fact Erastian before Erastus; his position as 'Supreme Head' of what he called 'our' Church of England,' and Elizabeth's as 'Supreme Governour,' seemed a perfectly natural one. The result that emerged at the end of the sixteenth century was the establishment of State and Church upon a thoroughly Erastian basis. It came to be a generally accepted notion that the Monarchy and the Church were so inextricably combined that their mutual support was necessary for the existence and security of each. The Erastian view of ecclesiastical policy derived no small support from some of the most eminent divines. That both the Sovereign and the Church assisted one another in no small degree for personal ends is probably true. If the clergy enhanced the pretensions of the Crown, they hoped in return to gain its sanction for pretensions of their own. The episcopal order of ecclesiastical government, which was retained in exclusion of presbyterianism, tended still further to bind the monarchy to the Church because a presbyterian rule had a flavour of democracy which was distasteful to a court. James I. -as the Speaker of the House of Commons reminded his grandson-was fond of saying, 'no Bishop, no King.' The royal Declaration of Breda in 1660 promised that no man shall be disquieted or called in question for differences of opinion in matters of religion which do not disturb the peace of the Kingdom,' and the settlement of the Church was left to the decision of Parliament. What that settlement was to be in its essential principles, there never could have been any doubt from the moment Charles II. stepped on English soil. It was inevitable that the King, his ministers and a parliament predominantly Tory, would not have been content with anything less than the restoration of the old episcopal government in Church and State. Charles himself-whatever may have been his innermost convictions on religion-had no doubt about the political value of an established Church. The advice given to him by his father to maintain the Church, which he thought the best in the world-keeping the middle way between the pomp of superstitious tyranny and the meanness of fantastic anarchy'-perhaps scarcely appealed to him. For if he had any sincere belief at all, it was in the Roman Catholic form of Pollard's Henry the Eighth, pp. 330, 378. faith. The Duke of Newcastle's exhortation-' remember you are both King and Pope'-was probably much more to his liking. It is probable that it did not take him long to come to the conclusion that the view, which his old tutor expressed with racy humour, was the true one. It is impossible, said the Duke, for a State both civil and ecclesiastical to be governed by one head, if the State is either Popish or Presbyterian. For if it be Popish, it will be governed by the Pope; if it be Presbyterian, it will be governed by itself. Popery and Presbyterianism, though they look divers ways with their heads, yet they are tied together like Samson's foxes by their tails, carrying the same firebrands of covetousness and ambition, to put all into a combustion wheresoever they come, that will not submit to them.' At all events, towards the end of his reign Charles told the Marquis of Worcester that he thought that the Presbyterians were ten times worse than the Pope in their encroachments, and he assured him that he would not lessen the power of the Crown by lessening the power of the Church, for we must march together.' He supported the episcopal form of church government, not because he had any belief in the doctrine of apostolical succession, but because he thought it an aristocratical government in the Church,' and therefore agreeable to monarchy." In saying that Presbyterianism was not the religion of a gentleman he was only echoing the traditional opinion. The Puritans, indeed-so Mrs. Hutchinson relates-thought it scarcely possible for anyone to continue a gentleman and firme to a godly interest,' 4 but the Cavaliers on their side had a very low opinion of the godly. As Archbishop Williams in a sermon preached at Court expressed it, a Presbyterian government was one only fit for tailors and shoemakers, and the like, and not fit for noblemen and gentlemen.' It was an unfortunate accident that the distinction of class coincided to a considerable extent with the divisions into which the nation was split by the diversities of faith; and that whereas the aristocracy, the landed gentry 1 The Duke of Newcastle's Treatise on Government. 6 2 2 The Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report xii., parts ix. and x. : The Papers of the Duke of Beaufort, p. 84. Cp. Selden's Table Talk, viii. : ' Bishops do best stand with Monarchy.' • Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson. and the cultured for the most part adhered to the Church, dissent became the badge of the small traders in the towns and of the yeomen in the country. If Charles II. instinctively inclined to the Church of those who, for want of a better term, must be called the upper classes, he displayed a spirit of conservatism that under the circumstances was natural. The logic of facts, after all, is irresistible. If the King thought that a consolidating force, a buttress for the throne, was to be found in a re-established Church, he was supported by a mass of authority that had considerable weight. The remark attributed to him by Pepys that he who took one stone from the Church took two from his Crownmust have seemed to many persons simply a piece of indisputable common sense. There were few, indeed, who were prepared to go as far as Hobbes in carrying Erastianism to its logical extremities. Yet the position of the philosopher of Malmesbury-who evidently thought all religions to be equally true to the people, false to the philosopher, and useful to the statesman-must have been in many ways congenial to Charles and his advisers. A sovereign, said Hobbes, is the representative of God in his kingdom; a church is a company of men professing the Christian religion, united in the person of one Sovereign, at whose command they ought to assemble'; there is no government but temporal; ' temporal and spiritual government are but two words brought into the world to make men see double and mistake their lawful sovereign'; bishops and pastors derive their authority from the Sovereign just like civil magistrates; the Sovereign has authority to preach, baptise, administer the Sacrament, ordain priests and consecrate churches. In all this Hobbes maintained -perhaps not without justice—that he did not go beyond the avowed opinions of some of the High Church clergy of the day. At all events it could be said that a rational basis for Erastianism had been found by the most famous of living English philosophers. Laymen so different as the Lord Chancellor Guilford and Lord Halifax took the same views on Church and State. The Church of England, said the former, which was reformed by law, and not by rebellion, is the best constitution for 1 Hobbes's Leviathan. L a monarch'; 'the monarchy and the Church of England cannot subsist but together,' said the latter; for they that endeavour to introduce a republican government in one, expect to have it followed in the other.' That great ecclesiastical personages should have found, or thought that they had found, almost an ideal state of things in an established State Church was only to be expected. Whether the State or the Church at this time gained most by the arrangement it is difficult to say, but the clergy were not disposed to under-estimate the value of their services. When it is remembered that the doctrine of the divine right of kings and of the duty of non-resistance found its warmest supporters among the Anglican clergy, the conclusion seems inevitable that the Church repaid in full measure its obligations to the Crown. For the ecclesiastical policy of the Restoration there was perhaps no one more responsible than the powerful Minister who forthwith took the helm of State. An ecclesiasticallyminded layman, who had pondered long over the dark questions of theology, Clarendon brought to his treatment of the religious settlement some passionate convictions. He was, as we have already seen, an admiring lover of the Church. Holding the opinions that he did he could never have been satisfied with anything less than the restoration of the Church to its old illustrious position. Of his Erastian views he has left us in no doubt. With a King and his chief Minister holding opinions such as these there could be very little doubt what the character of the ecclesiastical settlement would be. As the Restoration was to some extent a compromise in which the Presbyterians concurred, it was hoped at the beginning that some concessions in their favour would be made. One of the first things that Charles did on his return was to receive a deputation of some of the most eminent Presbyterian ministers, the 'popular preachers of the City,' who, while declaring themselves 'no enemies to moderate episcopacy,' prayed him to discontinue the use of the Book of Common Prayer, and of the surplice by his chaplains. But such faint hopes as were aroused were 1 The Correspondence of the Earls of Clarendon and Rochester, edited by S. W. Singer, p. 187. 1 speedily dispelled. Charles, indeed, used honeyed words when he addressed the deputation, and he assured Baxter of his desire for religious unity which, he very truly said, could only be gained' by abating somewhat on both sides, and meeting midway.' He did even more than merely speak conciliatory things; for he appointed some of the leading Presbyterian ministers his chaplains, and offered several of them bishoprics. Expectations reached their zenith when a conference of Bishops and Puritan Divines was summoned to meet at the Savoy Palace with a view to working out such modifications in the Liturgy as might be acceptable to both sides. The Conference met and much barren logomachy ensued. Burnet asserts that the leading protagonists on either side-Bishop Gunning and Baxter-were men of such metaphysical heads and so very disputatious that they were best fitted to spoil the design,' and that they spent whole days in arguments, as if their whole business was to try their skill in fencing work.' However that may be, it soon became apparent that the prospects of agreement were exceedingly remote; for whereas the Presbyterians argued that the commanding or the forbidding of things indifferent was a sin, when such action was likely to do more harm than good, the Churchmen held that not to command or forbid indifferent things struck at all authority, because it was only in such things that human authority could interpose. The spirit displayed at the Conference may be gathered from the fact that when Baxter made use of the word 'nation,' the Bishop of Carlisle acrimoniouly ejaculated, 'he will not say "Kingdom" lest he own a King.' That any agreement at all was arrived at was under the circumstances wonderful; but it was all in vain; for when Parliament and Convocation met, the labours of the Conference were contemptuously ignored. 3 The fact was that the dominant Royalists viewed the advances of the Presbyterians with very great suspicion. It was thought— so Pepys said that the latter wished to bring the King back ' with such conditions as if he had been in chains.' The Church preferments which were offered to the Presbyterians—sops 'Orme's Life and Times of Baxter, p. 176. 2 Burnet's History of His Own Time, pp. 328-329. |