CHAPTER VI.

[Sidenote: THE REGICIDES.]

The treatment of the men who had been foremost in what the Royalists called the Great Rebellion, affords a further and a critical instance of the temper of Parliament. At first, and for some little time afterwards, the majority supported a large measure of oblivion. Not more than seven persons were excepted from the Act of Indemnity. But the number speedily increased to twenty-nine.[159] Afterwards it was proposed that all who sat on the trial of Charles I., and had not surrendered according to a late Proclamation, were to be excluded from the Act of Oblivion,--a point carried without any division. The Lords made the Bill more stringent. They determined to exclude all who had signed the death-warrant, or were sitting in the court when sentence was pronounced, whether they had submitted since the Restoration or not; to these the Lords added the names of Hacker, Vane, Lambert, Haselrig, and Axtell. Yet they struck out a clause, reserving Lenthall and others for future punishment. The Commons had been slow with the Act of Indemnity, notwithstanding the salvation of many of their old friends was involved in it. The Lords were slower still, and both had to be spurred on by Royal messages. When the Bill, in its increased severity, came down from the Lords, the Commons resisted the sweeping amendment which excluded all the members of the High Court of Justice from the general amnesty. They pleaded that such an exclusion would violate the promise from Breda, and the terms of the recent Proclamation. Repeated conferences took place between the Houses, and it is visible that the spirit of resistance to the vindictiveness of the Lords gradually gave way, and that the violent Royalists were gaining ground amongst them. The Commons entered into a compromise. Most of the judges were excepted; others were reserved for lesser penalties. About twenty persons, besides those who had pronounced sentence in the High Court of Justice, were incapacitated for any civil or military office.[160]

The regicides being excluded from the Act of Oblivion, some of them were tried at the Old Bailey, in the month of October, 1660. Amongst those who then stood at the bar were four persons who have appeared, more or less conspicuously, in connection with the Ecclesiastical History of the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth.

[Sidenote: 1660.]

Major-General Harrison, the famous Republican, who, in the Little Parliament had opposed the tithe system, who had plunged deeply into the study of prophecy, had been for some time expecting the reign of the saints, and had been involved in the revolutionary schemes of the Fifth Monarchy men, was arraigned for having sat upon the trial of his "late Sovereign Lord King Charles I., of ever blessed memory," and for having signed and sealed the warrant for his execution.[161] He was found guilty, and condemned to die. With his political fanaticism there blended other feelings; and the propriety of his demeanour in prison was such, that the woman, who cleaned his cell, and kindled his fire, declared she could not conceive how he deserved to be there, for he was a man "full of God--there was nothing but God in his mouth--and his discourse and frame of heart would melt the hardest of their hearts."[162] He died expressing transports of religious joy.

[Sidenote: THE REGICIDES.]

Hugh Peters, the military Divine, who had beat up for recruits at country market crosses, and carried messages of victory from the Army to the Commons, was now condemned for stirring up the soldiery to demand the Monarch's execution, and for giving publicity to the Proclamation for the High Court of Justice. As he was going to execution, he replied to a person--who abused him as a regicide--"Friend, you do not well to trample upon a dying man, you are greatly mistaken. I had nothing to do with the death of the King."

Peters, although coarse, vulgar, and violent, has been painted in darker colours than he deserves. It is certain that he approved of the execution of the King; but whether his complicity in the deed was legally proved is another question. That he was one of the masked headsman on the 30th of January, 1649, is an idle tale; and of the charges against his moral character no adequate proof has ever been adduced. Without any respect for his memory I wish to do him justice. He has been commonly represented by Royalists as an unprincipled and cruel villain, steeped in vice, and laden with crime. The facts of his history do not support that indictment; they rather show him to have been a sincere, misguided, and unhappy enthusiast.[163]

Isaac Pennington--who presented to the Long Parliament in 1640 the famous "Root and Branch" Petition of the London citizens--was at this time also charged with compassing the Monarch's death. The Lord Chief Baron alluded to him in merciful terms, and although found guilty, his life was spared through the intercession of influential friends. He died a prisoner in the Tower, December the 17th, 1661. His son Isaac had embraced Quakerism; and a daughter of his wife, by a former husband, became the wife of William Penn.

[Sidenote: 1660.]

By the side of Isaac Pennington stood another prisoner with whom we are already acquainted--Henry Marten.[164] Of his Revolutionary opinions, and of his active part in the Whitehall tragedy, there could be no question--perhaps he had as much to do with it as any one; yet after he had been convicted, he threw himself upon the mercy of Parliament. In the petition which he presented he observed, with the careless wit which no misfortune could subdue, that he had surrendered himself upon the Restoration in consequence of the King's "Declaration of Breda," and that "since he had never obeyed any Royal proclamation before this, he hoped that he should not be hanged for taking the King's word now?"[165] The Commons do not appear to have attempted anything in his favour; but his cause received warm advocacy when it came before the Lords. With a dash of invincible humour, the Republican pleaded, that since the honourable House of Commons, which he before so idolized, had given him up to death, the honourable House of Peers, which he had so much opposed, especially in their power of judicature, was now left as a sanctuary to which he fled for life. He had submitted himself to His Majesty's gracious Proclamation, he took hold of it, and hoped to receive pardon through it. He now submitted himself to His Majesty and to the House for mercy.[166] Marten obtained what was denied to men more worthy; but although his life was spared, he spent twenty years in prison, and expired in Chepstow Castle, at the age of 78.[167]

The growth of vindictive loyalty was rapid; it rose to an alarming height, and assumed a frantic mien, when, after re-assembling in November, the Commons resolved, that the carcases of Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, John Bradshaw, and Thomas Pride, whether buried in Westminster Abbey or elsewhere, should with all expedition be taken up, drawn upon a hurdle to Tyburn, there hanged up in their coffins for a time, and afterwards buried under the gallows.[168]

[Sidenote: NEW BISHOPS.]

Leaving this horrid subject, we notice that at the close of the year a consecration of new Bishops took place. Of the nine prelates remaining alive at the time, Juxon, who had been Bishop of London, was translated to Canterbury; Frewen, who had been nominated by Charles I. to the see of Lichfield and Coventry, was promoted to the Archbishopric of York; and Duppa, who had held the see of Salisbury, was transferred to the diocese of Winchester. To the Bishopric of London, vacated by the translation of Juxon, Sheldon succeeded--a reward considered due for unceasing vigilance over Episcopalian interests during the Commonwealth. Morley, who had attended Charles at the Hague, was appointed Bishop of Worcester; and Henchman, who had aided His Majesty's escape after the battle near that city, became Bishop of Salisbury.[169]

Seven new prelates together were consecrated at Westminster on Sunday, the 2nd of December:--Cosin, the patristic scholar, who had been chaplain in the household of Queen Henrietta,--as Bishop of Durham; and Walton, the editor of the _Polyglott_,--as Bishop of Chester. Gauden also was one of the number. Though he had remained in Cromwell's Broad Church, it is said that upon all occasions he had taken worthy pains in the pulpit and by the press to rescue His Majesty and the Church of England, from all mistaken and heterodox opinions of several and different factions, as well as from the sacrilegious hands of false brethren whose scandalous conversation was consummate, in devouring Churchlands, and in impudently making sacrilege lawful.

[Sidenote: 1660.]

He received for these services the Bishopric of Exeter;[170] and at the same time there was consecrated with him--as Bishop of Carlisle--Richard Sterne, who had suffered much from the Presbyterians, and had attended on the scaffold his friend, Archbishop Laud. Laney designated to Peterborough, Lloyd to Llandaff, and Lucy to St. David's, complete the seven.

Sancroft, then domestic chaplain to Bishop Cosin, preached the sermon, in which he defended diocesan Episcopacy from the words of St. Paul to Titus: "For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee." He who appointed him, said the preacher, was "not a suffragan of St. Peter," "not a disciple of Gamaliel," "not a delegate of the civil magistrate," but "an apostle of Jesus Christ." And he who was appointed was "a single person; not a consistory of Presbyters, or a bench of elders," and his office was to supply defects--to correct what might be amiss--and to exercise the power of ordination; "our most reverend Titus" being "a genuine son and successor of the apostles." The theological reader will infer at once what were the arguments under each head, and he may judge of the style and spirit of the discourse from the following passage--"And blessed be this day (let God regard it from above, and a more than common light shine upon it!) in which we see the Phœnix arising from her funeral pile, and taking wing again; our Holy Mother, the Church, standing up from the dust and ruins in which she sate so long, taking beauty again for ashes, and the garments of praise for the spirit of heaviness, remounting the Episcopal throne, bearing the keys of the kingdom of heaven with her, and armed (we hope) with the rod of discipline; her hands spread abroad, to bless and to ordain, to confirm the weak, and to reconcile the penitent; her breasts flowing with the sincere milk of the word, and girt with a golden girdle under the paps, tying up all by a meet limitation and restriction to primitive patterns, and prescripts apostolical. A sight so venerable and august, that methinks, it should at once strike love and fear into every beholder, and an awful veneration. I may confidently say it. It was never well with us, since we strayed from the due reverence we owed to Heaven and her; and it is strange we should no sooner observe it, but run a maddening after other lovers that ruined us, till God hedged in our way with thorns, that we could no longer find them, and then we said, I will go and return to my former husband, for then was it better with me than now."[171]

[Sidenote: NEW BISHOPS.]

Eight Bishops of the Irish Church were still living. Bramhall was translated to the primacy as Archbishop of Armagh. Nominations to vacant Sees followed; including that of Jeremy Taylor to the diocese of Down and Conner, upon Henry Lesley being translated to Meath; but his consecration was delayed until the 27th of January, 1661, when ten new Bishops, and two old ones promoted to the Archiepiscopate, were solemnly set apart in Saint Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. The consecration of so many at one time has been pronounced, "an event probably without a parallel in the Church."[172]

[Sidenote: 1660.]

We have crossed, almost unconsciously, from England to Ireland. Between lies the Isle of Man; and this reminds us of what was going on there, a short time before the remarkable consecration at Dublin. In the autumn of 1660, Commissioners were engaged in reducing to order ecclesiastical affairs. They summoned the clergy before them to exhibit their letters of orders and of presentation; they enforced the use of the Prayer Book, and of catechizing, the keeping also of feasts and fast days, including the 30th of January, the day of King Charles' martyrdom, and the 15th of October, the day of Earl James' martyrdom. The observance of Lent was afterwards enjoined, with the customary penalties and with provision for dispensations. Parish discipline was established according to canon law; and, without any ejectment or any opposition, the portion of the Church existing in that island submitted at once to Episcopalian rule.[173]

[Sidenote: PERSECUTION.]

Returning to England, we remark that since certain old laws were deemed by Churchmen as still in force, notwithstanding the legislature of the last twenty years, they constituted an arsenal of weapons, with which magistrates and others could, if they were disposed, grievously disturb their Puritan neighbours. The _Canon law_ prohibited dissent from the Church under pain of excommunication. The same penalty was threatened against all who affirmed that ministers not subscribing to the form of worship in the Communion Book, might "truly take unto them the name of another Church not established by law," or that religious assemblies other than such as by the law of the land were allowed, might rightly challenge the name of true Churches, or that it was lawful for any sort of ministers or lay persons, to join together to make ecclesiastical rules or constitutions without the King's authority. No minister, without license of the Bishop, could presume to hold meetings for sermons. As all conventicles were hurtful to the state of the Church, no ministers or other persons were to assemble in any private house or elsewhere for ecclesiastical purposes, under pain of excommunication.[174] As to _Statute law_, the 1 Eliz. c. 2, required all persons to resort to Church every Sunday and every day ordained a holiday. The penalty of disobedience was a shilling fine, with Church censure for every offence. The 23 Eliz. c. 1, made the fine twenty pounds a month, and the offender who persevered for twelve months had to be bound to good behaviour with two sureties in two hundred pounds, until he conformed. To keep a schoolmaster who did not attend Church, incurred a monthly fine of ten pounds. The 29 Eliz. c. 6, empowered the Queen, by process out of the Exchequer, to seize the goods and two parts of the real property of offenders, upon default of paying their fines. The 35 Eliz. c. 1, made the frequenting of conventicles punishable by imprisonment. Those who after conviction would not submit were to abjure the realm. Refusal to abjure was felony, without benefit of clergy.[175]

[Sidenote: 1660.]

These laws, however, do not suggest a full idea of all the inconvenience and suffering to which Nonconformists, before the Civil War, had been exposed. That we may understand fully the circumstances in which they were placed, we must add the activity of spiritual courts, the jurisdiction of the High Commission, and the indefinite powers of the Crown. Nor do these laws, statute and canon, exhibit all the forces of oppression which continued to exist after the Restoration, and before the passing of the Act of Uniformity--forces which could be brought into play at any moment, and in any situation. Spiritual courts, it is true, had not yet been re-established; the High Commission no longer existed. The power of the Crown had received a check; but in addition to laws prohibitory of religious gatherings outside the Establishment, there stood the law of Royal Supremacy, which could not be taken by Papists, and was objected to by some Protestant Dissenters. The statute, which had sent More and Fisher to the block, brought sorrow upon a large number of unknown persons, who, on a different principle from that adopted by those sufferers, objected strongly to Royal Supremacy over causes ecclesiastical as well as