CHAPTER XI.

PROGRESS OF THE NATION FROM THE CIVIL WAR TO THE GREAT REVOLUTION.

Religion: Nonconformist Sects—Imprisonment of Bunyan—Fox and the Society of Friends—The Punishment of James Naylor—Expulsion of Roger Williams—Other Religious Sects—Literature: Milton—His Works—Cowley—Butler—Dryden—Minor Poets—Dramatists of the Restoration—Prose Writers: Milton and Dryden—Hobbes—Clarendon—Baxter—Bunyan—Walton—Evelyn and Pepys—Founding of the Royal Society—Physical Science—Discoveries of Napier, Newton, and Flamsteed—Mathematicians and Chemists—Harvey and Worcester—Painting, Sculpture, and Engraving—Coinage—Music—Furniture—Costume—Manners and Customs—State of London—Sports and Amusements—Country Life—Travelling—The Clergy—Yeomen—Village Sports—Growth of the Revenue and Commerce—Growing prosperity of the North of England—The Navigation Act—Norwich and Bristol—Postal Arrangements—Advantages Derived from the Industries of the Foreign Refugees—The East India Company—Condition of the People: Wages—The Poor Law—Efforts of Philanthropists.

The struggles of the Church we have sufficiently traced in our recent chapters. With the Restoration it came back to full power and possession of its revenues and honours, and held them firmly against all rivals till James menaced them with the recall of the Roman hierarchy, when, joining with the alarmed public, it compelled the monarch himself to fly, and continued on its own vantage-ground. The only notice of religious phenomena at this period demanded of us is rather what regards the sects which now became conspicuous.

The leading sects, the Presbyterians, the Independents, and the Baptists—then called Anabaptists—differed little in their faith. They were all of the Calvinistic school, whilst the Episcopal Church was already divided by the contending parties of Calvinists and Arminians. We have related the struggles of the Presbyterians, English and Scottish, for the possession of the Establishment in England to the exclusion of all other faiths; the triumph of the Independents, with more liberal views, through Cromwell and the army, and the expulsion of both these parties from the national pulpits following on the Restoration. The Baptists, though many of them were high in the army and the State during the Commonwealth, never displayed the political ambition of the other two great denominations. They cut, indeed, no figure in the secular affairs of the nation, but they were most honourably distinguished by their assertion of the right of private opinion. They were as tolerant of religious liberty as the Independents, or more so, from whom they differed only in their views of the rite of Baptism. Their early history in England was adorned by the appearance in their pulpits of one of the most extraordinary men of modern times—John Bunyan, whose "Pilgrim's Progress" continues to delight all classes of men, and will continue to do so as long as the English language is read. Bunyan, a tinker by trade, was serving in the Parliamentary army at Leicester, at the time of the battle of Naseby; and when Charles I. fled to that town John was ordered out as a sentinel, and his life was saved by another soldier volunteering to take his duty, who was shot at his post. Bunyan was thrown into prison for daring to preach under Charles II., and lay in gaol twelve years and a half, solely because he had a conscience of his own; and was only liberated on the Declaration of Indulgence by James II. A Mr. Smyth, a clergyman of the Church of England, who adopted their faith, was the first to open a chapel for the Baptists in London, and, encouraged by his example, others were soon opened, and the views of the denomination soon spread over England and Wales, in later times to be eloquently expounded by Robert Robinson and Robert Hall.

But the most remarkable organisation of a religious body was that of the Society of Friends, or, as they soon came to be nicknamed, Quakers, whose founder, George Fox, was born at Drayton, in Leicestershire, in 1624. His father was a weaver, and George was apprenticed to a shoemaker, who also had a little farm. He informs us in his own journal that he preferred the farming, and chiefly devoted himself to it. When he was about nineteen he became deeply impressed with a religious feeling. It was a time when religious discussion was making rapid progress amongst the people from the more general access to the Bible, and many were dissatisfied with the different churches, which seemed too much engaged in attempts at worldly aggrandisement, and at achieving a dominance over each other. George was one of these. In seeking for clear views of religious faith, such as could set his mind at rest, he went to various clergymen of the Established Church first, but he found no light. One of them bade him take tobacco and sing psalms; and another, Cradock of Coventry, was beginning to speak comfortably to George as they walked in the garden, when the embryo reformer unluckily happened to set his foot on a flower-border, which threw the clergyman into such a rage that the discourse was abruptly brought to an end.

ROGER WILLIAMS LEAVING HIS HOME IN MASSACHUSETTS. (See p. [354].)

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