was imprudent, rash, impolitic, and somewhat stern and severe. His measures, both in Church and State, had raised him up many enemies; his demeanour had raised up many more. But that he was influenced by unworthy motives or private ends, that he did not earnestly and zealously labour to advance that which, in his conscience, he believed to be true, and right, and just, not even his bitterest enemies have been able even colourably to establish. His execution was "the most unjustifiable act of these zealots," says one who regarded his character with strong feelings of hostility.1 storm. § 16. The part of England and the Church most entirely devoted to the king, and most opposed to Puritanism, had, during the first three or four years of Puritan ascendancy, altogether escaped molestation. The king's head-quarters and court were at Oxford, and there he had gathered around him the most prominent of his supporters, and those members of Parliament who were utterly opposed to the doings at Westminster. The University was transformed into a great camp. The schools were converted into magazines. The colleges, denuded of their plate and valuables, served as lodgings for the king's officers. The students worked at the trenches, or received commissions in the army. But in June 1646 Oxford was surrendered to the Parliament, and it was evident that the days of "purgation" for this hot-bed of loyalty had at last arrived. An ordinance, appointing a visitation of the University by commissioners, was passed May 1, 1647. The University did not quail or hesitate before the impending It put forth as an act of its whole body its Judgment on the Solemn League and Covenant; and in this paper, which was drawn up by Robert Sanderson, it condemns in the most emphatic and thorough manner the imposition of this tyrannical pledge. The University, indeed, showed a contemptuous disregard of the Parliamentary authority, well calculated to provoke those who had the power in their hands. By the middle of 1648 the Commissioners had ejected from the various foundations about 600 members of them, including ten professors, and all the heads of colleges except two.2 Some of those thus ejected were men of the highest mark for learning and piety. Dr. Henry Hammond, the most devout and learned man of his day, was turned out of his post of sub-dean of Christ Church, and committed to prison. Dr. Robert Sanderson, the Regius Professor of Divinity, who had so boldly written against the Covenant, was dismissed from the place which he so much adorned, but allowed to retire to his parsonage of Boothby Pagnel, where he ministered throughout the troubles 1 Hallam, Const. Hist., i. 577. 2 Wood's Athena Oxonienses; Walker, i. 136 With Oxford the last prop of the Church's influence was cut away, and the Church lay maimed and paralysed at the mercy of its enemies. Her temporal head was soon made to drink with her the cup of woe. § 17. Whatever faults of policy, rash imprudence, and want of political honesty may fairly be imputed to Charles I., the Church of England must ever regard him with reverence as one who honestly and firmly adhered to her cause when, by sacrificing her, he might have saved himself. Hence, without any attempt to canonise him as a saint, she may not unfitly regard him as a martyr. It is true that the king had consented, when the thing itself was inevitable, to the abolition of Episcopacy in Scotland. It is true that he had agreed, on the urgent importunity of the queen, to the taking away of the bishops' votes in Parliament. But this latter step he always bitterly regretted, although it did not touch the essentials of the Church. Further than this he could not be induced to go. "I am firm," he says, 66 to primitive Episcopacy, not to have it extirpated if I can hinder it. Nor was it any policy of State, or obstinacy of will, or partiality of affection either to the men or their functions, which fixed me; who cannot in worldly respects be so considerable to me as 'to recompense the injuries and losses I and my dearest relations, with my kingdoms, have sustained and hazarded, chiefly at first upon this quarrel." What the king risked politically by acting upon his principles in Church matters is evident. At Uxbridge, in 1645, he might have detached the Scotch from the interest of the Parliament if he had yielded to their religious policy. At Newcastle, the king, alone and unaided, combated all the arguments of the Presbyterian divines, and resisted the impassioned entreaties of his Scotch friends on one side, and the queen and his courtiers on the other, to yield in this matter and retrieve his almost desperate fortunes. When in the power of the Independents the king was still the same. He was now not called upon to destroy the Church, but only to "disestablish" it, and to allow complete toleration. This, however, he could not bring himself to do, although all the leading divines of the Church of England signed a paper to the effect that toleration was, under certain circumstances, permissible. 2 In his imprisonment and sore peril in the Isle of Wight it was still 1 1 Eikon Basiliké, chap. xvii. Whether the king himself wrote the Eikon, or Bishop Gauden wrote it for him (as he declares in the letters published by Todd), in any case it may be taken as expressing Charles's sentiments. 2 Tanner MSS. (Bodleian), 58, 453. "In case of exigence of Church and State, a Christian prince hath a latitude allowed him, the bounding whereof is by God left to him." Signed by Bishops of Salisbury, Worcester, the same. He said, "I have done what I could to bring my conscience to a compliance with their proposals, and cannot, and I will not lose my conscience to save my life." 1 He did, indeed, at length so far yield as to allow the establishment of Presbyterianism side by side with Episcopacy—a concession which, as it supplied a basis for the Presbyterians to treat with the king, hastened the action of Cromwell and the Independents, and quickly brought Charles to his trial and his death. § 18. In these last scenes, described with so much power and pathos by Sir T. Herbert and Sir P. Warwick in their Memoirs, the ministrations of the Church, which he had so much loved and so resolutely upheld, did not fail the king. The good Bishop Juxon zealously attended on him to the last, and read to him "the lesson of the day," in which the Church might seem to have reserved to the last her highest and chiefest consolation.2 The murder of the king put the finishing touch to the overthrow of the temporal status and external life of the Church of England. The triumphant fanatic might now gaze round with complacency and contemplate the ruin he had made. But there was an inward life of the Church which no persecution could destroy, and which continued through the long years of trial which yet remained, to maintain its vigour and power. How this was done, and under what difficulties and trials, will be told in the following chapter. Exeter, London, Bath and Wells, Armagh, Rochester; Drs. Sanderson. Holdsworth, Hammond, Jeremy Taylor (original signatures in MS.) 1 Wordsworth, Eccl. Biog. iv. 426. 2 Bishop Juxon, on the morning of the execution, read to the king the Church service of the day, in which Matthew xxvii., containing the account of the Crucifixion, is the second lesson. The king was much struck, and asked the bishop if he had selected that chapter purposely. When told that it was the ordinary lesson of the day, he put off his hat and said, "I bless God that it has thus fallen out."-Sir F. Warwick's Memoirs, p. 345. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 1. That he had traitorously endeavoured to subvert the fundamental laws of the realm, and to persuade the king that he might levy money without consent of Parliament. 2. That he had encouraged sermons and publications tending to the establishment of arbitrary power. 3. That he had interrupted and perverted the course of justice in Westminster Hall. 4. That he had traitorously and corruptly sold justice, and advised the king to sell judicial and other offices. 5. That he had caused a Book of Canons to be published without lawful authority, and had enforced subscription | to it. 6. That he had assumed a papal and tyrannical power both in ecclesiastical and temporal matters. 7. That he had laboured to subvert God's true religion, and to introduce popish superstition and idolatry. 8. That he had usurped the nomination to many ecclesiastical benefices, and had promoted none but persons who were popishly affected, or otherwise | unsound in doctrine and corrupt in man ners. 9. That he had committed the licensing of books to chaplains notoriously disaffected to the reformed religion. 10. That he had endeavoured to reconcile the Church of England to the Church of Rome; had held intelligence with Jesuits and the Pope; and had permitted a popish hierarchy to be established in this king dom. 11. That he had silenced many godly ministers; hindered the preaching of God's Word; cherished profaneness and ignorance; and caused many of the king's subjects to forsake the country 12. That he had endeavoured to raise discord between the Church of England and other Reformed Churches, and had oppressed the Dutch and French congrega tions in England. 13. That he had laboured to introduce innovations in re ligion and government into the kingdom of Scotland, and to stir up war between the two countries. 14. That, to preserve himself from being questioned for these traitorous practices, he had laboured to divert the ancient course of Parliamentary proceeding, and to incense the king against all Parliaments. (Laud's History of his Troubles.) Ten additional Articles were afterwards exhibited, which were somewhat more specific in their character. CHAPTER XXXI. THE CHURCH DURING THE COMMONWEALTH. 1649-1660. § 1. The period of religious anarchy. § 2. Some clergy return to their work under The Engagement. § 3. Difficulties of their position. § 4. English clergy in France. § 5. Appointment of the Triers. § 6. Clergy before the Triers. § 7. Cromwell exhibits some inclination to favour the Church. § 8. He issues the persecuting edict. § 9. Its crushing effect. § 10. Dr. Gauden's Remonstrance. § 11. Leading Clergy take measures to save the Church from destruction. § 12. Jeremy Taylor's Prayer-Book. § 13. Edward Pocock before the Commissioners. 14. A congregation imprisoned for celebrating the Lord's Supper. § 15. Dr. Hammond takes measures to alleviate the poverty of the Clergy. § 16. Secret ordinations. § 17. Attempts to procure the consecration of Bishops. § 18. The beginnings of hope. Declaration of Moderation. § 20. Death of Dr. Hammond. § 19. The § 1. THE Westminster Assembly of Divines had ceased to act long before the king's death, and the system of Church government and ordination which they had devised had never been fully carried out. From the rise into power of the Independents, the Presbyterian system, favoured by the Assembly, was of necessity overturned. The Independents, indeed, accepted the Westminster Confession, but the very essence of their system was the independence of congregations, and the right of each congregation to appoint its own church officers. Thus, from about the year 1648 till the year 1654-when the Government was constrained to adopt some means of testing the qualifications of ministers—there was absolutely no Church government in England, no machinery for ordination. In consequence, the wildest religious anarchy prevailed. The strange sects 1 fostered and encouraged in the army, claimed as much right to furnish ministers to churches as the Presbyterians. Every wild and wicked opinion found an expositor, and was heard advocated within the venerable walls which had long echoed to far different sounds. Where the fabric of a vacant 1 Besides the Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, there were numerous other sects, as Vanists, Fifth Monarchists, Seekers, Ranters, Familists, and Behmenists. Besides these, the followers of the strange enthusiast George Fox began now to be abundant. For some reason or other these fanatics were worse treated than the others. The gaols are said to have been full of Quakers under the Commonwealth.-Life of George Fox, p. 6. |