CLARENDON.
1667.
By an obvious association we are led to compare the political founder of the Church of England in the seventeenth century with his predecessor in the same capacity a hundred years before. Both Cecil, Lord Burleigh, and Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, had great difficulties in securing the stability of the civil government—in dealing with political discontent and disaffection, in defending the Throne against perils, and in providing revenues for the Crown. Both statesmen, in laying the corner stones of their ecclesiastical polity, had to build in troublous times, and each, "with one of his hands wrought in the work, and with the other hand held a weapon." Both of them, blind to the principle of religious liberty, employed persecuting laws in the service of what they deemed the best form of Christianity; and both also, together with other crooked means of ruling, employed spies, wherewith to see what was done at a distance, and agents wherewith to put in action secret and remote machinery. The contrast between the two, however, is more striking than the resemblance. If difficulties encompassed the navigation of the vessel, the helm of which rested in the hand of Clarendon, far greater difficulties of the same and other kinds—political and ecclesiastical, Popish and Puritan,—surrounded the course of Burleigh. Clarendon was not as cautious, not as timid, as Burleigh. Perhaps neither of them exhibited a lofty order of genius; but Clarendon appears inferior in originality of plan, and in consistency of method. Cecil struck out ideas in commerce too wise for the age in which he lived; and as the fruit of careful meditation in retirement, he laid down a comprehensive scheme of government on the accession of Elizabeth, from the fundamental principles of which he did not deviate in his long administration; but Hyde never showed himself to be more than an experimentalist, adopting expedients as circumstances arose. Cecil was more intolerant towards Papists than towards Puritans. Hyde seemed more averse to Protestant Nonconformists than to Popish recusants. Cecil had broad Protestant sympathies, which led him, as far as possible, to promote the cause of the Reformation abroad; Hyde manifested no zeal for the welfare of the Reformed Churches on the Continent. Burleigh did not enrich himself with the spoils of office,—praise which cannot be given to Clarendon. Yet justice demands the admission that Clarendon did suffer for his principles, at least the inconvenience of exile, which is more than can be said of Burleigh. Finally, success attendant upon the policy of the former lasted long enough to demonstrate the sagacity of the author; but the policy of the latter failed so early as to show, that he did not anticipate what was sure almost immediately to arise—that he did not thoroughly understand the character of his fellow-countrymen.[530]
The illustration of this latter point is required by the conditions of our History.
EXTENT OF NONCONFORMITY.
The Chancellor's object had been not merely to establish the Episcopal Church, but to crush every form of Dissent. Indeed, his notion of an establishment was that it should have an exclusive existence in the country—that Nonconformity should have no place whatever under its shadow. Yet, at the time of his fall, only five years after the Act of Uniformity was passed, and within two years of the passing of the Five Mile Act—not only did Popery continue to lurk within these dominions, not only did it make its way amongst the upper classes, but Presbyterianism recovered itself from the blows which it had received, and Independents, Baptists, and Quakers, secretly or openly, promoted the spread of their opinions. Of this fact, passages from contemporaries afford striking proofs.
On the 4th of August, 1666, a correspondent at Chester, stated that the City swarmed with "cardinal Nonconformists," and that they were so linked into the Magistracy, by alliance, that it was very difficult to bring them to punishment;—only a few of them attended Divine service, and even they were absent during the prayers. Experience proved that these great pretenders to piety and religion, who would not conform to the Prince's ecclesiastical power, only submitted to the civil until they could get power to refuse it.
On the 31st of August, 1667, the day after Clarendon resigned the Great Seal, a letter reached Sir Joseph Williamson complaining of "crowds of fanatics," about Bath and Frome. The gentry, as well as the ignorant and ill-affected classes, helped to beget a jealousy of Popery, and were apparently fallen back to the spirit of 1642. Even some who looked big in Court, and in Parliament, had sheltered the unlawful vessels of the malcontented and the furious within their allotments, and in their own families, more especially, since the late exigencies had arisen.
1667.