[33] Cunningham, The Moral Witness of the Church on the Investment of Money and the Use of Wealth, 1909, p. 25.
[34] Knox, The Buke of Discipline, in Works, ed. D. Laing, vol. ii, 1848, pp. 183 seqq.; Thos. Cartwright, A Directory of Church Government (printed in D. Neal, History of the Puritans, 1822, vol. v, Appx. iv); W. Travers, A Full and Plain Declaration of Ecclesiastical Discipline, 1574; J. Udall, A Demonstration of the Trueth of that Discipline which Christe hath prescribed in his Worde for the Government of his Church, 1589; Bancroft, Dangerous Positions and Proceedings published and practised within this Iland of Brytaine under Pretence of Reformation and for the Presbyteriall Discipline, 1593 (part reprinted in R. G. Usher, The Presbyterian Movement in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, as illustrated by the Minute Book of the Dedham Classis, 1905).
[35] Cartwright, op. cit.
[36] Usher, op. cit., p. 1.
[37] Ibid., pp. 14-15, for Bancroft’s account of the procedure.
[38] Quoted from Baillie’s Letters by W. A. Shaw, A History of the English Church during the Civil Wars and under the Commonwealth, 1900, vol. i, p. 128.
[39] Shaw, op. cit., vol. ii, chap. iii (The Presbyterian System, 1646-60). For the practical working of Presbyterian discipline, see Chetham Society, vols. xx, xxii, xxiv, Minutes of the Manchester Classis, and vols. xxxvi, xli, Minutes of the Bury Classis.
[41] Puritan Manifestoes, p. 120, quoted by H. G. Wood, The Influence of the Reformation on Ideas concerning Wealth and Property, in Property, its Rights and Duties, 1913, p. 142. Mr. Wood’s essay contains an excellent discussion of the whole subject, and I should like here to acknowledge my obligations to it. For the views of Knewstub, Smith, and Baro, see the quotations from them printed by Haweis, Sketches of the Reformation, 1844, pp. 237-40, 243-6. It should be noted that Baro, while condemning those who, “sitting idle at home, make merchandise only of their money, by giving it out in this sort to needy persons ... without having any regard of his commodity to whome they give it, but only of their own gain,” nevertheless admitted that interest was not always to be condemned. See also Thos. Fuller, History of the University of Cambridge, ed. M. Prickett and T. Wright, 1840, pp. 275-6, 288-9, and Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Modern Times, 1921 ed., pt. i, pp. 157-8.
[42] New Shakespeare Society, Series vi, no. 6, 1877-9, Phillip Stubbes’s Anatomy of the Abuses in England, ed. F. J. Furnivall, pp. 115-16.
[43] W. Ames, De Conscientia et eius iure vel casibus libri quinque, bk. v, chaps. xliii, xliv. Ames (1576-1633) was educated at Christ’s College, Cambridge, tried to settle at Colchester, but was forbidden to preach by the Bishop of London, went to Leyden about 1610, was appointed to the theological chair at Franeker in 1622, where he remained for ten years, and died at Rotterdam.
[44] E.g., Stubbes, op. cit.; Richard Capel, Temptations, their Nature, Danger, Cure, 1633; John Moore, The Crying Sin of England of not caring for the Poor; wherein Inclosure, viz. such as doth unpeople Townes, and uncorn Fields, is arraigned, convicted and condemned, 1653.
[45] J. O. Halliwell, The Autobiography and Correspondence of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, 1845, vol. i, pp. 206-10, 322, 354; vol. ii, pp. 96, 153-4.
[46] Usher, op. cit. (see note 34 above), pp. 32, 53, 70, 99-100.
[47] Sept. 26, 1645, it is resolved “that it shall be in the power of the eldership to suspend from the sacrament of the Lord’s supper any person that shall be legally attainted of Barratry, Forgery, Extortion, Perjury, or Bribery” (Commons’ Journals, vol. iv, p. 290).
[48] Chetham Society, Minutes of the Bury Presbyterian Classis, 1647-57, pt. i, pp. 32-3. The Cambridge classis (ibid., pt. ii, pp. 196-7) decided in 1657 that the ordinance of Parliament of August 29, 1648 should be taken as the rule of the classis in the matter of scandal. The various scandals mentioned in the ordinance included extortion, and the classis decided that “no person lawfully convict of any of the foresaid scandalls bee admitted to the Lord’s supper without signification of sincere repentance,” but it appears (p. 198) to have been mainly interested in witches, wizards, and fortune-tellers.
[49] Hist. MSS. Comm., Report on MSS. in various Collections, vol. i, 1901, p. 132.
[50] Quoted by F. J. Powicke, A Life of the Reverend Richard Baxter, 1924, p. 92.
[51] Selections from those parts of The Christian Directory which bear on social ethics are printed by Jeannette Tawney, Chapters from Richard Baxter’s Christian Directory, 1925, in which most of the passages quoted in the text will be found.
[52] Reliquiæ Baxterianæ (see note 2), p. 1.
[53] Life and Death of Mr. Badman (Cambridge English Classics, 1905), pp. 116-25, where Bunyan discusses at length the ethics of prices.
[54] Carlyle, Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches, Letter ii.
[55] See on these points Weber, op. cit. (note 32 above), p. 94, whose main conclusions I paraphrase.
[56] Milton, A Defence of the People of England (1692 ed.), p. xvii.
[57] See, e.g., Thos. Wilson, A Discourse upon Usury, Preface, 1925 ed., p. 178: “There bee two sortes of men that are alwayes to bee looked upon very narrowly, the one is the dissemblinge gospeller, and the other is the wilfull and indurate papiste. The first under colour of religion overthroweth all religion, and bearing good men in hande that he loveth playnesse, useth covertelie all deceypte that maye bee, and for pryvate gayne undoeth the common welfare of man. And touching thys sinne of usurie, none doe more openly offende in thys behalfe than do these counterfeite professours of thys pure religion.”
[58] Fenton, A Treatise of Usurie, 1612, pp. 60-1.
[59] Brief Survey of the Growth of Usury in England, 1673.
[60] S. Richardson, The Cause of the Poor Pleaded, 1653, Thomason Tracts, E. 703 (9), p. 14. For other references, see note 72 below. For extortionate prices, see Thomason Tracts, E. 399 (6), The Worth of a Penny, or a Caution to keep Money, 1647. I am indebted for this and subsequent references to the Thomason Tracts to Miss P. James.
[61] Hooker, Preface to The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Everyman ed., 1907, vol. i, p. 128.
[62] Wilson, op. cit., p. 250.
[63] Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, written by his Widow Lucy, Everyman ed., 1908, pp. 64-5.
[65] The Earl of Strafforde’s Letters and Despatches, by William Knowler, D.D., 1739, vol. ii, p. 138.
[66] No attempt has been made in the text to do more than refer to the points on which the economic interests and outlook of the commercial and propertied classes brought them into collision with the monarchy, and only the most obvious sources of information are mentioned here. For patents and monopolies, including the hated soap monopoly, see G. Unwin, The Gilds and Companies of London, 1908, chap. xvii, and W. Hyde Price, The English Patents of Monopoly, 1906, chap. xi, and passim. For the control of exchange business, Cambium Regis, or the Office of his Majesties Exchange Royall, declaring and justifying his Majesties Right and the Convenience thereof, 1628, and Ruding, Annals of the Coinage, 1819, vol. iv, pp. 201-10. For the punishment of speculation by the Star Chamber, and for projects of public granaries, Camden Society, N.S., vol. xxxix, 1886, Reports of Cases in the Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, ed. S. R. Gardiner, pp. 43 seqq., 82 seqq., and N. S. B. Gras, The Evolution of the English Corn Market, 1915, pp. 246-50. For the control of the textile industry and the reaction against it, H. Heaton, The Yorkshire Woollen and Worsted Industries, 1920, chaps. iv, vii; Kate E. Barford, The West of England Cloth Industry: A seventeenth-century Experiment in State Control, in the Wiltshire Archæological and Natural History Magazine, Dec., 1924, pp. 531-42; R. R. Reid, The King’s Council in the North, 1921, pt. iv, chap. ii; Victoria County History, Suffolk, vol. ii, pp. 263-8. For the intervention of the Privy Council to raise the wages of textile workers and to protect craftsmen, Tawney, The Assessment of Wages in England by the Justices of the Peace, in the Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirthschaftsgeschichte, Bd. xi, 1913, pp. 307-37, 533-64; Leonard, The Early History of English Poor Relief, pp. 160-3; Victoria County History, Suffolk, vol. ii, pp. 268-9; and Unwin, Industrial Organization in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 1904, pp. 142-7. For the Depopulation Commissions, Tawney, The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century, pp. 376, 391. For the squeezing of money from the East India Company and the infringement of its Charter, Shafa’at Ahmad Khan, The East India Trade in the XVIIth Century, 1923, pp. 69-73. For the colonial interests of Puritan members, A. P. Newton, The Colonising Activities of the English Puritans, 1914, and C. E. Wade, John Pym, 1912.
[67] E. Laspeyres, Geschichte der Volkswirthschaftlichen Anschauungen der Niederländer und ihrer Litteratur zur Zeit der Republik, 1863, pp. 256-70. An idea of the points at issue can be gathered from the exhaustive (and unreadable) work of Salmasius, De Modo Usurarum, 1639.
[68] John Quick, Synodicon in Gallia Reformata, 1692, vol. i, p. 99.
[69] For the change of sentiment in America, see Troeltsch, Protestantism and Progress, pp. 117-27; for Franklin, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin, and Sombart, The Quintessence of Capitalism, 1915, pp. 116-21.
[70] Rev. Robert Woodrow (quoted by Sombart, op. cit., p. 149).
[71] John Cooke, Unum Necessarium or the Poore Man’s Case (1648), which contains a plea for the regulation of prices and the establishment of Monts de Piété.
[72] For the scandal caused to the Protestant religion by its alleged condonation of covetousness, see T. Watson, A Plea for Alms, 1658 (Thomason Tracts, E. 2125), pp. 21, 33-4: “The Church of Rome layes upon us this aspersion that we are against good workes.... I am sorry that any who go for honest men should be brought into the indightment; I mean that any professors should be impeached as guilty of this sinne of covetousnesse and unmercifulnesse.... I tell you these devout misers are the reproach of Christianity.... I may say of penurious votaries, they have the wings of profession by which they seem to fly to heaven, but the feet of beasts, walking on the earth and even licking the dust.... Oh, take heed, that, seeing your religion will not destroy your covetousnesse, at last your covetousnesse does not destroy your religion.” See also Sir Balthazar Gerbier, A New Year’s Result in favour of the Poore, 1651 (Thomason Tracts, E. 651 [14]), p. 4: “If the Papists did rely as much on faith as the reformed professors of the Gospel (according to our English tenets) doe, or that the reformed professors did so much practice charity as the Papists doe?”
[74] The first person to emphasize the way in which the idea of a “calling” was used as an argument for the economic virtues was Weber (see note 32 above), to whose conclusions I am largely indebted for the following paragraphs.
[75] Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress.
[76] Richard Steele, The Tradesman’s Calling, being a Discourse concerning the Nature, Necessity, Choice, etc., of a Calling in general, 1684, pp. 1, 4.
[77] Ibid., pp. 21-2.
[78] Ibid., p. 35.
[79] Baxter, Christian Directory, 1678 ed., vol. i, p. 336b.
[80] Thomas Adams (quoted Weber, op. cit., p. 96 n.).
[81] Matthew Henry, The Worth of the Soul (quoted ibid., p. 168 n.).
[82] Baxter, op. cit., vol. i, p. 111a.
[83] Steele, op. cit., p. 20.
[84] Baxter, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 378b, 108b; vol. iv, p. 253a.
[85] Navigation Spiritualized: or a New Compass for Seamen, consisting of xxxii Points:
| Pleasant Observations | ||
| of | Profitable Applications and | |
| Serious Reflections. |
All concluded with so many spiritual poems. Whereunto is now added,
Being an essay towards their much desired Reformation from the horrible and detestable sins of Drunkenness, Swearing, Uncleanness, Forgetfulness of Mercies, Violation of Promises, and Atheistical Contempt of Death. 1682.
The author of this cheerful work was a Devonshire minister, John Flavell, who also wrote Husbandry Spiritualized, or the Heavenly Use of Earthly Things, 1669. In him, as in Steele, the Chadband touch is unmistakable. The Religious Weaver, apparently by one Fawcett, I have not been able to trace.
[86] Steele, op. cit. (see note 76 above).
[87] Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress.
[88] David Jones, A Farewell Sermon at St. Mary Woolnoth’s, 1692.
[89] Nicholas Barbon, A Discourse of Trade, 1690, ed. by Professor John H. Hollander (A Reprint of Economic Tracts, Series ii, no. 1).
[90] The words of a member of the Long Parliament, quoted by C. H. Firth, Oliver Cromwell, 1902, p. 313.
[91] The Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, 1827 ed., vol. ii, p. 235: “The merchants took much delight to enlarge themselves upon this argument [i.e., the advantages of war], and shortly after to discourse ‘of the infinite benefit that would accrue from a barefaced war against the Dutch, how easily they might be subdued and the trade carried by the English.’” According to Clarendon, who despised the merchants and hated the whole business, it was almost a classical example of a commercial war, carefully stage-managed in all its details, from the directorship which the Royal African Company gave to the Duke of York down to the inevitable “incident” with which hostilities began.
[92] Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 7-9.
[93] Sir Dudley North, Discourses upon Trade, 1691, Preface.
[94] Petty, Political Arithmetic, Preface.
[95] Chamberlayne, Angliæ Notitia (quoted P. E. Dove, Account of Andrew Yarranton, 1854, p. 82 n.).
[96] Roger North, The Lives of the Norths (1826 ed.), vol. iii, p. 103; T. Watson, A Plea for Alms (Thomason Tracts, E. 2125); p. 33; Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, 2nd part, 1682, p. 9, where Sir Robert Clayton, Lord Mayor 1679-80, and Member of Parliament for the City 1679-81 and again from 1689, appears as “extorting Ishban.” He was a scrivener who had made his money by usury.
[97] John Fawke, Sir William Thompson, William Love, and John Jones.
[98] Charles King (The British Merchant, 1721, vol. i, p. 181) gives the following persons as signatories of an analysis of the trade between England and France in 1674: Patience Ward, Thomas Papillon, James Houblon, William Bellamy, Michael Godfrey, George Toriano, John Houblon, John Houghe, John Mervin, Peter Paravicine, John Dubois, Benj. Godfrey, Edm. Harrison, Benj. Delaune. The number of foreign names is remarkable.
[99] For Dutch capital in London, see Hist. MSS. Comm., 8th Report, 1881, p. 134 (proceedings of the Committee on the decay of trade, 1669); with regard to investment of foreign capital in England, it was stated that “Alderman Bucknell had above £100,000 in his hands, Mr. Meynell above £30,000, Mr. Vandeput at one time £60,000, Mr. Dericost always near £200,000 of Dutch money, lent to merchants at 7, 6, and 5 per cent.”
[100] The Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, vol. ii, pp. 289-93, and vol. iii, pp. 4-7; and John Beresford, The Godfather of Downing Street, 1925.
[101] S. Bannister, William Paterson, the Merchant-Statesman, and Founder of the Bank of England: His Life and Trials, 1858.
[102] A. Yarranton, England’s Improvement, 1677.
[103] The Complete English Tradesman (1726) belongs to the same genus as the book of Steele (see above, pp. 244-6), but it has reduced Christianity to even more innocuous proportions: see Letter xvii (Of Honesty in Dealing).
[104] T. S. Ashton, Iron and Steel in the Industrial Revolution, 1924, pp. 211-26. Mr. A. P. Wadsworth has shown that the leading Lancashire clothiers were often Nonconformists (History of the Rochdale Woollen Trade, in Trans. Rochdale Lit. and Sci. Soc., vol. xv, 1925).
[105] Quoted F. J. Powicke, Life of Baxter, 1924, p. 158.
[106] Dicey, Law and Public Opinion in England, 1905, pp. 400-1.
[107] The Humble Petition of Thousands of well-affected Persons inhabiting the City of London, Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, Hamlets, and Places adjacent (Bodleian Pamphlets, The Levellers’ Petitions, c. 15, 3 Linc.). See also G. P. Gooch, English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century, 1898.
[108] Camden Society, The Clarke Papers, ed. C. H. Firth, 1891-4, vol. ii, pp. 217-21 (letter from Winstanley to Fairfax and the Council of War, Dec. 8, 1649).
[109] Records of the Borough of Leicester, 1603-88, ed. Helen Stocks, 1923, pp. 370, 414, 428-30.
[110] John Moore, op. cit. (see note 44, above), p. 13. See also E. C. K. Gonner, Common Land and Enclosure, 1912, pp. 53-5.
[111] Camden Society, The Clarke Papers, vol. i, pp. 299 seqq., lxvii seqq.
[112] The Diary of Thomas Burton, ed. J. T. Rutt, 1828, vol. i, pp. 175-6. A letter from Whalley, referring to agitations against enclosure in Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and Leicestershire, will be found in Thurloe, State Papers, vol. iv, p. 686.
[113] Joseph Lee, A Vindication of a Regulated Enclosure, 1656, p. 9.
[114] Aquinas, Summa Theol., 2a 2æ, Q. xxxii, art. v.
[115] Dives et Pauper, 1493, Prol., chap. vii; cf. Pecock, The Repressor of over-much Blaming of the Clergy, pt. iii, chap. iv, pp. 296-7. For an excellent account of the medieval attitude towards the poor, see B. L. Manning, The People’s Faith in the Time of Wyclif, 1919, chap. x.
[116] A Lyke-wake Dirge, printed by W. Allingham, The Ballad Book, 1907, no. xxxi.
[117] Latimer, The fifth Sermon on the Lord’s Prayer (in Sermons, Everyman ed., p. 336). Cf. Tyndale, The Parable of the Wicked Mammon (in Doctrinal Treatises of William Tyndale, Parker Society, 1848, p. 97): “If thy brother or neighbour therefore need, and thou have to help him, and yet showest not mercy, but withdrawest thy hands from him, then robbest thou him of his own, and art a thief.”
[118] Christopher Harvey, The Overseer of the Poor (in G. Gilfillan, The Poetical Works of George Herbert, 1853, pp. 241-3).