Nov. 8, 1645: New Ordinance for the Ordination of Ministers. In this long Ordinance the original identity of Bishop and Presbyter is asserted, and consequently the right of Presbyters, without any so-called Bishop among them, to ordain; nevertheless the ordinations by the late Bishops are recognised as valid. Directions are then given to Presbyters for the examination of candidates for the ministry in future, and for the formalities to be observed in their ordination. Every candidate must be twenty-four years of age at least, and must be tried not only in respect of piety, character, preaching ability, and knowledge of divinity, but also in respect of skill in the tongues and in Logic and Philosophy; and congregations were to have full opportunity of stating exceptions against ministers offered them. From a clause in the Ordinance it appears that certified ordination in Scotland was to be accepted in England.—Lords Journals.
Powers of the Congregational Elderships in suspending from Church- membership, and excluding from the Communion. This was perhaps the most important subject of all, for it involved the mode of the action of the new Presbyterian system at the heart of social life and its interferences with the liberties of the individual. Parliament was naturally slow and jealous on this subject, so that the discussion of it, part by part, extended over the whole year 1645. The briefest sketch of results must suffice here:—The Assembly having sent in to Parliament a Paper concerning the exclusion of ignorant and scandalous persons from the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the Parliament had desired a more particular definition by the Assembly of what they included in the terms ignorant and scandalous. The Assembly having then sent in an explanation, in which, under the head of the ignorance that should exclude from the Lord's Table, they mentioned "the not having a competent understanding concerning the Trinity," the Commons (March 27, 1645) had desired to know what the Assembly considered to be a competent understanding concerning the Trinity, The Assembly having farther declared, under the same head of ignorance, that no persons ought to be admitted to the Lord's Table who had not a "competent understanding" of the Deity, of the state of Man by Creation and by his Fall, of Redemption by Jesus Christ and the means to apply Christ and his benefits, of the necessity of Faith, Repentance and a Godly life, of the Nature and Use of Sacraments, and of the Condition of Man after this Life, the Commons had still demurred about the "competent understanding," and had begged the Assembly to be more precise and business-like (April 1). At length, some resolutions having been come to about the "competent understanding," and there being less difficulty in deciding who should come under the category of the scandalous, the Commons had before them a pretty extensive index of the kinds of persons, whether ignorant or scandalous, whom the Congregational Elderships were to be empowered to suspend or debar from the Communion. The index was not complete, I think, till January 1645-6; by which time, after numerous discussions, it included, in addition to the grossly ignorant in the elementary articles of Christianity, and to murderers, notorious drunkards, swearers, et hoc genus omne, a considerable list of such varieties of offenders as these— makers of images of the Trinity, worshippers of saints, persons sending or accepting challenges, persons playing at games selling wares or unnecessarily travelling on Sunday, persons consulting witches, persons assaulting magistrates or their own parents, persons legally convicted of perjury or bribery, persons consenting to the marriage of their children with Papists, and, finally, the maintainers of errors that subvert the prime Articles of Religion. To provide, moreover, for cases not positively enumerated, there were to be commissioners in every ecclesiastical province authorized to decide on such cases, when represented to them by ministers and the elderships. All this, with much more of the same kind, was partly agreed upon, partly still under Parliamentary consideration, in the beginning of 1646.—Commons Journals, with references there to the Lords Journals.
THE RECRUITING OF THE COMMONS; EMINENT RECRUITERS.
January 1645-6, I think, was the month in which Presbyterianism was in fullest tide. After that month, and through the spring and early summer of 1646, there was a visible ebb. The cause may have been partly that continued triumph everywhere of the New Model Army which had brought the War obviously to its fag-end, and now, perhaps, suggested to Parliament and the Londoners the uncomfortable idea that the marching mass of Independency, relieved from its military labours, would soon be re- approaching the capital, and at leisure to review the proceedings of its masters. There was, however, a more obvious cause. This was the increase of the Independent Vote in the House of Commons by the gradual coming in of the RECRUITERS.
By the outbreak of the Civil War in August 1642, and the consequent desertion of the House of Commons by two-thirds of its members, most of whom were then or afterwards formally disabled, the House, as we know, had been reduced to a mere stump of what it ought to have been constitutionally. There had been complaints about this outside, and regrets within the House itself; but it was felt that a time of Civil War could not be a time for Parliamentary elections. How could there be such elections while the King's forces were in possession of large regions of England, and these the very regions where most seats were vacant? For three years, therefore, the House had allowed the vacant seats in it to remain vacant, and had persisted in the public business in the state to which it had been reduced, i.e., with a nominal strength at the utmost of about 280, and a constant working attendance of only 100 or thereabouts. Not till after Naseby, and the recovery of more and more of English ground for Parliament by the successes of the New Model, was it deemed prudent to begin the issue of new writs; and even then the process was careful and gradual.
The first new writs issued were in Aug. 1645, and were for Southwark, St. Edmundsbury, and Hythe; in September there followed 95 additional new writs for boroughs or counties; in October there were 27 more; and so on by smaller batches in succeeding months, until, by the end of the year, 146 new members in all had been elected. This did not complete the process; for 89 new members more remained to be elected in the course of 1646, bringing the total number of the Recruiters up to about 235. Now, among these Recruiters, all of them Parliamentarians in the main sense, there were both Presbyterians and Independents. As Presbyterians, more or less, may be reckoned, among those elected before January 1645-6, Major- general RICHARD BROWNE (Wycombe), Major-general EDWARD MASSEY (Wootton Bassett), WALTER LONG, Esq. (Ludgershall, Wilts), and CLEMENT WALKER, Esq. (Wells): this last a very peculiar-tempered person from Somersetshire, a friend of Prynne's, and described by himself as an "elderly gentleman, of low stature, in a grey suit, with a little stick in his hand." Decidedly more numerous among the Recruiters, however, were men who might be called Independents, or were at least Tolerationists. Among such, all elected before January 1645-6, or not later than that month, may be named Colonel ROBERT BLAKE (Taunton), Sir JOHN DANVERS, brother of the late Earl of Danby (Malmesbury), the Hon. JOHN FIENNES, third son of Viscount Saye and Sele (Morpeth), GEORGE FLEETWOOD, Esq. (Bucks), Colonel CHARLES FLEETWOOD (Marlborough), Sir JAMES HARRINGTON (Rutland), the Hon. JAMES HERBERT, second son of the Earl of Pembroke (Wilts), Colonel JOHN HUTCHINSON (Notts), Commissary-general HENRY IRETON (Appleby), HENRY LAWRENCE, Esq., a gentleman of property and some taste for learning and speculation (Westmoreland), Sir MICHAEL LIVESEY (Queenborough), Colonel EDMUND LUDLOW (Wilts), SIMON MAYNE, Esq. (Aylesbury), young Colonel EDWARD MONTAGUE (Hants), Colonel RICHARD NORTON (Hants), Colonel CHARLES RICH (Sandwich), Colonel EDWARD ROSSITER (Great Grimsby), THOMAS SCOTT (Aylesbury), young Colonel ALGERNON SIDNEY (Cardiff), Colonel WILLIAM SYDENHAM (Melcombe Regis), and PETER TEMPLE, Esq. (Leicester). Of this list, nearly half, it may be noted, were or had been officers in the New Model. The fact was very significant. It was still more significant that among these New Model officers elected among the first Recruiters there was a knot of men who were already recognised as in a special sense Cromwellians. Almost all the New Model officers were devoted to Cromwell; but Ireton was his alter ego, and young Fleetwood, young Montague, young Sidney, and young Sydenham, belonged to a group known in the Army as Cromwell's passionate admirers and disciples. [Footnote: The statistics of the Recruiting in this paragraph are from my own counting of the New Writs from Aug. 1645 onwards in the Commons Journals, checked by Godwin's previous counting or calculation (Hist. of Commonwealth, II. 38, 39), and by the noting of new writs in the list of members of the Long Parliament given in the Parl. Hist. (II. 599-629). Among the individual Recruiters named I have tried not to include any whose election was later than Jan. 1645-6, and have trusted, in that particular, to the notices of new writs in the Commons Journals and the Parl. Hist.; but one cannot be perfectly sure that in each case an election immediately followed the new writ. My often-cited fly-sheet authority, Leach's Great Champions of England, has been of use. It distinguishes 131 Recruiters as of Parliamentary note before the end of July, 1646; but its list of Recruiters up to that date is neither complete nor accurate.—The description of Clement Walker is from his own Hist. of Independency (edit. 1660), Part I. p. 53.—The county in which there had to be most Recruiting, _i.e._in which there were most vacant seats, was Somersetshire. Nearly all the seats were vacant there. A large proportion of the seats was vacant in Notts, Yorkshire, Sussex, Westmoreland, and Wales.—The Recruiting went on not only through 1646, but also in stray cases through subsequent years; and FAIRFAX, SKIPPON, HARRISON, INGOLDSBY, among military men, and PRYNNE himself among civilians, came at length into the House.]
Not called Recruiters, but practically such for the Independents, were two original members who, after having been out of the House for a long while, were now restored to their places. These were Nathaniel Fiennes, alias "Young Subtlety," and the witty and freethinking Henry Marten. Fiennes, having been tried by court-martial and sentenced to death in December 1643, for his surrender of Bristol (antè, p. 6), had been forgiven and allowed to go abroad; but opinion of his conduct in that affair had meanwhile become more favourable, and before the end of 1645 he returned and resumed his seat. Marten (Vol. II. p. 166) had been expelled from the House by vote, Aug. 16, 1643, for words too daringly disrespectful of Royalty—in fact, for premature Republicanism; but, the House having become less fastidious in that matter, and his presence being greatly missed, the vote was rescinded January 6, 1645-6, and the record of it expunged from the Journals. [Footnote: Godwin's Commonwealth, II. 77, 78; Wood's Ath. III. 878 and 1238; and Commons Journals of dates given.]
Although as many as 146 Recruiters had been elected before the end of the year, they appear to have taken their places but slowly. Not till January 26, 1645-6, does one perceive any considerable effect on the numbers of the House. On that day there was a House of at least 183, the largest there had been for many a day—larger by 13 than the House that had made Fairfax commander-in-chief twelve months before. And thenceforward the numbers keep well up. On two occasions early in February there were Houses of 203 and 202 respectively; and before the summer of 1646 there were members enough at hand to form on great field-days Houses of from 250 to 270. By that time some of the military men among the Recruiters were able to be present. [Footnote: My notes of Divisions, from the Commons Journals.]
EFFECTS OF THE RECRUITING: ALLIANCE OF INDEPENDENCY AND ERASTIANISM: CHECK GIVEN TO THE PRESBYTERIANS: WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY REBUKED.
As soon as the Recruiting had begun to tell upon the numbers of the House, an effect on the policy of the House is also perceptible. Thus on Feb. 3, the very day when the Commons mustered a House of 203, a division took place involving Toleration in a subtle form. The question was whether in a Declaration setting forth the true intentions of the House in Church-matters this clause should be inserted: "A fitting care shall be taken of tender consciences, so far as may stand with the Word of God and the Peace of the Kingdom." This, though mild enough, displeased the Presbyterians, and was proposed from their side that the words "Church and" should be inserted before the word "Kingdom." On a division the Yeas (for adding the words and so making the pledge of a toleration weaker) were 105, and had for their tellers the Presbyterian party-chiefs, Denzil Holles and Sir Philip Stapleton; but 98 Noes rallied round Sir Arthur Haselrig and Sir Henry Mildmay, the tellers for the Opposition. [Footnote: Commons Journals of date.] A wavering of the balance towards Independency and Toleration was indicated by this vote; but it was not till the following month that the balance was decisively turned, and then not directly on the Toleration question, but on that great related question of the "Power of the Keys" which the Presbyterians of the Assembly wanted to see settled in their favour before they could consider the Presbyterian establishment perfect. If the phrase "Power of the Keys" should seem a mystic one to English readers now, it will perhaps be cleared up by the following story of what happened in March 1645-6.