THE BARTHOLOMEW EJECTMENT.
Another instance of a second ejectment occurred the same day under different circumstances. Robert Atkins, in the month of September, 1660, had been dismissed from the choir of Exeter Cathedral—the part of the edifice appropriated to the Presbyterians—"Church music," to use his own words, "jostling out the constant preaching of the Word; the minister being obliged to give place to the chorister; and hundreds, yea thousands, to seek where to hear a sermon on the Lord's Day, rather than singing service should be omitted, or not kept up in its ancient splendour and glory." Driven at the Restoration from East Peter's, he found refuge in the parish church of St. John—an instance which shows that nonconforming clergymen might lose one living and gain another, between the King's return and the execution of the Act. From St. John's, he was ejected in August, and then he preached a sermon in which, rising above all such narrowness as prompted the depreciation of cathedral music, he caught ennobling inspirations, and employed only words of loyalty and love. "Let him never be accounted a sound Christian that doth not both fear God and honour the King. I beg that you would not interpret our Nonconformity to be an act of unpeaceableness and disloyalty. We will do anything for His Majesty but sin. We will hazard anything for him but our souls. We hope we could die for him, only we dare not be damned for him. We make no question, however we may be accounted of here, we shall be found loyal and obedient subjects at our appearance before God's tribunal."[379]
1662.
Another day they had to quit the parsonage.[380] No poet that I am aware of, has made the Bartholomew Exodus a theme for his muse, but the well-known lines in Goldsmith's "Deserted Village" may be accommodated to the incident.
"Good heaven! what sorrows gloom'd that parting day,
That call'd them from their native walks away,
When the poor exiles, every pleasure past,
Hung round the bowers, and fondly look'd their last.
With loudest plaints the mother spoke her woes,