So Heylin writes the word; but in the “Rythmes against Martin,” a contemporary production, the term is Chiver. It is not in Cotgrave.
In the “Just Censure and Reproof of Martin Junior” (circæ 1589), we are told: “There is Cartwright, too, at Warwick; he hath got him such a company of disciples, both of the worshipfull and other of the poorer sort, as wee have no cause to thank him. Never tell me that he is too grave to trouble himself with Martin’s conceits. Cartwright seeks the peace of the Church no otherwise than his platform may stand.” He was accused before the commissioners in 1590 of knowing who wrote and printed these squibs, which he did not deny.—Ed.
I give a remarkable extract from the writings of Cartwright. It will prove two points. First, that the religion of those men became a cover for a political design; which was to raise the ecclesiastical above the civil power. Just the reverse of Hobbes’s after scheme; but while theorists thus differ and seem to refute one another, they in reality work for an identical purpose. Secondly, it will show the not uncommon absurdity of man; while these nonconformists were affecting to annihilate the hierarchy of England as a remains of the Romish supremacy, they themselves were designing one according to their own fresher scheme. It was to be a state or republic of Presbyters, in which all Sovereigns were to hold themselves, to use their style, as “Nourisses, or servants under the Church; the Sovereigns were to be as subjects; they were to vail their sceptres and to offer their crowns as the prophet speaketh, to lick the dust of the feet of the Church.” These are Cartwright’s words, in his “Defence of the Admonition.” But he is still bolder, in a joint production with Travers. He insists that “the Monarchs of the World should give up their sceptres and crowns unto him (Jesus Christ) who is represented by the Officers of the Church.” See “A Full and Plain Declaration of Ecclesiastical Discipline,” p. 185. One would imagine he was a disguised Jesuit, and an advocate for the Pope’s supremacy. But observe how these saintly Republicans would govern the State. Cartwright is explicit, and very ingenious. “The world is now deceived that thinketh that the Church must be framed according to the Commonwealth, and the Church Government according to the Civil Government, which is as much as to say, as if a man should fashion his house according to his hangings; whereas, indeed, it is clean contrary. That as the hangings are made fit for the house, so the Commonwealth must be made to agree with the Church, and the government thereof with her government; for, as the house is before the hangings, therefore the hangings, which come after, must be framed to the house, which was before; so the Church being before there was a commonwealth, and the commonwealth coming after, must be fashioned and made suitable to the Church; otherwise, God is made to give place to men, heaven to earth.”—Cartwright’s Defence of the Admonition, p. 181.
Warburton’s “Alliance between Church and State,” which was in his time considered as a hardy paradox, is mawkish in its pretensions, compared with this sacerdotal republic. It is not wonderful that the wisest of our Sovereigns, that great politician Elizabeth, should have punished with death these democrats: but it is wonderful to discover that these inveterate enemies to the Church of Rome were only trying to transfer its absolute power into their own hands! They wanted to turn the Church into a democracy. They fascinated the people by telling them that there would be no beggars were there no bishops; that every man would be a governor by setting up a Presbytery. From the Church, I repeat, it is scarcely a single step to the Cabinet. Yet the early Puritans come down to us as persecuted saints. Doubtless, there were a few honest saints among them; but they were as mad politicians as their race afterwards proved to be, to whom they left so many fatal legacies. Cartwright uses the very language a certain cast of political reformers have recently done. He declares “An establishment may be made without the magistrate;” and told the people that “if every hair of their head was a life, it ought to be offered for such a cause.” Another of this faction is for “registering the names of the fittest and hottest brethren without lingering for Parliament;” and another exults that “there are a hundred thousand hands ready.” Another, that “we may overthrow the bishops and all the government in one day.” Such was the style, and such the confidence in the plans which the lowest orders of revolutionists promulgated during their transient exhibition in this country. More in this strain may be found in “Maddox’s Vindication Against Neale,” the advocate for the Puritans, p. 255; and in an admirable letter of that great politician, Sir Francis Walsingham, who, with many others of the ministers of Elizabeth, was a favourer of the Puritans, till he detected their secret object to subvert the government. This letter is preserved in “Collier’s Eccl. Hist.” vol. ii. 607. They had begun to divide the whole country into classes, provincial synods, &c. They kept registers, which recorded all the heads of their debates, to be finally transmitted to the secret head of the Classis of Warwick, where Cartwright governed as the perpetual moderator! Heylin’s Hist. of Presbyt. p. 277. These violent advocates for the freedom of the press had, however, an evident intention to monopolise it; for they decreed that “no book should be put in print but by consent of the Classes.”—Sir G. Paul’s Life of Whitgift, p. 65. The very Star-Chamber they justly protested against, they were for raising among themselves!
Under the denomination of Barrowists and Brownists. I find Sir Walter Raleigh declaring, in the House of Commons, on a motion for reducing disloyal subjects, that “they are worthy to be rooted out of a Commonwealth.” He is alarmed at the danger, “for it is to be feared that men not guilty will be included in the law about to be passed. I am sorry for it. I am afraid there is near twenty thousand of them in England; and when they be gone (that is, expelled) who shall maintain their wives and children?”—Sir Simonds D’Ewes’ Journal, p. 517.