V. There existed, in different parts of the country, buildings entirely set apart for Nonconformist worship. Some of them were barns and warehouses adapted to the purpose, and in Norwich the refectory and dormitory of the old Blackfriars’ Convent, which, after the Restoration, had been turned into granaries for the City corn, were fitted up by permission of the Court of Mayoralty, for the use of the Presbyterian and Independent Congregationalists: also the old Leather Hall, in Coventry, a gloomy but spacious room, fitted up with galleries, was used for Nonconformist religious service.[300] A large meeting-house was erected in Zoar Street, Southwark, not far from the spot occupied by the summer theatre of Shakespeare, and within that building John Bunyan attracted immense congregations. “If there were but one day’s notice given,” his friend, Charles Doe, remarks, “there would be more people come together to hear him preach than the meeting-house could hold. I have seen, to hear him preach, by my computation, about 1,200 at a morning lecture, by seven o’clock, on a working-day, in the dark winter time. I also computed about 3,000 that came to hear him one Lord’s Day, at London, at a town’s-end meeting-house [in Zoar Street], so that half were fain to go back again for want of room, and then himself was fain at a back-door to be pulled almost over people to get upstairs to his pulpit.”[301] Mill Hill Chapel, at Leeds, was built during the period of Indulgence, being the first edifice erected by Dissenters “more ecclesiastico with arches.”[302] A meeting-house at Yarmouth is described as measuring fifty-eight feet one way, and sixty feet another, with a gallery quite round close to the pulpit, with six seats in it, one behind the other, and all accommodation possible for the reception of people below.[303] The “fanatic party” at Margate is referred to as building a “conventicle house” when it was illegal to do so, and as making great haste to get it up in spite of His Majesty’s proclamation.[304]
In some cases, so favourably inclined were the parish authorities, that they allowed Nonconformists to meet in the Church. At Southwold, every fourth Sunday, the incumbent and the Dissenting ministers both conducted Divine service under the same roof. The first who came took precedence, and after he had pronounced the Benediction, his neighbour began another service in his own way.
The liberty of using a parish church was also enjoyed by the Nonconformists of Waltham-le-Willows, a small village in Suffolk, and in connection with this arrangement there occurred a ludicrous circumstance. On one occasion when Mr. Salkeld, the Congregational minister, occupied the pulpit, Sir Edmund Bacon, of Redgrave, and Sir William Spring, of Packenham, being greatly scandalized at what they deemed a profanation of the edifice, came, with other country gentlemen, and planted themselves at the church-doors. Sir Edmund wished to compel the minister immediately to desist, but Sir William thought it more seemly to wait until the minister had finished his discourse. A noisy altercation consequently arose in the church-yard between the two gentlemen, when, upon the former becoming outrageously violent, his friend observed, “We read, Sir Edmund, that the devil entered into a herd of swine, and, upon my word, I think he is not got out of the Bacon yet.”[305]
RELIGIOUS STATISTICS.
VI. Perhaps this is as convenient a place as any to inquire into the relative number of Conformists and Nonconformists, towards the end of the period, embraced in this History.
The population of England towards the close of the seventeenth century, has been computed by Lord Macaulay at rather more than five millions.[306] He bases his estimate upon calculations made by King, Lancaster Herald, in 1696; upon returns consulted by William III., and upon conclusions drawn in the preface to the population returns of 1831. I find the estimate of about five millions confirmed by the author of The Happy Future State of England, published in 1688, who states an approximate number as the result of returns reported in a survey made by the Bishops in 1676.[307] Of these five millions and a half, or so, the Conformists formed an immense majority. In the returns which came under William’s eye, and in the report of the Bishops’ survey,—which seems to have been all but identical with them,—the Conformists, above sixteen years of age, in the province of Canterbury are put down at 2,123,362. York yields 353,892, making a total of 2,477,254. Against these are reckoned the following number of Nonconformists above sixteen years of age:—93,151 in the province of Canterbury, and 15,525 in the province of York—forming a gross amount of 108,676. The Conformists to the Nonconformists here are as 22⅘ to 1. The author I have just mentioned represents the Nonconformists as on the decline; and no doubt they were, during the reigns of Charles II. and James II., much fewer than they had been under the Commonwealth; but there is reason to believe, from their subsequent history, they were on the increase before the period of the Revolution. The same writer speaks of them, in the gross, as consisting of artizans and retail traders in corporations,[308] and probably the bulk of them would be found amongst the humbler classes; but it is to be remembered that some county families, including noble ones, to say nothing of old army officers, and rich citizen merchants, continued still within the ranks of Dissent. It is interesting and instructive to ponder the following particulars appended to the returns brought under the notice of William III., and certainly not prepared in any friendly spirit. Many persons left the Church upon the late Indulgence, who before did frequent it. The inquires made (I presume those of 1676 are referred to) caused many to frequent church. Walloons chiefly made up the number of Dissenters in Canterbury, Sandwich, and Dover. Presbyterians were divided; some of them not being wholly Dissenters, but occasionally going to church. A considerable number of Nonconformists belonged to no particular sect. Of those who attended church many did not receive the sacrament. There were in Kent about thirty heretics, called Muggletonians; the rest were Presbyterians, Anabaptists, Independents, and Quakers, in about equal numbers. The heads and preachers of the several factions had taken a large share in the Great Rebellion.[309]
PREACHING.
I may add that the Papists altogether are reckoned in the same document at 13,856. It was thought that they had increased in consequence of the Indulgence, and that the Jesuits had been very active up to the time of the plot, when they amounted to 1,800. After the excitement created by Oates’ business they are said to have considerably diminished.[310]
VII. The contrasts between Churchmen and Nonconformists already described, suggest another of a corresponding kind. Divine service in the Establishment, especially as conducted in cathedrals, in Royal chapels, and in large churches, would present an imposing appearance, such as never could belong to worship conducted in a conventicle. And a social prestige pertained to the Episcopalian priest, now forfeited by the Nonconformist preacher. Baxter, Owen, and Howe could not but feel the change which had come over their external circumstances since the day when, from high places—Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s, for example—they had addressed ex cathedra the élite of Puritan intelligence and rank.
The form of sermons, whether composed by Anglicans or Puritans, continued after the Restoration to be that which we may call textual, rather than topical, and Sanderson, who survived that crisis, broke up what he had to say upon a text into a perplexing arrangement of divisions and subdivisions; so far he resembled Andrewes, the great preacher of the reign of James I. This practice did not form the peculiarity of a class. It had been borrowed from the schoolmen, and came to be adopted alike by those who were most Protestant and those who were most Catholic. As it was with the teachers, so it was with the taught; the people, no doubt, liked this method, and acquired a habit of threading the mazes of a lengthened homily through all its numerical departments, with an expertness resembling that of modern schoolboys who perform such wonderful evolutions in mental arithmetic. Tastes began to change before the Revolution. Even Dr. Donne, in the beginning of the century, broke somewhat through technical trammels, and indulged in sonorous periods, flowing out into ample paragraphs; and Baxter himself, slave as he often was to scholastic fashions, would often burst into a strain of impassioned rhetoric which carried him page over page without a single break. South may be mentioned as a distinguished instance of departure from the old style, and Bates may be named also as an example, so far, of the same class. Sermons were very long. Some compositions, indeed, bearing that name, but extending to the dimensions of a considerable treatise, were never delivered at all. They were intended to be read, not heard. This was the case with some compositions from the pens of Baxter and Barrow: but anecdotes related respecting the latter Divine, show the enormous length to which he sometimes carried his oral addresses. Once, before he preached in Westminster Abbey, the Dean requested him to be short. He showed the sermon to that dignitary, who, finding it consisted of two parts, requested him to deliver only one of them. Barrow did so, yet that occupied an hour and a half in the delivery. Upon another occasion, he “enlarged” so much, that the vergers who were anxious to show to impatient visitors “the tombs and effigies of the Kings and Queens in wax,” “caused the organ to be struck up against him, and would not give over playing till they had blowd him down.” His Spital sermon lasted three hours and a half; what the Lord Mayor and Aldermen thought of it we do not know; but we are informed that the preacher, when asked if he felt tired, replied, that “he began to be weary of standing so long.”[311] Barrow’s case, no doubt, is an extreme one; but although he exceeded what might be common, it is plain enough from the specimens of pulpit eloquence belonging to that age, that they usually were such as would exhaust the patience of modern congregations.