[394] Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson, p. 80.

[395] This was in spite of orders "to do no injury to the church." Before these wars the cathedral suffered through neglect, as appears from a draft letter written by Archbishop Laud to the dean and chapter, in the name of the King, complaining that the dotations and allowances were very mean, and that there was "little left to keep so goodly a fabric in sufficient reparation."—State Papers, Domestic. (undated) vol. cclxxxi. 57.

[396] Mr. Britton asserts that numbers were removed when the cathedral underwent repairs in 1786. Two tons of brass were taken to the brazier's shop.—Winkle's Cathedrals, iii. 43.

[397] Poole's History of Ecclesiastical Architecture, p. 260.

All the mutilation of statues must not be put down to the Puritan account, nor the destruction of the mosaic pavement in the choir. "One half of its eastern border was entirely destroyed when the altar-piece was put up at the commencement of the last century." The rest but narrowly escaped.—Neale's History and Antiquities of Westminster Abbey, p. 20.

Oliver Cromwell has been charged with despoiling the tomb of Henry V., but we read in Stowe's Annals: "A royal image of silver and gilt was laid upon his tomb, which Queen Catherine his wife caused to be made for him; but about the latter end of King Henry VIII., the head of the king's image being of massy silver, was broken off and conveyed clean away, with the plates of silver and gilt that covered his body." p. 363.

It is a common story amongst cathedral vergers, that Cromwell turned churches into stables. Like stories are told in the East, with judgments superadded. "It was related to us by our Tartar, that about fifty years ago, Tamr Pasha turned the church into a stable, and next morning all his horses were found dead."—Badger's Nestorians, i. 68.

[398] It appears from the following entry that when the wars were over, the cathedral was desecrated by being made a prison. "That a letter be written to the Mayor of Salisbury, to let him know that the Council are informed that the Dutch prisoners who were lately sent to the town, to be kept there, have done much spoil upon the pillars of the cloisters, and to the windows of the library there, being committed to custody in that place, and also that by reason that due care hath not been had over them, some of them have escaped, &c." October 10, 1653.—State Papers, Order Book of Council.

[399] Again we may remark that like excesses had been committed in Roman Catholic times. In the annals of Rochester, 1264, we find: "Portæ, siquidem, ejus circumquque exustæ sunt, chorus ejus in luctum, et organa ejus in vocem flentium sunt concitata. Quid pluras, loca sacra, utpote oratoria, claustra, capitulum infirmaria, et oracula quæque divina, stabula equorum sunt effecta; et animalium immunditiis spurcitiisque cadaverum ubique sunt repleta."—Anglia Sacra, i. 351.

After the Reformation Ridley was prevented from giving Grindal a prebend in St. Paul's by the King's Council, who had bestowed it on the King, for the furniture of his stable.—Blunt's History of the Reformation, 244.

In 1561, according to Strype, the south aisle of the cathedral was used for a horse fair.

[400] Rushworth, v. 476.

Instructions were given for the taking of the Covenant throughout the kingdom, "the manner of the taking it to be thus:—The minister to read the whole Covenant distinctly and audibly in the pulpit, and during the time of the reading thereof the whole congregation to be uncovered; and at the end of his reading thereof, all to take it standing, lifting up their right hands bare, and then afterwards to subscribe it severally by writing their names (or their marks, to which their names are to be added) in a parchment roll or a book, whereinto the Covenant is to be inserted, purposely provided for that end, and kept as a record in the parish."—Husband's Collection, 421.

[401] Husband's Coll., 416.

[402] Neal, iii. 81.

[403] Husband's Coll., 404.

[404] In the State Paper Office are additional instructions, (dated March 6th, 1643-4,) to the Earl of Rutland, Sir W. Armyn, Bart., Sir H. Vane, and others, to declare to our brethren of Scotland that the Parliament have settled a course for taking the late Solemn League and Covenant throughout this kingdom and dominion of Wales, "we do hereby give you full power and authority by yourselves, or such as you shall appoint, to cause the said League and Covenant to be taken throughout the several places and counties where you shall come."

Vane, on the scaffold, said, respecting the Covenant: "The holy ends therein contained I fully assent to, and have been as desirous to observe; but the rigid way of prosecuting it and the oppressing uniformity that hath been endeavoured by it, I never approved."

Wood states, (Ath. Ox., ii. 84), that Strode made a motion to the effect, "that all those that refused the Covenant, (being certain ill-wishers to the laws and liberties of this kingdom,) might, therefore, have no benefit of those laws and liberties." He adds, "that motion being somewhat too desperate, was waived for the present, and took no effect."

[405] See Sermon on Solemn League and Covenant, by Saltmarsh.—Tracts in Brit. Mus., vol. 253.

[406] These also are in the British Museum; I think in the same volume as the former.

[407] Bishop Hall went on ordaining Episcopal clergymen in spite of the Covenant. He says: "The synodals both in Norfolk and Suffolk, and all the spiritual profits of the diocese were also kept back, only ordinations and institutions continued awhile. But after the Covenant was appointed to be taken, and was generally swallowed of both clergy and laity, my power of ordination was with some strange violence restrained; for when I was going on in my wonted course, which no law or ordinance had inhibited, certain forward volunteers in the city, banding together, stir up the mayor, and aldermen, and sheriffs, to call me to an account for an open violation of their Covenant."—Hard Measure, Hall's Works, p. xvii.

[408] Memoirs of the Life of Col. Hutchinson, 143-191.

[409] Mant's History of the Church of Ireland, i. 580.

[410] Eusebius observes, in his Epistle respecting the Nicene Creed, that he and his friends did not refuse to adopt the word ὁμοούσιος, "peace being the end in view, as well as the not falling away from sound doctrine." He excused the damnatory clause, simply on the ground that it aggrieved none by prohibiting the use of unscriptural phraseology.—Socrates' Ecc. Hist., b. i. c. 8.

[411] "Epistle" by John Canne, quoted in Hanbury's Memorials, iii. 380-386.

The following passage occurs in a paper by the Dissenting Brethren in 1646, also quoted in Hanbury, iii. 62:—"This Covenant was professedly so attempered in the first framing of it, as that we of different judgments might take it, both parties being present at the framing of it in Scotland." "It is as free for us to give our interpretation of the latitude or nearness of uniformity intended, as for our brethren."

[412] The following passages illustrate the state of public feeling in reference to the Covenant:—

"Men cry shame on the Covenant. Those that took it down cast it up again, and those that refuse it have given a world of arguments that it is unreasonable, which arguments our Assembly, like dull, ignorant rascals, never answered. I know, my Lords, many of our friends never took this oath, but they refused it out of mere conscience." ... "I hold the Covenanters extremely reasonable. Though some malignants take it, yet many refuse it; and, as some who love us do hate the Covenant, so some who hate us do take it. Yet our friends who hate it do love to force others to it, for their hatred to malignants is more than to the Covenant; and, as the one takes it to save his estate, so do others give it to make him lose his estate. They both love the estate, and both hate the Covenant."—A learned Speech spoken in the House of Peers by the Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery upon the 28th July last, taken out of Michael Ouldsworth's own Copy. State Papers, 1647.

"All this while I did not take the National Covenant, not because I refused to do, for I would have made no bones to take, swear, and sign it, and observe it too, for I had then a principle, having not yet studied a better one, that I wronged not my conscience in doing any thing I was commanded to do by those whom I served. But the truth is, it was never offered to me, every one thinking it was impossible I could get any charge, unless I had taken the Covenant either in Scotland or England."—Sir James Turner's Memoirs of his own Life and Times, published by the Bannatyne Club, 16.

Turner was a Royalist.

[413] Journals., Sept. 21st.—It was resolved by the Commons: That the Assembly of godly Divines, who, by Ordinance, July 1st, 1643, met in King Henry the Seventh's Chapel, shall, in respect of the coldness of the said chapel, have power to adjourn themselves to the Jerusalem Chamber, in the College of Westminster.

[414] For some of this information I am indebted to the kindness of the Dean of Westminster.

[415] Baillie's Letters, ii. 108, 109.

[416] This is stated on the authority of Brook's Lives, iii. 15. His account of Twiss's illness is confused, so is Clark's (Lives, p. 17,) to which Brook refers.

[417] As Erastianism is a word vaguely used, I subjoin the principal theses in the Book on Excommunication, by Erastus, and his own account of the occasion of his writing it.

"Excommunication is nothing else but a public and solemn exclusion from the sacraments, especially the Lord's Supper, after an investigation by the elders."—Thesis viii.

"In the Old Testament none were debarred from the sacraments on account of immorality of conduct."—Thesis xxiii.

"Christ did not hinder Judas, who betrayed Him, from eating the paschal lamb."—Thesis xxviii.

"It is not the will of Christ that His kingdom in these lands should be circumscribed within narrower limits than He appointed for it anciently amongst the Jews."—Thesis xxxi.

"As in the account given of the celebration of the sacraments we see no mention is made of excommunication, so neither in the history of their institution can anything warranting that practice be discovered."—Thesis xxxvii.

"'Tell it to the church' means nothing else than tell it to the magistrate of thy own people."—Thesis lii.

"I see no reason why the Christian magistrate at the present day should not possess the same power which God commanded the magistrate to exercise in the Jewish commonwealth."—Thesis lxxii.

"If then the Christian magistrate possesses not only authority to settle religion according to the directions given in the Holy Scriptures, and to arrange the ministries thereof, but also, in like manner, to punish crimes, in vain do some among us now meditate the setting up of a new kind of tribunal, which would bring down the magistrate himself to the rank of a subject of other men."—Thesis lxxiv.

According to Erastus, an ignorant man, a heretic, or an apostate should be excluded from the sacraments. But sins were to be punished by the civil magistrate.

The theses were handed about in MS., and not published till 1589—six years after the death of the author—with only the fictitious name "Pesclavii," 1589. The work was reprinted at Amsterdam, in 1649. Two old English translations exist, published in 1659 and 1682. There is a modern one by Rev. R. Lee, D.D., Edinburgh, 1844.

The occasion of writing the theses, Erastus says, was a proposition that a select number of elders should sit in the name of the whole church, and judge who were fit to be admitted to the Lord's Supper, which he thought would introduce dangerous divisions.

Theodore Beza wrote a reply, published at Geneva, 1590. Selden's views of excommunication in his Table Talk (p. 56) are similar to those of Erastus, though not so full.

Hobbes wrote his Leviathan in 1651, in which he says (pt. iii., ch. 42, p. 287, London edition), "The books of the New Testament, though most perfect rules of Christian doctrine, could not be made laws by any other authority than that of kings or sovereign assemblies." His doctrine with regard to Christianity is, that socially considered it is "good and safe advice," but not obligatory law till the government of a country shall make it so. This part of the philosopher's theory runs on the same line with Erastianism, only it is pushed further.

[418] Altogether there were ten or eleven Independents in the Assembly. Baillie mentions Goodwin, Nye, Burroughs, Bridge, Carter, Caryl, Philips, and Sterry.—Letters, &c., ii. 110.

[419] His works have been recently republished. His Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians illustrates what is said here.

[420] See The Wounded Conscience Cured, &c., by William Bridge, 1642.

[421] Baillie remarks: "Liberty of conscience, and toleration of all or any religion, is so prodigious an impiety, that this religious Parliament cannot but abhor the very naming of it. Whatever may be the opinions of John Goodwin, Mr. Williams, and some of that stamp, yet Mr. Burroughs, in his late Irenicum, upon many unanswerable arguments, explodes that abomination."—See Tracts on Liberty of Conscience, 270.

[422] Neal says he died of consumption (Hist., iii. 377), but the following appears in the Perfect Occurrences, 13th November, 1646:—"This day Mr. Burrows, the minister, a godly, reverend man, died. It seems he had a bruise by a fall from a horse some fortnight since; he fell into a fever, and of that fever died, and is by many godly people much lamented."

[423] P. 190.

[424] I do not attempt to vindicate this great man against the charge of inconsistency. One side of a subject was everything to him while he gazed at it. He had no faculty for harmonizing apparently opposite truths, and was apt, as ardent men are, to fall into errors, from which his clearly expressed opinion on certain points ought to have saved him. Mr. Hallam (Literature of Europe, iii. 112), in whose severe judgment of Taylor's inconsistency I cannot coincide, thinks that one inconsistent chapter, (the seventeenth) was interpolated after the rest of the treatise was complete. This is possible, but it is also possible that Taylor when first writing his book might suddenly swing from one side to the other, and then come round again. It has been said that Taylor forgot his liberality when he became a bishop. His biographer, Bishop Heber, attempts to meet this charge.—Works, i. 30. It may be added, that the Dissuasive from Popery, published in 1664, proceeds on the same principles as the Liberty of Prophesying. See Dissuasive, part ii. book i.—Works, x. 383.

How Taylor's work was regarded by a Royalist and an Episcopalian may be seen in Mrs. Sadleir's Letter to Roger Williams. "I have also read Taylor's book of the Liberty of Prophesying, though it please not me, yet I am sure it does you, or else I know you would not have wrote to me to have read it. I say, it and you would make a good fire. But have you seen his 'Divine Institution of the Office Ministerial?'" Life of Roger Williams, 99. Mrs. Sadleir was daughter of Sir Edward Coke. A writer in the Ecclesiastic, April, 1853, p. 179, remarks: "Whatever Taylor may have been thought of since, certainly his contemporaries amongst the Church party had no very high opinion of him."

[425] Sermon preached before the House of Commons, March 31st, 1647.

[426] Ward's Life of Henry More, 171. I have here confined myself to those in the Church of England who advocated toleration, pointing out the grounds which they adopted as distinguished from those occupied by the Independents. Others, who proceeded in the same advocacy on the broadest principles of justice, will be hereafter noticed, i.e., John Goodwin, Leonard Busher, and Sir Henry Vane. Of the last of these it may be remarked that so early as 1637 he used this memorable language, in New England: "Scribes and Pharisees, and such as are confirmed in any way of error, all such are not to be denied cohabitation, but are to be pitied and reformed; Ishmael shall dwell in the presence of his brethren." (Bancroft's United States, i. 390.) The most thorough advocate of intellectual liberty in the New World was Roger Williams, who, though in many respects an impracticable man, and wanting in catholicity of spirit, appears to have been an original and intrepid champion for the political independence of theological opinions, as well as a noble minded and disinterested leader in colonial enterprise. Milton advocates toleration in his Areopagitica, a speech to the Parliament of England for the liberty of unlicensed printing, 1644. Harrington's Political Aphorisms, in which liberty of conscience is justly placed on a political basis, was not published until 1659. Episcopius and Crellius were early advocates for toleration. See Hallam's Introduction to Literature of Europe, iii. 103, 104.

[427] Const. Hist., i. 612.

[428] The petition is largely quoted by Waddington in his Surrey Congregational History, p. 32, and the pamphlet, entitled Queries of Highest Consideration, is quoted in Hanbury, ii. 246.

[429] For proofs and illustrations of this we refer to our second volume. In the meanwhile we may observe that in An Attestation, published by the Cheshire ministers in 1648, allusion is made to some of the Independents as "averse in a great measure to such a toleration as might truly be termed intolerable and abominable"—meaning by that universal toleration.—Nonconformity in Cheshire. Introduction, xxvi.

[430] Life of Goodwin, by Jackson, 93.

[431] A Reply of Two of the Brethren to A. S., 1644. Quoted by Jackson, p. 116. Goodwin states "that the part which treats of religious liberty was the production of his own pen."—Jackson, 57.

[432] Baillie, writing to Mr. Spang, May 17th, 1644, (Letters, ii. 184,) says: "The Independents here, finding they have not the magistrate so obsequious as in New England, turn their pens, as you will see in M.S.," (which he had before identified as Goodwin's, of Coleman Street,) "to take from the magistrate all power of taking any coercive order with the vilest heretics. Not only they praise your magistrate who for policy gives some secret tolerance to diverse religions, wherein, as I conceive, your Divines preach against them as great sinners; but avows that by God's command the magistrate is discharged to put the least discourtesy on any man—Jew, Turk, Papist, Socinian, or whatever, for his religion." "The five will not say this, but M.S. is of as great authority here as any of them." Yet, though this sentiment is by Baillie confined to Goodwin, and expressly said not to be shared by the five, it has by some been put into the lips of Nye.

[433] As I have already observed, Harrington also did this. One of his political aphorisms on the subject is admirable, "When civil liberty, is entire it includes liberty of conscience. When liberty of conscience is entire, it includes civil liberty."

[434] Letter from Grindal to Bullinger, June 11th, 1568. Zurich Letters, First Series.

[435] This is extracted from p. 12 of a small volume entitled Historical Papers, First Series, Congregational Martyrs, published by Elliot Stock. The document bears internal signs of genuineness, but it is not said where the original may be found.

[436] Ecce Homo, 16.

[437] April 21st, 1581.

[438] Fuller's Church Hist., iii. 62.

[439] Strype's Annals, vol. iii. part i. 22-30.

[440] Fuller's Church Hist., iii. 65.

[441] Lansdowne M.S., 115, art. 55. Lord Keeper Bacon had a chaplain of Puritan tendencies. See Strype's Parker, ii. 69. Lady Bacon shewed her learning and Protestant zeal by translating Jewel's Apology,—Ibid., i. 354.

The Rev. Thomas Hill, late of Cheshunt, informs me:—"It is undeniable that there was a congregation of Separatists as early as the days of Elizabeth, in the neighbourhood of Theobalds. One or more of the ministers suffered persecution and imprisonment, but I do not think it improbable that the influence of Cecil, Lord Burleigh, who then resided at Theobalds, may have afforded some degree of protection to the Nonconformists of the neighbourhood."

[442] Hanbury, i. 38. Harl. Miscellany, ii. 21.

[443] Strype's Annals, iv. 245. Hanbury, i. 85.

[444] Published by Camden Society.

[445] This is the name written in the MS., no doubt intended for Greenwood.

[446] Letter from Thomas Phillips to William Sterrell, April 7, 1593. State Papers, Dom. The bracketed portions are underlined in the original, the writer desiring, in a postscript, that the passages so marked, should be "disguised with cipher."

[447] Strype's Annals, iv. 186. Hanbury's Mem., i. 90. The Archbishop referred to was Whitgift. Rippon died in 1592.

[448] "He was a person most excellently well read in theological authors, but withal was a most zealous Puritan, or, as his son Henry used to say, the first Independent in England."—Wood's Ath. Oxon., i. 464.

[449] Jacob's book, printed at Middleburgh, 1599, was entitled: A Defence of the Churches and Ministry of England. Written in two Treatises against the Reasons and Objections of Mr. Francis Johnson and others of the Separation called Brownists. Johnson replied in an Answer to Master H. Jacob, his Defence, &c. 1600.

[450] Hanbury's Mem., i. 226.

[451] See Hanbury's Mem., i. 227.

[452] His name is spelt in different ways.

[453] The church of which Lathrop was minister is said to have been formed in Southwark; if so, the fact of its now assembling in Blackfriars shews how, in times of persecution, the places of meeting were changed according to circumstances. As they had no chapels, and were proscribed by law, they met where they could.

[454] His name was ordinarily spelt "ten," although it stands "tin" in the MS. He was Judge of the Prerogative Court, and father of Henry Marten.

[455] Dr. Thomas Rives was the King's Advocate.

[456] In an interesting volume, just published by Dr. Waddington, entitled Surrey Congregational History, the following entries taken from the records of the High Commission in relation to Lathrop and Eaton, at a later date, are inserted, p. 20:—"June 12, 1634. John Lathrop, of Lambeth Marsh. Bond to be certified, and to be attached, if he appear not on the next Court-day.—June 19, 1634. Bond ordered to be certified, and he to be attached for non-appearance.—October 9. Samuel Eaton and John Lathrop to be attached for non-appearance, and bonds to be certified.—February 19, 1634-5. Samuel Eaton and John Lathrop, for contempt, in not appearing to answer articles touching their keeping conventicles. Their bonds ordered to be certified, and they attached and committed."

[457] The Brownist's Synagogue, 1641.

[458] Henry Jacob, probably, is the first who used the term independent in relation to a Christian Church. "Each congregation," he says, "is an entire and Independent body politic, and endowed with power immediately under and from Christ, as every proper Church is and ought to be."—Declaration and Plainer Opening of Certain Points, &c., 1611, p. 13.

[459] I am indebted for this and other extracts from the Yarmouth Corporation Records to a MS. history of the Yarmouth Church, compiled by my friend, the late Mr. Davey, of that town.

[460] The words printed in italics are underscored in the copy from which these extracts are transcribed.

[461] This Confession is described, and extracts from it are given in Hanbury, i. 293. It is attributed to Henry Jacob.

[462] Hanbury's Memorials, ii. 279-281.

[463] Ibid., ii. 409.

In a pamphlet by Katherine Chidley, it is asserted the Separatists supported their own poor.—Hanbury's Memorials, ii. 112.

[464] The whole account of Congregationalism in Yarmouth is drawn up from the records of the Corporation, and of the Independent Church there.

[465] See Oxoniana, iv. 188; and copy of the woodcut in Knight's Old England.

The Parliamentarians made a great mistake in not planting a garrison at Oxford, as they might have easily done when the war broke out.—See Whitelocke's Memorials, 63. The shrewd lawyer was not destitute of military insight, and justly blames Lord Say, who was opposed to the Parliament's taking possession of the city, because of the "improbability, in his opinion, that the King would settle there."

[466] Macaulay's Hist., iii. 18.

[467] Life of Chillingworth, by P. Des Maizeaux, 277.

[468] Rushworth, v. 354.

[469] A year afterwards, we find the following statement in Perfect Occurrences (June 17, 1644), where after describing the cruel spoliation of Abingdon and Worcester by fire by the Cavaliers, the news-writer thus continues:—"I could here insert the platform of all their projects, had I room to bring it in, set forth in a picture, intended to be sent to Seville, in Spain, and to be hanged in the great cathedral there, this day brought before the Parliament, where the Queen directs the King to present his sceptre to the Pope, and all the Cavaliers with him, and popish leaders with her, rejoicing to see it, he having a joyant, [this means perhaps, joyan, a jewel] to resemble his Majesty and she the Virgin Mary, and this motto upon the cases: 'Para Sancta Aña de Sevilla.' This picture is to be hung up for public view, and is enough to convince the strongest malignant in England."

[470] Parl. Hist., iii. 236.

[471] Meditations on the Times, xvii.

[472] Rushworth, v. 346.

[473] Ussher's Life, by Elrington, 238.

[474] Life, by Heber prefixed to his Works, i. 21, and another, by Willmott, 112.

[475] Memorials of Fuller, by Russell, 142, 148, 151, 153.

[476] He however maintained that Episcopacy was Apostolic. Life, 299, 300.

[477] There are several papers relating to Chillingworth in the Lambeth MSS. Nos. 943, 857-935.

[478] Yet Cheynell says, while some thought him uncharitable, others were of opinion he had been too indulgent in suffering Mr. Chillingworth to be buried like a Christian.—See Life of William Chillingworth, by P. Des Maizeaux, for the particulars we have given.

It has been stated that Cheynell was deranged, and certainly his own account of his conduct towards Chillingworth would indicate that at least he was touched. But then, after all this, we find him sent down as a visitor to Oxford, and made President of St. John's. Hoadly says he was as pious, honest, and charitable as his bigotry would permit. Eachard refers to him as a man of considerable learning and great abilities.—Neal, iii. 470. We have introduced this type of character, not as common, but as one without which an account of the religious phases of the time would be incomplete.

In 1658, Hartlib, writing to Pell, observes: "Cheynell is not shot as was reported, but certain that he is fallen distracted, and is sent to Bedlam."—Letters in Vaughan's Protectorate of Cromwell, ii. 462.

[479] Life of the Rev. John Barwick, D.D., written in Latin by his brother Dr. Peter Barwick, Physician in Ordinary to King Charles II., and translated into English by the editor of the Latin life. Though a fierce royalist production, and, in some respects, untrustworthy, yet it relates several curious facts not elsewhere found.

[480] 1st April, 1643.—Husband's Collection, 13.

[481] May 16th, and June 10th, 1643. Husband's Collection. Laud gives a detailed account of this business in the History of his Troubles and Trials.—Works, iv. 16. The Vicar General was Sir Nathaniel Brent, who, when he saw the Presbyterians begin to be dominant, sided with them. Wood's Ath. Oxon., ii. 161.

[482] A case of this kind is mentioned in Blomefield's History of Norfolk, ii. 424, in a note relating to John Peck, A.M., of Hingham.

[483] Commons' Journals, 27th of July, 1643. Husband's Collection, 311. Persons accused were to have timely notice, in order that they might make their defence.