THE KING'S RETURN.
1660.
There was also an address from the Independent ministers of London and Westminster, in which they referred to the Breda Declaration, indicating how greatly it sustained their hopes. They did not, they said, wish for liberty longer than they deserved it. "And it is our desire," they added, "no longer to sit under the shadow, and to taste the fruit of this your Majesty's royal favour, than we approve ourselves followers of peace with all men, seeking the peace of these kingdoms united under your Majesty's Government, and abiding in our loyalty to your royal person and submission to your laws."[96]
An address, sent by the ministers of Lancashire at a later period, shows their desire to wipe out the stigma of disloyalty:—
"Whereas we, or some of us, have been injuriously misrepresented to your Majesty, or some eminent persons about you, and have also been prejudiced and molested, as if we denied your Supremacy, or were disaffected to your Government (which hindered this our application to your Majesty, although prepared, and which otherwise had been much earlier, even with the first), we do, in all humility, and with great earnestness, profess before God and man, that we detest and abhor the very thoughts of such unworthy principles, behaviour, and expression, having always, according to occasion, expressed and declared the contrary."[97]
THE KING'S RETURN.
In this address we notice a recognition of the Royal Supremacy. Not only the civil, but, in some sense, the ecclesiastical Supremacy of the Crown must, under the circumstances, have been meant. Ecclesiastical Supremacy would be claimed and exercised by the restored sovereign as a matter of course. No new Act of Parliament was passed reconferring it on the Crown, and defining the limits.[98] Henry VIII. had been declared "Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ et Hibernicæ Supremum Caput." That title had been continued during the reign of Edward VI., but was repealed in the reign of Queen Mary. In the first year of Queen Elizabeth, Supremacy was restored to the Crown, the Queen being styled, not "Supreme Head of the Church," but "Supreme Governor, as well in all spiritual and ecclesiastical causes as in others." Henry's and Edward's title had never been resumed, but that of Elizabeth, having belonged to the first two monarchs of the Stuart line, descended to Charles II.[99] Charles II., then, could not, in legal phrase, be "Head of the Church;" if he happened to be so designated, it would be in adulation or in ignorance. But he inherited the ecclesiastical powers possessed by Queen Elizabeth, except in relation to the High Commission Court, which had been abolished by Act of Parliament in the reign of his father. The canons—as well as Acts of Parliament unrepealed before the Civil Wars—were regarded by Churchmen as remaining in force, and the second canon required an oath to the effect that "the King's Majesty hath the same authority in causes ecclesiastical that the Godly kings had amongst the Jews, and Christian emperors of the primitive Church"—whatever might be meant by that vague appeal to ancient and obscure precedents. The Supremacy of the Crown, however, as asserted by Anglican lawyers, would be one thing; the Supremacy, as acknowledged by Puritans, especially any Nonconformist portion of them, would be quite another. The authority of the temporal ruler over the temporalities of the Church, all parties probably would be prepared to allow; those of them who approved of a State Church would not object to his being invested with ecclesiastical patronage; Presbyterians, who wished for the establishment of perfect parochial discipline by the magistrate's aid, could not consistently object to some kind of Royal Supremacy in reference to that matter; but High Church Puritans, if I may so term persons holding exalted ideas of the spiritual, as distinguished from the temporal powers, like High Church Anglicans, would entertain a reduced and modified conception of the legitimate interference of the Crown with Christ's Church; whilst Nonconformists, who embraced the voluntary principle, would (even if from loyal courtesy they conceded the title of Supreme Governor in causes ecclesiastical) extract from it almost all which constituted its signification in the eyes of others.
1660.
THE KING'S RETURN.
It should further be borne in mind, not only here, but throughout this division of our narrative, indeed onward to the passing of the Act of Uniformity,—that ecclesiastical affairs were in a transition state, that scarcely anything could be regarded as perfectly settled. The High Church party took it for granted, that with the return of the King came the return of the episcopal constitution, with its laws, ceremonies, and usages. They assumed that at once, without any new Parliamentary statute, the stream of affairs would flow back into the old channel—that all which had been done by the Long Parliament, without the sanction of the Crown, ought to be treated as if it had never been done at all. The opposite party also had law on their side; for some valid Acts, affecting the Establishment, remained unrepealed—for example, the Act for divesting Bishops of their temporal powers. Under existing circumstances, much might be said on behalf of other portions of recent legislation, even where the Royal assent had not been obtained. And very few people now will deny that the clergy holding preferment during the Commonwealth had reason and common sense in their favour when they maintained—that, after nearly twenty years of change, after a revolution carried on by a de facto Government which had destroyed old vested rights, and created new ones—things could not be expected to resume their former position as a matter of course; that those in possession, and in possession by sanction of Government, had something to say for themselves, and that the conclusion as to the Church of the future was not foreclosed. And whatever might be said to the contrary, this aspect of the question had been, and still was, tacitly accepted as the true one by Charles and by Clarendon, in their negotiations with the Presbyterians, for they kept them in suspense for more than a year, holding out the idea of a compromise, and did not attempt to carry matters with a high hand until the Presbyterians had been reduced to a condition in which they could be easily crushed.
1660.
The counsellors by whom Charles was surrounded on his return were men of different characters, and they ought at once to be noticed, since they had more or less to do with the ecclesiastical affairs, which it is our business to study. Hyde immediately became Chief Minister. His round face and double chin, as we see them in his portrait, appear signs of good nature; but, perhaps, a skilful physiognomist would discover in his eyes and lips indications of qualities less pleasant. He was a different man from his master. Like Charles I., he was sincerely attached to the Episcopal Church of England. That unhappy Monarch, in one of his published letters, dated Oxford, March 30, 1646, assures Queen Henrietta that "Ned Hide" was fully of his mind on the subject of Episcopacy; he was almost, if not altogether (at that time), the only person in the confidence of the King who concurred with him on the point of religion.[100] The same year, when matters were even worse, Hyde expressed himself against "buying a peace at a dearer price than was offered at Uxbridge," and encouraged the notion that it was the duty of the Royalists to submit to a kind of martyrdom. "It may be," he remarked, "God hath resolved we shall perish, and then it becomes us to perish with those decent and honest circumstances that our good fame may procure a better peace to those who succeed us, than we were able to procure for them, and ourselves shall be happier than any other condition could render us."[101] Looking at the circumstances under which the letter was written, there can be no doubt of the sincerity of this confession—a sincerity confirmed in all the years of his exile under the Commonwealth, and in his active solicitude for the interests of the Church in the prospect of the Restoration. His subsequent conduct in reference to ecclesiastical affairs will appear as we proceed.