V. There existed, in different parts of the country, buildings entirely set apart for Nonconformist worship. Some of them were barns and warehouses adapted to the purpose, and in Norwich the refectory and dormitory of the old Blackfriars’ Convent, which, after the Restoration, had been turned into granaries for the City corn, were fitted up by permission of the Court of Mayoralty, for the use of the Presbyterian and Independent Congregationalists: also the old Leather Hall, in Coventry, a gloomy but spacious room, fitted up with galleries, was used for Nonconformist religious service.[300] A large meeting-house was erected in Zoar Street, Southwark, not far from the spot occupied by the summer theatre of Shakespeare, and within that building John Bunyan attracted immense congregations. “If there were but one day’s notice given,” his friend, Charles Doe, remarks, “there would be more people come together to hear him preach than the meeting-house could hold. I have seen, to hear him preach, by my computation, about 1,200 at a morning lecture, by seven o’clock, on a working-day, in the dark winter time. I also computed about 3,000 that came to hear him one Lord’s Day, at London, at a town’s-end meeting-house [in Zoar Street], so that half were fain to go back again for want of room, and then himself was fain at a back-door to be pulled almost over people to get upstairs to his pulpit.”[301] Mill Hill Chapel, at Leeds, was built during the period of Indulgence, being the first edifice erected by Dissenters “more ecclesiastico with arches.”[302] A meeting-house at Yarmouth is described as measuring fifty-eight feet one way, and sixty feet another, with a gallery quite round close to the pulpit, with six seats in it, one behind the other, and all accommodation possible for the reception of people below.[303] The “fanatic party” at Margate is referred to as building a “conventicle house” when it was illegal to do so, and as making great haste to get it up in spite of His Majesty’s proclamation.[304]

In some cases, so favourably inclined were the parish authorities, that they allowed Nonconformists to meet in the Church. At Southwold, every fourth Sunday, the incumbent and the Dissenting ministers both conducted Divine service under the same roof. The first who came took precedence, and after he had pronounced the Benediction, his neighbour began another service in his own way.

The liberty of using a parish church was also enjoyed by the Nonconformists of Waltham-le-Willows, a small village in Suffolk, and in connection with this arrangement there occurred a ludicrous circumstance. On one occasion when Mr. Salkeld, the Congregational minister, occupied the pulpit, Sir Edmund Bacon, of Redgrave, and Sir William Spring, of Packenham, being greatly scandalized at what they deemed a profanation of the edifice, came, with other country gentlemen, and planted themselves at the church-doors. Sir Edmund wished to compel the minister immediately to desist, but Sir William thought it more seemly to wait until the minister had finished his discourse. A noisy altercation consequently arose in the church-yard between the two gentlemen, when, upon the former becoming outrageously violent, his friend observed, “We read, Sir Edmund, that the devil entered into a herd of swine, and, upon my word, I think he is not got out of the Bacon yet.”[305]

VI. Perhaps this is as convenient a place as any to inquire into the relative number of Conformists and Nonconformists, towards the end of the period, embraced in this History.

The population of England towards the close of the seventeenth century, has been computed by Lord Macaulay at rather more than five millions.[306] He bases his estimate upon calculations made by King, Lancaster Herald, in 1696; upon returns consulted by William III., and upon conclusions drawn in the preface to the population returns of 1831. I find the estimate of about five millions confirmed by the author of The Happy Future State of England, published in 1688, who states an approximate number as the result of returns reported in a survey made by the Bishops in 1676.[307] Of these five millions and a half, or so, the Conformists formed an immense majority. In the returns which came under William’s eye, and in the report of the Bishops’ survey,—which seems to have been all but identical with them,—the Conformists, above sixteen years of age, in the province of Canterbury are put down at 2,123,362. York yields 353,892, making a total of 2,477,254. Against these are reckoned the following number of Nonconformists above sixteen years of age:—93,151 in the province of Canterbury, and 15,525 in the province of York—forming a gross amount of 108,676. The Conformists to the Nonconformists here are as 22⅘ to 1. The author I have just mentioned represents the Nonconformists as on the decline; and no doubt they were, during the reigns of Charles II. and James II., much fewer than they had been under the Commonwealth; but there is reason to believe, from their subsequent history, they were on the increase before the period of the Revolution. The same writer speaks of them, in the gross, as consisting of artizans and retail traders in corporations,[308] and probably the bulk of them would be found amongst the humbler classes; but it is to be remembered that some county families, including noble ones, to say nothing of old army officers, and rich citizen merchants, continued still within the ranks of Dissent. It is interesting and instructive to ponder the following particulars appended to the returns brought under the notice of William III., and certainly not prepared in any friendly spirit. Many persons left the Church upon the late Indulgence, who before did frequent it. The inquires made (I presume those of 1676 are referred to) caused many to frequent church. Walloons chiefly made up the number of Dissenters in Canterbury, Sandwich, and Dover. Presbyterians were divided; some of them not being wholly Dissenters, but occasionally going to church. A considerable number of Nonconformists belonged to no particular sect. Of those who attended church many did not receive the sacrament. There were in Kent about thirty heretics, called Muggletonians; the rest were Presbyterians, Anabaptists, Independents, and Quakers, in about equal numbers. The heads and preachers of the several factions had taken a large share in the Great Rebellion.[309]

I may add that the Papists altogether are reckoned in the same document at 13,856. It was thought that they had increased in consequence of the Indulgence, and that the Jesuits had been very active up to the time of the plot, when they amounted to 1,800. After the excitement created by Oates’ business they are said to have considerably diminished.[310]

VII. The contrasts between Churchmen and Nonconformists already described, suggest another of a corresponding kind. Divine service in the Establishment, especially as conducted in cathedrals, in Royal chapels, and in large churches, would present an imposing appearance, such as never could belong to worship conducted in a conventicle. And a social prestige pertained to the Episcopalian priest, now forfeited by the Nonconformist preacher. Baxter, Owen, and Howe could not but feel the change which had come over their external circumstances since the day when, from high places—Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s, for example—they had addressed ex cathedra the élite of Puritan intelligence and rank.

The form of sermons, whether composed by Anglicans or Puritans, continued after the Restoration to be that which we may call textual, rather than topical, and Sanderson, who survived that crisis, broke up what he had to say upon a text into a perplexing arrangement of divisions and subdivisions; so far he resembled Andrewes, the great preacher of the reign of James I. This practice did not form the peculiarity of a class. It had been borrowed from the schoolmen, and came to be adopted alike by those who were most Protestant and those who were most Catholic. As it was with the teachers, so it was with the taught; the people, no doubt, liked this method, and acquired a habit of threading the mazes of a lengthened homily through all its numerical departments, with an expertness resembling that of modern schoolboys who perform such wonderful evolutions in mental arithmetic. Tastes began to change before the Revolution. Even Dr. Donne, in the beginning of the century, broke somewhat through technical trammels, and indulged in sonorous periods, flowing out into ample paragraphs; and Baxter himself, slave as he often was to scholastic fashions, would often burst into a strain of impassioned rhetoric which carried him page over page without a single break. South may be mentioned as a distinguished instance of departure from the old style, and Bates may be named also as an example, so far, of the same class. Sermons were very long. Some compositions, indeed, bearing that name, but extending to the dimensions of a considerable treatise, were never delivered at all. They were intended to be read, not heard. This was the case with some compositions from the pens of Baxter and Barrow: but anecdotes related respecting the latter Divine, show the enormous length to which he sometimes carried his oral addresses. Once, before he preached in Westminster Abbey, the Dean requested him to be short. He showed the sermon to that dignitary, who, finding it consisted of two parts, requested him to deliver only one of them. Barrow did so, yet that occupied an hour and a half in the delivery. Upon another occasion, he “enlarged” so much, that the vergers who were anxious to show to impatient visitors “the tombs and effigies of the Kings and Queens in wax,” “caused the organ to be struck up against him, and would not give over playing till they had blowd him down.” His Spital sermon lasted three hours and a half; what the Lord Mayor and Aldermen thought of it we do not know; but we are informed that the preacher, when asked if he felt tired, replied, that “he began to be weary of standing so long.”[311] Barrow’s case, no doubt, is an extreme one; but although he exceeded what might be common, it is plain enough from the specimens of pulpit eloquence belonging to that age, that they usually were such as would exhaust the patience of modern congregations.

An amusing story is related of Barrow’s preaching, soon after the Restoration, at St. Lawrence Jewry. His “aspect pale, meagre, and unpromising, slovenly and carelessly dressed, his collar unbuttoned, and his hair uncombed,” so alarmed the congregation that a spectator declares, “there was such a noise of pattens of serving maids and ordinary women, and of unlocking of pews, and cracking of seats, caused by the younger sort hastily climbing over them, that I thought all the congregation were mad.” An apprentice accosted him when all was over, saying, “Sir, be not dismayed, for I assure you ’twas a good sermon.” When asked what he thought of the congregation running away, Barrow answered—“I thought they did not like me or my sermon, and I have no reason to be angry with them for that.” “But what was your opinion of the apprentice?” “I take him,” replied he, “to be a very civil person, and if I could meet with him I’d present him with a bottle of wine.” Some of the parishioners afterwards called on Dr. Wilkins, the Incumbent, to expostulate with him for allowing one “who looked like a starved Cavalier to preach in his pulpit.” Baxter, happening to be in the Vicar’s house when the parishioners arrived, Wilkins said: “The person you thus despise, I assure you, is a pious man, an eminent scholar, and an excellent preacher, for the truth of the latter, I appeal to Mr. Baxter, here present, who heard the sermon you so vilify, I am sure you believe Mr. Baxter is a competent judge.” Baxter praised the sermon, and the parishioners ended by requesting that Barrow might preach again. But he was not disposed to appear any “more on that stage.”[312]

As to the mode of delivering sermons, some Nonconformists, as well as Churchmen, read from a MS., and Dr. Charnock is described as having used an eye-glass to assist his sight.[313] Of Baxter, it is said in the funeral sermon by his friend and assistant Sylvester—“He was a person wonderful at extemporate preaching, for having once left his notes behind him, he was surprised into extemporate thoughts upon (as I remember) Heb. iv. 15, ‘For we have not an High Priest, &c.’ Whereon he preached to very great satisfaction unto all that heard him; and when he came down from the pulpit, he asked me if I was not tired? I said, With what? He said, With his extemporate discourse. I told him, that had he not declared it, I believe none could have discovered it. His reply to me was, that he thought it very needful for a minister to have a body of divinity in his head.” Clarkson, in his funeral sermon for Dr. Owen, remarks that he seldom used notes. Of Dr. Bates, Howe observes, that faithful to the example and traditions of their Puritan fathers, “his sermons, wherein nothing could be more remote from ramble, he constantly delivered from his memory, and hath sometime told me, with an amicable freedom, that he partly did it, to teach some that were younger to preach without notes.”[314] Bull, however,—in this respect anticipating Addison,—advised young Divines not at first to preach their own sermons, but to provide themselves with the compositions of approved authors, or to read to their congregations either one of the authorized Homilies or a chapter selected from The Whole Duty of Man.[315] The old Puritan practice of taking down sermons continued to be very common; and, if we may notice so trivial a matter as pulpit costume, it is amusing to add an odd story told of a Royal chaplain, who preached before the King at Newmarket, “in a long periwig and holland sleeves, according to the then fashion for gentlemen,” at which His Majesty was so scandalized that he commanded the Chancellor of the University to put in execution the statutes respecting decency in apparel.[316]

VIII. Superstition still prevailed. Though the zeal for witchfinding diminished, rumours of witchcraft continued in circulation. People in Worcestershire said, that if certain witches had not been taken up, the King would never have returned to England. From Lancashire, a stronghold of the infernal sisterhood, one of the correspondents of the Secretary of State wrote an account of a woman who confessed, that she, and her father and her mother, “each rode on a black cat to Warrington, nine miles off, and that the cats sucked her mother till they sucked blood.” He states, however, that he had “little faith in this, though given on oath.”[317]

Wise and good men, especially Divines and lawyers, clung as firmly as ever to the old belief of the power of necromancy. Baxter pursued his inquiries into the subject; and Sir Matthew Hale, at the Bury Assizes, in March, 1664, observed, touching a witch case, that he made no doubt there were such creatures, and appealed to Scripture in proof of the fact.[318] On that occasion, Sir Thomas Browne, gave it as his opinion, that the parties named in the indictment as sufferers, were really bewitched. It is proper to remember, with respect to such superstitions, that, at that time, things were worse in France than in England. Witchcraft, divination, raising apparitions, and consulting the stars, were so common there in 1679, that a Commission was appointed, called the “Chambre Ardente,” to inquire into such cases.

The Royal touch for curing the King’s Evil was again sought and bestowed. A minute religious ceremonial, almost incredible to us, accompanied the act. His Majesty sat in a chair of state. One of the Clerks of the Closet stood on his right hand, holding as many gold angels, everyone tied to a riband of white silk, as there were patients to be touched. A chaplain read in the 16th chapter of the Gospel of Mark from the 14th verse to the end. The chirurgeon presented the diseased; and making three reverences, they knelt down together before the King, the chaplain repeating the words: “They shall lay their hands on the sick, and they shall be healed.” His Majesty then touched the cheeks of the persons brought to be cured; after which, the chaplain read the first chapter of John as far as the 15th verse; and, as the words were pronounced, “That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” the King suspended round the neck of each person one of the gold angels, handed to him by the clerk. Other passages of Scripture followed, a prayer was offered, and the ceremony ended with the King’s washing his hands.[319] Numerous were the applications made for the Royal touch, to which, no doubt, the obtaining of a gold angel operated as a motive, no less than the hope of receiving a sovereign cure.

I add a further illustration of the superstition of the age, not amongst the ignorant, but the educated. Rectors of parishes requested the Secretary of State to procure His Majesty’s touch for parishioners who were troubled with the malady. When Charles II. went to Newmarket, Sir Thomas Browne wrote to Sergeant Knight, and sent certificates for divers afflicted persons who were going from Norwich to be touched by the King. No fewer than 92,107 persons were asserted by the eminent physician, just named, to have passed through this ceremony between the years 1660 and 1683. One woman is said to have been cured of blindness by these wonderful means; and greater marvel still, a man is reported to have been cured of Nonconformity by witnessing the effect of the Royal fingers upon his child!—he expressed his thanks in this method: “Farewell to all Dissenters, and to all Nonconformists; if God can put so much virtue into the King’s hand as to heal my child, I’ll serve that God and that King so long as I live with all thankfulness.” An example of other absurd beliefs is found in a statement made to the Secretary of State, about a salmon which came up to the River Avon, on a Christmas Day. It was represented as being so religious, that it allowed itself to be touched by a staff, whereas at other times it is said, “Salmon are so shy that they endure not the least shadow.” “If any one made a prey of these quiet Christian fish they came to an unfortunate end.”[320]

Samuel Hartlib, in his correspondence with Dr. Worthington, of Cambridge, raised a question respecting angelic apparitions: “For long-bearded, good angels,” he says, “or lady-angels of true light, they do indeed cross all the old records of antiquity, whether Gentile or Jewish, neither Mercury, nor Gabriel, appeared otherwise than in prime of youthful vigour.”[321] The Cambridge scholar inclined to the idea, that angels might appear in long beards, and told his friend a story of a stranger, who knocked at a sick man’s door, and directed him to make use of two red sage leaves, and one blood-wort leaf, steeped in beer for three days,—and to live for a month in fresh country air. “Several circumstances,” he gravely added, “made it probable that he who came was a good angel, and if so, that he appeared as a grave old man, very tall and straight, of a very fresh colour, his hair as white as wool, and his beard broad and very white.” This old man, believed to be an angelic visitant, wore new shoes, tied with black ribbons.[322]