pressed. The sanctity of the tomb was violated; sacred edifices were profaned in the most indecent manner; and the clergy openly insulted in the midst of their holy function. No virtues, charities, or piety, could save them; calvinists and arminians suffered alike; and often a band of fanatical soldiers would thrust the preacher out of his pulpit, tear the book of common prayer into fragments, and vent upon the astonished congregations the fervour of their heated imaginations.

Lest anything should escape the notice of the London committee, bodies of inquisitors were soon after organized in all the counties and principal towns in the kingdom, and empowered to sequester the temporalities as well as suspend the spiritual functions of the clergy.

Armed with such authority, these committees subverted the existing form of church-government, dispersed the cathedral establishments, and confiscated their revenues; they declared a large number of the livings throughout the country to be void; and made the universities feel their iron sway. Aided by occasional orders of the Commons, they regulated the ecclesiastical affairs of the country till 1646, when the presbyterian form of ecclesiastical government and worship was established.

It has already been stated that Dr. Hammond was ejected from his living and from the offices which he held in the university of Oxford; and as we have said that in the latter he had many fellow-sufferers, so now we must add that his companions in the former loss were infinitely

more numerous.

By authority of the committee, above referred to, a great number of the clergy, (estimated by some writers to amount to seven thousand,) with their wives and families, were turned out of their comfortable homes, robbed of their furniture, and often of the rest of their private property,

and thrown upon the wide world to seek a precarious subsistence from some unaccustomed occupation; or at best made dependents upon the bounty of the generous but impoverished loyalists. No tyranny of king Charles ever equalled the tyranny of this parliament and their agents; no measures of the star-chamber were more indefensible than the severities of these countless star-chambers erected in every part of the country.

The bishop's houses were now turned into prisons for some of the unfortunate clergy who were thought worthy of bonds; others were thrown into more comfortless confinement, with a view to extort a ruinous sum for their release; many were imprisoned in the holds of ships; and a project was at one time on foot for selling them to the Turks as slaves. Several were brought to trial, and condemned to die for their attachment to the cause of their religion and their king; while the more ordinary barbarities of the times accelerated the removal of many out of the afflictions of the world. A considerable number made their escape to foreign lands, in the hope that they might receive from strangers that compassion which their native country denied them; and although they were disappointed of the hospitality which they expected, and were minished and brought low, yet God helped them in their trouble by raising up for them friends in England, who transmitted contributions to them through the hands of the two friends, Dr. Jeremy Taylor and Dr. Hammond.

Yet even to raise contributions for those persecuted refugees was deemed a criminal act; and as it is very probable that some of Jeremy Taylor's imprisonments were occasioned by his being detected as the channel of such benevolence, so we know that Dr. Hammond was brought into danger by his generous exertions in their.

behalf. Some persons who unworthily enjoyed his confidence betrayed him to Cromwell; and, fully expecting to be harshly treated, he determined to speak plainly and boldly to that singular man, and to remonstrate with him upon his unjust severities. Whether the opportunity was afforded to him is not quite clear, but the issue was, that he received no injury at the hands of Cromwell, and experienced the truth of a favourite saying of his, that "they who least considered hazard in doing their duties fared always the best." And he immediately proceeded, with his wonted diligence, to collect, as before, the contributions for his afflicted brethren.

Those who remained in England were but too happy if they had saved from the general spoliation a wreck of their private property; and the benevolence of the royalist nobility and gentry was eminently seen in the succour and refuge which they afforded to these maligned and plundered outcasts.

If any ventured to exercise the ministry entrusted to them, it was rarely, and in secret, and at much hazard; it was dangerous for them to assemble congregations to hear the word of God, or for the orderly administration of the sacraments; and it was perilous to pray to God in the language of the liturgy, even in private houses.* While the wildest fanatics were suffered to agitate the minds of the multitude without molestation, the episcopalians alone were excepted from this toleration, and ex

* An ordinance to that effect was passed January 3, 1645. On the 23rd of August following, another ordinance was passed, imposing a penalty upon all who should use the Prayer-book, or refuse to adopt the directory, or speak against it. It is not a little remarkable that this ordinance received its sanction on the eve of St. Bartholomew's day, just seventeen years before the impolitic and unjust, but not more severe, Act of Uniformity came into operation, as is so well known.

perienced the most severe and iniquitous treatment. "The usurper himself," says Bishop Heber," was indeed, as is well known, averse to such measures, and personally well inclined not only to many individuals of the episcopal clergy but even to their form of government. His inclinations were, however, obliged to give way to those of the zealots around him, and the whole history of the times evinces that wicked and unwise as was the retaliation which, a few years after, the episcopalians inflicted on their opponents, it was no more than retaliation after all, and what the opposite party therefore on their own principles had no right to complain of."

In order that there might be at least a semblance of humanity, the parliament, some years after the general ejectment of the clergy, pretended to allot to the families of their victims one-fifth of the revenues of their livings, ingeniously excluding the clergy themselves from any claim to the benefits of this measure. But often the ministers who had possession of their homes, their furniture, their income, their all, refused to contribute even this morsel of bread; the husband and father was probably eluding the vigilance of his enemies, lest the prison-ship should be his portion, and his wife could only seek redress by an expensive and tedious process, which often terminated in disappointment, insult, and beggary.

Shame and reproach were also among the afflictions of the clergy. No name was too contemptuous, or implied too degraded a character, to be affixed to them by their supplanters. They were pointed at as destitute of understanding, moral principle, and religion; as full of all subtlety and all mischief, children of the devil, enemies of all righteousness, perverters of the right ways of the Lord. As long as the presbyterians held the reins of ecclesiastiLife of Jeremy Taylor.

cal affairs, they presented a strange sight to the world, by following the very footsteps of those whom they had denounced as frequenters of evil paths. Although they had decried the prayer-book, they enforced the use of the directory; although they had made such a stir about their scruples of conscience, they had no tenderness for those of others; their assembly of divines voted that the presbyterian form of church government was of divine right; and, much as they had decried pluralities, they took possession of all that they could grasp. By such conduct Milton was provoked to use his powerful and caustic lash. He pronounced that the assembly of divines was "neither chosen by any rule or custom ecclesiastical, nor eminent for either piety or knowledge, above others left out; only as each member of parliament in his private fancy thought fit, so elected, one by one. The most part of them were such as had preached and cried down, with great show of zeal, the avarice and pluralities of bishops and prelates, and that one cure of souls was a full employment for one spiritual pastor, how able soever, if not a charge rather above human strength. Yet these conscientious men, (ere any part of the work done for which they came together, and that on public salary,) wanted not boldness, to the ignominy and scandal of their pastor-like profession, and especially of their boasted reformation, to seize into their hands, or not unwillingly to accept, (besides one, two, or more, of the best livings,) collegiate masterships in the universities, rich lectures in the city, setting sail to all winds that might blow gain into their covetous bosoms; by which means these great rebukers of non-residence, ainong so many distant cures, were not ashamed to be seen so quickly pluralists and non-residents themselves, to a fearful condemnation doubtless by their own mouths." He then inveighs

K