fashion of by-gone days—and with the adoption of the Episcopalian formularies in the cathedral and chapel, would connect, in more retired devotion, the use of extemporaneous prayer, and of Scripture exposition. And such a parish pastor as Gurnall would, in a similar way, continue Puritan usages in his quiet parsonage at Lavenham. We must look elsewhere for characteristic habits and customs of the Episcopalian stamp. Of an Anglican prelate, enjoying his palace, and engaged in his diocese, a good specimen is afforded by the memoirs of Seth Ward, the Bishop of Salisbury.[338]

He was renowned for hospitality. The clergy, even the meanest curates, were welcome at his table; and people of quality, travelling between London and Exeter, stopped at the Wiltshire city, and dined at the palace. He was a hearty entertainer, we are told, assuring his guests that he accounted himself but a steward, and pressing upon them the enjoyment of the fare which he plentifully provided. He would not ask, “Will you drink a glass of wine?” says his biographer, with amusing minuteness; but he would call for a bottle, and drink himself, and then offer it to his friends. The poor were relieved at his gates. He had a band of weekly pensioners; and when he went out for a walk in the streets or on the plains, he gave money to all who solicited alms; and when children saw him in his coach or on horseback, they would rush from their play, to shout, in expectation of a largess, “The Bishop is coming.” Being a capital horseman, he would ride twenty miles before dinner, and not mind following the hounds, if he “by chance chopt upon” them. After dinner and “a dish or two of coffee or tea,” as soon as the bell “tilled,”—to use the Salisbury phrase,—he called for his robes, and went to church, taking with him his visitors.[339]

Of another kind of dignitary an example is afforded in the memoirs of the Honourable and Reverend Dr. John North. He was Clerk of the Closet to Charles II.; possessing “a very convenient lodging in Whitehall, upon the parade of the Court, near the presence-chamber,” where his table was provided from the Royal kitchen, and he enjoyed the company of His Majesty’s chaplains. People who had nothing else to do, would say to one another—so North’s brother reports—“Come, shall we go and spend half-an-hour with Mr. Clerk of the Closet?” but when they went with the expectation of getting “a glass of wine or ale,” the wary Divine, by the advice of an old Courtier, would not offer so much as “small beer in hot weather,” lest he should be overdone with visitors. In consequence of this prudent determination, he lived “like a hermit in his cell, in the midst of the Court, and proved the title of a foolish French writer, La Solitude de la Cour.” “Divers persons,” however, particularly ladies, “far from Papists,” were wont to repair to this spiritual officer for a different purpose, thinking “auricular confession, though no duty, a pious practice,” and seeking “to ease their minds” by means of that Anglo-Catholic custom. He did “the office of a pastor or parochus of the Court,” somewhat after the fashion of the mediæval Clerks of the Closet, who were, in fact, Court confessors. “And I have heard him say,” proceeds his brother, “that, for the number of persons that resided in the Court, a place reputed a centre of all vice and irreligion, he thought there were as many truly pious and strictly religious as could be found in any other resort whatsoever; and he never saw so much fervent devotion, and such frequent acts of piety and charity, as his station gave him occasion to observe there. It often falls out that extremes are conterminous, and, as contraries, illustrate each other: so here virtue and vice.”[340] We are glad to hear such testimony, and, when we think of Evelyn and Margaret Godolphin, we cannot altogether doubt it; but, as this Court Divine lived in a cell, he could not know much of what went on around him in the Court.

FAMILY LIFE.

Noble families observed the duties of domestic worship; and, from the same source as that from which the last illustration is drawn, it appears how the household of the princely Duke of Beaufort, at Badminton, attended to this practice. There was breakfast in the Duchess’ gallery, which opened into the gardens, where perhaps a deer was to be killed; and half-an-hour after eleven in the forenoon the bell rang to prayers; and at six in the evening the best company went into an aisle in the church, where the Duke and Duchess could see if all the family were present. Her Grace had divers gentlewomen with her, commonly engaged upon “embroidery and fringe-making; for all the beds of state were made and finished in the house.”[341]

Instead of extemporary effusions, Episcopalians used the daily prayers of the Church, or selections from them. On special occasions the minister of the parish performed the office; and an amusing instance occurs of the neglect of this custom on the part of a gentleman who had the honour of entertaining the Judges on the Western Circuit. “He himself got behind the table in his hall, and read a chapter, and then a long-winded prayer, after the Presbyterian way. The Judges took it very ill, but did not think fit to affront him in his own house. Next day”—who the narrator is may be guessed—“when we came early in the morning to Exeter, all the news was that the Judges had been at a conventicle, and the Grand Jury intended to present them and all their retinue for it; and much merriment was made upon that subject.”[342]

Devout Anglicans attended strictly to the private duties of religion. They kept fasts and festivals in their own houses, as well as at church; and in their morning and evening devotions they used portions of the Common Prayer, or forms supplied by Taylor and Andrewes. They read the sermons of those Divines, and of Sanderson and others; perhaps also the annotations of Hammond or some kindred expositor. At a later period, The Whole Duty of Man became a very popular book with the class of persons now described.

I conclude these illustrations of Anglo-Catholic life with the account of the death of an Anglo-Catholic young lady:—

“Upon Thursday, the 1st of February, my most dearly beloved daughter Grimston fell sick of small-pox.

“She had, from the beginning of her sickness to the last period of her breath, an understanding very entire, and so perfect a patience that her demeanour towards them who were about her was not only holy, but cheerful too.

FAMILY LIFE.

“She received the sentence of death with the greatest tranquillity of soul that is imaginable, and sent for Mr. Frampton (the household chaplain to the Master of the Rolls, in whose house she died). To him she made an excellent confession of her faith and life, and opened all the burdens of her spirit, wherein were found no heavier matters than a few angry words spoken seven years since, and some small errors of that nature. But [there followed] a most solemn repentance for all transgressions, whether remembered or forgotten. This being done, she did, with great devotion, receive the blessed sacrament, and the absolution of the Church. Before she composed herself to die, she first took a most kind and comfortable leave of her dear husband—who, from the beginning of her sickness till the hour of her death, never left her chamber—praying God to bless him, and that he might never find the want of her. Then she recommended her little girl to my wife, entreating her to take her into her family, if it might not be too great a trouble, and desiring her not to weep, for she was happy. She remembered almost every relation she had in the world by name, and offered up a particular prayer for them. I had never seen her after the second day of her sickness; but she prayed most devoutly for me, and desired all that were present to tell me from her, that, if prayer were made in heaven, she would never cease to pray for me there so long as I lived here: an expression so amazing from a child, and withal so piercing, that, in the midst of all my spiritual joys, I feel a sorrow great enough to break my heart if I would give way to it. For within a few minutes after these words uttered, she surrendered up her blessed soul into the hands of God Almighty, who, by the assistance of His most blessed Spirit, had prepared and fitted her for Himself. And now she hath left her dear husband, and his family, and mine, as full of mourning and lamentation for the want of her as can possibly consist with Christian patience and submission. On Monday next she is carried from hence to her grave, in St. Michael’s Church, near Gorhambury.”[343]

X. As during the Commonwealth, so after the Restoration, different opinions were entertained respecting the observance of Sunday. Puritans were not all of one mind upon that matter. Extreme men argued thus:—“If honest labour be forbidden, much more honest recreations; for recreation is but the means to prepare and fit men for labour; therefore, if labour, which is the end of recreation, be forbidden, much more recreation, which is but the means to labour.”[344] But Baxter, who was himself strict in the observance of the day, and who then walked for his health privately, lest he “should tempt others to sin,” observed, with great moderation, “The body must be kept in that condition (as far we can) that is fittest for the service of the soul: a heavy body is but a dull and heavy servant to the mind, yea, a great impediment to the soul in duty, and a great temptation to many sins.” “When the sights of prospects, and beautiful buildings, and fields, and countries, or the use of walks, or gardens, do tend to raise the soul to holy contemplation, to admire the Creator, and to think of the glory of the life to come (as Bernard used his pleasant walks), this delight is lawful, if not a duty where it may be had.” Of music and moderate feasting he says, when they “promote the spiritual service of the day, they are good and profitable.”[345]

OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH.

Owen, perhaps, was more strict in his views of Sabbath observance than Baxter; yet he spoke of its being no small mistake that men have laboured more to multiply directions about external duties than to direct a due sanctification of the day according to the spirit and genius of Gospel obedience; and he did not deny that some, measuring others by themselves, tied people up unto such long tiresome duties, and rigid abstinences from refreshments, as clogged their minds, and turned the whole service of the day into a wearisome bodily exercise which profiteth little.[346]

Between Puritans and Anglicans a great difference continued upon the Sunday question. Jeremy Taylor, speaking of persons who objected to have meat dressed upon the Lord’s Day, or to use an innocent, permitted recreation, says—“When such an opinion makes a sect, and this sect gets firm, confident, and zealous defenders, in a little time it will dwell upon the conscience as if it were a native there, whereas it is but a pitiful inmate, and ought to be turned out of doors.”[347] Thorndike denied the obligation of the Fourth Commandment upon any but the Jewish people; he based the authority for the Lord’s Day on the Apostolic custom of the Church, and he disapproved of the Sabbatarian strictness of the Puritans.[348] Sanderson pleaded for recreations, “walking and discoursing” for “men of liberal education;” but for the “ruder sort of people,” “shooting, leaping, pitching the bar, and stool-ball,” rather than “dicing and carding.” “These pastimes,” he said, were to be used “in godly and commendable sort,” with great moderation, at seasonable times, not during Divine service, nor at hours appointed by the master of the house for private devotion, but so as to make men fitter for God’s service during the rest of the day, and all this was to be done, not doubtingly, for whatsoever is not of faith is sin; nor uncharitably, for in this, “as in all indifferent things, a wise and charitable man will, in godly wisdom, deny himself many times the use of that liberty, which, in a godly charity, he dare not deny to his brother.”[349] Although the Book of Sports had lost its authority, its spirit revived after the Restoration, and amusements in accordance with its provisions were encouraged, in some cases, without any checks or any religious teaching of the kind adopted by Sanderson. Cosin, indeed, in a sermon upon Sunday observance, quotes a remark by Augustine, which condemns all vain and idle pastimes—“Some people keep holy day for the devil, and not for God, and should be better employed, labouring and ploughing in their fields, than so to spend the day in idleness and vanity, and women should better bestow their time in spinning of wool, than upon the Lord’s Day to lose their time leaping and dancing, and other such wantonness.”[350] Borough magistrates enforced the observance of the Sabbath; not only were corporations, attired in their gowns, required to attend church, morning and afternoon, but all masters were ordered to cause their apprentices to be at Divine service at the same time.[351] In the houses of such as disliked Puritanism, scenes of levity, if not dissipation, often desecrated the holy hours. After attendance at church, time was spent in a manner at variance with the previous devotions.

RECREATIONS.

Pious Anglicans after the Restoration loved the first day of the week with all the fervour of George Herbert;—and what some of them said with reference to recreations, shocking as it appeared to Puritans, proceeded not from a desire of self-indulgence, but from a consideration of weakness in other people,—still, the Sabbath remained the Puritans’ peculiar treasure. They put on it the highest price. To them it seemed the jewel and crown, the bloom and flower of the week, the torch which lighted up its dark days, the sunshine which from eternity streamed down on the waters of time. Unwisdom, sinking into superstition, betrayed itself in the strictness of their conduct, provoking ridicule, and producing reaction; but it should not be overlooked that it was from their great love to the festival, that they were so careful to frame rules for its preservation. Some treated Puritan habits as pitiable, and regarded the men as insanely melancholy, but the latter esteemed themselves objects for envy rather than commiseration, since in their own hearts they made the Sabbath “a delight, the holy of the Lord, and honourable.”

XI. The idea of “a Christian year,” a sanctification of the seasons of nature by Gospel memories, is undeniably beautiful. This theory of time, adopted by the Church of England, reappeared at the Revolution, and days which mark the progress of the old earth’s journeys round the sun were stamped anew with sacred names, and entwined with the history of the Redeemer and His Apostles. Christmas celebrated the Incarnation, and Epiphany the infant appearance of Jesus to the Magi at Bethlehem, with subsequent manifestations of His glory; Lent was the spring period, set apart for fasting and prayer, preparatory to the commemoration of Divine mercy in the atonement of Christ. Palm Sunday is not recognized in the English Prayer Book. On the Sunday before Easter no reference occurs to our Lord’s entrance into Jerusalem in the proper Lessons, the Epistle, or the Gospel. But Easter itself, after the sorrows of Good Friday, is a high and holy festival, when the Church breaks out into songs of joy because of the Resurrection of her Lord. At the close of the forty days following, come Rogation Week, with Holy Thursday, and then Whitsuntide—a season associated with Christ’s Ascension, and culminating in the celebration of Pentecost. Trinity Sunday crowns the whole, and invites the faithful to contemplate the comprehensive, the fundamental, the mysterious doctrine of a distinction in the Godhead. The character and history of St. John the Baptist, and of the Apostles, St. Matthias, St. Peter, St. James, St. Bartholomew, St. Matthew, St. Simon and St. Jude, St. Andrew, St. Thomas, are in succession bound up with certain days, the series terminating in the festival of All Saints.[352]

RECREATIONS.

With these seasons, observed from ancient times, various recreations had become connected in the middle ages. Many of them survived the fall of Popery, and with exceptions and changes, came once more, at the Restoration, into general fashion and indulgence. To say the least, they brought around sacred things the strangest and most incongruous associations. Some, indeed, were very much worse than strange and incongruous. Christmas Eve shone with the blaze of the Yule log, and its bountiful accompaniments of good cheer. The Christmas carol echoed through the family hall with gay music from the minstrels’ gallery. The Christmas hobby-horse cut strange capers, and Christmas-boxes were given freely to young and old. The Lord of misrule, the foot plough, and the sword dance, Yule doughs, mince-pies, Christmas-pies and plum-puddings added to the tide of fellowship and pleasure at that mid-winter season. All the glories of Twelfth night, which threw old men and old women, as well as little children, into ecstasies of merriment, were engrafted on the feast of Epiphany. Easter holidays, Easter liftings, Easter eggs, and all sorts of Easter fun, gathered in strange, grotesque, often revolting, contrast round the professed acknowledgment of the greatest of the redemptive miracles of Christianity. Rogation Week, with Ascension Day in its centre, had long been the chosen time for sacred processions and litanies, and now again in England, on the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of that week, parochial perambulations revived; charity children carried flowers; the clergy with singing men and boys, all in sacred vestments, and with churchwardens and parishioners, beat the bounds of the parish, and under Gospel oaks, and other Gospel trees, the Incumbent read the Gospel, according to an old custom, in which had originated these familiar appellations. The idea of such perambulations, sanctioned by the Church, was—that processional worship should be offered to the Almighty, that thanks should be given to Him for the promise of a good crop, or that prayer should be offered for His mercy on the prospect of a bad harvest. But the gathering together of all sorts of idle people, and the habit of drinking which obtained amongst them, led to most deplorable excesses.

Superstitious and absurd practices cropped up profusely on St. Mark’s Eve. With St. John’s Day was coupled the use, in decoration, of the birch, the lily, and St. John’s wort, and at night bonfires illuminated the villages of “Merrie England.” St. Peter’s Day had similar illuminations; St. James’ Day was a time for eating oysters, and Allhallow Even was devoted to nut-cracking, apple-catching, and the ancient game of quintain. The feasts of the consecration of churches degenerated into rush bearings, hoppings, and all kinds of rustic amusements, in which, as Bishop Hall observed in his Triumph of Pleasure “you may well say no Greek can be merrier than they.”

The theory was to unite the remembrance of Christian facts and Christian names with particular seasons in the lives of men, to interlink religion with social intercourse, to recognize recreation as a human necessity, to hallow it with Christian influences, and to allow joy, on account of the events recorded in the Gospel, to express itself in innocent festivities. But nobody can fail to see that if this was the theory, the practice did not correspond with it, for the history of the amusements common in England at these festivals after the Restoration, as before, abounds in proofs of revelry and riot, most unseemly in the estimation of sober Christians. A distinction ought to be made between the use of festivities at Christmas, Easter, and other seasons, and their abuse; between what is harmful and what is innocent; and also it must be allowed that, whilst Churchmen, in the days of which we speak, mingled recreation with religion, some of them also mingled the spirit of religion with recreation, and condemned all vicious indulgence; but the fact still remains, that amongst the lower classes, and the upper as well, in cities and towns, and in rural districts, a large amount of social demoralization existed under the cover of Christian symbols, and in union with professedly Christian observances. This fact should not be overlooked in an Ecclesiastical History of England.

RECREATIONS.

Different ideas respecting amusements are marked badges of religious denominations, and one of the dangers of all Puritanism is a tendency to separate between recreation and religion, and to regard them as if antagonistic, from mistaken views of the condition and necessities of human nature; views which ignore one side of the mind of man, and narrow the range of social sympathies. Some good men of the Puritan class did, in consequence, look sourly on several very innocent sorts of pleasure; but the morbid, ungenial restriction of feeling, ascribed to the Puritans in general, has been greatly exaggerated, and to some extent, so far as it really existed, an excuse may be found for it in the persecuting treatment which they, as a body, received from those who were foremost in promoting the revival of old English customs. The distinctive amusements of the Church festivals the Puritan disliked, condemned, and opposed. Indeed, many disliked, condemned, and opposed the festivals themselves, from a strong conviction that they were superstitious in their origin, their character, and their tendency. They devoutly believed in the events which those festivals commemorated, and thought that they should be remembered, not at particular seasons, but all the year round. Their idea of the festivals was not such as to redeem the recreations which had clustered round them; and the recreations themselves were, to their religious and moral tastes, exceedingly offensive.

After all which has been said to the contrary, however, numbers of the Puritans—under the later Stuarts, under the earlier ones, and under the Commonwealth—were genial and even “facetious”—to use a word applied to some of their best men—full of pleasantness, and by no means averse to certain English amusements. Many demonstrations of joy they made in common with their neighbours. Feasting and sending gifts to one another, the ringing of bells, making bonfires, and sounding trumpets, with thundering of ordnance on great national occasions, had been recommended in so many words from the chief pulpit of Manchester, by the chief Presbyterian minister of that City. If Puritans objected to drinking healths, some had no objections to see the street-conduits running with claret. Anti-prelatists, like prelatists before, and Nonconformists, like Conformists after the Restoration, indulged in the sports of fishing and shooting; they followed the hounds, and they went a hawking.

Cock-fighting is an old English amusement, especially at Shrove-tide, and, strange as it may seem, an eminent Puritan minister, Henry Newcome, allowed his boys, when that season came round, to “shoot at the cock.” He amusingly expresses in his diary a fear lest the youngsters should come to mischief in so dangerous a game, and therefore prayed to God that He would preserve them, as he thankfully acknowledges God was pleased to do; and he mentions that on one occasion he had particular reason to be alarmed, since what was meant for the cock threatened danger to the boy, for “Daniel’s hat on his head was shot through with an arrow.” Yet the careful and devout father never indicates an apprehension of there being anything wrong in the game itself.[353] Nonconformists condemned card-playing, and other games of chance, but if the late Nonconformists resembled their Presbyterian predecessors, they amused themselves with balls and billiards. The game of shuffle-board was a Royal amusement, and a board for playing the game is mentioned in an inventory of the goods belonging to Charles I., which were seized at Ludlow Castle. Boards of this description had lines drawn across them at one end, and the players stood at the other, the object being to push or shove flat pieces of metal across the lines, without causing them to fall off the board. Newcome liked to play this game, as appears from his diary, only he was afraid of taking “too great a latitude in such mirth,” and thought it his duty to let some “savoury thing” fall at the time, and if he cracked a jest, he considered himself as thereby incurring a debt for an equal amount of serious discourse. The Presbyterian minister, who tells these stories of himself, was a young man at the time to which he thus refers, and he lived beyond the Revolution, but it is very probable that in after years he continued cautiously to practise his early favourite amusement. There is, however, no reason to believe that his taste in this respect, and his habit of indulging in it, is to be taken as a specimen of Nonconformists’ recreation in general.

CHARITIES.

XII. The charities revived or established after the Restoration, springing from the benevolent spirit of Christianity, call for some notice. Visiting the venerable hospital of St. Mary, in the City of Chichester, with its spacious hall, spanned by an arched roof, and its rows of tiny rooms built on either side, as if in a covered street, with its chapel and altar table, and other provisions for Episcopalian worship on Sundays and week-days, and with its old-fashioned men and women finding rest in their declining days, after the toils and troubles of life; or visiting the like venerable hospital of Bishopgate, in the City of Norwich, with somewhat similar arrangements, we see the kind of place in which benevolent people loved to shelter the aged and the infirm in the days of Charles II. After the banishment—during the Commonwealth—of the ancient religious services, and of the old spirit of these quaint retreats—not, however, to the violation of the charitable purposes of the foundation—those services took possession of them again at the Restoration. The same may be said of numerous almshouses in different parts of the country.

New ones of a similar description were established. Bishop Ward’s College of Matrons, for the maintenance of ten widows of orthodox clergymen, may be mentioned as an instance. He disliked it to be called an hospital, it being intended for those who were well descended, and had lived in good reputation. He purchased land in the Close at Salisbury, on which to erect the buildings, and the Cathedral being so near, they were required to attend worship there, both morning and evening. The same prelate endowed an hospital at Buntingford, in Hertfordshire, the place of his birth, for ten aged men, each to receive ten pounds a year.

Some persons, in founding almshouses, required that all the inmates should “be conformed to the Church of England, according to the Thirty-Nine Articles,” and placed under the ban of exclusion all such as should not profess, or follow the Protestant religion, or should absent themselves from the parish or castle church without cause.[354] Others devised bequests in a more catholic spirit, providing “that poor boys may be instructed in the principles of the Protestant religion, and in the fear of the Lord, and also to read and to write, and to cast up accounts, that so they may be blessed in their souls as well as in their bodies, and may be a blessing to their masters, and may for ever have cause to bless God for the fatherly care” of the Mayor on their behalf.[355]

CHARITIES.

The name of a singular kind of person, who signalized himself by his beneficence, may also be introduced.

An epitaph on a tomb-stone in the Chapel of Jesus’ College, Cambridge, records his deeds:—“Tobias Rustat, Yeoman of the Robes to King Charles II., whom he served with all duty and faithfulness in his adversity as well as prosperity, both at home and abroad. The greatest part of the estate he gathered by God’s blessing, the King’s favour, and his industry, he disposed in his lifetime in works of charity, and found the more he bestowed upon churches, hospitals, universities, and colleges, and upon poor widows and orphans of orthodox ministers, the more he had at the year’s end. Neither was he unmindful of his kindred and relations in making them provision out of what remained. He died a bachelor the 15th day of March, in the year of our Lord 1693, aged 87.”

Dr. Sutcliffe, in the reign of James I., founded and built a college at Chelsea “principally for the maintenance of the true Catholic, Apostolic, and Christian faith, and next, for the practice, setting forth, and increase of true and sound learning against the pedantry, sophistries and novelties of the Jesuits, and others, the Pope’s factors and followers; and, thirdly, against the treachery of the Pelagians, and Arminians, and others, that draw towards Popery and Babylonian slavery, endeavouring to make a rent in God’s Church, and a peace between heresy and God’s true faith—between Christ and Antichrist.”[356] Although patronized by the King, this indefinite scheme for maintaining truth in a controversial age came to nothing, and Charles II. appropriated the ground occupied by the college to the famous Royal Hospital for superannuated soldiers. Everybody is familiar with the imposing edifice near the banks of the Thames, and with the stories about Nell Gwynn’s influence, in the establishment of the foundation, but it is not generally known, that a number of persons, besides the King, took part in the work, and that it is really a monument of national as well as of Royal munificence.

Tillotson, in one of his sermons, commemorates the benevolence of a London merchant:—

“He (Mr. Gouge) set the poor of St. Sepulchre’s parish (where he was a minister) to work at his own charge. He bought flax and hemp for them to spin; when spun he paid them for their work, and caused it to be wrought into cloth, which he sold as he could, himself bearing the whole loss. This was a very wise and well-chosen way of charity, and in the good effect of it, a much greater charity; than if he had given to those very persons (freely and for nothing) so much as he made them earn by their work, because, by this means, he rescued them from two most dangerous temptations—idleness and poverty. This course, so happily devised and begun by Mr. Gouge, gave, it may be, the first hint to that useful and worthy citizen, Mr. Thos. Firman, of a much larger design, which has been managed by him some years in this city, with that vigour and good success, that many hundreds of poor children, and others, who lived idle before, unprofitable both to themselves and the public, now maintain themselves, and are also some advantage to the community. By the assistance and charity of many excellent and well-disposed persons, Mr. Firman is enabled to bear the unavoidable loss and charge of so vast an undertaking, and by his own forward inclination to charity, and unwearied diligence and activity, is fitted to sustain and go through the incredible pains of it.”[357]

CHARITIES.

Such instances of Christian benevolence are quite as worthy of being recorded in ecclesiastical history as the strifes of controversy, and the changes of government, and it may therefore be added in reference to “the useful and worthy citizen, Mr. Firman,” just mentioned, that, although he was a person of singular and heterodox opinions, he distinguished himself above many who condemned his errors; and left behind him a name for active and unwearied charity, which entitles him to a place in the same honourable list with Howard, Fry, and Peabody. The details of his beneficence are minutely recorded in his interesting life: besides establishing a linen manufactory entirely for the employment and benefit of poor spinners, he visited prisons, and redeemed poor debtors; he was a zealous supporter of Christ’s and St. Thomas’ Hospitals; he largely gave away Bibles, good books, and catechisms; he diligently helped the French Refugees; he evinced a deep interest in the sufferings and relief of the persecuted Irish, and he was an eminent contributor to the wants of the poor.[358]

Nor were missionary efforts altogether neglected. Sir Leoline Jenkins—who, in 1680, succeeded Sir William Coventry as Secretary of State—was touched by the large amount of spiritual destitution amongst the Navy and in the Colonies, and with a view to the supplying of it, he instituted two fellowships in Jesus’ College, Oxford, the holders of which should go out to sea as Chaplains of the Fleet, or proceed to “His Majesty’s foreign plantations, there to take upon them a cure of souls.”

In July, 1649, an ordinance had been passed by the Long Parliament for the propagation of the Gospel in New England. A collection for the object having been made in every parish, a large sum was realized in consequence. With this money certain lands were purchased of Colonel Beddingfield, a Roman Catholic Royalist, the annual proceeds of which were to be devoted to the mission. But after the Restoration, the Colonel seized back the property for his own use, and it was only after legal proceedings,—in which Clarendon, as Lord Chancellor, behaved most equitably,—that it was recovered by the trustees. Charles II. granted the Society a new Charter of Incorporation, of which Robert Boyle became president; and Mr. Ashurst, an influential and pious citizen, and alderman of London, who had been treasurer before, reaccepted that important post. Richard Baxter took an active part in the proceedings at home, and John Eliot, a missionary to the Indians, carried on its operations abroad. Letters are preserved which passed between the illustrious Divine and the illustrious Evangelist, and from one written by the former we learn that, although, from reasons connected with the peculiar character of the times, numbers were unwilling to leave England just then to embark in this new expedition of religious zeal, many would have been glad to have gone amongst “Persians, Tartarians, and Indians,” to preach the Gospel, had they but understood the language. Hints respecting universal language—a dream which occupied the thoughts of Wilkins, the Bishop of Chester, and inspired George Dalgarno’s Ars Signorum—occur in Eliot’s letters, showing that he leaned towards the Hebrew tongue as the all-comprehensive vehicle of instruction—the tongue which, he said, will be spoken in heaven, and which, by its “trigramical foundation,” is “capable of a regular expatiation into millions of words, no language like it.” Baxter was strongly excited by the deplorable destitution of the Gospel, but it inspired more of despair than of hope; it paralyzed rather than stimulated effort. “He that surveyeth the present state of the earth, and considereth, that scarcely a sixth part is Christian, and how small a part of them are reformed, and how small a part of them have much of the power of godliness, will be ready to think that Christ hath called almost all His chosen, and is ready to forsake the earth, rather than that He intendeth us such blessed days below as we desire. We shall have what we would, but not in this world.”[359] There are also several letters from Eliot to Boyle, written with touching simplicity—reports, in fact, of the missionary work in New England—in which the apostle to the Indians addresses the President of the Society as a right honourable, deeply learned, abundantly charitable, and constant, nursing father.[360]

CHARITIES.

Boyle devoted to the New England mission, £300 a year during his life, and, by his will, bequeathed a legacy of £100; and although several persons of distinction were nominally connected with the scheme, he was its moving-spring, its power and life. The meetings for the transaction of its affairs, which he commonly attended, were held at Alderman Ashurst’s residence in London—the first board of foreign missions in Protestant England, and the first mission-house of that kind in its enterprising metropolis. Missionary operations on a much larger scale were commenced after the Revolution.

XIII. I have recorded several incidents which occurred in the Universities. Nothing like a history of those great institutions comes within the purpose of this work, nor is there any need to describe their state after the Restoration, as in former volumes I described it before that event:—because, during the Commonwealth, the Universities were extraordinarily circumstanced, but at the Restoration they returned to their normal condition, in which they have continued ever since. A few notices, however, indicative of the studies and habits of the members, may be appropriately included within this chapter.

Sancroft conveys an unfavourable impression of the state of things at Cambridge in the year 1663:—“It would grieve you to hear of our public examinations; the Hebrew and Greek learning being out of fashion everywhere, and especially in the other Colleges, where we are forced to seek our candidates for fellowships; and the rational learning they pretend to, being neither the old philosophy, nor steadily any one of the new. In fine, though I must do the present society right, and say, that divers of them are very good scholars, and orthodox (I believe) and dutiful both to King and Church; yet methinks I find not that old genius and spirit of learning generally in the College that made it once so deservedly famous; nor shall I hope to retrieve it any way sooner, than by your directions who lived here in the most flourishing times of it.”[361]

Not only would the transition from Puritan to Anglican occasion inconvenience, but a transition also occurred from the study of the old to the study of the new philosophy,—from Aristotle to Plato, and from the pursuit of metaphysics to the investigation of physical science. Lucas founded a professorship of Mathematics in the year 1663, to which office Barrow was the first appointed, and in his inaugural address, he eulogizes that department of knowledge which he was about to teach.[362]

UNIVERSITIES.

Another great change at Cambridge, consequent upon the Restoration, is seen in the decline of Calvinistic theology, the return of Anglican opinions, and especially the progress of the Latitudinarian schools of Divinity, described in a subsequent portion of this work. Turning to less important matters, it may be observed that Royal mandates became too common, and provoked refusals from the College authorities. Dr. Cudworth, Master of Christ’s, politely apologized for declining an order for the election of a son of Sir Richard Fanshaw, as a Fellow, pleading that “since the Restoration, their little College had received and obeyed ten Royal letters; and even received a manciple imposed by letter, though it was a thing never known before.” “When mandates are so plentifully granted they cannot possibly be all obeyed.”[363] North set himself decidedly against these mandates, as most mischievous abuses, and contrived by pre-elections to obviate their occurrence. “Out of the several years, four or five one under another, he caused to be pre-elected into fellowships scholars of the best capacities in the several years; which made it improbable another election should come about in so many years then next ensuing, for until all these elections were benefited there could be no vacancy, and that broke the course of mandates whilst he lived.” North was a High Tory, an advocate of absolute monarchy, a severe disciplinarian, and an austere man in his personal habits. Although his opinions accorded with those prevalent in the University, his conduct as the Head of a College made him unpopular; and it happened, one evening,—when sitting in his dining-room by the fire, the chimney being opposite to the windows, looking out into the great quadrangle,—that a stone was sent from the court through the window. He was “inwardly vexed, and soon after, the discourse fell upon the subject of people’s kicking against their superiors in government, who preserves them as children are preserved by parents; and then he had a scroll of instances, out of Greek history, to the same purpose, concluding that no conscientious magistrate can be popular, but in lieu of that, he must arm himself with equanimity.” He differed at times from the senior fellows, and at a meeting for business, when eight of them had determined to have their own way, and carry a point on which they had previously agreed, one of them attempted to effect his object by saying, “Master, since you will not agree, we must rise, and break up the meeting.” “Nay,” he replied, “that you shall not do, for I myself will rise and be gone first.”[364] This brought them round. The relation of such an incident gives an idea of the High Church Don at Cambridge much better than any general description, and throws amusing light on the social life of the University.

The election of a new Chancellor was then, as it generally is, an exciting event for the University men, and every kind of influence was brought to bear upon the success of the respective competitors. In 1671, the Duke of Buckingham entered into a contest with the Earl of Arlington, for the enjoyment of the honour, and obtained the prize; Williamson, the Secretary of State, having without effect canvassed on the opposite side. Leading men apologized to him for not supporting his candidate, of which an instance appears in the following communication:—

UNIVERSITIES.

“For Joseph Williamson, Esq., Whitehall.—Sir,—My worthy friend,—This morning, about seven, I received the favour of your letter sent me by Dr. Turner, of St. John’s, and Dr. Cudworth our Master received another from you to the same effect. But we were so far engaged before, having been visited (as we call it here, for the Duke of Buckingham) on Sunday or Monday last, and the inclinations of the University lay so against an Oxford man (you know our academical humour) that no good could be done so late for my Lord Arlington, but the Duke was chosen this day with a nemine contradicente. You know, dear Sir, my personal obligations to you are such, and peculiarly in my expectancy for the professorship, that you might command not only my own suffrage, but all the friends I could make if it had been in time.

“Believe me to be your much obliged and humble Servant,

John Carr.

“Christ’s Coll., Cambridge,
May 11, 1671.”

There are other letters amongst the State Papers on the same subject, including one from Dr. Cudworth, to Williamson, excusing himself for supporting the Duke instead of the Earl.

Charles II. visited Cambridge on the 4th of October in the same year, and the whole body of students wearing academical habits, according to their several degrees, lined the streets as His Majesty visited the various buildings. He was received by the new Chancellor and the other authorities, who presented him with a “fair Bible,” accompanied by a short speech from the public orator. The King visited the University’s libraries and the Colleges of Trinity and St. John, and after dining at Trinity he saw a comedy acted there, with which he expressed himself well pleased.[365] In 1674, the Duke of Monmouth succeeded the Duke of Buckingham in the Chancellorship, and in that year we find the former sending a curious communication to the Eastern University.

By His Majesty’s desire he noticed the liberty which several persons in holy orders had taken to wear their own hair and perukes of an unusual and unbecoming length, and rebuked them for it, strictly enjoining that all such, who professed the study of Divinity, should wear their hair in a manner more suitable to the gravity and sobriety of their profession. He also blamed them in His Majesty’s name for reading sermons, and commanded that preaching from MS., which took a beginning with the disorders of the late times, should be wholly laid aside, and that preachers should deliver their sermons, both in Latin and English, by memory or without book, as being a way of preaching which His Majesty judged most agreeable to the use of all foreign Churches, to the former custom of the University, and the nature and intention of the holy exercise itself.[366] These injunctions were anticipated at Oxford, where James, Duke of Ormond, continued Chancellor from 1669 to 1688.

UNIVERSITIES.

“It is not long since,” writes Dr. Ralph Bathurst, President of Trinity, “we had notice of the Duke of Monmouth’s letter, written by His Majesty’s command, to the University of Cambridge, against long hair and the reading of sermons. It was here thought advisable to obviate the like reproof to ourselves, by an early compliance with His Majesty’s desires, though we think ourselves much more blameless than they, especially in the last particular. To this end, I have this day published a programme, the copy whereof I have made bold to send you.”[367]

With this amusing insight into academic life, may be coupled another of earlier date. Williamson, Secretary of State, presented to Queen’s College, a silver trumpet and two pairs of banners. Thanks were returned by Dr. Thomas Barlow, in the name of the Society, and the gift was described as “most welcome, not only for its cost and curiosity, but for its congruity to them who by statute are to be called to dinner with a trumpet, though fitter for him to give than for a poor College to receive, to call them to a mess of pottage and twopenny commons. It will be used on all solemn days, but at other times their old brass trumpet will serve the turn.” In another letter, it is remarked, “The Provost, and all the company, highly extol them, and are very grateful for them. The trumpet was long sounded in the quadrangle, wine was drunk through the hall, and venison pasties were at every table, there being a whole buck from Lady Foster, of Aldermaston,” besides Williamson’s from Woodstock.[368] Old Christmas and Candlemas customs were revived, and the senior undergraduates amused themselves at night before the charcoal fires by bringing in the freshmen, and making them “sit down on a form in the middle of the hall, joining to the declaimer’s desk,”—where they were required to “speak some pretty apothegm, or make a jest or bull;” and if the thing were not done cleverly, the unhappy wight was punished by the seniors, who would “tuck him—that is set the nail of their thumb to his chin, just under the lip, and by the help of their other fingers under the chin, they would give him a mark which sometimes would produce blood.”[369] A picturesque usage occurred on Holy Thursday, when the Fellows of New College walked to Bartholomew’s Hospital, which was decked with fruit for the occasion, and then, after reading the Scriptures, and the singing of hymns, they offered silver to be divided amongst poor men; then they proceeded to Stockwell, where, after reading the epistle and gospel for the day, the Fellows in “the open place, like the ancient Druids, echoed and warbled out from the shady arbours, melodious melody, consisting of several parts, then most in fashion.”[370]

UNIVERSITIES.

The conduct of persons who from time to time acted the part of Terræ filius, had been complained of under the Commonwealth; it continued to be complained of after the Restoration. The excesses into which these lawless students were wont to run, with other corresponding extravagances, appear to have reached their greatest height in 1669, at the opening of the Sheldon theatre. South once, as University orator, delivered a long oration, in which he satirically inveighed against Cromwell, the Fanatics, the Royal Society, and the new philosophy:—and then pronounced encomiums upon the Archbishop, the building, the Vice-Chancellor, the Architect, and the Decorator, concluding with execrations, cast upon Fanatics, Conventicles, and Comprehension, “damning them ad inferos, ad Gehennam.” At the same Commemoration, the Terræ filius gave so general offence, that Dr. Wallis says: “I believe the University hath thereby lost more reputation than they have gained by all the rest.” “The excellent Lady,” he adds, “which your letter mentions, was, in the broadest language represented as guilty of those crimes, of which, if there were occasion, you would not stick to be her compurgator.”[371]

Complaints of the same kind were made years afterwards. The Bishop of Oxford, writing December 14, 1684, complains:—“The Terræ filii in this place have of late taken to themselves such licenses as were altogether intolerable, their scurrilous discourses passing not only the bounds of decency but of common humanity, so that it was necessary for the University to oppose sharp remedies to so prevailing an evil.”[372]

Within eighteen months of the date of the Oxford decree for burning the books of Milton and others, there occurred another Act conceived in the same spirit. Lord Sunderland wrote to the Bishop of Oxford, Dr. John Fell, complaining of John Locke,—“He being,” remarks the Bishop in reply, “as your Lordship is truly informed, a person who was much trusted by the late Earl of Shaftesbury, and who is suspected to be ill-affected to the Government, I have for divers years had an eye upon him, but so close has his guard been on himself, that after several strict inquiries, I may confidently affirm that there is not any man in the College, however familiar with him, who has heard him speak a word either against, or so much as concerning the Government.” Yet, although Locke was so extremely cautious, the Bishop professed the greatest zeal in seeking his expulsion, and, after describing what he himself meant to do, adds: “If this method seem not effectual or speedy enough, and His Majesty, our founder and visitor, shall please to command his immediate remove, upon the receipt thereof, directed to the Dean and Chapter, it shall accordingly be executed.” A warrant, immediately despatched by Sunderland, signified the King’s pleasure, that John Locke should be removed from his student’s place, to which the Bishop obsequiously replied: “I hold myself bound in duty to signify to your Lordship that His Majesty’s command for the expulsion of Mr. Locke from this College is fully executed.”[373] This disgraceful deed originated, it is true, with the Sovereign, but the part taken by the Bishop, and the Dean and Chapter of Christchurch, with the silent acquiescence of the University, demonstrates what must have been the political and ecclesiastical atmosphere of the place at that time.

We here terminate these somewhat rambling notices of the ecclesiastical, the religious, and the academic life of the period; and proceed to notice, in the next chapter, a very important subject connected with the state of the English Churches, which has not received from historians the attention it requires.