CHAPTER XIX. ARCHBISHOP WHITGIFT'S STRUGGLE WITH PURITANISM. 1583-1586. § 1. Appointment of Archbishop Whitgift, his character. § 2. Difficulties in his way. § 3. The Nonconforming sects-1. Brownists; 2. Familists; 3. Anabaptists. § 4. The Conforming Puritanical clergy. § 5. Their plan for observing the discipline and keeping livings. § 6. Whitgift's demand of Subscription. § 7. The "Three Articles." § 8. New Ecclesiastical Commission. § 9. Whitgift and the Council. § 10. The Council issue a paper of Articles of inquiry. § 11. Virulent attacks upon Whitgift in print. § 12. Whitgift draws up the Twenty-four Articles for the commission. § 13. Dispute between Lord Burleigh and Whitgift. § 14. Whitgift gives explanations to the queen. § 15. Discussion at Lambeth. § 16. Sees kept vacant. § 17. Controversy about the mastership of the Temple, Hooker appointed. § 18. Puritan expectations from the new Parliament. § 19. Their plan of proceeding. § 20. Petition of the Commons to the Lords. § 21. It is rejected by the Lords. § 22. Whitgift procures Articles to be passed in Convocation. § 23. Bills on religious matters in Parliament. § 24. The queen stops them. § 25. Other work of Convocation. § 26. Project for revaluing clerical incomes. § 27. Insidious attacks on Whitgift. § 28. Walsingham induces him to relax the Subscription Test. § 29. Whitgift made a privy councillor. § 1. On the death of Archbishop Grindal the queen was resolved to put into the place of chief governor of the Church a Prelate whom she could thoroughly trust as able and willing to enforce conformity without fear or favour. For this purpose she selected Dr. John Whitgift, Bishop of Worcester. Whitgift was born at Great Grimsby, in Lincolnshire, in 1530. For many years he was the leading man at Cambridge as master of Trinity, regius professor of divinity, and vice-chancellor. He had shown himself an uncompromising opponent of the Puritans by procuring the expulsion of Thomas Cartwright. The queen had heard him preach, and much admired him, and had made him first Dean of Lincoln (1571), then Bishop of Worcester (1577.) He had been selected by the Canterbury Convocation as their prolocutor (1572), and had been appointed by Archbishop Parker as the divine most suitable to answer Admonition to Parliament." No divine in England united so many testimonies as to ability, learning, and energy, and none could have been chosen who was more suited for the work which he was called to perform. "the § 2. That work was year by year increasing in difficulty, and the disorganised state of the Church, consequent upon Archbishop Grindal's suspension, had added strength to the obstacles which opposed it. In an attempt to produce conformity to the legal settlement of the Church of England, the rulers of the Church had to contend- first, against the Nonconformists declared and open; secondly, against the Conformists who sought to evade the law, and under cover of it to establish a system of their own. § 3. Of the first class there were now three main sects—(1) The Brownists, who may be held to have absorbed such of the Puritanical clergy as had actually separated, and had remained in England.1 Robert Brown, the founder of this sect, was a Norfolk clergyman of good family, being a relative of Lord Burleigh. He had separated from the Church on the ground of the ceremonial, and had become an itinerant preacher, everywhere inveighing against the Church and bishops. He denounced not only those who were satisfied with the Church system, but with still greater bitterness those who were contented to remain in a Church, the ceremonial and laws of which they did not approve. Against these he published "a treatise of Reformation without tarrying for any, and of the wickedness of those preachers that will not reform themselves and their charge, because they will tarry till the magistrate command and compel them." In his crusade against the Church, Brown was constantly arrested and thrown into prison. He boasted that he had seen the inside of no less than thirty-two prisons, "in some of which he could not see his hand at noon-day." He was again and again delivered by the influence of Lord Burleigh, while some of his unfortunate followers were actually put to death for distributing his works, under the terrible law of libel which was passed in 1581.2 He himself retired to Holland with a band of his disciples, who immediately fell into all sorts of quarrels and divisions among themselves. Brown "being weary of his office" returned to England, became a Conformist, and lived to a great age, bearing, as is said, a very disreputable character. But the sect which he had founded increased and multiplied in England. Their principal tenets were the excommunication and condemnation of all other churches, their entire rejection of external order and law, and their theory that each congregation was to be a law to itself. After a few years they came to be known in England as Barrowists rather than Brownists, from the name of another leader who had 1 Many of the clergy who had separated in 1566, went abroad to Holland, and formed congregations there. 2 e.g. Copping and Thacker were hanged for this in 1583. 3 Neal's Puritans, i. 295. sprung up after Brown had deserted them. They were extremely bitter against the Puritanical clergy, who were not bold enough to take the same step of separation which they had taken, in consequence, as they declared, of the teaching which they had heard from them. 2. The Familists or Family of Love.-This was a sect of foreign origin, being an offshoot of the Dutch Anabaptists, and grounding their belief on the teaching of Henry Nicholas of Amsterdam. Their tenets were those which were afterwards better known under the name of mystical. They denied the personality of Christ, the facts of the resurrection, and the future judgment, giving a mystical meaning to all the statements of Scripture. Separating the inward from the outward, they were ready to obey all the laws of Church and State, being content with the higher illumination which they conceived themselves to possess. Hence they were a harmless set of enthusiasts, and for the most part escaped persecution. They were specially bitter against the Puritans, whose contentiousness they despised and hated, as it often served to bring them into trouble.2 3. The Anabaptists.-These were distinguished from the other sects of enthusiasts by holding some especially dangerous civil heresies. They denied the sanctity of an oath, the binding power of laws, the right of the magistrate to punish, and the rights of property. Their tenets were no doubt a danger to the State, but in England they seem to have been content with holding them without striving to carry them into practice. Many of them had suffered death under Henry VIII., and one at least under Edward VI. In the year 1575, two were condemned to be burned in Smithfield. The conscience of many in England was shocked at the notion of the fires for heresy being lighted again after seventeen years cessation. John Foxe wrote a letter to the queen, entreating her to substitute some other form of punishment for that of burning. But the queen was inexorable; and to the great disgrace of her and her government, these poor men suffered, the sentence being rendered the more iniquitous by the fact of their being foreigners. The sect 1 See Hooker, Preface to Ecclesiastical Polity. Works, i. 175 (Ed. Keble). 2 Strype, Annals, iii. 556, sq.; Hooker, Preface to Ecclesiastical Polity, i. 148, and note. 3 Not to spare them altogether, as is often said to have been the case. His words are, "Sunt ejectiones, inclusiones retrusæ, sunt vincula, sunt perpetua exilia, sunt stigmata et λŋyμara, sunt etiam patibula. Id unum valde deprecor ne piras ac flammas Smithfieldanas, jam diu faustissimis tuis auspiciis huc usque sopitas, sinas nunc candescere." (Fuller, Ch. Hist.) It appears, therefore, that the martyrologist would have been quite contented to see these men hung. In addition to the two Dutchmen executed in 1575, Matthew Hamond, a poor ploughman of Hetherset, near Norwich, was burned for Anabaptistical and Arian opinions in 1579. of the Anabaptists proper does not appear to have numbered many followers in England. They Then This § 4. These were the chief divisions of the Nonconformists, but a far greater difficulty in the way of Church discipline than any which proceeded from them, was furnished by those of the clergy who nominally conformed, but under cover of conformity, were deliberately plotting to establish the Geneva discipline. About the year 1580, the Puritanical party in the Church had made the second great step in advance in the working out of their system. had commenced by merely objecting to the clerical habits. they had gone on to object to the whole Church ceremonial. we may see developed in the Admonition to Parliament published in 1572. From this they had now proceeded to the adoption of the Geneva discipline; and, consequently, to an objection to the whole framework of an episcopal Church. The "Discipline " was in their view equally important with doctrine. "They do brag," writes Bancroft, "that they will not stick to die in the cause." The discipline was one of the absolute marks of a true Church, and those Churches which had it not were synagogues of Antichrist. Ministers episcopally ordained might profitably be reordained, according to the "discipline." To establish this kings and princes might be resisted and even deposed.3 § 5. It would seem that those who held such views must of necessity quit the Church of England. But this they had determined not to do. The Book of Discipline had been drawn up by Cartwright and Travers on the Geneva model, and this they resolved now to accept as their guide, while they still outwardly remained ministers of the Church of England. To arrange the best method of compassing this, a meeting of about sixty of the Puritanical clergy took place at Cuckfield, in Sussex (May 8, 1582). The plan they devised was as follows-(1) a certain number of clergy of the required sentiments were to form a classis or conference. To this classis those who desired the ministry were to apply. If approved and called (and thus practically ordained, according to the Discipline), they were to apply to the bishop for the legal rite; (2) as regards the ceremonial the clergy, were to use no more than was absolutely necessary. If called upon to use what their consciences obeyed to, the matter was to be referred to the classis. If the classis allowed the use, the conscientious difficulty 1 Bancroft's Dangerous Positions, p. 42. 2 Bancroft gives numerous quotations from their writings. 3 Ib. b. i. c. iv. Ib. b. ii Walter Travers, though a B.D. of Cambridge, thought fit to be "called to the ministry" by a congregation at Antwerp. He will meet us again in the controversy with Richard Hooker. was got over, and the minister might comply; (3) for the consis tories in the parishes the lay element was to be furnished by the churchwardens and collectors for the poor, who might be elected to their offices with this end in view; (4) the classis of various neighbourhoods might be grouped in a provincial synod, and the provincial synods in a national synod. This might be held without danger, and with great advantage, at the meeting of Parliament, when many resorted to London. The classis might meet for prophesyings, or if that were forbidden, under pretence of keeping a solemn fast and "praying for the queen." This may serve to show some of the difficulties which awaited the new Primate, and also the necessity for vigorous action if the Church of England was to be saved from being degraded into a Presbyterian sect. § 6. Whitgift was elected August 24 (1583), and confirmed September 23. His first step was to issue a body of articles, which had been prepared beforehand, after consultation with the bishops of his province. This document contained three special articles, which all the clergy were to be called upon to subscribe, upon pain of deprivation. The tests were not new, and had all been previously enacted by statute law. But they had hitherto been only partially applied. It was now determined to apply them together, and to all-to preachers, schoolmasters, and chaplains, as well as to beneficed clergy. "Very many preachers," says Strype," had now started up that would do nothing but preach, and neither read the liturgy nor administer the sacraments. And some undertook to preach that were not ordained ministers at all, or had been ordained differently from the English book, nor had subscribed to the Three Articles-that is, the Queen's Supremacy, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Articles of Religion." Some of the beneficed clergy, who were preachers, took pains to exhibit the utmost contempt for the Prayer-book. They hired some inefficient layman to read the service, they themselves not coming into the church till it was over. This indeed was one of the counsels given by the classis to help scrupulous consciences. Heylin gives an extract from a letter of a minister who wrote: "that having nothing to do with the prescribed Book of Common Prayer, he preached every Lord's Day in his congregation, and that he did so by the counsel of the reverend brethren, by whom (such was God's goodness to him) he had been lately called to be one of the classis which once a week was held in some place or other."3 It will be seen, therefore, that the arch1 Bancroft, Dangerous Positions, b. iii. c. 3; Neal's Puritans, i. 272, sq.; Heylin's, Presbyterians, p. 299. 2 Strype's Whitgift, b. iii. c. 2. 3 Heylin's Presbyterians, p. 301. |