Many of the alterations cannot be corrections of the printer’s errata. They evidently indicate changes of words made in the original copy after the printing of the books which were used as sealed copies.
In the Appendix to the first Report of the Royal Commission on Ritual will be found remarks upon the sealed copy at Ely.
It is strange that the printers of Prayer Books do not bring them into correspondence with the sealed books, which alone contain the legally correct formularies of the Church.
No. VI.—Vol. I., p. 282.
The number of the ejected is a vexed question. We possess at present unsatisfactory data; and I fear that we shall never obtain such a knowledge of facts as will enable us to reach a precise conclusion. The Ecclesiastical Registers of the country might seem to afford great hope of being sufficient to decide the controversy; but, to say nothing of the labour of searching them, unfortunately when the work has been begun, in some cases, from the imperfection of the records, it has yielded little or no fruit.
Some years ago I attempted searching the records of the See of London, in St. Paul’s Cathedral; but from the state of the records at that time the attempt proved unsuccessful.
The friendly kindness of the Dean of Chichester, and Canon Swainson, afforded me every facility for examining the Archives in the Cathedral. The latter assisted me in examining the Registers; to our disappointment they were found defective for 1662. But as this Work was passing through the press, Canon Swainson communicated to me some valuable information, which will be subjoined to this note. At present our conclusions must rest upon the lists of names which have been published by Calamy and Palmer; and upon such general statements as are furnished by writers who were living at the time when the ejectment took place.
Calamy, in his second volume, undertakes to give an “Account of the ministers who were ejected or silenced after the Restoration of King Charles II.” In his second, and two following volumes, he includes ministers, lecturers, masters and fellows of colleges, and schoolmasters. Palmer, in his Nonconformist Memorial, describes those whom he registers as “Ejected or silenced after the Restoration, particularly by the Act of Uniformity.” These important distinctions are often overlooked; and it is imagined that all the names collected together, are the names of clergymen who were removed from their livings on Bartholomew’s Day. Such an imagination is contradicted by facts. In agreement with the indication given on the title pages of our two principal authorities, we discover in these biographical sketches a number of incumbents who were displaced before the Uniformity Act was passed, most of them in consequence of Episcopalian clergymen having returned to claim their sequestered livings. Cases of this kind appear in the present History. Those ministers who thus lost their benefices clearly ought to be arranged in a class by themselves. Having set them aside, there remain others who, according to all accounts, did not forfeit their emoluments through the operation of the new Act. They consisted of such clergymen as, through Episcopal connivance, or from some other cause, continued to hold their benefices; they were comparatively few in number, and the benefices of most were of inconsiderable value. We are then to add another class, described as simple candidates for the ministry, who therefore possessed no livings from which they could be driven. Also we must separate the cases of persons who, though mentioned amongst the ejected, did not quit the Church until after St. Bartholomew’s Day; some of whom were not ministers in the Establishment at that time. The exceptional cases of the last three kinds, such as were connived at, such as were only candidates, and such as did not quit the Church until afterwards, so far as I can see, are altogether below fifty. I may have overlooked some.
What would be the total number of the persons who, although included in the general list of sufferers, did not surrender their incumbencies on St. Bartholomew’s Day, I am at a loss to determine. The information given in many cases is so incomplete, that it does not show when and how the persons mentioned were removed. In more than five hundred instances bare names occur, and in many more so little is added as to be next to nothing. Most of the persons named were probably in some way or other losers for conscience’ sake; but I am not aware of any means by which all those among them who left the Establishment before the 24th of August of 1662, can be separated from those who were ejected on that day.
If we refer to general statements, we find Baxter saying, in his Petition for Peace presented to the Bishops with the proposed reformation of the Liturgy, at the Savoy Conference, “Some hundreds of able, holy, faithful ministers, are of late cast out.”[615] He also speaks in the Rejoinder of “several hundreds.”[616] These statements were made in 1661, more than a year before the Uniformity Act came into operation. Taking the indefinite several hundreds at the lowest reasonable computation, and remembering, that during the intermediate year more Nonconformists would be “cast out,” we can scarcely reckon the ejected, before St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1662, at less than six hundred. Hook’s letter written in the month of March, 1663, alludes to the number of the ejected on St. Bartholomew’s Day as 1,600, and says “as many had been removed before.” This, no doubt, is an exaggeration; but it would seem to suggest, at least, that the number previously removed bore a large proportion to the number ultimately ejected. To the six hundred, or so, ejected before the Uniformity Act came into effect, let there be added two or three hundred more,—which would be a very large allowance for such exceptional cases as I have indicated, and for the great uncertainty respecting the five hundred bare names in the lists of “the ejected and silenced,”—and we thus reach a total of some eight or nine hundred, who may be admitted to have suffered more or less in consequence of the Restoration, but who must not be considered as undergoing ejectment on Bartholomew’s Day. The last and the longest list of sufferers, before and upon the 24th of August, 1662, put all together, is that furnished by Palmer, amounting to 2,231,—a list evidently prepared with much care. He mentions a MS. “Index eorum Theologorum Aliorumque No. 2,257, qui propter Legem Uniformitatis, Aug. 24, A. D. 1662, ab Ecclesia Anglicana secesserunt.” Calamy’s entire list reckons 2,190. Making the largest allowable deduction for those deprived before Bartholomew’s Day—that of nine hundred as just suggested—then the number of those who were deprived on that day would amount to about 1,200. I do not see how more than that number could have been then displaced. I am induced to believe there were scarcely so many.