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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 90: THE CASE OF DR. NOWELL.
By Edward Farr
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About This Book

The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

THE CASE OF DR. NOWELL.

On the anniversary of the execution of King Charles, the 30th of January, Dr. Nowell preached a sermon before the house of commons. The speaker and four members only were present, and a motion of thanks and for printing the sermon was carried as a matter of course. When the sermon was printed, however, it was found to savour of the doctrines of passive obedience and the divine right of kings, and to contain principles in direct opposition to those which had placed the reigning family on the throne. This brought down a storm on the head of the preacher. Mr. Thomas Townshend moved that the sermon should be burned by the common hangman; and another member moved that all future sermons should be printed before the preachers received the thanks of the house. These motions were not carried, but on the motion of the Honourable Boyle Walsingham, it was voted that the thanks of the house to Dr. Nowell should be erased. In the course of the debate severe strictures were made upon the character of Charles I., and of that part of the liturgy which describes him as a blessed martyr; and this seems to have encouraged Mr. Montague soon afterwards to make a motion to repeal the act for observing the 30th of January as a holiday, or a day of prayer and fasting. Mr. Montague attacked the appointed form of prayer as blasphemous, inasmuch as it contains a parallel between Charles I. and our Saviour. But the motion was negatived by a majority of an 125 to 97.