Upon the abolition of Royalty in England, certain of the Colonies became refractory. Parliament heard, on the 5th of October, 1650, that, inasmuch as many well-affected persons had been driven away from Barbadoes, the Council of State was of opinion that the island should be reduced, and a fleet sent thither for that purpose.[511] Whereupon an Act was passed prohibiting trade with the plantation there, and with the sister States, who were sharers in the disaffection—including Virginia, Bermudas, and Antigua—and empowering the Council to bring them all into speedy subjection to the authority of the Commonwealth.[512] Sir George Ayscue, commander of a ship called the Rainbow, conducted a fleet into the Western seas, taking with him as brother Commissioners, Daniel Searle and Captain Michael Pack, whose instructions were, to insist upon the submission of the inhabitants of Barbadoes, to enforce there the Acts of Parliament against Kingship, the House of Lords, and the use of the Book of Common Prayer, and to require every person in the Colonies to take the Engagement.[513] A summons to surrender to the Commonwealth reached Lord Willoughby, the Governor of Barbadoes, accompanied by an assurance that the Commissioners wished by "amicable ways" to bring the Colony to obedience, without bloodshed, or the destruction of "their long laboured for estates."[514] But the representative body in the State expressed indignation at this endeavour to persuade the ignorant, that the Government now set up in England by miseries, bloodsheds, rapines, and other oppressions, was any better than that under which their ancestors had lived for hundreds of years; and further they declared how they despised all "menaces to drive them from their loyalty," to which their souls were as firmly united as they were to their bodies.[515] Abundance of parleying succeeded, and once, when Ayscue's men were invited on shore, "with a white flag," they were fired upon; in revenge for which act of treachery they burnt the houses of their assailants—a proceeding in positive opposition to Sir George's explicit orders.[516] At last, in midwinter, after three months had been spent in fruitless negotiation, proposals of peace from Lord Willoughby reached Ayscue on board the Rainbow, which was now anchored in Carlisle Bay. Articles specifying the terms of an acceptable surrender were returned to Willoughby, conceding to the Colonists indemnity for their past resistance, and, for the future, the right of taxation, and other important political privileges. With respect to higher interests, the articles distinctly stated that no oaths, covenants, or engagements, should be imposed upon the inhabitants against their convictions, and that liberty of conscience should be allowed to all—"excepting to such whose tenets are inconsistent to a civil government."[517] But, strange to say, in another and corrected paper, sent a few days afterwards, the articles relating to oaths and to liberty of conscience are altogether omitted; yet, still more strange, after this, Willoughby replied to Ayscue, that the articles in this latter were the same in effect as had been previously received. At last the latter agreed to the first propositions made by the former—namely, that the Government should remain as already established—that all Acts passed in the Colony previously to the year 1638, and not being repugnant to the present laws of England, should continue in force, and that those concerning present differences should be repealed. In the final arrangement between the Governor and the Commissioner no stipulation appears to have been made touching matters of religion. Such matters were left to shape themselves according to circumstances. The use of the Prayer Book was neither expressly forbidden nor expressly allowed. Liberty of conscience was neither secured nor denied in distinct terms. Nothing was agreed upon which could interfere with the subsequent legislation of the Colony in relation to ecclesiastical matters, except a general implication that all enactments in the future, as well as those in the past, would be utterly invalid if they were found at all repugnant to the laws of the mother empire.[518] We find eighteen months afterwards, the next Governor, Colonel Daniel Searle, complaining of "unsatisfied" and "restless spirits" who, not content with the Constitution of England, would model "this little limb of the Commonwealth into a free state." He further informed the Council that in consequence of "some lately brought under the ordinance of baptism in a Church society"—by which expression, doubtless, Baptists are intended—having forwarded to England a remonstrance concerning the Colonial Assembly, that Assembly had desired that these remonstrants might be dismissed from public employment in the island; but Governor Searle gave reasons in detail why he could not comply with any such desire.[519]

As Ayscue steered towards Barbadoes, Captain Robert Dennis sailed to Virginia, for the reduction of the plantations in Chesapeake Bay.[520] No sooner did his ship, the Guinea frigate, heave in sight, than the Virginians abandoned all thoughts of resistance, and instantly came to terms. Like the Commissioners to the royalist colony of Barbadoes, Captain Dennis and his colleagues were charged by written instructions—amongst other things, to publish in Virginia the Acts of Parliament against Kingship, the House of Lords, and the Book of Common Prayer. But it would appear that, upon submission by the Colonists to the powers at St. Stephen's and Whitehall, the execution of the Act in reference to religion came to be waived in America, as it had been waived in the West Indies. Indeed, in this case, Episcopal worship was expressly allowed for one year, on condition of all public allusions to monarchy being omitted in prayer. The clergy remained undisturbed, and were entitled to their accustomed dues for that space of time. Nor was there to be any censure for loyal supplications and speeches which might be uttered in private houses. Indeed, during the whole term of the Protectorate, Episcopal rites seem to have been continued in Virginia;[521] and the Home Government does not appear to have stained its character by any acts of persecution in that Colony, or in Barbadoes. It is curious to add that, as tobacco was the chief produce and the main staple of Virginia, it became used in the payment of taxes, of penalties, and of privileges. All titheable parishioners, "in the vacancy of their minister," were notwithstanding, to pay, per head, fifteen pounds of tobacco towards a church-building "and glebe" fund; Sabbath breakers and drunkards incurred a fine of one hundred pounds of tobacco; persons introducing ministers into the Colony at their own charge, were to receive, for so doing, the sum of twenty pounds sterling by bill of exchange, or two thousand pounds weight of tobacco.[522]

The Bermudas became an asylum for Royalists at the end of the Civil Wars. A patent had been granted by King James for a Company there, so early as the year 1615; and, until 1653, this Company and the Colonial Council appointed by it were permitted to continue. But in the midst of the troubles at home, the Company neglected to consult the Council; the Colony suffered great distress; and "turbulent spirits," by their reports to the Home Authorities, prejudiced them against the Local Administration. Report reached head quarters that the Governor of Bermudas wished to "invite Charles Stuart to take possession" of the territory; and, therefore, in the year 1653, certain trustworthy Commonwealth's men received a commission to govern affairs in the islands with the same powers and privileges as the Old Company had enjoyed. But, in the year 1656, Colonel Owen Rowe wrote home, complaining that the former Government, standing upon the foundation of James the First's patent, had refused to acknowledge the New Commission. It had gone so far as to declare Charles' execution "bloody, traitorous, and rebellious;" to proclaim his son as Charles II.; and to avow a determination to be ruled only by laws which were sanctioned by the Crown. These bold Royalists enforced the oath of supremacy, imprisoned such as refused it, and banished Independents who sympathized with the regicides. The Council of State, however, persevered in efforts to secure subjugation, feeling the importance of the islands to the Commonwealth, and fearing lest the Spaniards might endeavour to get a footing in them. Captain Wilkinson, commander of the chief castle in the Colony, was strongly urged to attend to his duties, and to keep a watchful eye upon the malignant party. Petitions from the inhabitants to the Lord Protector arrived a few months before his decease, stating that "the people were naked for want of clothing, naked to their enemies for want of ammunition, and further destitute for want of godly teachers"—ministers having received no salary for years past. Only a few days after Cromwell had expired another petition appeared, complaining of the disaffection of Deputy-Governor Sayle, and describing him as a Royalist, as one who condemned the late King's execution, and as an intimate friend of Colonial rebels, and of scandalous ministers.[523]

Cromwell, in his ill-fated expedition against the Spanish West Indies, was influenced by religious, perhaps, even more than by political and commercial considerations. He remembered the Protestant martyrs whom the Spaniards had put to death, and the poor innocent Indians whom they had barbarously murdered, and he thought that infinite good would arise to the honour of God by maiming the Colonial power of these enemies to the welfare of reformed Christendom. Spain, losing America, would have the sword wrested from her right hand, and then Europe would be relieved from cruel wars, and from the disquietude and misery produced by perpetual attempts to extirpate true religion and to set up the idolatries and abominations of Popery. So Cromwell reasoned, in a State Paper delivered to the Dutch ambassador in the year 1653; in which also he proposed that England and Holland should send teachers gifted with Christian knowledge "unto all people and nations, to inform and enlarge the Gospel and the ways of Jesus Christ."[524] This design on Hispaniola proved altogether a very bad business, and was grievously laid to heart by the brave man, who, as a Protestant prince, wished to stand in the shoes of Gustavus Adolphus. Jamaica, however, fell into Cromwell's hands as soon as his soldiers approached the island. In the capital—St. Jago de la Vega—there stood an abbey and two Roman Catholic churches called the Red and the White Cross, which the Puritan soldiers immediately stripped of their superstitious ornaments. The country abounded in waste land, and lacked population. Cromwell aimed at making it a centre of Protestant influence, as much as of British dominion; and this being known, it was suggested to him by a French Protestant that he should gather there a number of foreigners professing the Reformed religion, who might constitute a sort of evangelical propaganda to "negative the designs of the Jesuits in those parts."[525] Plenty of room for work might be found in the uncultivated acres of that wild region for young Irish people, both men and women, and for "Scotch vagabonds," male and female.[526] The Council of State consequently resolved that such people should be sent over; but Cromwell desired above all to see godly New Englanders settling upon the island. It was, he said, a chief end of his design, to enlighten those parts by means of such as knew and feared the Lord; and he thought that some who had been driven for conscience' sake into a barren wilderness, might now remove to a land of plenty.[527] He had confidence in the pilgrims of New Plymouth, and in the Puritans of Massachusetts, and he fondly hoped that many of them would emigrate to his new West Indian dominions, and there sow the fields with the "good seed of the kingdom." But disappointment followed his hopes. The American Colonists would not remove. Some of the best agents sent over to superintend the plantation died, chief amongst whom were Governors Fortescue, Sedgwick, and Brayne.

Earnest piety, dashed with eccentricities of Puritan expression, conspicuously appears in the letters and in the conduct of these Colonial Governors under the Commonwealth.[528] They were men of religious zeal, and of political sagacity, and they certainly deserve honourable remembrance, although their enterprise proved unsuccessful; a circumstance, indeed, which arose not from any fault of theirs, but entirely from the unconquerable difficulties connected with their position. The letters of D'Oyley, who succeeded these earlier governors—himself a highly respectable officer with Royalist tendencies—bear witness to their discouragements and to his own also. Brayne followed D'Oyley in office, and died a victim to the fatal climate.[529]

The history of Maryland, under the Commonwealth, is full of the records of strife for lordship. The Commission of 1651 for reducing disaffected Colonial dependencies did not specify that maritime State; but the Commissioners managed to include it within the range of their instructions, by unwarrantably stretching the expression, "all the plantations within the Bay of Chesapeake." The agents and friends of Lord Baltimore at first resisted this intrusion, but they were at last obliged to submit to a compromise. Afterwards, rallying their strength, they re-asserted their earlier rights, and displaced the new authorities; but these again, in their turn, overcame the old government, and reinstated themselves in their former position. Religious animosities were at the bottom of this quarrel; the Puritans not being able to endure having a Roman Catholic at the head of the community, and the Roman Catholics trembling at the idea of being left to the mercy of Puritans.[530] After the Colony, under Lord Baltimore, had enjoyed an amount of toleration unparalleled in those days of intense party feeling, it becomes a question of great interest, what was the course pursued by his opponents, when for a while they held the reins of government which they had snatched out of his hands? The answer is, that they made a law denying to such as exercised the Popish form of worship all civil protection, they also proscribed all Prelacy and Antinomianism, and resolved that, besides such as professed the Presbyterian religion, which had been established in England, none should be protected except those who avowed faith in God by Jesus Christ, and did not abuse their freedom by injuring others. Such a law can be rightly understood only when it is studied in the light of previous history. Enough has been said in former pages of this work to shew how deeply the Puritans feared lest they should be deprived of their civil rights by the restoration of Roman despotism—a fear which if not justified may be excused by the old maxim, "that a burnt child dreads the fire." The toleration, indeed, vouchsafed in Maryland ought to have taught another lesson, but the idea remained unconquerable that such toleration as had been there conceded only served the purpose of protecting Popery for a time, in order that it might in the end throw off its cunning mask, and devour those very liberties to which it had been indebted for existence.[531]

Uncertainty was felt or pretended as to the wishes of the Protector in reference to the subject so keenly agitated in the State of Maryland. But upon his hearing a report to that effect, and upon his being informed that it was said he wished a stop to be put to the proceedings of the Commissioners who were authorized to settle the civil government, he distinctly stated that such was not his intention. Of their interference with the secular business of the colony he fully approved, but of their interference with spiritual matters, it would appear that he had formed a different judgment; for in an earlier communication to the same Commissioners he had commanded them to confine their attention to temporal affairs, and "not to busy themselves about religion."[532] In this instance, as in others, Cromwell shewed a disposition to leave people to themselves in what concerned their consciences, provided only that they remained loyal to his political rule. We have said that the Prayer Book continued to be used in Virginia; and so long as Maryland remained quiet under the Protectorate, his Highness was not anxious to disturb either Prelatist or Papist. Whilst careful not to displease his own political partizans, he at the same time indicated no sympathy with the opposition which was made to Lord Baltimore; and, although he was strongly urged to annul altogether the patent and privileges of that excellent nobleman, he still allowed him to persevere in pressing his claims, and even permitted him to appoint his own Lieutenant.[533]

Beyond these particulars relative to religion in the Western Colonies, space remains only for a word respecting the other hemisphere. The first East Indian charter had been granted by Queen Elizabeth, and soon after the date of that charter the first English factory had been established at Surat. In the year 1649, Edward Terry—who had attended Sir Thomas Roe, as chaplain, on his embassy to the Mogul—preached what might be called a missionary sermon in the church of St. Andrew Undershaft, before the Governor and Company of the Merchant Traders to India; and in that sermon he strongly urged them to commend Christianity by a holy life; and he took care also faithfully to rebuke the gross inconsistencies of English Christians in Oriental countries, which, as he observed, often provoked natives to exclaim, "Christian religion, devil religion—Christian much drunk—much rogue—much naught." Dr. Edward Reynolds also preached in the same church, before the same company, in the year 1657, taking for his text Nehemiah xiii. 31; shewing, as Evelyn notices in his "Diary,"[534] "by the example of Nehemiah, all the perfections of a trusty person in public affairs, with many good precepts, apposite to the occasion, ending with a prayer for God's blessing on the Company and the undertaking."

Another body of traders, called the Levant Company, were certainly left free to pursue their own course with respect to religion.[535] Through the endeavours of Pocock, and other Episcopalian clergymen, the Company had aimed to extend Christianity in the countries where they trafficked; and in the year 1654 they sent Robert Frampton—a distinguished Episcopal minister—to Aleppo, who remained for sixteen years in charge of the spiritual welfare of the factory in that place. On his return to England he became first Dean, and then Bishop of Gloucester, and he is found amongst the non-jurors at the period of the Revolution. On the other hand a Presbyterian minister, who had been appointed chaplain at Smyrna, found no favour with the merchants of that ancient port; in vain he produced his bale of Westminster catechisms, and he fruitlessly endeavoured to establish amongst the English residents the Westminster Confession Directory and Discipline.[536]

This review of ecclesiastical affairs proves very clearly the large measure of independence which in that respect was conceded to the Colonies, under the government of Cromwell. The prohibition of the use of the Book of Common Prayer emanated from the home authorities before he became seated in the Protectoral chair, and there is no evidence of any zeal on his part in enforcing the ordinance, or of any disposition to adopt a persecuting policy towards his Colonial subjects. On the contrary, his connivance at Episcopalian worship in Virginia, and his conduct with reference to Maryland and Lord Baltimore, indicate a spirit of toleration and a breadth of view with regard to religious liberty,—where the stability and civil order of society were not placed in jeopardy—such as are in harmony with his habitual professions and his well-known character, and such also as probably would have been more fully exemplified in England, had not the exemplification been prevented by the political disaffection of religious parties.