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(ed. Andrew Clark); George Herbert, The Temple, and A Priest to the Temple; Works of the writers mentioned in the text; The Visitation Articles of different bishops; Two Lives of Farrar, edited by Professor Mayor, 1855; Life of Donne, by Edmund Gosse, with important criticisms by H. C. Beeching, in the Cornhill Magazine, 1900, and The Athenæum; The Story Books of Little Gidding; Hacket's Scrinia Reserata (Life of Williams); The Returnes of Spiritual Comfort and Grief in a Devout Soul (Lettice, Lady Falkland), 1648; Prynne, Canterburie's Doome; A View of the Ancient and Present State of the Churches of Door, Home-Lacy, and Hampstead, Gibson, 1727; A Laudian Church, G. M'W. Rushforth, Guardian, March 5, 1902; C. Fell Smith, Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick; M. E. Palgrave, Mary, Countess of Warwick; Churchwardens' Accounts of St. Mary's, Reading (Garry) Reading, 1893; Churchwardens' Accounts of St. Edmund and St. Thomas, Sarum, Wilts Records Society, 1896; Laud, Works; Diary of John Rous, Incumbent of Santon Downham, 1625-42, Camden Society, 1856.

CHAPTER VIII

The war

THE CHURCH IN THE CIVIL WARS

THE last hope of peace had fled from political as well as religious life. On the 22nd of August 1642 the king's standard was raised at Nottingham. Charles issued begun. a lengthy declaration as a manifesto, in which he said "that nothing but the preservation of the true Protestant religion, invaded by Brownism, Anabaptism, and Libertinism, the safety of our person threatened and conspired against by rebellion and treason, the law of the land and liberty of the subject oppressed and almost destroyed by an usurped, unlimited, arbitrary power, and the freedom, privilege, and dignity of Parliament by force and tumults, could make us put off our long-loved robe of peace, and take up defensive arms." These words, however inadequately they accounted for the origin of the civil war, found an echo in many hearts, and many felt what Walton said in after years: "When I look back upon the ruin of families, the bloodshed, the decay of common honesty, and how the former piety and plain dealing of this now sinful nation is turned into cruelty and cunning; when I consider that, I praise God that He prevented me from being of that party which helped to bring in the Covenant and those sad confusions that followed it."

In a war of creeds the ecclesiastical machinery naturally demands attention, and the religious life of the New Model must also be considered. Both armies had chaplains. In the king's, each regiment was thus provided, many of those employed being clergy who had been driven from their livings, Fuller and Pearson among

Religion in the armies.

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their number. A Soldier's Prayer Book was put forth by the . king's command in 1648 for the use of his army: it was a book of prayer and praise drawn up on the model of the Common Prayer. In 1643 a special Fast was observed on the second Friday in every month, and a form of prayer for it, incorporating the Prayer against Rebellion of Elizabeth's day, was published at Oxford.

The Parliament had not fixed chaplains, but was very liberally supplied with ministers, who spoke freely against the Church and the bishops. The following passage from the letters of Nehemiah Wharton, quoted in the "Calendar of State Papers Domestic," is characteristic:

"A week later" (September 1642) when Wharton's force reached Hereford, he relates, "Sabbath Day, about the time of morning prayer, we went to the minster, where the pipes played and the puppets sang so sweetly that some of our soldiers could not forbear dancing in the holy choir, whereat the Baalists were sore displeased. The anthem ended, they fell to prayer, and prayed devoutly for the king, the bishops, etc.; and one of our soldiers with a loud voice, said, 'What! never a bit for the Parliament,' which offended them much more. Not satisfied with this human service, we went to Divine, and, passing by, found shops open and men at work, to whom we gave some plain dehortations, and went to hear Mr. Sedgwick, who gave us two famous sermons, which much affected the poor inhabitants, who, wondering, said they never heard the like before. And I believe them."

Independents

Sectaries.

After Edgehill most of the ministers in Essex's army went home, and it was in this that Baxter attributed the growth of independency, which Cromwell, from the first, wished to be dominant in the army. Within two years of and the formation of the New Model the Independents secured complete control. Dell, Saltmarsh, William Sedgwick, and Hugh Peter were the chief ministers, and they were indefatigable. From 1648 a considerable increase of chaplains occurred, but, though they were well paid, their position remained a precarious one, liable to termination at the will of the commanding officer, on whom depended the precise shade of theology preached.

The Independents, however, did not remain without rivals.

A large number of sects sprang up, not unnaturally, from the fact that soldiers claimed to preach indiscriminately, and that attempts to restrict the privilege to ministers ordained by some Reformed Church entirely failed. But toleration was no more complete in the army than outside it. Severe measures were used against Quakers, Fifth Monarchy men, Antinomians, and the like: the limits of permissible opinion were strictly fenced.

The ministers as well as the officers heartily approved of the iconoclasm which marked the progress of the Parliamentary troops. Waller's army did grievous damage at Winchester and Chichester. At the latter place, where painted windows and monuments were destroyed under Waller's eyes, a trooper said, "That if his old colonel in the Low Countries were there and commanded in chief, he would hang up half-a-dozen soldiers for example's sake." It may be added that there is no evidence for, and much to contradict, the often-repeated statement that every soldier in Cromwell's army had a Bible in his knapsack.

Puritanism

When the war began Puritanism presented an unbroken front. Presbyterians and Calvinistic churchmen stood shoulder to shoulder, and Independency had hardly yet at its best, begun to lift up its head. Puritanism at its best was indeed a powerful and in many respects a righteous force. Allied, on the one hand, with those who were eager for political freedom, or at least for definite checks on the personal government of the king, and, on the other, with the strong individualist tendencies of the religious men who had been trained in the school of Calvin, it had, in the strength of its protest against luxury and immorality, the "scurf" of the playhouse and the idleness of the cultured classes, a work to do which no other party could have accomplished. Puritanism had the power which always belongs to strong individualist principles when they are keenly felt by masses of men. It was a logical and rational following of the principles of Luther and of Calvin-unlike in outward expression as those principles were, but ultimately the same in essentials-in the reliance of the soul upon God apart from any media of communication. The stern simplicity of life which it fostered, the rejection, when pressed to

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its extreme, of worldly literature and art, was its most distinctive feature, and as such it sank into the hearts of thousands of poor folk, to whom the English Bible was speaking with a tremendous force of literalism and of conversion. In its sternest moments, even in the extremity of its Calvinism, when its divines could joyfully contemplate the damnation of "infants a span long," it was not really far divided from charity and grace. Households trained on its principles were homes of love as well as of discipline, and to them much that was beautiful as well as strong in later English life was not a little due.

Dr.

and at its

worst.

Such was Puritanism in its noblest aspect, but in the hands of too many of its upholders it meant no more than bigotry and outrage. As the Parliamentary army set out from London in September 1642 they sacked the churches on their way, burning the communion tables and destroying surplices and prayer-books. Even clergy disposed towards Puritanism did not always escape. Featley, of Acton and of Lambeth, of Pædobaptist fame, though he was, as Heyton says, "a Calvinist always in his heart," had his barns and stables at Acton fired by some of Essex's troops after the battle of Brentford. They had heard that he was very exact in his prayer-book services, so at Lambeth they broke open the door of his church, smashed the windows, burnt the rails, and destroyed the font. His subsequent history, it may be noted, was unfortunate. The Committee for Plundered Ministers made short work of him, and though only four of its members out of seventeen were present, turned him out of his living, and he died in prison.

The advance of the Parliamentary forces was too often marked by reckless destruction of church property by the soldiers. At Oxford they stole as much of the college plate as they could get, and fired shots at the statue of the Blessed Virgin with the infant Saviour in her arms over the new porch of St. Mary's church. Later, they hacked to pieces a representation of Christ on tapestry at Canterbury, and made a stone statue of Him a target. The cathedral church of Worcester was foully defiled, and many another after it. Charing Cross was destroyed by order of the Common Council on May 2, 1643. Before that, on April 24, the House of