The Presbyterians were now treated as the vanquished party; and Baxter especially became the butt for malignant marksmen. Almost every time he preached he was accused of treason; and even his prayers were listened to with suspicion. Still, as the parliament now sitting had been elected before the Restoration, the Presbyterians in that assembly were too numerous and troublesome to permit of summary suppression. Hence, in March 1661, a new election was ordered, and great excitement followed. Alderman Thompson, “a godly man of good parts, and a congregationalist,” was one of the candidates for London; but the Royalists objected to him, because he was “so fond of smoking that his breath would poison a whole committee.” Dr Caryl and other eminent ministers held a fast. Zachary Crofton preached against bishops “every Sunday night, with an infinite auditory, itching, and applause;” and Mr Graffen had a crowd of two thousand in the streets, who could not get into his meeting-house to hear him “bang the bishops.”
The new parliament met on the 8th of May 1661; and the change from Presbyterian to Episcopalian predominancy was manifested in one of the earliest orders,—viz., that the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, on the Sunday seven night, should be administered, at St Margaret’s Church, according to the form prescribed in the Liturgy of the Church of England; and that no one should be admitted a member of that House who neglected to partake of the Communion, either there publicly, or afterwards in the presence of two or more witnesses. In addition to this, it was resolved that “the Solemn League and Covenant,” the well-known symbol of Presbyterian ascendancy—which, for a year past, had been taken down from the walls of the House of Commons—should be burnt by the common hangman; and this was done, the hangman first tearing the document into pieces, and then burning the fragments in succession,—he all the while lifting up his hands and eyes in pious indignation, until not a shred was left.[[1]]
Before the year was ended, the bishops took their place in the House of Lords; and a bill was passed requiring all members of corporations to swear that the “Solemn League and Covenant was unlawful; and declaring that no one was eligible for office who had not, within one year before, taken the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England.”
Added to this, another and a far more important bill was introduced:—“A Bill for the Uniformity of Public Prayers and Administration of the Sacraments.” The bill was first submitted to Parliament in December 1661, and became law on the 19th of May 1662. During this interval of five months the greatest excitement prevailed throughout the nation. Loud and fierce were the diatribes uttered from the Episcopal pulpit against Roundheads, Anabaptists, and Quakers. Swarms of pamphlets and broadsides were issued, to support Church and State by argument, but more frequently by ridicule and satire. Many of these, as “Noctroft’s Maid Whipt,” and the “Antidote of Melancholy made up in Pills,” were coarse and filthy in a high degree. Of course, sharp and bitter things were said and written on the Nonconformists’ side, but in none of their publications is there anything like the abominable and indecent scurrility which the royalist press published against them.
Before giving a synopsis of the Act of Uniformity, it may be well to say, that the Book of Common Prayer, which it mentions, was the book as revised by Convocation in November 1661. About six hundred alterations had been made in the body of the volume. Forms respecting the weather, prayers to be used at sea, and emendations in the commination, and in the churching of women services were introduced. The calendar was revised, and the Apocrypha appointed to be read in the daily lessons. The absolution was to be pronounced by the “priest,” instead of by the “minister.” In the Litany, the words “rebellion and schism” were added to the petition against sedition; and the words, “bishops, priests, and deacons,” were substituted for “bishops, pastors, and ministers of the Church.” A few new collects were added, and, in one of them, a new epithet was added to the title of Charles I., he being styled “our most religious king.” None of these things were calculated to make the prayer-book more palatable to the Presbyterian and Dissenting parties, and hence the terrible rupture occasioned by the passing of the Act of Uniformity.
By that act it was provided, that “every parson, vicar, or other minister whatsoever, now enjoying any ecclesiastical benefice or promotion, within this realm of England,” who neglected or refused to declare publicly, before his congregation, his “unfeigned assent and consent to the use of all things contained and prescribed” in the Book of Common Prayer, on some Lord’s-day before the feast of St Bartholomew, in 1662, should be deprived of all his spiritual promotions; and that, henceforth, it should be lawful for all patrons and donors of such church livings to present others to the same, as though the person or persons so offending or neglecting were dead. The act further provided, that all deans, canons, and prebendaries; also all heads, fellows, and tutors of colleges; and likewise all schoolmasters, keeping any public or private schools, should, before the same feast of St Bartholomew, subscribe a declaration to the effect that they would conform to the liturgy of the Church of England, as now by law established; and that they renounced all obligation from the oath commonly called “The Solemn League and Covenant,” and regarded it as an unlawful oath, contrary to the laws and liberties of the kingdom. It likewise enacted that all the church functionaries above-mentioned who refused to subscribe to this declaration were to be deprived of their promotions; and all schoolmasters who refused were to suffer three months’ imprisonment. It also provided that if any minister, not being a foreigner, who was not episcopally ordained, should presume to administer the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper after St Bartholomew’s day, he should, for every such offence, forfeit the sum of £100; and if he presumed to lecture or preach in any church, chapel, or other place of worship whatever, within the realm of England, he should suffer three months’ imprisonment in the common gaol. And another, though minor provision was, that the parishioners of every parish church, at their own cost, should provide for such church, before the feast of St Bartholomew, a true printed copy of the revised Book of Common Prayer; and that they should be fined £3 for every month, after St Bartholomew’s, that they neglected to obey such a mandate.
Such was the substance of that most momentous Act of Parliament. What were the results? Terrible were the struggles in many a good man’s breast during the fourteen weeks elapsing between the 19th of May and the 24th of August 1662. As the corn ripened, and the country rector sat with his wife in the snug parlour, and looked out of the latticed windows on the children chasing the butterflies in the garden, or gathering daisies on the glebe, he had to decide in his heart and conscience whether he should leave all this, or whether he should keep it. He must either conform, or he and his family must go. Such was the ugly alternative. The vicarage was comfortable and commodious; the means of usefulness had bright attractions; and hardest wrench of all it was, to snap the union between the shepherd and his flock. To resolve to go, required now and then a woman’s quiet fortitude to reinforce a man’s more loud resolve.
Meanwhile, mutterings of discontent and growlings of sedition began to be heard on every hand. Rumours circulated that some of the king’s regiments were disaffected; that trained bands were refractory or negligent; that gunsmiths were dressing arms; and that Lancashire ministers talked little less than treason. The Court was uncertain whether to execute or to suspend the Act. Presbyterian lords pleaded for indulgence; but Sheldon was opposed to it. It was the long vacation, and few of the council remained in town to decide the point. The nobility were at their country seats enjoying the summer months. The bishops were performing their visitations. Charles was at Hampton Court, joking with his lords, toying with his mistresses, watching games in the tennis court, and feeding ducks in the royal ponds. Time travelled on, and the 23d of August came. All Quakers imprisoned in the gaols of London and Middlesex were released, because on that day Charles’s consort, Queen Catherine, first came “to our royal palace at Westminster.” The Thames was covered with boats almost without number. Music floated on the water, and thundering peals roared from huge cannon on the shore. Charles and his queen sailed in an open vessel covered with a canopy of cloth of gold, which was supported by Corinthian pillars wreathed with flowers, festoons, and garlands. This was Saturday.
The previous Sunday had been a day such as England never knew, either before or since.[[2]] Hundreds of faithful ministers on that day preached farewell sermons to heart-broken, weeping flocks. Churches were crowded; aisles and stairs were crammed to suffocation; and people clung to the open windows like swarms of bees. It would have been pardonable if the ministers had mingled with the loving exhortations addressed to the distressed crowds before them sentiments of indignation at the legislative act which was the means of their removal. But, instead of that, the discourses were as calm as the pastors had ever preached, and some of them scarcely alluded to the peculiar circumstances of the time.
A week after, on the day after Queen Catherine’s jubilant reception, the Act of Uniformity was enforced in all its rigour, and upwards of two thousand ministers, with their families, were ejected from their livings.[[3]]