A history of England

by Charles Oman

These comparatively harmless beginnings were followed by a series of bills prompted by a spirit of unwise rancour against the men who had ruled England from 1648 to 1660. The Cavaliers had twelve years of spiritual and temporal oppression to revenge, and were determined to do as they had been done by. The Church settlement, which had been left pending by the Convention, they carried out in the most summary way. The king had promised that a meeting between divines of the old Church and Presbyterian ministers should be held, in order to endeavour to bring about a union. But the scheme came to nothing; at the "Savoy Conference" of 1661, each side refused to move an inch from its position. The Parliament then proceeded to pass the "Act of Uniformity," to force the Puritans either to conform or to leave the Church. The Book of Common Prayer, slightly revised, and the Thirty-nine Articles were to be the rule of faith, and every minister was ordered to use and abide by them. Every incumbent was to declare his assent to them by August 24, 1662, or to vacate his benefice; such was also to be the fate of all who refused to accept Episcopal ordination. This left the Puritan ministers three months to choose between conformity and expulsion—a longer shrift than they had allowed the Anglican clergy in the days of the triumph of Presbyterianism. The large majority of them conformed, and accepted Episcopacy and the Book of Common Prayer; these men became the parents of the "Low Church" party of the succeeding age. The more stubborn souls refused obedience; about 2000 of them were expelled from their livings on St. Bartholomew's Day, 1662. They and their followers are the original progenitors of the dissenting sects of modern England. The extrusion of the Puritans was most thoroughly carried out, not only in the case of beneficed clergy, but in the Universities and schools. No University professor and no schoolmaster was to be allowed to teach, unless he got a certificate of orthodoxy from his bishop.

The Corporation Act.

Not content with thrusting out the Puritan ministers from the livings they had held, the Parliament went on to legislate against the Puritan laity. The "Corporation Act" of 1661 enacted that all mayors, aldermen, and other office-holders in the cities and boroughs of England should, on assuming their functions, abjure the Covenant, take the oath of supremacy and allegiance to the king, and receive the Holy Communion according to the rites of the Anglican Church. Thus the Sacrament was made into a political test, a scandalous perversion of the Holy Table. This bill excluded all sectarians of the more conscientious and honest sort from municipal authority, but it also produced the unsatisfactory class of "occasional conformists," dissenters who took the oaths and the Communion according to law, but remained outside the Church.

The Conventicle Act and the Five-Mile Act.

Before passing on to matters outside the sphere of things ecclesiastical, we must mention two other persecuting bills passed, at a somewhat later date, by the "Cavalier Parliament." The "Conventicle Act" of 1664 forbade religious meetings of dissenters. Family worship was to be allowed, but if any number of persons more than five were present, beyond the members of the family, such a gathering was to be held a "conventicle," and the hearers to be punished. Lastly, the "Five-Mile Act" of 1665 forbade any minister who had refused to sign the "Act of Uniformity" to dwell within five miles of any city or corporate borough. It also prohibited such men from acting as tutors or schoolmasters, unless they took an oath "to attempt no alteration of the constitution in Church or State." These acts were purely vexatious and spiteful, as the Nonconformists were now completely crushed and harmless. Their numbers were already rapidly dwindling, and by the end of the century they did not number a fifth of the population of the realm. The vast majority of them had gone to swell the Low Church party within the Anglican establishment.

Clarendon.

For the first seven years of the reign of Charles II., the days of the "Cavalier Parliament," the chief minister of the realm was Edward Hyde, Lord Clarendon. He was a survivor from the days of the Long Parliament, being one of the original reforming members of that body who had gone over to the royal side when the Puritan majority commenced to attack the Church. He had been one of the wiser and more moderate councillors of Charles I., and had followed Charles II. all through the days of his exile. His daughter, Anne Hyde, had married James, Duke of York, the king's brother. Fourteen years of exile had put him somewhat out of touch of English politics, and his political ideals were more like those of the Elizabethan monarchy than those of his own day. He was an honest and capable, but not a very strong man. All through his life he preserved the theories which had guided him in the early days of the Long Parliament, wishing to keep a balance between the royal Prerogative and the power of the two Houses. Of course he failed to satisfy either king or Parliament, Charles thought that he was not so zealous a servant as he might have been; while the advocates of stringent checks on the monarchy thought him too subservient to his master. Clarendon was a strong Churchman, and must bear his share of the responsibility for the iniquitous "Conventicle" and "Five-Mile" acts. In secular matters he was more judicious; he always opposed the attempts of the king or Parliament to slur over the "Act of Oblivion and Indemnity" and hunt down the adherents of the Commonwealth. In foreign affairs he was a strong advocate of the old Elizabethan policy of war with Spain and friendship with France, a system which was rapidly becoming very dangerous, owing to the growing preponderance of France under the vigorous and ambitious young king, Lewis XIV. The first sign of his views was the sale of Dunkirk, Cromwell's old conquest, to the French for 5,000,000 francs.

Profligacy of the court.

Clarendon's great fault was that he had no influence over his master, the king. He allowed Charles to develop his unworthy personal habits without remonstrance. The king filled both his palace and the public service with disreputable favourites. He neglected his amiable but unattractive wife, Catherine of Portugal, [44] and filled his court with a perfect harem of mistresses, whose sons he made dukes and earls. England had never seen shameless immorality in high places so rampant in any previous age. The king's companions and servants were, as might have been expected, men of scandalous life, and quite unfit for the offices into which he thrust them. The tone of the court had a profound and unhappy influence on the manners of the day. Never were the private vices displayed so unblushingly; as if in protest against the formal piety and bleak austerity of the days of the Puritans, England—or at least its governing classes—plunged into extravagance and evil living of all sorts. Drunkenness, profanity, thriftless luxury, gambling, duelling, shameless lust, were accounted no discredit. The literature, and more especially the drama, of the Restoration is coarse and foul beyond belief. Even great poets like Dryden felt constrained to be scurrilous when they wished to please. The days of the great civil war had brought out the sterner virtues of Englishmen; the Restoration and the reign of domestic peace were marked by the outburst of all the folly and lewd frivolity which had so long been dormant beneath the surface.

The Dutch war.—1665-67.