CHAPTER IX

THE COMMONWEALTH AND THE PROTECTORATE

1649-1660

The disestablishment

of the Church.

THE years that followed the death of Charles I. may here be briefly sketched. The Church of England, the body established from old time under the sanction of the State, on its acceptance of the Catholic creeds and the Apostolic ministry, was no longer recognised by the State. Its worship was illegal, its ministry was deposed, and it was replaced by a fully established Presbyterian Church. The Universities, the strongholds of the National Church, were purged of all those who would not take the Covenant and accept the new religious order. And throughout England the process was carried out with increasing rigour. The Engagement, offered in 1649, by which a promise was given to be faithful to the Commonwealth as established, without a king and House of Lords, was not much more satisfactory to many of the clergy than was the Covenant. Several changes occurred at Oxford from refusal to take the Engagement, for, writes Calamy the biographer of Baxter, "the moderate Church party and the Presbyterians rejected it.

After a sketch of the general action of Parliament towards the Church, and of its consequences, the history of the Church from 1649 to 1660 can best be followed by an examination of the religious position of Cromwell, of the ecclesiastical settlement under the Presbyterian system, the treatment of the dispossessed clergy, the nature of the toleration that was

allowed by the Government to Christian and non-Christian bodies, and the causes which led to the reaction which restored the Church with the king. At this point it may be well to contrast the systems of Presbytery and Independency. The former was originally of French origin. The scheme, the heirarchy of elders, the elaborate system of assembly and classes, the strict discipline enforced, were all The Presby derived from the institution of John Calvin. Adopted in Scotland through the genius of John Knox, advocated in England by able and influential writers such as Thomas Cartwright, the system was adopted as the ideal of those Puritans of Elizabeth's and James I.'s days, who regarded the Episcopal government of the Church of England as contrary to the word of God. This has been dealt with in the previous volume of this History of the English Church. In the reign of Charles I. and up to the triumph of the Parliamentary party through the aid of the Scots, the Presbyterians of England seem to have learnt nothing and to have forgotten nothing. They still desired to establish the system of jurisdiction which was the keystone of the Presbyterian system. It was this which they succeeded in formally setting up by law on June 1646. But it was soon found to be in every sense a foreign system in England.

Objections to it were advanced on two sides. First there were the Erastians, who desired to subject the Church entirely to the State, and were therefore utterly hostile to Tupopu Javity of their the encroaching supervision of the hierarchical system of Presbytery. When the system was established by law, ineffectually though it worked, it was found by men of different views from Milton, as well as by the poet himself, that "new presbyter is but old priest writ large." There was a strong feeling against the tyranny of the spiritual courts and the enforcement of civil penalties for spiritual offences. It was a foreign system out of harmony with the instincts of the English people.

Secondly, there was Independency, which divided with the Church the enthusiasm of the really pious English folk. It secured the allegiance of Cromwell, Milton, Vane, the three great names of the later years They would-in theory at least-free the

of Revolution.

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PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS

145

Church from State control, and yet place religion under the guardianship of the State. Yet their system (which looked back also to Elizabeth's days and the teaching of Robert Brown, the Separatist) was the antithesis of the Presbyterian. Each congregation claimed the right to order all its own business, religious and secular, and to choose its own ministers. All spiritual offences were punished by spiritual penalties alone. It was the logical outcome of individual ideas. Politically it avoided, in theory at least, the danger of a Church-governed State, and it was, as the great German historian Von Ranke observed, essentially republican. held out hopes of a wider toleration than seemed consistent with the views of other parties. It attracted to itself nearly all those who were not strongly attached to the English Church or the Presbyterian system.

Attitude of

the Church.

It

The attitude of these two parties towards the Church was different. The Presbyterians claimed to reform it by substituting a system more purely spiritual but not less ecclesiastical,-one which would enter still more each towards deeply into every aspect of the individual and national life. This they claimed to do as in obedience to the direct instruction of Holy Writ, outside the words of which any Church government was unlawful. The Independents, on the other hand, desired to reform the Church in the direction of individual liberty, to loosen the bonds between Church and State, to establish a number of small self-governing societies hardly related to each other by more than brotherly love.

It was natural that the Presbyterian party should come to the front during the earlier stages of the constitutional struggle and of the war. It alone was an organised party, with fixed principles, and a history behind it, and with examples of successful establishment among neighbouring nations. The characteristic expression of their views is to be found in the propositions made at Uxbridge in 1645, in which it was demanded that Charles should take the Covenant, assent to the abolition of the Prayer-book and of Episcopacy, and to the establishment of the Directory of Public Worship and the Presbyterian Church systems. It was a demand based on the conscientious belief that one form of government, with its concomitant expression in worship, had been established

L

by the Long Parliament, a form from which it would be impossible to vary without incurring the Divine wrath.

It is characteristic also that this demand was met by the project of toleration suggested on behalf of the Church, by which the bishops were to continue, but to exercise their power only by the advice of the presbyters, and the Prayerbook was to be revised. Toleration was at the same time offered. "We think it lawful," said the Oxford clergy representing the Church view, "that a toleration be given by suspending the penalties of all laws, both to the Presbyterians and Independents."

It was on the rejection of these terms, or the failure to obtain an agreement or compromise between them, that the Independent party became prominent. It was strong in the army, and every day the failure of the Presbyterian system to root itself in the affections of the country made it stronger; and it had the supreme advantage of being guided by the greatest man in England, in force and will, Oliver Cromwell, the Lord General who had led the armies of the Parliament to victory, and whose firm insistence had brought the king to the block. When the king suffered, the final position of these two parties was not certain; but during the next few months, step by step, the Independents, through the army, which since the New Model was strongly of their party, came into power. The history of the events which brought this about belongs to politics, not to religion. It is our part here rather to sketch the general attitude of Parliament towards the Church.

Three clergy lists have recently been printed. They contain the names of those clergy dealt with by Parliament as superstitious, innovating, scandalous, or malignant." The first on the list, it may be noted, is Dr. Layfield, of All Hallows Barking, the Church in which Archbishop Laud was buried. To this is appended a list of Puritan General lecturers nominated or sanctioned by the Long House of Parliament up to the outbreak of the Civil War, and with regard after that there is a list of the Parliamentary sequestrations of Royalist clergy from the beginning of the war, with the names of those who were appointed in their places, in each case the action being that of Parliament. How minute and inquisitorial the action of the House was is

action of the

Commons

to the Church.

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ESTABLISHMENT OF PRESBYTERIANISM

147

shown by these lists. It assumed the patronage of the Crown, of all the ecclesiastical corporations, both sole and aggregate, and of Royalist private patrons whenever it could with any appearance of justification. Complete chaos seems in some counties to have been introduced into the ecclesiastical arrangements by these means. The Church had been entirely disestablished and disendowed; and, though in August 1645, and March 1646, Presbyterianism was definitely established by law in its place, it was found impossible to carry the system into operation in many parts of England-by no means only those which during the war were favourable to the king. The Calvinistic system was felt by the people to be both foreign and inquisitorial. Theoretically it had the adhesion of the Universities, when they had been "purged" by Parliamentary Commissions with armed men at their backs; and in London and Essex it was practically founded; but in the north it hardly existed, even in name.

Beside these detailed lists has been placed a very interesting and significant collection of financial data, showing what became of the Church lands. After the money used by the Parliament for military purposes, and after the extremely large deductions for salaries and expenses, and the small sums paid to the dispossessed clergy, very little, in proportion, went to the support of a "God-fearing clergy." It seems clear that if the revolution had been completely carried out, it would have resulted, as it had done in Scotland a century before, in the utter impoverishment of the religious establishment.

of ministers.

There was great difficulty in procuring a proper sustenance for the Ministry. The Parliament, by ordinance of April 1, 1643, confiscated all the real and personal pro(1) The perty of all persons, ecclesiastical and civil, who payment had taken up arms against the Parliament or voluntarily contributed towards the king's army, and with it two-thirds of all the property of Roman Catholics. The sums thus secured, and the property, were placed in the hands of committees and sequestrators, named for all the English shires, who were to remit the money for the use of the Parliament. None of this money seems to have been directly employed in the maintenance of the ministers now placed in