many ignorant and superstitious people. It has encouraged the papists, who boast that the book was a compliance with them. It has produced an idle and unedifying ministry, which contented itself with set forms. . . . For these and other weighty considerations we have determined to lay aside the former liturgy with its rites and ceremonies, and to adopt the Directory which follows." 1 Such was the case stated against the venerable liturgy of the Church of England, and such the order for its disuse. The order was followed by another (August 1645) prescribing penalties. Any one using the Common Prayer, either privately or publicly, was to be fined five pounds for the first offence, ten pounds for the second, for the third a year's imprisonment. Any minister not using the Directory was to be fined forty shillings for each offence.2

§ 11. The Church of England was at that time happily furnished with some of the greatest of her divines. Were any of her children perplexed by the charges brought against the Prayer-Book and the commendations of the new book, their doubts might speedily be removed by reading Jeremy Taylor's Apology for Authorised and Set Forms of Liturgy, Henry Hammond's View of the New Directory, and Robert Sanderson's criticism of the Solemn League and Covenant. But what a time of misery and rebuke was that for all sober-minded Christians! The tedious and long-winded directions could ill supply the ignorant and self-satisfied "minister" thrust into the place of the old incumbent, who had been ejected for the crime of refusing the Covenant, with the power of conducting the service with reverence and devotion; nor could any amount of rules for preaching furnish him with the due requisites for that holy function. "Master Presbyter," says Judge Jenkins, was left to do as his fickle brains would serve him." "The worship of God," says Jeremy Taylor, " was left to chance, indeliberation, and a petulant fancy.' It is not to be wondered at that the Directory never became popular. "It proved not to the satisfaction," says Neal, "of any one party of Christians." No service was now allowed at the burial of the dead. The observance of all holidays, and specially of Christmas Day, was strictly forbidden. The words of the old liturgy were indeed still heard in some churches. Some of the orthodox clergy who had escaped ejectment were able to use the prayers from memory. Thus Sanderson, Jeremy Taylor, and George Bull, ministered. But this was a rare and precarious privilege, and as the war proceeded and the Parliament's cause became

1 Neal, Appendix to vol. iii.

2 Husband's Collections, pp. 715, 716.

3 Jenkins' Scourge for the Directory. Taylor, Works, v. 235. An ordinance of Parliament was passed, Dec. 19, 1644, appointing a solemn fast to be held on Christmas Day.

everywhere triumphant, a general cessation of the use of the PrayerBook, in favour of some "conceived" worship, either Presbyterian, Independent, or Sectarian, prevailed throughout the land.

§ 12. By a proclamation issued from Oxford (Nov. 13, 1645). the king condemned and forbade the use of the Directory, declaring the Common Prayer to be a most excellent form of worship grounded on the Holy Scriptures, and a great help to devotion, commanding all ministers in cathedrals and parish churches to continue its use, and threatening with punishments all those who should lay it aside in favour of the Directory. In such a dilemma were the unfortu

nate clergy of that period involved!

§ 13. In April 1645, the Lords, not satisfied with the temporary provision made by the Assembly for ordination, sent to the divines to order them to draw up a Directory for that purpose. The attempt to construct this brought out, with greater violence than before, the antagonism between the various parties of which the Assembly was constituted. There sat in it a party of divines, more considerable for their talent and energy than their numbers, who were the legitimate descendants of the Brownists of Queen Elizabeth's days, and held that "every particular congregation of Christians has an entire and complete power of jurisdiction over its members to be exercised by the elders thereof within itself." 2 Hence they obtained the name of Independents. But they had improved on the views of the Brownists so far as to hold that "an offending Church is to submit to an examination by other neighbouring churches," and if it persists in error, communion with it is to be renounced. They professed themselves to agree in doctrine with the Articles of the Church of England, and to hold multitudes of parochial churches, in that Church to be true churches, and their ministers to be true ministers. In this liberality of sentiment these divines were honourably distinguished from the Presbyterians. To these latter they were altogether opposed on the question of Church government, on which matter they were supported by the Erastians, whose numbers in the Assembly far exceeded that of the Independents, and who desired that all should be left to the civil magistrate, and that the function of the minister should be merely persuasive.3

§ 14. Thus opposed, the Presbyterian divines could make but little progress. Forty sessions were consumed on the question of ordination, for which the Assembly at length agreed to a scheme

1 Neal's Puritans, iii. 125.

2 Apologetical Narrative of Independents, Neal, iii. 112. The chief Independents in the Assembly were Goodwin, Wye, Simpson, Burroughs, Bridge. Baillie says there were ten or eleven in the Assembly, many of them very able men. 3 Baxter's Life and Times, pp. 109-141.

to be carried into operation when circumstances should permit, but for the present confirmed the temporary arrangement of entrust ing it to certain committees of divines, to be established in London and other large towns, which were to act until a more complete system could be established.1

§ 15. A similar compromise was forced upon the Presbyterians in the matter of Church government. The difficulties with which the Presbyterian and Scotch party had to contend were indeed almost insurmountable. "We have been in a pitiful labyrinth these ten days," writes Baillie, "and still stick in it."2 The Independents declared that Presbytery would prove as arbitrary and tyrannical as Prelacy. The Erastians, supported by the learning and genius of Selden and Whitelocke, argued that there was no Church government to be found in Scripture.3 At length, after thirty days' debate, the Assembly voted a Presbyterian scheme, including lay elders and deacons for each parish, and providing for congregational, classical, provincial, and national assemblies for Church government. This they declared to be of divine appointment, but the Parliament refused to agree to this point; nor would it consent to entrust to the presbyteries the power of excommunication without reserving the right of appeal to themselves.4 The Presbyterians were compelled to listen to arguments for toleration from Cromwell, Vane, and others—arguments which seemed to them full of profanity and wickedness." The modified scheme of Church government was finally voted June 6, 1646.

§ 16. An election of elders under this scheme took place in London in the following spring, and on May 3, 1647, the Provincial Assembly of London met in the Chapter House at St. Paul's. In Lancashire, also, the scheme appears to have been carried into execution about this time. In Coventry and some few other places attempts were made to carry it out.6 But the rise of the Independents into power quickly overturned the elaborate arrangements of the Presbyterians, and the country was destined to be the prey of religious anarchy for many years longer.

§ 17. In addition to the labours which have been enumerated, the Assembly of Divines was occupied in drawing up two Cate

1 See Neal's Puritans, ii. 216, sq., and Appendix iii. The great debate between the Presbyterians and Independents was whether each congregation was to ordain its own ministers, or whether this was to be done by a number of churches associated ad hoc. The arguments were published under the name of The Grand Debate.

2 Baillie's Letters, ii. 115.

3 Whitelocke's Memorials, p. 95.

4 Whitelocke's Memorials, p. 106; Neal, iii. 229.

Baillie's Letters, pp. 230, 328, 343.

6 Calamy's Baxter, i. 85, 86; Lathbury's Hist. of Prayer Book, p. 303.

chisms-a Longer and a Shorter-the former of which, with the Scripture proofs, occupies 157 quarto pages, and the latter 40. The Shorter Catechism was intended for children, but its questions, turning upon abstruse and doubtful points, were altogether unsuited for the purpose. The doctrine of both Catechisms was, of

course, Calvinistic and Puritanical.

§ 18. The last act in which the Assembly was engaged was the compiling the heads of a Confession of Faith, intended to supersede the Articles of the Church of England. This was presented to Parliament at the beginning of December 1646.

§ 19. Soon after this the Assembly began to melt away. The Episcopal divines, nominated to it originally, had never attended its sessions. Many others had been irregular in their attendance. As the Presbyterian interest became day by day weaker in the country, the regular attendants, whose presence was not now much desired by Parliament, began to betake themselves to the benefices with which they had been plentifully provided; and, without any formal dissolution, the Westminster Assembly came to an end.

§ 20. No body of divines has been more vigorously abused than the "Westminster Assembly ;" but, assuming them to have conscientiously held their opinions, it must be admitted that they advocated them with learning, power, and fairness. The great

blot of their work was the adoption of the Scotch Covenant and the sanctioning its forcible imposition. In this it is to be feared that some of them were guilty of perjury, and the whole body of persecution. As for their directories, catechisms, confessions, and schemes of Church government, they cannot, of course, be acceptable to those who reverence antiquity and catholic tradition; but they appear to be quite equal in ability to other similar documents.

CHAPTER XXX

THE PERSECUTION OF THE CLERGY.

1640-1649.

31. Character of the Persecution of the Clergy. § 2. The Grand Committee for Religion. § 3. The Committee for Scandalous Ministers. § 4. Its Subdivisions. § 5. Proceedings of the Committees. § 6. Publication of slanders against the Clergy. §7. The Committee for plundered Ministers. § 8. The Country Committees. § 9. The Earl of Manchester's Committees. § 10. The nominal provision for the Wives and Families. § 11. The Bishops. Bishop Hall at Norwich. § 12. Prevalence of Sacrilege. § 13. Archbishop Laud impeached before the House of Lords. § 14. Attainted in the House of Commons. § 15. His Execution. § 16. Visitation of Oxford. § 17. The King's fidelity to the Church of England. § 18. His Death.

§ 1. THROUGHOUT the period contained in the last two chapters, and the attempt to force upon the Church of England the greatest political and doctrinal changes, the individual clergy had to endure a persecution of the severest character, and of a unique and peculiar type. They were not only ejected from their livings, and deprived of maintenance, but they were assailed with the fiercest retaliatory attacks for that which was held to be their past misconduct. Sequestration of all their goods, imprisonment frequently under hatches in ships moored on the river, these even did not constitute the whole or the worst part of the punishment inflicted on them. They were deliberately and designedly assailed with charges of the most frightful immorality, and the weapon of slander was profusely used to blast their reputation and to strike them down, so that they might never rise again. It will be attempted in this chapter to give a connected view of the persecution, which a contemporary writer, who has chronicled some of its details, has not inaptly described as "the Eleventh Persecution of the Church."

§ 2. The House of Commons, greatly exasperated by the proceedings of the late Convocation, and by the way in which discipine had been administered and changes forced upon the country under the rule of Archbishop Laud, at once, on the meeting of Parliament, rushed eagerly to the work of revenge. On November 6 (1640), or three days after the opening of Parliament, a Grand Committee for Religion was established. To this committee all 1 Fell's Life of Hammond; Wordsworth, E. B., iv. 363.