Ecclesiastical History of England, Volume 2—The Church of the Commonwealth

by John Stoughton

West Indies.

Cromwell, in his ill-fated expedition against the Spanish West Indies, was influenced by religious, perhaps, even more than by political and commercial considerations. He remembered the Protestant martyrs whom the Spaniards had put to death, and the poor innocent Indians whom they had barbarously murdered, and he thought that infinite good would arise to the honour of God by maiming the Colonial power of these enemies to the welfare of reformed Christendom. Spain, losing America, would have the sword wrested from her right hand, and then Europe would be relieved from cruel wars, and from the disquietude and misery produced by perpetual attempts to extirpate true religion and to set up the idolatries and abominations of Popery. So Cromwell reasoned, in a State Paper delivered to the Dutch ambassador in the year 1653; in which also he proposed that England and Holland should send teachers gifted with Christian knowledge "unto all people and nations, to inform and enlarge the Gospel and the ways of Jesus Christ."[524] This design on Hispaniola proved altogether a very bad business, and was grievously laid to heart by the brave man, who, as a Protestant prince, wished to stand in the shoes of Gustavus Adolphus. Jamaica, however, fell into Cromwell's hands as soon as his soldiers approached the island. In the capital—St. Jago de la Vega—there stood an abbey and two Roman Catholic churches called the Red and the White Cross, which the Puritan soldiers immediately stripped of their superstitious ornaments. The country abounded in waste land, and lacked population. Cromwell aimed at making it a centre of Protestant influence, as much as of British dominion; and this being known, it was suggested to him by a French Protestant that he should gather there a number of foreigners professing the Reformed religion, who might constitute a sort of evangelical propaganda to "negative the designs of the Jesuits in those parts."[525] Plenty of room for work might be found in the uncultivated acres of that wild region for young Irish people, both men and women, and for "Scotch vagabonds," male and female.[526] The Council of State consequently resolved that such people should be sent over; but Cromwell desired above all to see godly New Englanders settling upon the island. It was, he said, a chief end of his design, to enlighten those parts by means of such as knew and feared the Lord; and he thought that some who had been driven for conscience' sake into a barren wilderness, might now remove to a land of plenty.[527] He had confidence in the pilgrims of New Plymouth, and in the Puritans of Massachusetts, and he fondly hoped that many of them would emigrate to his new West Indian dominions, and there sow the fields with the "good seed of the kingdom." But disappointment followed his hopes. The American Colonists would not remove. Some of the best agents sent over to superintend the plantation died, chief amongst whom were Governors Fortescue, Sedgwick, and Brayne.

Earnest piety, dashed with eccentricities of Puritan expression, conspicuously appears in the letters and in the conduct of these Colonial Governors under the Commonwealth.[528] They were men of religious zeal, and of political sagacity, and they certainly deserve honourable remembrance, although their enterprise proved unsuccessful; a circumstance, indeed, which arose not from any fault of theirs, but entirely from the unconquerable difficulties connected with their position. The letters of D'Oyley, who succeeded these earlier governors—himself a highly respectable officer with Royalist tendencies—bear witness to their discouragements and to his own also. Brayne followed D'Oyley in office, and died a victim to the fatal climate.[529]

Maryland.

The history of Maryland, under the Commonwealth, is full of the records of strife for lordship. The Commission of 1651 for reducing disaffected Colonial dependencies did not specify that maritime State; but the Commissioners managed to include it within the range of their instructions, by unwarrantably stretching the expression, "all the plantations within the Bay of Chesapeake." The agents and friends of Lord Baltimore at first resisted this intrusion, but they were at last obliged to submit to a compromise. Afterwards, rallying their strength, they re-asserted their earlier rights, and displaced the new authorities; but these again, in their turn, overcame the old government, and reinstated themselves in their former position. Religious animosities were at the bottom of this quarrel; the Puritans not being able to endure having a Roman Catholic at the head of the community, and the Roman Catholics trembling at the idea of being left to the mercy of Puritans.[530] After the Colony, under Lord Baltimore, had enjoyed an amount of toleration unparalleled in those days of intense party feeling, it becomes a question of great interest, what was the course pursued by his opponents, when for a while they held the reins of government which they had snatched out of his hands? The answer is, that they made a law denying to such as exercised the Popish form of worship all civil protection, they also proscribed all Prelacy and Antinomianism, and resolved that, besides such as professed the Presbyterian religion, which had been established in England, none should be protected except those who avowed faith in God by Jesus Christ, and did not abuse their freedom by injuring others. Such a law can be rightly understood only when it is studied in the light of previous history. Enough has been said in former pages of this work to shew how deeply the Puritans feared lest they should be deprived of their civil rights by the restoration of Roman despotism—a fear which if not justified may be excused by the old maxim, "that a burnt child dreads the fire." The toleration, indeed, vouchsafed in Maryland ought to have taught another lesson, but the idea remained unconquerable that such toleration as had been there conceded only served the purpose of protecting Popery for a time, in order that it might in the end throw off its cunning mask, and devour those very liberties to which it had been indebted for existence.[531]

Maryland.

Uncertainty was felt or pretended as to the wishes of the Protector in reference to the subject so keenly agitated in the State of Maryland. But upon his hearing a report to that effect, and upon his being informed that it was said he wished a stop to be put to the proceedings of the Commissioners who were authorized to settle the civil government, he distinctly stated that such was not his intention. Of their interference with the secular business of the colony he fully approved, but of their interference with spiritual matters, it would appear that he had formed a different judgment; for in an earlier communication to the same Commissioners he had commanded them to confine their attention to temporal affairs, and "not to busy themselves about religion."[532] In this instance, as in others, Cromwell shewed a disposition to leave people to themselves in what concerned their consciences, provided only that they remained loyal to his political rule. We have said that the Prayer Book continued to be used in Virginia; and so long as Maryland remained quiet under the Protectorate, his Highness was not anxious to disturb either Prelatist or Papist. Whilst careful not to displease his own political partizans, he at the same time indicated no sympathy with the opposition which was made to Lord Baltimore; and, although he was strongly urged to annul altogether the patent and privileges of that excellent nobleman, he still allowed him to persevere in pressing his claims, and even permitted him to appoint his own Lieutenant.[533]

The East.

Beyond these particulars relative to religion in the Western Colonies, space remains only for a word respecting the other hemisphere. The first East Indian charter had been granted by Queen Elizabeth, and soon after the date of that charter the first English factory had been established at Surat. In the year 1649, Edward Terry—who had attended Sir Thomas Roe, as chaplain, on his embassy to the Mogul—preached what might be called a missionary sermon in the church of St. Andrew Undershaft, before the Governor and Company of the Merchant Traders to India; and in that sermon he strongly urged them to commend Christianity by a holy life; and he took care also faithfully to rebuke the gross inconsistencies of English Christians in Oriental countries, which, as he observed, often provoked natives to exclaim, "Christian religion, devil religion—Christian much drunk—much rogue—much naught." Dr. Edward Reynolds also preached in the same church, before the same company, in the year 1657, taking for his text Nehemiah xiii. 31; shewing, as Evelyn notices in his "Diary,"[534] "by the example of Nehemiah, all the perfections of a trusty person in public affairs, with many good precepts, apposite to the occasion, ending with a prayer for God's blessing on the Company and the undertaking."

Another body of traders, called the Levant Company, were certainly left free to pursue their own course with respect to religion.[535] Through the endeavours of Pocock, and other Episcopalian clergymen, the Company had aimed to extend Christianity in the countries where they trafficked; and in the year 1654 they sent Robert Frampton—a distinguished Episcopal minister—to Aleppo, who remained for sixteen years in charge of the spiritual welfare of the factory in that place. On his return to England he became first Dean, and then Bishop of Gloucester, and he is found amongst the non-jurors at the period of the Revolution. On the other hand a Presbyterian minister, who had been appointed chaplain at Smyrna, found no favour with the merchants of that ancient port; in vain he produced his bale of Westminster catechisms, and he fruitlessly endeavoured to establish amongst the English residents the Westminster Confession Directory and Discipline.[536]