nest men were not only persecuted at home, but restrained from retiring into his majesty's dominions abroad; for when the ecclesiastical courts had driven them from their habitations and livelihoods, and were still hunting them by their informers from one end of the land to the other, several families crossed the ocean to Virginia, and invited their friends to follow; but Bancroft being informed that great numbers were preparing to embark, obtained a proclamation prohibiting them to transport themselves to Virginia, without a special licence from the king; a severity hardly to be paralleled! nor was it ever imitated in this country except by archbishop Laud.

The isles of Guernsey and Jersey having enjoyed the discipline of the French churches without disturbance, all the reign of queen Elizabeth, upon the accession of the present king, addressed his majesty for a confirmation of it;* which he was pleased to grant by a letter under the privy seal, in these words;

"Whereas we have been given to understand, that our dear sister queen Elizabeth did permit and allow to the isles of Jersey and Guernsey, parcels of the dutchy of Normandy, the use of the government of the reformed churches of the said dutchy, whereof they have stood possessed till our coming to the crown; for this cause, as well as for the edification of the church, we do will and ordain, that our said isles shall quietly enjoy their said liberty in the use of ecclesiastical discipline there now established; forbidding any one to give them any trouble or impeachment, so long as they contain themselves in our obedience.

"Given at Hampton-court, August 8th, in the first year of our reign, 1603."

But Bancroft and some of his brethren the bishops, hav

* Dr. Grey quotes here Collyer's Ecclesiastical History, vol. 2. p. 705, in contradiction to Mr. Neal, and to charge the Puritans as "addressing king James with a false suggestion, that the discipline had been allowed by queen Elizabeth." Dr. Grey's stricture would have been superseded, if he had attended to Mr. Neal's state of the business; who says only, that "the discipline of the French churches had been enjoyed without disturbance all the reign of queen Elizabeth;" without asserting whether this indulgence were owing to connivance, or to an express grant. Heylin, how. ever says, that the " Genevian discipline had been settled by queen Elizabeth." Hist. of Presb. p. 395. And Collyer himself owns, that though the queen allowed only one church to adopt the model of Geneva, and enjoined the use of the English liturgy in all others; yet it was soon laid aside by all the churches, and the Geneva plan adopted by the decree of synods, held under the countenance of the governors of Guernsey and the neighbouring isles. These authorities fully justify Mr. Neal's representation.-ED.

ing possessed the king with the necessity of a general uniformity throughout all his dominions, these islands were to be included; accordingly sir John Peyton, a zealous churchman; was appointed governor with secret instructions to root out the Geneva discipline, and plant the English liturgy and ceremonies.* This gentleman, taking advantage of the synod's appointing a minister to a vacant living, according to custom, protested against it, as injurious to the king's prerogative, and complained to court, that the Jersey ministers had usurped the patronage of the benefices of the island; that they had admitted men to livings without the form of presentation, which was a loss to the crown in its first-fruits; that by the connivance or allowance of former governors they exercised a kind of arbitrary jurisdiction; and therefore prayed that his majesty would settle the English discipline among them. The Jersey ministers alleged in their own defence, that the presentation to livings was a branch of their discipline; and that the payments of first-fruits and tenths had never been demanded since they were disengaged from the see of Constance. They pleaded his majesty's royal confirmation of their discipline, which was read publicly in a synod of both islands in the year 1605. But this pious king had very little regard to promises, oaths, or charters, when they stood in the way of his arbitrary designs; he ordered therefore his ecclesiastical officers to pursue his instructions in the most effectual manner. Accordingly they took the presentations to vacant livings into their own hands, without consulting the presbytery; they annulled the oath, whereby all ecclesiastical and civil officers were obliged to swear to the maintenance of their discipline; and whereas all who received the holy sacrament were required to subscribe to the allowance of the general form of church-government in that island, the king's attorney-general and his friends now refused it. Their elders likewise were cited into the temporal courts, and stripped of their privileges; nor had they much better quarter in the consistory, for the governor and jurats made the decrees of that court ineffectual, by reversing them in the Town-hall.

Complaint being made to the court of these innovations, the king sent them word, that to avoid all disputes for the *Heylin's Hist. Presh. p. 396, and Collyer's Eccles. Hist. p. 705. + Heylin's Hist. Presh. p. 396.

future, he was determined to revive the office and authority of a dean, and to establish the English Common Prayerbook among them, which he did accordingly;* and ordered the bishop of Winchester, in whose diocess they were, to draw up some canons for the dean's direction in the exercise of his government; which being done, and confirmed by the king, their former privileges were extinguished. Whereupon many left the islands and retired into France and Holland: however, others made a shift to support their disci pline after a manner, in the island of Guernsey, where the episcopal regulations could not take place.

Mr. Robert Parker, a Puritan minister already mention ed, published this year a very learned treatise "Of the cross in baptism." But the bishops, instead of answering it, persuaded the king to issue a proclamation, with an offer of a reward for apprehending him, which obliged him to abscond. A treacherous servant of the family having informed the officers where he had retired, they came and searched the house, but by the special providence of God he was preserved, the only room they neglected to search being that in which he was concealed, from whence he heard them quarrelling and swearing at one another; one saying, they had not searched that room, and another confidently asserting the contrary, and refusing to suffer it to be searched over again. Had he been taken, he had been cast into prison, where without doubt, says my author, he must have died. When he got into Holland, he would have been chosen minister of the English church at Amsterdam, but the magistrates being afraid of disobliging king James, he went to Doesburgh, and became minister of that garrison, where he departed this life 1630..

This year died the famous Dr. John Raynolds, king's professor in Oxford. He was at first a zealous Papist, while his brother William was a Protestant; but by conference and disputation the brothers converted each other, William dying an inveterate Papist, and John an eminent Protestant. He was born in Devonshire 1549, and educated in Corpus-Christi college, Oxford, of which he was afterward president. He was a prodigy for reading, his memory being a living library. Dr. Hall used to say, that his memory and

* Collyer, vol. 2. p. 706. Heylin's Hist. Presb. p. 398, 399.
+ Pierce, p. 171.
Fuller's Abel Redivivus, p. 477.

reading were near a miracle. He had turned overall wri ters profane and ecclesiastical, as councils, fathers, histories, &c. He was a critic in the languages; of a sharp wit and indefatigable industry; his piety and sanctity of life were so eminent and conspicuous, that the learned Cracanthorp used to say, that to name Raynolds was to commend virtue itself. He was also possessed of great modesty and humility. In short, says the Oxford historian, nothing can be spoken against him, but that he was the pillar of Puritanism, and the grand favourer of nonconformity. Atlength, after a severe and mortified life, he died in his college May 21, 1607, aged sixty-eight, and was buried with great funeral solemnity in St. Mary's church.

Soon after died the famous Mr. Thomas Brightman, author of a commentary upon the Song of Solomon, and the Revelations: he was born at Nottingham, and bred in Queen's college, Cambridge, where he became a champion for nonconformity to the ceremonies. He was afterward presented by sir John Osbourne to the rectory of Haunes in Bedfordshire, where he spent the remainder of his days in hard study, and constant application to his charge, as far as his conscience would admit. His life, says Mr. Fuller, was angelical, his learning uncommon; he was a close student, of little stature, and such a master of himself, that he was never known to be moved with anger. His daily discourse was against episcopal government, which he prophesied would shortly be overthrown, and the government of the foreign Protestant churches be erected in its place. He died suddenly upon the road, as he was riding with sir John Osbourne in his coach, by a sudden obstruction of the liver or gall, Aug. 24, 1607, aged fifty-one.

The king having given the reins of the church into the hands of the prelates and their dependants, these in return

+ Church Hist. b. 10. p. 50.

Wood's Ath. vol. 1. p. 290. "How (asks bishop Warburton) would the historian have us understaud this? As a true prophecy to be fulfilled, or a false prophet confuted?" The reply is, Mr. Neal is to be understood as his author Mr. Fuller, from whom he quotes. Neither meant to ascribe to Mr. Brightman a prophetic inspiration, but only to relate his sentiments and apprehensions; to which, however the bishop may sneer, the events of the next reign bore a correspondence. The clause-" and the government of the foreign Protestant churches," &c. as Dr. Grey observes, is not in Fuller; who, however, says, that Mr. Brightman gave offence by " resembling the church of England to lukewarm Laodicea, praising and preferring the purity of foreign Protestant churches." He always carried about him a Greek Testament, which he read through every fortnight.-ED.

became zealous champions for the prerogative, both in the pulpit and from the press. Two books were published this year, which maintained the most extravagant maxims of arbitrary power; one written by Cowel, LL.D. and vicargeneral to the archbishop, wherein he affirms, 1. That the king is not bound by the laws, or by his coronation oath. 2. That he is not obliged to call parliaments to make laws, but may do it without them. 3. That it is a great favour to admit the consent of the subject in giving subsidies. The other, by Dr. Blackwood, a clergyman, who maintained that the English were all slaves from the Norman conquest. The parliament would have brought the authors to justice, but the king protected them by proroguing the houses in displeasure; and to supply his necessities began to raise money by monopolies of divers manufactures, to the unspeakable prejudice of the trade of the kingdom.

This year died the famous Jacobus Arminius, divinityprofessor in the university of Leyden, who gave birth to the famous sect still called by his name. He was born at Oudewater, 1560. His parents dying in his infancy, he was educated at the public expense by the magistrates of Amsterdam, and was afterward chosen one of the ministers of that city in the year 1588. Being desired by one of the professors of Franequer to confute a treatise of Beza's upon the Supralapsarian scheme of predestination, he fell himself into the contrary sentiment. In the year 1600, he was called to succeed Junius in the divinity-chair of Leyden, and was the first who was solemnly created doctor of divinity in that university. Here his notions concerning predestination and grace, and the extent of Christ's redemption, met with a powerful opposition from Gomarus and others. But though his disciples increased prodigiously in a few years, yet the troubles be met with from his adversaries, and the attacks made upon his character and reputation, broke his spirits, so that he sunk into a melancholy disorder, attended with a complication of distempers, which hastened his end, after he had been professor six years, and had lived forty

Rapin says, as Dr. Grey observes, "the king interposed, and frustrated the parliament's design, by publishing a proclamation, to forbid the reading of these books, and to order copies to be delivered to the magistrates. But such proclamations are usually ill obeyed, especially when it is not the king's interest to see them strictly executed." So that by these measures the king screened, the persons of the authors.-ED.