(Spurious lines added to Rand’s 1624 edition of Skelton’s Elynour Rummynge.) Most of this information I have taken from Nares’s Glossary and Halliwell-Phillipp’s Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, second edition.”
[547] The reference here is apparently to the running footmen much in use in the eighteenth century, and also, judging by the text, as early as the reign of Charles I. Their duty was to run before and alongside the cumbrous coaches then in use, to notify innkeepers of the coming guests. They carried long poles to assist them in clearing obstacles, and to help pry the carriages out of the sloughs in which they frequently got stuck. (Brewer’s Dict. of Phrase and Fable, p. 773; Macaulay’s England, vol. i. pp. 374-8.)
[548] It was one of the doctrines of Pythagoras that the souls of the dying passed into the air, and thence into the living bodies of other men, taking controlling possession of them. That the nimbleness of the father’s feet might thus account for the volubility of the son’s tongue is, it is needless to say, a purely Mortonian deduction.
[549] “May 12. [1621] was the first marriage in this place, which, according to the laudable custome of the Low-Countries, in which they had lived, was thought most requisite to be performed by the magistrate, as being a civill thing, upon which many questions aboute inheritances doe depende, with other things most proper to their cognizans, and most consonante to the scripturs. Ruth 4. and no wher found in the gospell to be layed on the ministers as a part of their office.” (Bradford, p. 101.) The marriage here referred to was that of Edward Winslow to Mrs. Susannah White. It took place in May, Winslow’s wife having died seven weeks before, and Mrs. White’s husband, William, twelve weeks before. That he had married people was, it will be remembered, the other of the two charges advanced against Winslow himself, at the Privy Council hearing just referred to. (Supra, [322], note 2.) The practice of civil marriage already prevailed in the Massachusetts colony also, as, a week before the arrest of Morton was ordered, Governor Endicott, on August 18, 1630, was married, at Charlestown apparently, “by the governour and Mr. Wilson.” (Winthrop, vol. i. p. *30. See also Plaine Dealing, pp. 86-7.) There are few more edifying examples of the casuistical skill of Winthrop and his associates than is afforded by his method of dealing with the question of civil marriages, as explained in detail in his Journal (vol. i. p. *323). “In our church discipline, and in matters of marriage, to make a law that marriages should not be solemnized by ministers is repugnant to the laws of England; but to bring it to a custom by practice for the magistrates to perform it, is no law made repugnant, etc.” The charter of 1629 empowered the General Court of the colony “to make, ordeine, and establishe all Manner of wholesome and reasonable Orders, Lawes, Statutes, and Ordinances, Directions, and Instructions, not contrary to the Lawes of theis our Realme of England.” (Hazard, vol. i. p. 252.)
[550] At the conference between the Bishops and the Puritans, held in presence of James I. at Hampton Court in January, 1603, one of the practices of the English Church especially excepted to as a “relique of popery” by Dr. John Reynolds, the spokesman of the Puritans, was the ring in marriage. (Neal’s Hist. of Puritans, vol. ii. p. 42.) Among the reasons urged against its use I have not elsewhere found the “diabolical circle” argument. It seems rather to have been associated in the Puritan mind with the Romish traditions. (Jones’s Finger-Ring Lore, pp. 288-90.) This count, in Morton’s indictment, was based on good grounds. “In the Weddings of [early] New England the ring makes none of the ceremonies.” (Mather’s Ratio Disciplinæ, p. 116.)
[551] This refers to churching practice of the English Church. At the Hampton Court conference, referred to in the preceding note, another of the “reliques of popery,” specifically excepted to by Dr. Reynolds, was “the churching of women by the name of purification.”
[552] This count in the indictment was well laid. The children of the non-communicants in early New England could not be baptized; though they might be if either one of the parents was a member of the church. At a later period this became one of the leading causes of political agitation in the colony, and is referred to in the Dr. Robert Childs petition of 1646. In 1670 from four fifths to five sixths of the adult male inhabitants of Massachusetts were without the franchise, as being non-communicants. (Lechford’s Plaine Dealing, pp. 47, 48, 151; Mem. Hist. of Boston, vol. i. p. 156; Palfrey, vol. ii. p. 8, vol. iii. p. 41.)
[554] This was the favorite epithet employed by the early reformers in referring to the Mass. Calvin called it “an execrable idol;” Hooper, “a wicked idol.” Bradford—not Governor William, but John, the Smithfield martyr of Queen Mary’s time—terms it an “abominable idol of bread;” and again, “the horriblest and most detestable device that ever the devil brought out by man.” Bland, rector of Adishan, repeated the familiar figure, calling it a “most blasphemous idol;” and Latimer improved upon this by adding the words, “full of idolatry, blasphemy, sacrilege against God and the dear sacrifice of His Christ.” (Blunt’s Reformation of the Church of Eng., vol. ii. pp. 399-402.) The derivation of the Book of Common Prayer, in many of its parts, from the Missal was unmistakable; and naturally the next race of religious reformers applied to the former the same earnest epithets of theological dissent which had before been applied to the latter. Accordingly, in Barrowe’s Brief Discovery of the False Church, we find the Book of Common Prayer referred to as “a detestable idol, ... old rotten stuff ... abstracted out of the pope’s blasphemous mass-book, ... an abominable and loathsome sacrifice in the sight of God, even as a dead dog.” Barrowe was one of the three Separatist martyrs, and as such held in deepest veneration at Plymouth. (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., pp. 427-34.) The Book of Common Prayer was therefore undoubtedly looked upon and referred to at Plymouth as Morton says. Indeed, the Lyford schism was in some degree due to its use. (Bradford, p. 181.) That it was, in the early days, also so looked upon and so referred to at Salem and at Boston, is not clear. It is true that in 1629 it was again the cause of the Browne dissension at Salem (Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 287), in consequence of which Skelton and Higginson both declared openly “that they came away from the Common Prayer and ceremonies, ... and therefore, being in a place where they might have their liberty, they neither could nor would use them, because they judged the imposition of these things to be sinful corruptions in the worship of God.” (Morton’s Memorial, p. 147.) The Puritans of Boston, however, were not Separatists, and it is open to question whether they at first felt towards the Common Prayer as the Plymouth people felt towards it, and as Morton says. In 1640 Governor Winthrop, it is true, noted it as a thing worthy of observation that his son “having many books in a chamber where there was corn of divers sorts, had among them one wherein the Greek testament, the psalms and the common prayer were bound together. He found the common prayer eaten with mice, every leaf of it, and not any of the two other touched, nor any other of his books, though they were above a thousand.” (Winthrop, vol. ii. p. *20.) When Governor Winthrop tried and sentenced Morton, however, he was anxious to preserve his connection with the Church of England, and it is very doubtful whether he then looked upon its Book of Prayer as “an idol.” (Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., vol. xviii. p. 296.)
As one count in Morton’s indictment of the people of New England, that in the text now under consideration was not only sufficiently well founded, but it was peculiarly calculated to excite Archbishop Laud’s anger. It is unnecessary to say that he was the special champion of the Church of England ritual. To enforce exact conformity to it he regarded as his mission. When the ships loaded with emigrants for New England were, in March, 1634, stopped in the Thames by order of the Privy Council, they were not allowed to proceed on their voyage until the masters bound themselves to have the Book of Common Prayer used at morning and evening service during the voyage. (Council Register, Feb. 21, 28, 1634; Gardiner’s Charles I., vol. ii. p. 23.) This was Laud’s act, and it is more than probable that he was as much influenced by Morton on that occasion as he was subsequently in the matter of Winslow’s imprisonment for having performed the marriage ceremony. (Supra, [69], [93].)