1660.
These laws, however, do not suggest a full idea of all the inconvenience and suffering to which Nonconformists, before the Civil War, had been exposed. That we may understand fully the circumstances in which they were placed, we must add the activity of spiritual courts, the jurisdiction of the High Commission, and the indefinite powers of the Crown. Nor do these laws, statute and canon, exhibit all the forces of oppression which continued to exist after the Restoration, and before the passing of the Act of Uniformity—forces which could be brought into play at any moment, and in any situation. Spiritual courts, it is true, had not yet been re-established; the High Commission no longer existed. The power of the Crown had received a check; but in addition to laws prohibitory of religious gatherings outside the Establishment, there stood the law of Royal Supremacy, which could not be taken by Papists, and was objected to by some Protestant Dissenters. The statute, which had sent More and Fisher to the block, brought sorrow upon a large number of unknown persons, who, on a different principle from that adopted by those sufferers, objected strongly to Royal Supremacy over causes ecclesiastical as well as civil. Their resistance and their trouble, together with the perplexity of magistrates respecting them, are illustrated in the following extract of a letter written from Bristol, in the autumn of 1660:—"Be pleased to take notice that no Quaker, or rarely any Anabaptist, will take these oaths; so that the said oaths are refused by many hundreds of their judgment, being persons of very dangerous principles, and great enemies in this city to His Majesty's royal person, government, and restoration—and some of them [are] petitioners to bring his martyred Majesty, of blessed memory, to his trial,—and will undoubtedly fly out again and kick up the heel against his sovereign authority, should it be in their power, therefore [they] are not worthy His Majesty's protection, refusing to swear loyalty to him. Besides, their said refusal, if suspended or connived at, will cause a general discontent and repining in, by those His Majesty's loyal subjects who have already taken, or are to take the said oaths; for 'tis already the language of many of them, and these not a few, 'Why should any oaths be imposed on or required of us? and the Quakers, Anabaptists, and others, His Majesty's enemies, be gratified with a suspension thereof.' And 'tis the answer of others, 'If the Quakers, Anabaptists, and others of dangerous practices and principles do, or are enforced to, take the said oaths, then will we. In the interim, we want the same liberty which is to them afforded.'" The writer next asks instructions to guide him in his perplexity. "Sir," he continues, "these, I had almost said, monsters of men with us are, yea more numerous than in all the West of England; and here they all centre and have their meetings, at all seasons till 9 of the clock at night, and later;—sometimes about 1,000 or 1,200 at a time,—to the great affrightening of this city as to what will be consequent thereof if not restrained, or should a suspension of the said oaths be to them given."[176]
PERSECUTION.
1660.
Many persons had to suffer severely. In Wales the fire was first kindled, and burnt most fiercely. Before the King landed at Dover the Episcopalians in the Principality busied themselves in persecuting Quakers. Several Nonconformists were imprisoned at Caermarthen, and the gaol at Montgomery was so filled with them that the gaoler had to pack them into garrets. Pitiful stories, with some exaggerations perhaps, are told of sufferers in the May and June of 1660, who were dragged out of their beds to prison, or like stray cattle driven into parish pounds, or led in chains to the Quarter Sessions.[177] If violence with so wide a sweep did not rage on our side the border, the confessors for conscience' sake in England were nevertheless numerous enough. In that transitional state of things all sorts of irregular proceedings took place. Even Philip Henry could not preach in quiet, but was presented in the month of September, at the Flint assizes, for not reading the Common Prayer. John Howe also fell into trouble for what he had said in the pulpit; and it is not generally remembered that long before the Uniformity, the Conventicle, and the Five Mile Acts were passed, John Bunyan was cast into Bedford gaol.[178] In England, as well as in Wales, many Quakers and Anabaptists suffered a loathsome imprisonment. If, in London, Nonconformity was strong, in the provinces it was rapidly becoming otherwise. Bishops were busy; Episcopalian Rectors were being restored, and Loyal Corporations were getting more and more noisy in their demonstrations of zeal for Church and Crown. Grey-headed squires, and nobles in Cavalier plumes and doublets, with their courtly dames in rustling silks, and with their children in bright-coloured sashes, and attended by servants clothed in gay liveries, sat with joy before the crackling yule log that merry Christmas; and when the boar's head and the roast beef had been despatched, they related stories of their virtuous and devout King,[179] and told their sons and daughters of the gay doings and merry games of their own young days. The mistletoe hanging in the hall corresponded with the holly suspended in the Church; and the service, which members of these merry parties had heard that Christmas morning for the first time, as they sat in the old family pew, sustained worthy association with the pleasant festivities of the afternoon and evening. Puritanism had been to them a religion of restraint, and now the return of Bishops and Prayer Books brought freedom and joy. Of course there were sentiments of a far higher order cherished at that season, but the existence of much of the humbler feeling now described may be taken for granted.
REACTION AGAINST PURITANISM.
Other ceremonies besides those immediately connected with Christmas time appeared that winter. Newspaper letters from Exeter, dated the 29th of December, 1660, announced the joyful welcome of Dr. Gauden, the new Bishop of the diocese, who had been met by most of the gentry, to the number of one hundred and twenty, and escorted by the High Sheriff, with nearly five times as many horse; the Mayor and Aldermen in scarlet and fur, waiting on His Lordship, amidst the ringing of bells. A week later, Londoners saw, in the public prints, a glowing account of a public Episcopalian christening at Dover—a most significant service in a town where Anabaptists were numerous. So great a concourse, it is reported, had seldom been seen, the Mayor being obliged to make way that the children might reach the font, which had not been used for nearly twenty years, and had now, by the care and prudence of the Churchwardens, been set up for this solemnity.
1660.
The reaction against the Puritanism of the Commonwealth, visible in so many ways, received a fresh impulse from the insurrection of Venner and his associates. This fanatical wine-cooper had been before laying plots: in the month of April, 1657, he and his confederates, after conferring at a Meeting House in Swan Alley, had assembled on Mile End Green, when Cromwell sent a troop of horse, and seized him, with twenty other ringleaders. The cause of Fifth Monarchism, during the season of confusion consequent upon the resignation of the Protector Richard, reappeared, and made itself heard through its irrepressibly loquacious advocates, Rogers and Feake. The revival of their tenets, in connection with a renewal of pure Republicanism under Sir Henry Vane and his party, was of short duration; and there is nothing noticeable, in connection with this form of religious sentiment, until Venner's second outbreak.
Instead of narrating that incident in words of my own, I shall simply use a letter, written respecting it in the midst of the excitement. The circumstances mentioned at the close, although below the dignity of history, are too amusing to be omitted.
VENNER'S INSURRECTION.
1661.