The election of scholars at Westminster had, in the year 1645, been vested in Commissioners, and also in the Master of the school, the Master of Trinity, Cambridge, and the Dean of Christ Church, Oxford—if "the said Dean were not a delinquent." The ordinance would give to Dr. Owen, when he presided over Christ Church, the rights with regard to the school which had been exercised by such dignitaries of old. In the Act of April, 1649, for the sale of ecclesiastical property, the foundations of Westminster, Winchester, and Eton were expressly excepted from its operation.[295] The old Westminster school-room, with its chesnut roof—which once covered the dormitory of the monks of St. Peter—had its rows of boys (Puritans amongst the rest), under the tuition of Puritan teachers, occupying the forms and studying their Latin primers, as in days of yore. The then Head Master, appointed about 1639, was no other than the famous Richard Bushy, whose portrait—reminding one a little of the spare-looking but keen-eyed Richard Baxter—still adorns the Deanery. There he wielded his ferule for fifty-seven years, not sparing the rod lest he should spoil the child.[296] One of his under-masters was the once well-known but now forgotten Edward Bagshawe, an Oxford student, who had shewn himself a turbulent and domineering person, not only in his college, but in the University—where he disturbed the Vice-Chancellor "with interposed speeches without formalities, and with his hat cocked," in which guise he was wont to read his catechetical lecture. But Master Richard Busby would not allow in office such a "pragmatical and ungrateful" personage, and therefore "outed" him in 1658, when Littleton, a Christ Church man, was put in his room.[297] The revenues of the public schools of England were more or less affected by the disturbances of the period, but in other respects they seem to have held on the even tenor of their way.
CHAPTER XII.
Cromwell's establishment excluded Prelacy, but it did not altogether exclude Prelatists. It was possible for them to hold parish livings. The use of the Prayer Book, the performance of Episcopal rites, and the exercise of diocesan superintendence were disallowed. Still, those who approved of such things could preach if the Triers permitted. Not a few must have accepted this abridged freedom, otherwise we could not account for the large proportion of clerical conformists at the period of the Restoration. Numbers had no very decided opinions in matters relating to Church government and forms of worship; but some persons of fixed views—on the principle of not doing what they felt to be unscriptural, only omitting what under other circumstances they would have gladly performed—were anxious still to labour as parish pastors for the good of souls. The Episcopal Clergy who remained in the Establishment, without in any way professing Presbyterianism, may be divided into two classes.
Bull.
I. Those who, notwithstanding the law against it, continued to use more or less of the Book of Common Prayer. George Bull, afterwards Bishop of St. David's, was a distinguished individual of this class. Having received orders as deacon and priest the same day from the hands of Dr. Skinner—the ejected Bishop of Oxford, who after his ejectment continued to perform the rite of ordination—this young man, then only twenty-one, settled at St. George's, near Bristol, upon an income of £30 a year. By his preaching, his prudence, and his charities, he is said to have won the favour of Quakers, and "other wild sectaries," and even to have reclaimed some from their "pernicious errors." Stories are told of his notes being blown out of the Bible over the Church, amidst the laughter of the congregation; and of his adroitly turning the circumstance to account by proceeding with his sermon extempore. Another anecdote is related of his being interrupted by a Quaker, with whom he expostulated so calmly, that the people lost all patience, and would have fallen violently on the poor delinquent, had not the preacher come down from the pulpit to save him from their assaults. He constantly repeated the common prayers without referring to the book; thereby, it is said, exciting admiration even in some who counted the prohibited volume a beggarly element, and a carnal performance. Nelson, his biographer, speaks of his diligence in visiting his flock, in instructing the ignorant, in comforting the afflicted, and in correcting the erring. He seems even to have kept up some sort of parish discipline;—summoning to a conference those who absented themselves from communion and worship, and engaging in controversy with those who seduced any of his parishioners. Bull aimed at doing in the parish of St. George's, after the Episcopalian type, what Baxter did at Kidderminster, after the "Presbyterian way," and, on the whole, he appears to have been successful.[298]
John Hacket, afterwards Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, was allowed for a time to read the Common Prayer at Cheam, to the living of which he had been presented through the interest of the Lord Keeper Williams. At length the Surrey Committee required him to forbear using the forbidden formulary, "when he found himself under the necessity of omitting such parts as were most offensive to the Government."[299] After this limited measure of interference, he continued to hold his living.