[199] Whitaker's Hist., p. 7.
[200] This notice of the appointment of a pastor is founded upon an entry in the Church Book at Bury St. Edmunds, which, on account of the rare occurrence of such a record, we shall give at length in the Appendix. It should be remembered that this was not an ordination to preach, but simply an ordination to the exercise of pastoral authority in a particular Church. Ordinations and recognition services amongst Independents are not conducted in the present day after the manner just described.
[201] There are letters and resolutions on this subject in the Norwich and Yarmouth Church Books, but they are too long to be inserted here.
[202] These illustrations are chiefly taken from the Yarmouth Church Book.
[203] In some cases loans were sought to meet expenses connected with religious worship. In the Corporation Books at Norwich, it is ordered "that the mayor, sheriffs, and aldermen should every of them lend forty shillings a man, and every of the common council twenty shillings a man, for the building of the seats in the Dutch chapel for the corporation and their wives." It is naïvely added—"If any man will give half, rather than lend the whole, let it be accepted."
[204] The use in some cases of parochial edifices for church-meetings could hardly be considered an exception to this rule. In the Canterbury Church Book this passage occurs:—"The 5th day of the fifth month, this day the Church did unanimously agree to break bread in the Sermon-house, and ordered that henceforth it should be there."—Timpson's Church Hist. of Kent, 307.
The Sermon-house was in the crypt where Henry II. did penance after the assassination of Thomas à Becket. It was granted to the French and Flemish refugees by Elizabeth, in 1561. It is still used for French worship. The long table is that at which the worshippers sit to receive the Sacrament.
[205] He had been minister of St. Laurence, Poultry, London, whence he removed to Aston. He held religious meetings at Nottingham after the Restoration, and was imprisoned for it. Mr. McAll, formerly pastor of Castle Gate, Nottingham, in a sermon he preached on the Bicentenary Celebration of the Church there, in 1862, distinguishes between this Thomas Palmer and the Thomas Palmer at Nottingham, who is described as a military chaplain by Lucy Hutchinson.—Bicentenary of Castle Gate Meeting, p. 73.
[206] His Lordship on another occasion, when on the Western Circuit, remarked in a charge which he delivered to the jury:—"That in case any ministers did not do the duties of their office, as particularly to baptize their children, and to administer the Sacrament to all but such as were ignorant and scandalous, they might refuse to pay them their dues, and they should present such ministers, which was agreeable to the law, and if they were by them presented, they should be dealt withal."
The same Judge also observed that the payment of tithes was in return for the performance of religious service by the minister, and if he did not perform his duty he could not claim his rights. The ministry, he said, in many places now dealt worse with the people than did the Popish priests. They gave the laity one element, but these would not allow them bread or water.