A handbook of Freethought

by Unknown

PROTESTANT PERSECUTIONS.

William Cobbett on the English Church.—A Letter to Lord Tenderten, Lord Chief Justice of England, April 6, 1829.

“My Lord: I have read the report of your lordship’s speech made on the 4th inst. on the second reading of the Catholic bill; and there is one passage of it on which I think it my duty thus publicly to remark. The passage to which I allude relates to the character of the law established church, and also to the probable fate that will, in consequence of this bill, attend her in Ireland.

“First, then, my lord, let us take your proposition ‘that there in no church so tolerant as this.’ I am sure your lordship has never read her history; I am sure you have not. If you had you never would have uttered these words. Not being content to deal in general terms, I will not say she has been, and was from the outset, the most intolerant church that the world ever saw; that she started at first armed with halters, ripping-knives, axes, and racks; that her footsteps were marked with blood, while her back bent under the plunder of her innumerable innocent victims; and that for refinement in cruelty and extent of rapacity she never had an equal, whether corporate or sole. I will not thus speak of her in general terms, but I will lay before your lordship some historical facts, to make good that contradiction which I have given to your words. I assert that this law-church is the most intolerant church I ever read or heard of; and this assertion I now proceed to make good.

“This church began to exist in 1547, and in the reign of Edward VI. Until now the religion of the country had been for several years, under the tyrant Henry VIII., a sort of mongrel; but now it became wholly Protestant by law. The Articles of Religion and the Common Prayer-book were now drawn up, and were established by acts of Parliament. The Catholic altars were pulled down in all the churches; the priests, on pain of ouster and fine, were compelled to teach the new religion, that is to say, to be apostates; and the people who had been born and bred Catholics were not only punished if they heard mass, but were also punished if they did not go to hear the new parsons; that is to say, if they refused to become apostates. The people, smarting under this tyranny, rose in insurrection in several parts, and, indeed, all over the country. They complained that they had been robbed of their religion, and of the relief to the poor which the old church gave; and they demanded that the mass and the monasteries should be restored, and that the priests should not be allowed to marry. And how were they answered? The bullet and bayonet at the hands of German troops slaughtered a part, caused another part to be imprisoned and flogged, and the remainder to submit, outwardly, at least, to the law-church. And now mark this tolerant and merciful church. Many of the old monastics and priests, who had been expelled from their convents and livings, were compelled to beg their bread about the country, and thus found subsistence among the pious Catholics. This was an eye-sore to the law-church, who deemed the very existence of these men, who refused to apostatize, a libel on her. Therefore, in company, actually in company with the law that founded the new church came forth a law to punish beggars, by burning them in the face with a red-hot iron and by making them slaves for two years, with power in their masters to make them wear an iron collar. Your lordship must have read this act of Parliament, passed in the first year of the first Protestant reign, and coming forth in company with the Common Prayer-book. This was tolerant work, to be sure; and fine proof we have here of this church being ‘favorable to civil and religious liberty.’ Not content with stripping these faithful Catholic priests of their livings; not content with turning them out upon the wide world; this tolerant church must cause them to perish with hunger or be branded slaves.

“Such was the tolerant spirit of this church when she was young. As to her burnings under Cranmer (who made the prayer book), they are hardly worthy of particular notice, when we have before us the sweeping cruelties of this first Protestant reign, during which, short as it was, the people of England suffered so much that the suffering actually thinned their numbers; it was a people partly destroyed, and that, too, in the space of about six years; and this is acknowledged even in acts of Parliament of that day. But this law-church was established in reality during the reign of Elizabeth, which lasted forty-five years; that is, from 1558 to 1603; and though this church has always kept up its character, even to the present day, its deeds during this long reign are the most remarkable.

“Elizabeth established what she called ‘a court of high commission’ consisting chiefly of bishops of your lordship’s ‘most tolerant church,’ in order to punish all who did not conform to her religious creed, she being ‘the head of the church.’ This commission was empowered to have control over the ‘opinions’ of all men, and to punish all men according to their ‘discretion, short of death.’ They had power to extort evidence by prison or the rack. They had power to compel a man (on oath) to ‘reveal his thoughts,’ and to ‘accuse his friend, brother, parent, wife, or child;’ and this, too, on ‘pain of death.’ These monsters, in order to ‘discover priests,’ and to crush the old religion, ‘fined, imprisoned, racked,’ and did such things as would have made Nero shudder to think of. They sent hundreds to the rack in order to get from them confessions, ‘on which confession many of them were put to death.’

“I have not room to make even an enumeration of the deeds of religious persecution during this long and ‘tolerant’ reign; but I will state a few of them:

1. It was death to make a new Catholic priest within the kingdom.

2. It was death for a Catholic priest to come into the kingdom from abroad.