“Dear Cousin,— ... You know that we having voted the King, before Christmas, four hundred thousand pounds, and no more; and enquiring severely into ill management, and being ready to adjourn ourselves till February, his Majesty, fortified by some undertakers of the meanest of our House, threw up all as nothing, and prorogued us from the first of December till the fourteenth of February. All that interval there was great and numerous caballing among the courtiers. The King also all the while examined at council the reports from the Commissioners of Accounts, where they were continually discountenanced, and treated rather as offenders than judges. In this posture we met, and the King, being exceedingly necessitous for money, spoke to us stylo minaci et imperatorio; and told us the inconveniences which would fall on the nation by want of a supply, should not ly at his door; that we must not revive any discord betwixt the Lords and us; that he himself had examined the accounts, and found every penny to have been employed in the war; and he recommended the Scotch union. The Garroway party appeared with the usual vigour, but the country gentlemen appeared not in their true number the first day: so, for want of seven voices, the first blow was against them. When we began to talk of the Lords, the King sent for us alone, and recommended a rasure of all proceedings. The same thing you know that we proposed at first. We presently ordered it, and went to tell him so the same day, and to thank him. At coming down, (a pretty ridiculous thing!) Sir Thomas Clifford carryed Speaker and Mace, and all members there, into the King’s cellar, to drink his health. The King sent to the Lords more peremptoryly, and they, with much grumbling, agreed to the rasure. When the Commissioners of Accounts came before us, sometimes we heard them pro formâ, but all falls to dirt. The terrible Bill against Conventicles is sent up to the Lords; and we and the Lords, as to the Scotch busyness, have desired the King to name English Commissioners to treat, but nothing they do to be valid, but on a report to Parliament, and an act to confirm. We are now, as we think, within a week of rising. They are making mighty alterations in the Conventicle Bill (which, as we sent up, is the quintessence of arbitrary malice), and sit whole days, and yet proceed but by inches, and will, at the end, probably affix a Scotch clause of the King’s power in externals. So the fate of the Bill is uncertain, but must probably pass, being the price of money. The King told some eminent citizens, who applyed to him against it, that they must address themselves to the Houses, that he must not disoblige his friends; and if it had been in the power of their friends, he had gone without money. There is a Bill in the Lords to encourage people to buy all the King’s fee-farm rents; so he is resolved once more to have money enough in his pocket, and live on the common for the future. The great Bill begun in the Lords, and which makes more ado than ever any Act in this Parliament did, is for enabling Lord Ros, long since divorced in the spiritual court, and his children declared illegitimate by Act of Parliament, to marry again. Anglesey and Ashly, who study and know their interests as well as any gentlemen at court, and whose sons have marryed two sisters of Ros, inheritrixes if he has no issue, yet they also drive on the Bill with the greatest vigour. The King is for the Bill: the Duke of York, and all the Papist Lords, and all the Bishops, except Cosins, Reynolds, and Wilkins, are against it. They sat all Thursday last, without once rising, till almost ten at night, in most solemn and memorable debate, whether it should be read the second time, or thrown out. At last, at the question, there were forty-two persons and six proxys against it, and forty-one persons and fifteen proxys for it. If it had not gone for it, the Lord Arlington had a power in his pocket from the King to have nulled the proxys, if it had been to the purpose. It was read the second time yesterday, and, on a long debate whether it should be committed, it went for the Bill by twelve odds, in persons and proxys. The Duke of York, the bishops, and the rest of the party, have entered their protests, on the first day’s debate, against it. Is not this fine work? This Bill must come down to us. It is my opinion that Lauderdale at one ear talks to the King of Monmouth, and Buckingham at the other of a new Queen. It is also my opinion that the King was never since his coming in, nay, all things considered, no King since the Conquest, so absolutely powerful at home, as he is at the present; nor any Parliament, or places, so certainly and constantly supplyed with men of the same temper. In such a conjuncture, dear Will, what probability is there of my doing any thing to the purpose? The King would needs take the Duke of Albemarle out of his son’s hand to bury him at his own charges. It is almost three months, and he yet lys in the dark unburyed, and no talk of him. He left twelve thousand pounds a year, and near two hundred thousand pounds in money. His wife dyed some twenty days after him; she layed in state, and was buryed, at her son’s expence, in Queen Elizabeth’s Chapel. And now,
Fortunam ex aliis.
“March 21, 1670.”
This remarkable letter lets us into many secrets.
The Conventicle Bill is “the price of money.” The king’s interest in the Roos divorce case was believed to be due to his own desire to be quit of a barren and deserted wife.1 Our most religious king had nineteen bastards, but no lawful issue. It may seem strange that so high a churchman as Bishop Cosin should have taken the view he did, but Cosin had a strong dash of the layman in his constitution, and was always an advocate of divorce, with permission to re-marry, in cases of adultery.
A further and amending Bill for rebuilding the city was before the House—one of eighty-four clauses, “the longest Bill, perhaps, that ever past in Parliament,” says Marvell; but the Roos Divorce Bill and the Conventicle Bill proved so exciting in the House of Lords that they had little time for anything else. Union with Scotland, much desired by the king, but regarded with great suspicion by all Parliamentarians, fell flat, though Commissioners were appointed.
The Conventicle Bill passed the Lords, who tagged on to it a proviso Marvell refers to in his next letter, which the Lower House somewhat modified by the omission of certain words. Lord Roos was allowed to re-marry. The big London Bill got through.
Another private letter of Marvell’s, of this date, is worth reading:—
“Dearest Will,—I wrote to you two letters, and payd for them from the posthouse here at Westminster; to which I have had no answer. Perhaps they miscarryed. I sent on an answer to the only letter I received from Bourdeaux, and having put it into Mr. Nelthorp’s hand, I doubt not but it came to your’s. To proceed. The same day (March 26th letter) my letter bore date, there was an extraordinary thing done. The King, about ten o’clock, took boat, with Lauderdale only, and two ordinary attendants, and rowed awhile as towards the bridge, and soon turned back to the Parliament stairs, and so went up into the House of Lords, and took his seat. Almost all of them were amazed, but all seemed so; and the Duke of York especially was very much surprized. Being sat, he told them it was a privilege he claimed from his ancestors to be present at their deliberations. That therefore, they should not, for his coming, interrupt their debates, but proceed, and be covered. They did so. It is true that this has been done long ago, but it is now so old, that it is new, and so disused, that at any other but so bewitched a time as this, it would have been looked on as an high usurpation, and breach of privilege. He indeed sat still, for the most part, and interposed very little; sometimes a word or two. But the most discerning opinion was, that he did herein as he rowed for having had his face first to the Conventicle Bill, he turned short to the Lord Ross’s. So that, indeed, it is credible, the King, in prospect of diminishing the Duke of York’s influence in the Lord’s House, in this, or any future matter, resolved, and wisely enough at present, to weigh up and lighten the Duke’s efficacy, by coming himself in person. After three or four days continuance, the Lords were very well used to the King’s presence, and sent the Lord Steward and Lord Chamberlain, to him, when they might wait, as an House on him, to render their humble thanks for the honour he did them. The hour was appointed them, and they thanked him, and he took it well. So this matter, of such importance on all great occasions, seems riveted to them, and us, for the future, and to all posterity. Now the Lord Ross’s Bill came in order to another debate, and the King present. Nevertheless the debate lasted an entire day; and it passed by very few voices. The King has ever since continued his session among them, and says it is better than going to a play. In this session the Lords sent down to us a proviso1 for the King, that would have restored him to all civil or ecclesiastical prerogatives which his ancestors had enjoyed at any time since the Conquest. There was never so compendious a piece of absolute universal tyranny. But the Commons made them ashamed of it, and retrenched it. The Parliament was never embarrassed, beyond recovery. We are all venal cowards, except some few. What plots of State will go on this interval I know not. There is a new set of justices of peace framing through the whole kingdom. The governing cabal, since Ross’s busyness, are Buckingham, Lauderdale, Ashly, Orrery, and Trevor. Not but the other cabal too have seemingly sometimes their turn. Madam,1 our King’s sister, during the King of France’s progress in Flanders, is to come as far as Canterbury. There will doubtless be family counsels then. Some talk of a French Queen to be then invented for our King. Some talk of a sister of Denmark; others of a good virtuous Protestant here at home. The King disavows it; yet he has sayed in publick, he knew not why a woman may not be divorced for barrenness, as a man for impotency. The Lord Barclay went on Monday last for Ireland, the King to Newmarket. God keep, and increase you, in all things.—Yours, etc.
“April 14, 1670.”
77:1 Clarendon’s Life, vol. ii. p. 442.
79:1 The clerks, however, only counted the members who voted, and kept no record of their names. Mr. Gladstone remembered the alteration being made in 1836, and how unpopular it was. The change was a greater revolution than the Reform Bill. See The Unreformed House of Commons by Edward Posselt, vol. i. p. 587.
Without a single Bankes.”—Praed.
82:1 See Dr. Halley’s Lancashire—its Puritanism and Nonconformity, vol. ii. pp. 1-140, a most informing book.
88:1 Clarendon’s History, vol. vi. p. 249.
90:1 An Historical Poem.—Grosart, vol. i. p. 343.
92:1 Macaulay’s History, vol. i. p. 154.
95:1 I am acquainted with the romantic story which would have us believe that Lady Fauconberg, foretelling the time to come, had caused some other body than her father’s to be buried in the Abbey (see Notes and Queries, 5th October 1878, and Waylen’s House of Cromwell, p. 341).
96:1 See The Unreformed House of Commons, by Edward Porritt, vol. i. p. 51. Marvell’s old enemy, Parker, Bishop of Oxford, in his History of his own Time, composed after Marvell’s death, reviles his dead antagonist for having taken this payment which, the bishop says, was made by a custom which “had a long time been antiquated and out of date.” “Gentlemen,” says the bishop, “despised so vile a stipend,” yet Marvell required it “for the sake of a bare subsistence, although in this mean poverty he was nevertheless haughty and insolent.” In Parker’s opinion poor men should be humble.
98:1 Parliamentary History, vol. iv., App. No. III.
104:1 Mr. Gladstone’s testimony is that no real improvement was effected until within the period of his own memory. ‘Our services were probably without a parallel in the world for their debasement.’ (See Gleanings, vi. p. 119.)
106:1 There is a copy in the library of the Athenæum, London: “A Relation of Three Embassies from his sacred Majestie Charles ii. to the Great Duke of Muscovie, the King of Sweden, and the King of Denmark. Performed by the Right Hoble the Earle of Carlisle in the Years 1663 and 1664. Written by an Attendant on the Embassies, and published with his Lordship’s approbation. London. Printed for John Starkie at the Miter in Fleet Street, near Temple Barr, 1669.”
109:1 “I have mentioned the dignity of his manners.... He was at his very best on occasion of Durbars, investitures, and the like.... It irritated him to see men giggling or jeering instead of acting their parts properly.”—Life of Lord Dufferin, vol. ii. p. 317.
116:1 Hist. MSS. Com., Portland Papers, vol. iii. p. 296.
116:2 See above, vol. iii. p. 294.
118:1 Sir Walter Besant doubted this. See his London.
123:1 Mr. Goldwin Smith says this was the first pitched battle between Protection and Free Trade in England.—The United Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 25.
126:1 Being curious to discover whether no “property” man raised his voice against these measures, I turned to that true “home of lost causes,” the Protests of the House of Lords; and there, sure enough, I found one solitary peer, Henry Carey, Earl of Dover, entering his dissent to both Bills—to the Judicature Bill because of the unlimited power given to the judges, to the Rebuilding Bill because of the exorbitant powers entrusted to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen to give away or dispose of the property of landlords.
128:1 Clarendon’s Life, vol. iii. p. 796.
129:1 Clarendon’s Life, vol. iii. p. 798.
129:2 “Instructions to a Painter for the drawing of the Posture and Progress of His Majesty’s forces at Sea under the command of His Highness Royal: together with the Battel and Victory obtained over the Dutch, June 3, 1665.”—Waller’s Works, 1730, p. 161.
130:1 Sir John Denham’s wife was reported to have been poisoned by a dish of chocolate, at the bidding of the Duchess of York.
131:1 Clarendon’s eldest son.
139:1 It is disconcerting to find Evelyn recording this, his last visit to Clarendon, in his Diary under date of the 9th December, by which time the late Chancellor was in Rouen. One likes notes in a diary to be made contemporaneously and not “written-up” afterwards. Evelyn makes the same kind of mistake about Cromwell’s funeral, misdating it a month.
140:1 The duke died in 1670 and had a magnificent funeral on the 30th of April. See Hist. MSS. Com., Duke of Portland’s Papers, vol. iii. p. 314. His laundress-Duchess did not long survive him.
141:1 Afterwards Lord Dartmouth, a great friend of James the Second, but one who played a dubious part at the Revolution.
145:1 The poet Waller was one of the wittiest speakers the House of Commons has ever known.
148:1 For a full account of this remarkable case, see Clarendon’s Life, iii. 733-9.
149:1 “Provided, etc., that neither this Act nor anything therein contained shall extend to invalidate or avoid his Majesty’s supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs [or to destroy any of his Majesty’s rights powers or prerogatives belonging to the Imperial Crown of this realm or at any time exercised by himself or any of his predecessors Kings or Queens of England] but that his Majesty his heirs and successors may from time to time and at all times hereafter exercise and enjoy all such powers and authorities aforesaid as fully and amply as himself or any of his predecessors have or might have done the same anything in this Act (or any other law statute or usage to the contrary) notwithstanding.” The words in brackets were rejected by the Commons. See Parliamentary History, iv. 446-7.
150:1 Madame’s business is now well known. The secret Treaty of Dover was the result of this visit.
CHAPTER V
“THE REHEARSAL TRANSPROSED”
It is never easy for ecclesiastical controversy to force its way into literature. The importance of the theme will be questioned by few. The ability displayed in its illumination can be denied by none. It is the temper that usually spoils all. A collection in any way approaching completeness, of the pamphlets this contention has produced in England, would contain tens of thousands of volumes; full of curious learning and anecdotes, of wide reading and conjecture, of shrewdness and wit; yet these books are certainly the last we would seek to save from fire or water. Could they be piled into scales of moral measurement a single copy of the Imitatio, of the Holy Dying, of the Saint’s Rest, would outweigh them all. Man may not be a religious animal, but he recognises and venerates the spirit of religion whenever he perceives it, and it is a spirit which is apt to evaporate amidst the strife of rival wits. Who can doubt the sincerity of Milton, when he exclaimed with the sad prophet Jeremy, “Woe is me my Mother that thou hast borne me a man of strife and contention.”
Marvell’s chief prose work, the two parts of The Rehearsal Transprosed, is a very long pamphlet indeed, composed by way of reply to certain publications of Samuel Parker, afterwards Bishop of Oxford. Controversially Marvell’s book was a great success.1 It amused the king, delighted the wits, was welcomed, if not read, by the pious folk whose side it espoused, whilst its literary excellence was sufficient to win, in after years, the critical approval of Swift, whose style, though emphatically his own, bears traces of its master having given, I will not say his days and nights, but certainly some profitable hours, to the study of Marvell’s prose.
Biographers of controversialists seldom do justice to the other side. Possibly they do not read it, and Parker has been severely handled by my predecessors. He was not an honour to his profession, being, perhaps, as good or as bad a representative of the seamy side of State Churchism as there is to be found. He was the son of a Puritan father, and whilst at Wadham lived by rule, fasting and praying. He took his degree in the early part of 1659, and migrating to Trinity came under the influence of Dr. Bathurst, then Senior Fellow, to whom, so he says in one of his dedications, “I owe my first rescue from the chains and fetters of an unhappy education.”2 Anything Parker did he did completely, and we next hear of him in London in 1665, a nobleman’s chaplain, setting the table in a roar by making fun of his former friends, “a mimical way of drolling upon the puritans.” “He followed the town-life, haunted the best companies and, to polish himself from any pedantic roughness, he read and saw the plays with much care and more preparing than most of the auditory.” In 1667 the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Sheldon, a very mundane person indeed, made Parker his chaplain, and three years later Archdeacon of Canterbury. He reached many preferments, so that, says Marvell, “his head swell’d like any bladder with wind and vapour.” He had an active pen and a considerable range of subject. In 1670 he produced “A Discourse of Ecclesiastical Politie wherein the Authority of the Civil Magistrate over the Consciences of Subjects in Matters of External Religion is Asserted; The Mischiefs and Inconveniences of Toleration are represented and all Pretenses pleaded in behalf of Liberty of Conscience are fully answered.” Some one instantly took up the cudgels in a pamphlet entitled Insolence and Impudence Triumphant, and the famous Dr. Owen also protested in Truth and Innocence Vindicated. Parker replied to Owen in A Defence and Continuation of Ecclesiastical Politie, and in the following year, 1672, reprinted a treatise of Bishop Bramholl’s with a preface “shewing what grounds there are of Fears and Jealousies of Popery.”
This was the state of the controversy when Marvell entered upon it with his Rehearsal Transprosed, a fantastic title he borrowed for no very good reasons from the farce of the hour, and a very good farce too, the Duke of Buckingham’s Rehearsal, which was performed for the first time at the Theatre Royal on the 7th of November 1671, and printed early in 1672. Most of us have read Sheridan’s Critic before we read Buckingham’s Rehearsal, which is not the way to do justice to the earlier piece. It is a matter of literary tradition that the duke had much help in the composition of a farce it took ten years to make. Butler, Sprat, and Clifford, the Master of Charterhouse, are said to be co-authors. However this may be, the piece was a great success, and both Marvell and Parker, I have no doubt, greatly enjoyed it, but I cannot think the former was wise to stuff his plea for Liberty of Conscience so full as he did with the details of a farce. His doing so should, at all events, acquit him of the charge of being a sour Puritan. In the Rehearsal Bayes (Dryden), who is turned by Sheridan in his adaptation of the piece into Mr. Puff, is made to produce out of his pocket his book of Drama Commonplaces, and the play proceeds (Johnson and Smith being Sheridan’s Dangle and Sneer):
“Johnson. Drama Commonplaces! pray what’s that?
Bayes. Why, Sir, some certain helps, that we men of Art have found it convenient to make use of.
Johnson. How, Sir, help for Wit?
Bayes. I, Sir, that’s my position. And I do here averr, that no man yet the Sun e’er shone upon, has parts sufficient to furnish out a Stage, except it be with the help of these my rules.
Johnson. What are those Rules, I pray?
Bayes. Why, Sir, my first Rule is the Rule of Transversion, or Regula Duplex, changing Verse into Prose, or Prose into Verse, alternative as you please.
Smith. How’s that, Sir, by a Rule, I pray?
Bayes. Why, thus, Sir; nothing more easy when understood: I take a Book in my hand, either at home, or elsewhere, for that’s all one, if there be any Wit in ’t, as there is no Book but has some, I Transverse it; that is, if it be Prose, put it into Verse (but that takes up some time), if it be Verse, put it into Prose.
Johnson. Methinks, Mr. Bayes, that putting Verse into Prose should be called Transprosing.
Bayes. By my troth, a very good Notion, and hereafter it shall be so.”
Marvell must be taken to have meant by his title that he saw some resemblance between Parker and Bayes, and, indeed, he says he does, and gives that as one of his excuses for calling Parker Bayes all through:—
“But before I commit myself to the dangerous depths of his Discourse which I am now upon the brink of, I would with his leave, make a motion; that instead of Author I may henceforth indifferently well call him Mr. Bayes as oft as I shall see occasion. And that first because he has no name, or at least will not own it, though he himself writes under the greatest security, and gives us the first letters of other men’s names before he be asked them. Secondly, because he is, I perceive, a lover of elegancy of style and can endure no man’s tautologies but his own; and therefore I would not distaste him with too frequent repetition of one word. But chiefly because Mr. Bayes and he do very much symbolise, in their understandings, in their expressions, in their humour, in their contempt and quarrelling of all others, though of their own profession.”
But justice must be done even to Parker before handing him over to the Tormentor. What were his positions? He was a coarse-fibred, essentially irreligious fellow, the accredited author of the reply to the question “What is the best body of Divinity?” “That which would help a man to keep a Coach and six horses,” but he is a lucid and vigorous writer, knowing very well that he had to steer his ship through a narrow and dangerous channel, avoiding Hobbism on the one side and tender consciences on the other. Each generation of State Churchmen has the same task. The channel remains to-day just as it ever did, with Scylla and Charybdis presiding over their rocks as of old. Hobbes’s Leviathan appeared in 1651, and in 1670 both his philosophy and his statecraft were fashionable doctrine. All really pious people called Hobbes an Atheist. Technically he was nothing of the sort, but it matters little what he was technically, since no plain man who can read can doubt that Hobbes’s enthronement of the State was the dethronement of God:—
“Seeing then that in every Christian commonwealth the civil sovereign is the supreme factor to whose charge the whole flock of his subjects is commuted, and consequently that it is by his authority that all other pastors are made and have power to teach and perform all other pastoral offices, it followeth also that it is from the civil sovereign that all other pastors derive their right of teaching, preaching and other functions pertaining to that office, and that they are but his ministers in the same way as the magistrates of towns, judges in Court of Justice and commanders of assizes are all but ministers of him that is the magistrate of the whole commonwealth, judge of all causes and commander of the whole militia, which is always the Civil Sovereign. And the reason hereof is not because they that teach, but because they that are to learn, are his subjects.”—(The Leviathan, Hobbes’s English Works (Molesworth’s Edition), vol. iii. p. 539.)
Hobbes shirks nothing, and asks himself the question, What if a king, or a senate or other sovereign person forbid us to believe in Christ? The answer given is, “such forbidding is of no effect; because belief and unbelief never follow men’s commands.” But suppose “we be commanded by our lawful prince to say with our tongue we believe not, must we obey such command?” Here Hobbes a little hesitates to say outright “Yes, you must”; but he does say “whatsoever a subject is compelled to do in obedience to his own Sovereign, and doth it not in order to his own mind, but in order to the laws of his country, that action is not his, but his Sovereign’s—nor is it that he in this case denieth Christ before men, but his Governor and the law of his country.” Hobbes then puts the case of a Mahomedan subject of a Christian Commonwealth who is required under pain of death to be present at the Divine Service of the Christian Church—what is he to do? If, says Hobbes, you say he ought to die, then you authorise all private men to disobey their princes in maintenance of their religion, true or false, and if you say the Mahomedan ought to obey, you admit Hobbes’s proposition and ought to consent to be yourself bound by it. (See Hobbes’s English Works, iii. 493.)
The Church of England, though anxious both to support the king and suppress the Dissenters, could not stomach Hobbes; but if it could not, how was it to deal with Hobbes’s question, “if it is ever right to disobey your lawful prince, who is to determine when it is right?”
Parker seeks to grapple with this difficulty. He disowns Hobbes.
“When men have once swallowed this principle, that Mankind is free from all obligations antecedent to the laws of the Commonwealth, and that the Will of the Sovereign Power is the only measure of Good and Evil, they proceed suitably to its consequences to believe that no Religion can obtain the force of law till it is established as such by supreme authority, that the Holy Scriptures were not laws to any man till they were enjoyn’d by the Christian Magistrate, and that if the Sovereign Power would declare the Alcoran to be Canonical Scripture, it would be as much the Word of God as the Four Gospels. (See Hobbes, vol. iii. p. 366.) So that all Religions are in reality nothing but Cheats and impostures to awe the common people to obedience. And therefore although Princes may wisely make use of the foibles of Religion to serve their own turns upon the silly multitude, yet ’tis below their wisdom to be seriously concerned themselves for such fooleries.” (Parker’s Ecc. Politie, p. 137.)
As against this fashionable Hobbism, Parker pleads Conscience.
“When anything that is apparently and intrinsically evil is the Matter of a Human Law, whether it be of a Civil or Ecclesiastical concern, here God is to be obeyed rather than Man.”
He forcibly adds:—
“Those who would take off from the Consciences of Men all obligations antecedent to those of Human Laws, instead of making the power of Princes Supreme, Absolute and Uncontrollable, they utterly enervate all their authority, and set their subjects at perfect liberty from all their commands. For if we once remove all the antecedent obligations of Conscience and Religion, Men will no further be bound to submit to their laws than only as themselves shall see convenient, and if they are under no other restraint it will be their wisdom to rebel as oft as it is their interest.” (Ecc. Politie, pp. 112-113.)
But though when dealing with Hobbes, Parker thinks fit to assert the claims of conscience so strongly, when he has to grapple with those who, like the immortal author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, “devilishly and perniciously abstained from coming to Church,” and upheld “unlawful Meetings and Conventicles,” his tone alters, and it is hard to distinguish his position from that of the philosopher of Malmesbury.
Parker’s argument briefly stated, and as much as possible in his own vigorous language, comes to this:
There is and always must be a competition between the prerogative of the Prince or State and that of Conscience, which on this occasion is defined as “every private man’s own judgment and persuasion of things.” “Do subjects rebel against their Sovereign? ’Tis Conscience that takes up arms. Do they murder Kings? ’Tis under the conduct of Conscience. Do they separate from the communion of the Church? ’Tis Conscience that is the Schismatick. Everything that a man has a mind to is his Conscience.” (Ecc. Politie, p. 6.)
How is this competition to be resolved? Parker answers in exact language which would have met with John Austin’s warm approval.
“The Supreme Government of every Commonwealth, wherever it is lodged, must of necessity be universal, absolute and uncontrollable. For if it be limited, it may be controlled, but ’tis a thick and palpable contradiction to call such a power supreme in that whatever controls it must as to that case be its Superior. And therefore affairs of Religion being so strongly influential upon affairs of State, they must be as uncontrollably subject to the Supreme Power as all other Civil concerns.” (Ecc. Politie, p. 27.)
If the magistrate may make penal laws against swearing and blasphemy, why not as to rites and ceremonies of public worship? (39.) Devotion towards God is a virtue akin to gratitude to man; religion is a branch of morality. The Puritans’ talk about grace is a mere imposture, (76) which extracts from Parker vehement language. What is there to make such a fuss about? he cries. Why cannot you come to Church? You are left free to think what you like. Your secret thoughts are your own, but living as you do in society, and knowing as you must how, unless the law interferes, “every opinion must make a sect, and every sect a faction, and every faction when it is able, a war, and every war is the cause of God, and the cause of God can never be prosecuted with too much violence” (16), why cannot you conform to a form of worship which, though it does not profess to be prescribed in all particulars, contains nothing actually forbidden in the Scriptures? What authority have Dissenters for singing psalms in metre? “Where has our Saviour or his Apostles enjoined a directory for public worship? What Scripture command is there for the three significant ceremonies of the Solemn League and Covenant, viz. that the whole congregation should take it (1) uncovered, (2) standing, (3) with their right hand lift up bare” (184), and so on.
In answer to the objection that the civil magistrate might establish a worship in its own nature sinful and sensual, Parker replies it is not in the least likely, and the risk must be run. “Our enquiry is to find out the best way of settling the world that the state of things admit of—if indeed mankind were infallible, this controversy were at an end, but seeing that all men are liable to errors and mistakes, and seeing that there is an absolute necessity of a supreme power in all public affairs, our question (I say) is, What is the most prudent and expedient way of settling them, not that possibly might be, but that really is. And this (as I have already sufficiently proved) is to devolve their management on the supreme civil power which, though it may be imperfect and liable to errors and mistakes, yet ’tis the least so, and is a much better way to attain public peace and tranquillity than if they were left to the ignorance and folly of every private man” (212).
I now feel that at least I have done Parker full justice, but as so far I have hardly given an example of his familiar style, I must find room for two or three final quotations. The thing Parker hated most in the world was a Tender Conscience. He protests against the weakness which is content with passing penal laws, but does not see them carried out for fear of wounding these trumpery tender consciences. “Most men’s minds or consciences are weak, silly and ignorant things, acted by fond and absurd principles and imposed upon by their vices and their passions.” (7.) “However, if the obligation of laws must yield to that of a tender conscience, how impregnably is every man that has a mind to disobey armed against all the commands of his superiors. No authority shall be able to govern him farther than he himself pleases, and if he dislike the law he is sufficiently excused (268). A weak conscience is the product of a weak understanding, and he is a very subtil man that can find the difference between a tender head and a tender conscience (269). It is a glorious thing to suffer for a tender conscience, and therefore it is easy and natural for some people to affect some little scruples against the commands of authority, thereby to make themselves obnoxious to some little penalties, and then what godly men are they that are so ready to be punished for a good conscience” (278). “The voice of the publick law cannot but drown the uncertain whispers of a tender conscience; all its scruples are hushed and silenced by the commands of authority. It dares not whimper when that forbids, and the nod of a prince awes it into silence and submission. But if they dare to murmur, and their proud stomachs will swell against the rebukes of their superiors, then there is no remedy but the rod and correction. They must be chastised out of their peevishness and lashed into obedience (305). The doctor concludes his treatise with the words always dear to men of fluctuating opinions, ‘What I have written, I have written’” (326).
Whilst Parker was writing this book in his snug quarters in the Archbishop’s palace at Lambeth, Bunyan was in prison in Bedford for refusing to take the communion on his knees in his parish church; and Dr. Manton, who had been offered the Deanery of Rochester, was in the Gate House Prison under the Five Mile Act.
The first part of The Rehearsal Transprosed, though its sub-title is “Animadversions upon a late book intituled a Preface shewing what grounds there are of Fears and Jealousies of Popery,” deals after Marvell’s own fashion with all three of Parker’s books, the Ecclesiastical Politie, the Bramhall Preface, and the Defence of the Ecclesiastical Politie. It is by no means so easy to give a fair notion of the Rehearsal Transprosed in a short compass, as it was of Parker’s line of argument. The parson wrote more closely than the Member of Parliament. I cannot give a better description of Marvell’s method than in Parker’s own words in his preface to his Reproof to the Rehearsal Transprosed, which appeared in 1673 and gave rise to Marvell’s second part:—
“When,” writes Parker, “I first condemned myself to the drudgery of this Reply, I intended nothing but a serious prosecution of my Argument, and to let the World see that it is not reading Histories or Plays or Gazettes, nor going on pilgrimage to Geneva, nor learning French and Italian, nor passing the Alps, nor being a cunning Gamester that can qualify a man to discourse of Conscience and Ecclesiastical Policy; in that it is not capping our Argument with a story that will answer it, nor clapping an apothegm upon an assertion that will prove it, nor stringing up Proverbs and Similitudes upon one another that will make up a Coherent Discourse.”
Allowing for bias this is no unfair account of Marvell’s method, and it was just because this was Marvell’s method that he succeeded so well in amusing the king and in pleasing the town, and that he may still be read by those who love reading with a fair measure of interest and enjoyment.
Witty and humorous men are always at a disadvantage except on the stage. The hum-drum is the style for Englishmen. Bishop Burnet calls Marvell “a droll,” Parker, who was to be a bishop, calls him “a buffoon.” Marvell is occasionally humorous and not infrequently carries a jest beyond the limits of becoming mirth; but he is more often grave. Yet when he is, his gravity was treated either as one of his feebler jokes or as an impertinence. But as it is his wit alone that has kept him alive he need not be pitied overmuch.
The substance of Marvell’s reply to Parker, apart altogether from its by-play, is to be found in passages like the following:—
“Here it is that after so great an excess of wit, he thinks fit to take a julep and re-settle his brain and the government. He grows as serious as ’tis possible for a madman, and pretends to sum-up the whole state of the controversy with the Nonconformists. And to be sure he will make the story as plausible for himself as he may; but therefore it was that I have before so particularly quoted and bound him up with his own words as fast as such a Proteus could be pinion’d. For he is as waxen as the first matter, and no form comes amiss to him. Every change of posture does either alter his opinion or vary the expression by which we should judge of it; and sitting he is of one mind, and standing of another. Therefore I take myself the less concern’d to fight with a windmill like Quixote; or to whip a gig as boyes do; or with the lacqueys at Charing-Cross or Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields to play at the Wheel of Fortune; lest I should fall into the hands of my Lord Chief-Justice, or Sir Edmond Godfrey. The truth is, in short, and let Bayes make more or less of it if he can, Bayes had at first built-up such a stupendous magistrate as never was of God’s making. He had put all princes upon the rack to stretch them to his dimension. And as a straight line continued grows a circle, he had given them so infinite a power, that it was extended unto impotency. For though he found it not till it was too late in the cause, yet he felt it all along (which is the understanding of brutes) in the effect. For hence it is that he so often complains that princes know not aright that supremacy over consciences, to which they were so lately, since their deserting the Church of Rome, restored; that in most Nations government was not rightly understood, and many expressions of that nature: whereas indeed the matter is, that princes have always found that uncontroulable government over conscience to be both unsafe and impracticable. He had run himself here to a stand, and perceived that there was a God, there was Scripture; the magistrate himself had a conscience, and must ‘take care that he did not enjoyn things apparently evil.’ But after all, he finds himself again at the same stand here, and is run up to the wall by an angel. God, and Scripture, and conscience will not let him go further; but he owns, that if the magistrate enjoyns things apparently evil, the subject may have liberty to remonstrate. What shall he do, then? for it is too glorious an enterprize to be abandoned at the first rebuffe. Why, he gives us a new translation of the Bible, and a new commentary! He saith, that tenderness of conscience might be allowed in a Church to be constituted, not in a Church constituted already. That tenderness of conscience and scandal are ignorance, pride, and obstinacy. He saith, the Nonconformists should communicate with him till they have clear evidence that it is evil. This is a civil way indeed of gaining the question, to perswade men that are unsatisfied, to be satisfied till they be dissatisfied. He threatens, he rails, he jeers them, if it were possible, out of all their consciences and honesty; and finding that will not do, he calls out the magistrate, tells him these men are not fit to live; there can be no security of government while they are in being. Bring out the pillories, whipping-posts, gallies (=galleys), rods, and axes (which are ratio ultima cleri, a clergyman’s last argument, ay and his first too), and pull in pieces all the Trading Corporations, those nests of Faction and Sedition. This is a faithful account of the sum and intention of all his undertaking, for which, I confess, he was as pick’d a man as could have been employed or found out in a whole kingdome; but it is so much too hard a task for any man to atchieve, that no goose but would grow giddy with it.”1
In reply to what Parker had written about the unreasonable fuss made by the Dissenters over the “two or three symbolical ceremonies” called sacraments, Marvell says:—