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x PROCLAMATION AS TO ATTENDING CHURCH 193

ever disturbed them. On October 14, 1662, the king issued a letter to the archbishops, to the effect that, the extravagance of preachers having much heightened public disorder, and still continuing so to do, through the diligence of factious spirits who often dispose men to jealousy of the government, and young divines in ostentation of learning handling the deep points of God's eternal counsels, or wrangling about gestures and fruitless controversies, his Majesty, to put a timely stop to these abuses, has followed the example of former kings and drawn up directions for preachers, to be communicated to every minister.

Proclamation

attendance at church, Aug. 22, 1663.

On August 22, 1663, a proclamation directed the observance of the statutes requiring attendance at church under penalty of a shilling fine for each absence without reasonable excuse, condemning Sunday trading and requiring dissipation, and ordering the proclamation which the king had issued the day after his return to London against vicious and debauched persons to be read monthly in every church or chapel for the next half year. Charles was advised to exercise to the full the ecclesiastical prerogatives of his predecessors. The exercise was made the more acceptable by the memory which now gave to the crown a peculiar sanctity in the eyes of churchmen.

The Church came back bound by a new link to the crown, a link forged by the execution of Charles I. and the publication of the Eikon Basilike. On the evening of March 25, 1660, some soldiers came to the Exchange and effaced the inscription that had been placed where once the statue of the king had stood, "exit tyrannus, regum ultimus, anno libertatis Angliæ restitutæ primo, annoque Domini 1648." The air rang with shouts of "Long live the king": knew that Charles I. was not to be the last of their monarchs, and instead of a tyrant they deemed him a martyr.

men

The canon

On January 25, 1661, a proclamation was issued by request of Parliament, which ordered January 30 to be kept as a day of fasting and humiliation, to show "the abhorrence of the nation at the act of those wretched miscreants, isation of who, usurping the power of Parliament and reducing the army, erected a prodigious and unheard of tribunal, by which the late king was condemned to death and publicly

Charles I.

murdered."

A form of prayer for use on the day was drawn up by Brian Duppa, Bishop of Winchester. It offered praise and thanks to God "for the glory of His grace that showed forth in His anointed our Sovereign King Charles," and besought that "by a careful, studious imitation of this Thy blessed saint and martyr, and all other Thy saints and martyrs that have gone before us, we may be made worthy to receive benefit by their prayers, which they, in communion with the Church Catholic, offer up unto Thee for that part of it here militant." This form was revised in January 1662, and a third revision was completed when the Convocation formally issued the service, with that for the 29th of May, in thanksgiving for the restoration of the king. These were annexed to the book of Common Prayer by the authority of the crown, Parliament being content merely to order the observance of the days. It may be noted here that the service underwent further changes on the accession of James II., when the tone of loyalty was, under the influence of Sancroft, heightened. The popular feeling, it is clear, went with the services; and it was encouraged by preaching on the "sufferings" and "martyrdom " of the king, which had more than a touch of extravagance. Churches before long came to be dedicated to the memory of the king. Seth Ward, Bishop of Exeter, writing to Archbishop Sancroft on September 1, 1665, spoke of his consecration of a church at Falmouth "by the name of Charles' Church, in memoriam Caroli regis et martyris," varying from a form already used, "out of the honour which every true son of the Church owes to his memory (the only person canonised for a martyr by it)." He was to consecrate a few days later a church at Plymouth, "which by an Act of the Long Parliament (made in the beginning of it) is to be called by the name of Charles' Church. I was ashamed," he added, "that those hypocrites should, besides the making him a martyr, canonise him by a prolepsis, and that having so fair an opportunity I should not give testimony to his glory." This "canonisation," certainly a popular act, had important religious and political consequences.

It was designed not only to commemorate a martyr but to emphasise such views as are to be seen in the advice he had given in the days of his imprisonment, to his son,

X

CANONISATION OF CHARLES I.

195

canonisation.

now on the throne. "If you never see my face again, and God will have me buried in such a barbarous Lessons inimprisonment and obscurity wherein few hearts tended by the that love me are permitted to exchange a word or a look with me, I do require and entreat you, as your Father and your king, that you never suffer your heart to receive the least check against, or disaffection from, the true religion established in the Church of England. I tell you I have tried it, and after much search and many disputes, have concluded it to be the best in the world, not only in the community as Christian, but also in the special notion as reformed keeping the middle way between the pomp of superstitious tyranny and the meanness of fantastic anarchy. Not but that, the draught being excellent as to the main, both for doctrine and government in the Church of England, some lines, as in very good figures, may haply need some correcting and polishing, which might here easily have been done by a safe and gentle hand, if some men's precipitancy had not violently demanded such rude alterations as would have destroyed all the beauty and proportions of the whole. scandal of the late troubles which some may object and urge to you against the Protestant religion established in England, is easily answered to them or your own thoughts in this, that scarce any one who hath been a beginner, or an active persecutor of this late war against the Church, the laws, and me, either was, or is a true lover, embracer, or practiser of the Protestant religion established in England, which neither gives such rules, nor ever set such examples before."

The

It was this advice which the Church desired by her formal action to give to the new king. Every point in it was emphatic in the desire of the Church now as of the king whose blood had been shed, as churchmen believed, for the Church's sake. "Some correcting and polishing" perhaps was needed but that must come from those who had the interests of the true Protestant religion at heart, that is, from the bishops and clergy who adhered to the principles which they had maintained before the wars against Papist and Puritan alike. Those who fought against the Crown could not, the Church taught, be loyal to the Constitution. It was a view which the pulpits were tuned to make emphatic and

Lessons from his life.

up

the

impressive. It represented not only the views of the Church but those of the parliamentary representatives of the people. The sermon preached before the House of Commons in St. Margaret's, Westminster, on January 30, 1662, by Dr. Hardy, and printed by the House's desire, shows how warmly the Parliament had already taken cause of the Church—the preacher congratulated the country that they had now "an House of Commons made up of gentlemen, and those both faithful subjects to their king and zealous friends to the Church,"-and how studiously the character of the royal martyr was commended as an example to his son. "Unspotted either with incontinence or intemperance, so that even his most malicious enemies could not lay either to his charge; indeed, he was an exemplary pattern of the contrary virtues.”

Charles's failure to obtain toleration.

Charles II. showed no signs of a desire to follow such an example. While he was on the whole scrupulous in attending divine service and long-suffering in the matter of sermons, he resented any personal address or personal application. He would talk theology with preachers, but there was never any doubt as to his real character. The devotion to his father's memory cast but a dim reflection indeed on the "Merry Monarch." And while the veneration of Charles I. intensified the popular feeling against the dissenters, it did not, as was soon seen, involve the recognition of any extra-legal power in the crown. Charles II. was genuinely anxious to satisfy the nonconformists. It was impossible that the law should be carried out entirely without friction. Some of the dissenting ministers thought it still to be their duty to preach and Edmund Calamy was imprisoned for thus disobeying the law. The ministers presented a petition for toleration; and the king promised to urge Parliament to make an Act enabling him to exercise his "dispensing power" in the matter. But the House of Commons in the next session, February 1663, vigorously protested against any project of "establishing schism by a law," and the king was unable to proceed.

AUTHORITIES.-For list of authorities, see end of Chap. XI.

CHAPTER XI

SHELDON AND SANCROFT

WITHIN a few months of the settlement of the Church Juxon and Sanderson passed to their rest. Gilbert Sheldon, Bishop of London, was elected archbishop on June 6, 1663. Sheldon, Abp. He had already been in practical possession of the of Canterbury, 1663-78. powers of archbishop, owing to Juxon's age and infirmities. No bishop of his time has been so variously judged. Burnet spoke of him as having "little virtue and less religion," a judgment little less than grotesque on one who was the intimate friend of Falkland, Hammond, Clarendon, Sanderson, and Juxon, and to whom Charles I. had intrusted his solemn vow to restore all Church lands and lay impropriations held by the Crown if he should be restored to his "just rights." At the restoration Brian Duppa had written to him, "You are the only person about his Majesty that I have confidence in, and I persuade myself that as none hath his ear more, so none is likely to prevail on his heart more, and there was never more need of it." He fully deserved the confidence reposed in him. He strongly reproved Charles II. for his evil life, and refused to admit him to the Holy Communion; and eventually, in 1667, he entirely lost the king's favour on account of his consistent attitude. The character. memoirs which he left behind him, and which appear to have perished, would doubtless afford a vindication from his own standing-point of his policy in many matters where it has been severely criticised. Without them, we must look for the most intimate portrait of him in the History of his own Time, written by Samuel Parker, Bishop of Oxford, who was at one

His

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