Books Condemned to be Burnt

by James Anson Farrer

FEW things now seem more surprising than the sort of fury with which in the earlier part of the seventeenth century the extreme rights of monarchs were advocated by large numbers of Englishmen. Political servitude was then the favourite dream of thousands. The Church made herself especially prominent on the side of prerogative; the pulpits resounded with what our ancestors called Crown Divinity; and in the reign of Charles I. the rival principles, ultimately fought for on the battlefield, first came into conflict over sermons, the immediate cause, indeed, of so many of the greatest political movements of our history.

The first episode in this connection is the important case of Dr. Roger Manwaring, one of Charles's chaplains, who, at the time when the King was pressing for a compulsory loan, preached two sermons before him, advocating the King's right to impose any loan or tax without consent of Parliament, and, in fact, making a clean sweep of all the liberties of the subject whatsoever. At Charles's request, Manwaring published these sermons under the title of Religion and Allegiance (1627). But the popular party in Parliament resolved to make an example of him, and a long speech on the subject by Pym is preserved in Rushworth. The Commons begged the Lords to pronounce judgment upon him, and a most severe one they did pronounce. He was to be imprisoned during the House's pleasure; to be fined £1000 to the King; to make a written submission at the bars of both Houses; to be suspended for three years; to be disabled from ever preaching at Court, or holding any ecclesiastical or secular office; and the King was to be moved to grant a proclamation for calling in and burning his book.

On June 23rd, 1628, Manwaring made accordingly a most abject submission at the bars of both Houses, Heylin says, on his knees and with tears in his eyes, confessing his sermons to have been "full of dangerous passages, inferences, and scandalous aspersions in most parts"; and the next day Charles issued a proclamation for calling them in, as having incurred "the just censure and sentence of the High Court of Parliament." The sentence of suppression presumably in this case carried the burning; but, if so, there is no mention of any public burning by the bishops and others, to whom the books were to be delivered by their owners.

Fuller says that much of Manwaring's sentence was remitted in consideration of his humble submission; and Charles the very same year not only pardoned him, but gave him ecclesiastical preferment, finally making him Bishop of St. David's. Heylin attests the resentment this indiscreet indulgence roused in the Commons; but, unfortunately, as Manwaring was doubtless well aware, to have incurred the anger of Parliament was motive enough with Charles for the preferment of the offender, and the shortest road to it.

This is shown by the similar treatment accorded to the Rev. Richard Montagu, who had made himself conspicuous on the anti-Puritan side in the time of James. In defence of himself he had written his Appello Cæsarem, with James's leave and encouragement. It was a long book, refuting the charges made against him of Popery and Arminianism, and full of bitter invectives against the Puritans. After the matter had been long under the consideration of Parliament, the House prayed Charles to punish Montagu, and to suppress and burn his books; and this Charles did in a remarkable proclamation (January 17th, 1628), wherein the Appello Cæsarem is admitted to have been the first cause of those disputes and differences that have since much troubled the quiet of the Church, and is therefore called in, Charles adding, that if others write again on the subject, "we shall take such order with them and those books that they shall wish they had never thought upon these needless controversies." It appears, however, from Rushworth that, in spite of this, several answers were penned to Montagu, and that they were suppressed. And what, indeed, would life be but for its "needless controversies"?

Nothing could be more praiseworthy than Charles's attempt to put a stop to the idle disputations and bitter recriminations of the combatants on either side of religious controversy. Could he have succeeded he might have staved off the Civil War, which we might almost more fitly call a religious one. But in those days few men, unfortunately, had the cool wisdom to remain as neutral between Arminian and Calvinist, Papist and Protestant, as between the rival Egyptian sects which, in Juvenal's time, fought for the worship of the ibis or the crocodile. Our comparatively greater safety in these days is due to the large increase of that neutral party, which was so sadly insignificant in the time of Charles. May that party therefore never become less, but constantly grow larger!

Montagu, at the time of the proclamation of his book, had been appointed Bishop of Chichester, having been raised to that see in spite or because of his quarrel with Parliament. He was consecrated by Laud in August of the same year, and Heylin admits that his promotion was more magnanimous than safe on the part of Charles, being clearly calculated to exasperate the House. Ten years later (1638) he was preferred to the see of Norwich. All his life he remained a prominent member of the Romanising party.

These books of Manwaring and Montagu are important as proving clearly two historical points, viz.:—(1) The early date at which the Court party alienated even the House of Lords. (2) The fact that the original exciting cause of all the subsequent discord between Puritan and Prelatist came from a prominent member of the Laudian or Romanising faction.

The rising temper of the people, and its justification, is shown even in these literary disputes. But the popular temper was destined to be more seriously roused by those atrocious sentences against the authors of certain books which were passed within a few years by the Star Chamber and High Commission. The heavy fines and cruel mutilations imposed by these courts were not new in the reign of Charles, but they became far more frequent, and were directed less against wrong conduct than disagreeable opinions. They are intimately connected with the memory of Laud, first as Bishop of London, and then as Archbishop of Canterbury, whose letters show that the severities in question were to him and Strafford (to use Hallam's expression) "the feebleness of excessive lenity." To the last Charles was not despotic enough to please Laud, who complains petulantly in his Diary of a prince "who knew not how to be, or be made great."

As the first illustration of Laud's method for attaining this end must be mentioned the case of a book which enjoys the distinction of having brought its author to a more severe punishment than any other book in the English language. Our literature has had many a martyr, but Alexander Leighton is the foremost of the rank.