CHAPTER I

RELIGION

Let us consider the religious side of London in the first half of the seventeenth century. It was not so much the abolition of the Mass and all that went with it, not so much the Smithfield fires and all that they meant, that changed the mind of London, but the acquisition of the Bible and the continual delight which the people found in reading it, in hearing it read, in hearing it expounded, and in making out for themselves the meaning of passages and the foundations of doctrine. The Bible gave them histories more entrancing than any that had ever been presented to them. They read of Abraham and of Jacob, of Joshua, of the Strong Man, of the rash King’s vow, of Saul and David, of Hezekiah, of Elijah and the prophets of Baal. They read the words of the Prophets and applied them to the events and the kings and statesmen of their own time; if they longed to praise their God, the Psalms of David gave them words; if they were sad they found consolation in those poems; for the conduct of life there was the Book of Proverbs; for example, under every possible circumstance was a gallery of portraits, the like of which could nowhere else be found. In the Gospel they read of a Christ whose image rose always higher than they could reach; and in the Epistles they gathered materials for the doctrines of a hundred sects. With this book in their hands, containing history, poetry, morals, example, admonition, the way of eternal life and, scattered about, the materials for the Creed or Articles of Faith, without which it seemed impossible to live, the old authority was gone, never to return so long as that book remained in the hands and sank into the minds of the people.

For forty years and more before the Stuarts came, the book had been read and read again and again by every one; children had read it at school; they had been catechised in it; they had been taught that it contained in itself the whole of religion, so that what had been added since was superfluous or superstitious.

The attitude of the people towards Catholicism at the beginning of the seventeenth century was that of hatred far beyond the hatred of fifty years before, because it was intensified by the terror of the Papacy, which seemed recovering its old ground and quickly seizing on one country after another. It seemed to those that could look beyond the sea that in a short time there would be another, and a far more dangerous attempt than that of the Spanish Armada, upon the religion and the liberties of the country. The horrors of Catholic victory were impressed upon them by the spectacle of the Huguenot fugitives and the unfortunate Palatines, by stories of the Spanish Inquisition and its ruthless tortures. The preachers—those “lecturers”—who were added to the parish churches, fed this feeling of hatred and of terror. What, then, was the indignation, what was the dismay, when the citizens of London found the ecclesiastical authorities separating themselves more and more from the reformed churches of Germany and Switzerland, and, as they thought, advancing with no uncertain steps towards a reconciliation with Rome!

{Transcription: HAGGAI CHAP:I·VE:2. THVS SPEAKETH THE LORD OF HOSTS THIS PEOPLE SAIE, THE TYME IS NOT YET COME THAT THE LORDS HOVSE SHOVLD BE BVILT. 3. THEN CAME THE WORD OF THE LORD BY HAGGAI THE PROPHETT SAYING, 4. IS IT TYME FOR YOVRSELVES (O YEE) TO DWELL IN YOVR SEILED HOVSES, & THIS HOVSE LYE WASTE:·}

IT IS WRITTEN: MY HOVSE IS THE HOVSE OF PRAYER: &C;·}

The early years of the seventeenth century saw the Puritan at his best. That he should prefer and hold a narrow creed was inevitable; there was no creed or sect possible which was not narrow. In this respect the Puritan was in no way below the Catholic, the Episcopalian, the Presbyterian, or the Brownist, or the Fifth Monarchy man, or any other sectarian. He was not, however, necessarily a gloomy and austere person. He might be a man of many accomplishments; Colonel Hutchinson fenced, danced, and played the viol. But the Puritan was, above all, conscious of his own individual responsibility. Between himself and his God he wanted no priest; he would not acknowledge that there was for any man the need of a priest, or for any priest the possession of supernatural power; he wanted no ceremonies; he remembered that symbolism, as all history proclaims aloud, leads infallibly to the worship of the symbol. He would not allow so simple a thing as the sign of the cross in baptism or the ring in marriage. The key-note of Puritanism, the thing which made it strong and glorified it in the persons of the best and noblest spirits, as Milton and Hutchinson, was that the man was master of himself. Consider, therefore, the wrath and the dismay when such a man saw himself, or thought himself deprived of his liberty of thought, compelled to conformity with what he held to be superstitions, dragged unwillingly and in chains along the road to Rome.

Among the lower ranks, the shopkeepers and the craftsmen of London, the same spirit prevailed; but it led to extravagances. The Bible was kept open on every counter; men discussed texts in every tavern; the barbers quoted Paul while they shaved their customers. A certain description of a citizen’s wife suggests the thought and discourse of a London household of this time. “She was very loving and obedient to her parents, kind to her husband, tender-hearted to her children, loving all who were godly, much misliking the wicked and profane; ... very ripe and perfect in all stories of the Bible; _likewise in all stories of Martyrs_.” The martyrs were the Marian martyrs; this good woman knew them all; there would be more martyrs, she knew full well, if the Catholics came back. And she knew, and delighted in, all the stories of the Bible; she was ripe in them and perfect in them. If the Catholics came back, her Bible would be taken from her. Consider the dismay of this poor woman when she was told that Laud was doing all he could to bring them back!

Green points out, very forcibly and truly, how the claims of despotic authority, of crown and church, jarred with all that was noblest in the temper of the time. “These were everywhere reaching forward to the conception of law. Bacon sought the law in material nature; Hooper asserted the rule of law over the spiritual world. The temper of the Puritan was eminently a temper of law. The diligence with which he searched the Scriptures sprang from his earnestness to discover a Divine Will, which, in all things, great or small, he might implicitly obey. But this implicit obedience was reserved for the Divine Will alone: for human ordinances derived their strength only from their correspondence with the revealed law by God.” Against such a temper, with such a stubborn people, fully persuaded that their eternal welfare depended upon their adherence to their own convictions, Charles and Laud were bound to fail.

It must be admitted that the better type of Puritan was apt to degenerate and to give way to a narrower and a stricter school. There appeared the Puritan who pulled down and cut in pieces the Maypoles—those of St. Andrew Undershaft, and of Basing Lane, for example. Also there appeared the Puritan who put down games and sports:—

“I’ve heard our fine refined clergy teach, Of the commandments, that it is a breach To play at any game for gain or coin; ’Tis theft, they say—men’s goods you do purloin; For beasts or birds in combat for to fight, Oh, ’tis not lawful, but a cruel sight. One silly beast another to pursue ’Gainst nature is, and fearful to the view; And man with man their activeness to try Forbidden is—much harm doth come thereby; Had we their faith to credit what they say We must believe all sports are ta’en away; Whereby, I see, instead of active things, What harm the same unto our nation brings; The pipe and pot are made the only prize Which all our spriteful youth do exercise.’”

There appeared also the Puritan who objected to the study of Latin and Greek as encouraging idolatry and pagan superstition. And the Puritan who would have no Christmas festivities, who put down the custom of plum porridge, and changed the name of Christmas pie to mince-pie, which it is still called. The gloomy face of the Puritan belongs to later developments, as do the texts worn on the sleeve, the lank hair, and the hat without a band.

With such a temper in the people, against such leaders, Charles and Laud began their campaign for the overthrow of civil and religious liberty. It is easy to exclaim against a short-sighted policy, and against the blindness of those who could not observe the signs of the times. In the absence of newspapers and public meetings, how was a statesman to understand the signs of the times? The King, like his father, had not been brought up in the knowledge of English liberties and their history. To this ignorance a great deal of the blundering, both of James and of Charles, may be attributed. Laud, for his part, was an ecclesiastic through and through. It was not for him to seek out the opinions of the unlearned or of the dissentient. It was his business to enforce the ecclesiastical law as he found it, and as he designed to make it.

The number of London clergy afterwards ejected sufficiently proves the support which he obtained from that class. It is, indeed, always safe to expect support from the clergy whenever steps are taken to magnify the ecclesiastical office or to advance the sacerdotal pretensions. As it is in our time, so it was in the days of Laud.

The Archbishop ordered conformity with the ceremonies of the Prayer Book. The surplice was enforced; the sign of the Cross in Baptism was continued; the ring in marriage remained in use; kneeling, and not sitting, at the administration of the Holy Communion became obligatory. The Geneva Bible, the old favourite of the people, with its short and pithy notes, was prohibited; those ministers who refused to conform were ejected; the lectures, which in London had been mostly on the Puritan side, were suppressed.

It became evident fifteen years later that the intolerance of Laud was not so much a subject of complaint as the enforcement of ritual and teaching abhorrent to the mind of Puritan, Presbyterian, and Independent. In 1644 it was proved that intolerance belonged equally to all sects. The possibility of allowing people differing in creeds to live in peace was not as yet admitted; nor would it be admitted until all alike, Anglican, Presbyterian, Independent, Quaker, Anabaptist, Socinian, Roman Catholic, had each and all in turn felt and realised that religion would mean continuous persecution, ejection, rebellion, and suffering, unless a _modus vivendi_ were arrived at.

{Transcription: A Trimers Character._ _Who Can in the Twinkling of an eye Transform himselfe .viz^t. to act the patriot and Saint. With two Hearts, two Tongues, and two Opinions for God or Baal like the Hedg-Hog’s Holes of refuge to fly too when a Storme Aproches, or the Barnacle both flesh and fish, Janus with two faces, or the Sea-gull that Swims as fish and flyes as fowl that hath a Double devotion Scotch and English, in one day’s duty. Half Surplice, and half Cloak both Priest and Presbeter. by way of Caution, be not led— misled I meane, but Mark these Monsters, who serve their own bellyes, and are onely fleecers, not feeders. He would be stil a Rebel if he durst, Turn-Coat in every Age for Interest._}

Meantime those who would be intolerant in their turn, but as yet could not, found the situation gloomy. They looked across the Atlantic and began to emigrate by thousands; not, as is too often asserted, to find across the ocean that freedom which they could not find here, but to find the power of living under the creed that they accepted, and of imposing it upon all who would live among them.

“The Land,” says Clarendon, “was full of pride and mutiny.” It seemed, at one time, as if the best blood of the country was going across the ocean. Hundreds of the clergy gave up their houses and went into poverty because they would not turn a table into an altar, and because they refused to take the least step which pointed in the direction of Rome.

And persecution and public punishment of men like Leighton and Prynne only had the effect of bringing the discontent of the people to the point of exasperation.

{Transcription: _S^t. Alexander Carew, S^t. John Hotham, Captin Hotham & the Arch Bishop of Canterbury, beheaded on Towerhill for Treason against y^e Parliament 1645._

_issue of blood in this more then miserable Kingdom; I shall desire, that I may pray for the people too, as well as for my self: O Lord, I beseech thee give grace of repentance to all people that have a thirst for blood, but if they will not repent, then scatter their devices so, and such as are or shall be contrary to the glory of thy great name, the truth and sincerity of Religion, the establishment of the King, and his posterity after him in their just rights and priviledges, the honour and conservation of Parl. in their ancient and just power, the preservation of this poor Church in her truth, peace and patrimony and the settlement of this distracted and distressed people, [un]der the ancient laws, and in their native liberties; and when thou hast [don]e all this in mercy for them, O Lord fill their hearts with thankfullness, [and] with religious dutiful obedience to thee and thy Commandments all [thei]r dayes: So Amen, Lord Jesus; and I beseech thee receive my soul to [mer]cy. Our Father, &c._

The Bishop of Canterburies last prayer on the Scaffold.

_Lord I am comming as fast as I can, I know I must pass through the [sha]dow of death before I can come to see thee, but it is but_ umbra mortis, _[a m]eere shadow of death, a little darkness upon nature, but thou by thy me[ri]ts and passion hast broke through the jaws of death; so, Lord, receive my Soul, and have mercy on me, and bless this Kingdom with peace and plenty, and with brotherly love and charity, that there may be not this effusion of Christian blood amongst them, for Jesus Christ his sake, if it be thy will. And when he said, Lord receive my soul, which was his designe, the Executioner did his office._}

In the year 1633 appeared Prynne’s _Histrio Mastix_, a violent attack on play-acting, dancing, and masques. In all these things the Queen took great delight. Therefore the work was supposed to be directed against her. A brutal sentence was inflicted upon Prynne, and was duly carried out, and after pillory, branding on the forehead, having his nose slit and his ears cut off, the wretched man was condemned to be disbarred, to be deprived of his University degree, and to be imprisoned for life.

The freedom of the press was of course attacked. Laud assumed a censorship over all new books and over the sale or circulation of old books. Among other books prohibited were Foxe’s _Book of Martyrs_ and Bishop Jewel’s _Works_. Prynne, and with him Dr. Bastwick, a physician, and Henry Burton, a divine, all three being prisoners in the Tower, were prosecuted in the Star Chamber for writing libellous and schismatical books. They were sentenced to pay £5000 each; to stand in pillory; to lose their ears, or, in Prynne’s case, to lose what was left of his ears; to be branded and to be imprisoned in Launceston, Lancaster, and Carnarvon. An immense multitude gathered to see the sentence carried out; they “cried and howled terribly”; they followed the prisoners with shouts of good wishes and groans for their persecutors; they threw money into the coach in which Burton’s wife was sitting. Laud complained afterwards that the prisoners were suffered to speak to the people, and that notes were taken of their speeches and circulated in the City. At Chester, on his way to Carnarvon, Prynne was entertained by the Sheriff and a number of gentlemen, who refreshed him with a good dinner, and gave him tapestry and carpets for his cell.

Let us turn to the other side of religious opinion. If the Bible, and especially the Old Testament, furnished the popular side with arguments in support of every doctrine they professed, the same authority was called in for the maintenance and defence of the High Church and Loyalist party. Laud and his friends were by no means without Scriptural defence. For instance, the most rigid rule of conduct advanced by the divines of Charles the Second’s reign was that of passive obedience, together with the corollary that resistance to the King’s authority was a mortal sin. This doctrine seems to us absurd, we who inherit the training of two hundred years in the belief that all power is conferred by the people and may be withdrawn by the people. But, in fact, the doctrine was perfectly logical if one admitted that the English monarchy was an Oriental despotism such as that of Solomon or any other Eastern king. I have before me a sermon preached on February 6, 1668, in Ripon Cathedral, by the Dean, in which the doctrine is boldly advanced and upheld. The text is from 1 Kings