Chapter XI: Part 11

It did not appear that Williams had ever divulged these letters; but it was held that the concealment of a libellous letter was a high misdemeanor. Williams was therefore adjudged to pay five thousand pounds to the King and three thousand to the Archbishop, to be imprisoned during pleasure, and to make a submission; Osbaldiston to pay a still heavier fine, to be deprived of all his benefices, to be imprisoned and make submission, and, moreover, to stand in the pillory before his school in Dean's yard, with his ears nailed to it. This man had the good fortune to conceal himself; but the Bishop of Lincoln, refusing to make the required apology, lay about three years in the Tower, till released at the beginning of the Long Parliament.

It might detain me too long to dwell particularly on the punishments inflicted by the Court of Star-chamber in this reign. Such historians as have not written in order to palliate the tyranny of Charles, and especially Rushworth, will furnish abundant details, with all those circumstances that portray the barbarous and tyrannical spirit of those who composed that tribunal. Two or three instances are so celebrated that I cannot pass them over. Leighton, a Scots divine, having published an angry libel against the hierarchy, was sentenced to be publicly whipped at Westminster and set in the pillory, to have one side of his nose slit, one ear cut off, and one side of his cheek branded with a hot iron; to have the whole of this repeated the next week at Cheapside, and to suffer perpetual imprisonment in the Fleet. Lilburne, for dispersing pamphlets against the bishops, was whipped from the Fleet prison to Westminster, there set in the pillory, and treated afterward with great cruelty. Prynne, a lawyer of uncommon erudition and a zealous Puritan, had printed a bulky volume, called _Histriomastix_, full of invectives against the theatre, which he sustained by a profusion of learning. In the course of this he adverted to the appearance of courtesans on the Roman stage, and, by a satirical reference in his index, seemed to range all female actors in the class. The Queen, unfortunately, six weeks after the publication of Prynne's book, had performed a part in a mask at court. This passage was accordingly dragged to light by the malice of Peter Heylin, a chaplain of Laud, on whom the Archbishop devolved the burden of reading this heavy volume in order to detect its offences.

Heylin, a bigoted enemy of everything Puritanical, and not scrupulous as to veracity, may be suspected of having aggravated, if not misrepresented, the tendency of a book much more tiresome than seditious. Prynne, however, was already obnoxious, and the Star-chamber adjudged him to stand twice in the pillory, to be branded in the forehead, to lose both his ears, to pay a fine of five thousand pounds, and to suffer perpetual imprisonment. The dogged Puritan employed the leisure of a jail in writing a fresh libel against the hierarchy. For this, with two other delinquents of the same class, Burton a divine, and Bastwick a physician, he stood again at the bar of that terrible tribunal. Their demeanor was what the court deemed intolerably contumacious, arising, in fact, from the despair of men who knew that no humiliation would procure them mercy. Prynne lost the remainder of his ears in the pillory; and the punishment was inflicted on them all with extreme and designed cruelty, which they endured, as martyrs always endure suffering, so heroically as to excite a deep impression of sympathy and resentment in the assembled multitude. They were sentenced to perpetual confinement in distant prisons. But their departure from London and their reception on the road were marked by signal expressions of popular regard; and their friends resorting to them even in Launceston, Chester, and Carnarvon castles, whither they were sent, an order of council was made to transport them to the isles of the Channel.

It was the very first act of the Long Parliament to restore these victims of tyranny to their families. Punishments by mutilation, though not quite unknown to the English law, had been of rare occurrence; and thus inflicted on men whose station appeared to render the ignominy of whipping and branding more intolerable, they produced much the same effect as the still greater cruelties of Mary's reign, in exciting a detestation of that ecclesiastical dominion which protected itself by means so atrocious.

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY

Now commenced a new era. Many English kings had occasionally committed unconstitutional acts; but none had ever systematically attempted to make himself a despot, and to reduce the Parliament to a nullity. Such was the end which Charles distinctly proposed to himself. From March, 1629, to April, 1640, the Houses were not convoked. Never in our history had there been an interval of eleven years between Parliament and Parliament. Only once had there been an interval of even half that length. This fact alone is sufficient to refute those who represent Charles as having merely trodden in the footsteps of the Plantagenets and Tudors.

It is proved, by the testimony of the King's most strenuous supporters, that, during this part of his reign, the provisions of the Petition of Right were violated by him, not occasionally, but constantly, and on system; that a large part of the revenue was raised without any legal authority; and that persons obnoxious to the government languished for years in prison, without being ever called upon to plead before any tribunal.

For these things history must hold the King himself chiefly responsible. From the time of his third Parliament he was his own prime minister. Several persons, however, whose temper and talents were suited to his purposes, were at the head of different departments of the administration.

Thomas Wentworth, successively created Lord Wentworth and Earl of Strafford, a man of great abilities, eloquence, and courage, but of a cruel and imperious nature, was the counsellor most trusted in political and military affairs. He had been one of the most distinguished members of the opposition, and felt toward those whom he had deserted that peculiar malignity which has, in all ages, been characteristic of apostates. He perfectly understood the feelings, the resources, and the policy of the party to which he had lately belonged, and had formed a vast and deeply meditated scheme which very nearly confounded even the able tactics of the statesmen by whom the House of Commons had been directed. To this scheme, in his confidential correspondence, he gave the expressive name of Thorough.

His object was to do in England all, and more than all, that Richelieu was doing in France: to make Charles a monarch as absolute as any on the Continent; to put the estates and the personal liberty of the whole people at the disposal of the crown; to deprive the courts of law of all independent authority, even in ordinary questions of civil right between man and man; and to punish with merciless rigor all who murmured at the acts of the government, or who applied, even in the most decent and regular manner, to any tribunal for relief against those acts.

This was his end; and he distinctly saw in what manner alone this end could be attained. There was, in truth, about all his notions a clearness, a coherence, a precision, which, if he had not been pursuing an object pernicious to his country and to his kind, would have justly entitled him to high admiration. He saw that there was one instrument, and only one, by which his vast and daring projects could be carried into execution. That instrument was a standing army. To the forming of such an army, therefore, he directed all the energy of his strong mind. In Ireland, where he was viceroy, he actually succeeded in establishing a military despotism, not only over the aboriginal population, but also over the English colonists, and was able to boast that, in that island, the King was as absolute as any prince in the whole world could be.

The ecclesiastical administration was, in the mean time, principally directed by William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. Of all the prelates of the Anglican Church, Laud had departed furthest from the principles of the Reformation and had drawn nearest to Rome. His theology was more remote than even that of the Dutch Arminians from the theology of the Calvinists. His passion for ceremonies, his reverence for holidays, vigils, and sacred places, his ill-concealed dislike of the marriage of ecclesiastics, the ardent and not altogether disinterested zeal with which he asserted the claims of the clergy to the reverence of the laity, would have made him an object of aversion to the Puritans, even if he had used only legal and gentle means for the attainment of his ends. But his understanding was narrow; and his commerce with the world had been small. He was by nature rash, irritable, quick to feel for his own dignity, slow to sympathize with the sufferings of others, and prone to the error, common in superstitious men, of mistaking his own peevish and malignant moods for emotions of pious zeal.

Under his direction every corner of the realm was subjected to a constant and minute inspection. Every little congregation of Separatists was tracked out and broken up. Even the devotions of private families could not escape the vigilance of his spies. Such fear did his rigor inspire that the deadly hatred of the Church, which festered in innumerable bosoms, was generally disguised under an outward show of conformity. On the very eve of troubles, fatal to himself and to his order, the bishops of several extensive dioceses were able to report to him that not a single dissenter was to be found within their jurisdiction.

The tribunals afforded no protection to the subject against the civil and ecclesiastical tyranny of that period. The judges of the common law, holding their situations during the pleasure of the King, were scandalously obsequious. Yet, obsequious as they were, they were less ready and less efficient instruments of arbitrary power than a class of courts the memory of which is still, after the lapse of more than two centuries, held in deep abhorrence by the nation. Foremost among these courts in power and in infamy were the Star-chamber and the High Commission, the former a political, the latter a religious, inquisition. Neither was a part of the old constitution of England. The Star-chamber had been remodelled, and the High Commission created, by the Tudors.

The power which these boards had possessed before the accession of Charles had been extensive and formidable, but had been small indeed when compared with that which they now usurped. Guided chiefly by the violent spirit of the primate, and freed from the control of Parliament, they displayed a rapacity, a violence, a malignant energy, which had been unknown to any former age. The government was able through their instrumentality, to fine, imprison, pillory, and mutilate without restraint. A separate council which sat at York, under the presidency of Wentworth, was armed, in defiance of law, by a pure act of prerogative, with almost boundless power over the northern counties. All these tribunals insulted and defied the authority of Westminster hall, and daily committed excesses which the most distinguished royalists have warmly condemned. We are informed by Clarendon that there was hardly a man of note in the realm who had not personal experience of the harshness and greediness of the Star-chamber, that the High Commission had so conducted itself that it had scarce a friend left in the kingdom, and that the tyranny of the Council of York had made the Great Charter a dead letter on the north of the Trent.

The government of England was now, in all points but one, as despotic as that of France. But that one point was all-important. There was still no standing army. There was therefore no security that the whole fabric of tyranny might not be subverted in a single day; and if taxes were imposed by the royal authority for the support of an army, it was probable that there would be an immediate and irresistible explosion. This was the difficulty which more than any other perplexed Wentworth. The Lord Keeper Finch, in concert with other lawyers who were employed by the government, recommended an expedient which was eagerly adopted. The ancient princes of England, as they called on the inhabitants of the counties near Scotland to arm and array themselves for the defence of the border, had sometimes called on the maritime counties to furnish ships for the defence of the coast. In the room of ships, money had sometimes been accepted. This old practice it was now determined, after a long interval, not only to revive, but to extend. Former princes had raised ship-money only in time of war: it was now exacted in a time of profound peace. Former princes, even in the most perilous wars, had raised ship-money only along the coasts: it was now exacted from the inland shires. Former princes had raised ship-money only for the maritime defence of the country: it was now exacted, by the admission of the royalists themselves, with the object, not of maintaining a navy, but of furnishing the King with supplies which might be increased at his discretion to any amount, and expended at his discretion for any purpose.

The whole nation was alarmed and incensed. John Hampden, an opulent and well-born gentleman of Buckinghamshire, highly considered in his own neighborhood, but as yet little known to the kingdom generally, had the courage to step forward, to confront the whole power of the government, and take on himself the cost and the risk of disputing the prerogative to which the King laid claim. The case was argued before the judges in the exchequer chamber. So strong were the arguments against the pretensions of the crown that, dependent and servile as the judges were, the majority against Hampden was the smallest possible. Still there was a majority. The interpreters of the law had pronounced that one great and productive tax might be imposed by the royal authority. Wentworth justly observed that it was impossible to vindicate their judgment except by reasons directly leading to a conclusion which they had not ventured to draw. If money might legally be raised without the consent of Parliament for the support of a fleet, it was not easy to deny that money might, without consent of Parliament, be legally raised for the support of an army.

The decision of the judges increased the irritation of the people. A century earlier, irritation less serious would have produced a general rising. But discontent did not now so readily, as in an earlier age, take the form of rebellion. The nation had been long steadily advancing in wealth and in civilization. Since the great northern earls took up arms against Elizabeth seventy years had elapsed; and during those seventy years there had been no civil war. Never, during the whole existence of the English nation, had so long a period passed without intestine hostilities. Men had become accustomed to the pursuits of peaceful industry, and, exasperated as they were, hesitated long before they drew the sword.

This was the conjuncture at which the liberties of the nation were in the greatest peril. The opponents of the government began to despair of the destiny of their country; and many looked to the American wilderness as the only asylum in which they could enjoy civil and spiritual freedom. There a few resolute Puritans, who, in the cause of their religion, feared neither the rage of the ocean nor the hardships of uncivilized life, neither the fangs of savage beasts nor the tomahawks of more savage men, had built, amid the primeval forests, villages which are now great and opulent cities, but which have, through every change, retained some trace of the character derived from their founders. The government regarded these infant colonies with aversion, and attempted violently to stop the stream of emigration, but could not prevent the population of New England from being largely recruited by stout-hearted and God-fearing men from every part of the old England. And now Wentworth exulted in the near prospect of Thorough. A few years might probably suffice for the execution of his great design. If strict economy were observed, if all collision with foreign powers were carefully avoided, the debts of the crown would be cleared off: there would be funds available for the support of a large military force; and that force would soon break the refractory spirit of the nation.

At this crisis an act of insane bigotry suddenly changed the whole face of public affairs. Had the King been wise, he would have pursued a cautious and soothing policy toward Scotland till he was master in the South. For Scotland was of all his kingdoms that in which there was the greatest risk that a spark might produce a flame, and that a flame might become a conflagration. The government had long wished to extend the Anglican system over the whole island, and had already, with this view, made several changes highly distasteful to every Presbyterian. One innovation, however, the most hazardous of all, because it was directly cognizable by the senses of the common people, had not yet been attempted. The public worship of God was still conducted in the manner acceptable to the nation. Now, however, Charles and Laud determined to force on the Scots the English liturgy, or rather a liturgy which, wherever it differed from that of England, differed, in the judgment of all rigid Protestants, for the worse.

To this step, taken in the mere wantonness of tyranny, and in criminal ignorance or more criminal contempt of public feeling, England owes her freedom. The first performance of the foreign ceremonies produced a riot. The riot rapidly became a revolution. Ambition, patriotism, fanaticism, were mingled in one headlong torrent. The whole nation was in arms. The power of England was, indeed, as appeared some years later, sufficient to coerce Scotland; but a large part of the English people sympathized with the religious feelings of the insurgents, and many Englishmen who had no scruple about antiphonies and genuflexions, altars and surplices, saw with pleasure the progress of a rebellion which seemed likely to confound the arbitrary projects of the court and to make the calling of a parliament necessary.

For the senseless freak which had produced these effects Wentworth is not responsible. It had, in fact, thrown all his plans into confusion. To counsel submission, however, was not in his nature. An attempt was made to put down the insurrection by the sword; but the King's military means and military talents were unequal to the task. To impose fresh taxes on England in defiance of law would, at this conjuncture, have been madness. No resource was left but a Parliament; and in the spring of 1640 a parliament was convoked.

The nation had been put into good humor by the prospect of seeing constitutional government restored and grievances redressed. The new House of Commons was more temperate and more respectful to the throne than any which had sat since the death of Elizabeth. The moderation of this assembly has been highly extolled by the most distinguished royalists, and seems to have caused no small vexation and disappointment to the chiefs of the opposition; but it was the uniform practice of Charles--a practice equally impolitic and ungenerous--to refuse all compliances with the desires of his people, till those desires were expressed in a menacing tone. As soon as the Commons showed a disposition to take into consideration the grievances under which the country had suffered during eleven years, the King dissolved the Parliament with every mark of displeasure.

Between the dissolution of this short-lived assembly and the meeting of that ever-memorable body known by the name of the Long Parliament, intervened a few months, during which the yoke was pressed down more severely than ever on the nation, while the spirit of the nation rose up more angrily than ever against the yoke. Members of the House of Commons were questioned by the privy council touching their parliamentary conduct, and thrown into prison for refusing to reply. Ship-money was levied with increased rigor. The lord mayor and the sheriffs of London were threatened with imprisonment for remissness in collecting the payments. Soldiers were enlisted by force. Money for their support was exacted from their counties. Torture, which had always been illegal, and which had recently been declared illegal even by the servile judges of that age, was inflicted for the last time in England in the month of May, 1640.

Everything now depended on the event of the King's military operations against the Scots. Among his troops there was little of that feeling which separates professional soldiers from the mass of a nation and attaches them to their leaders. His army, composed for the most part of recruits, who regretted the plough from which they had been violently taken, and who were imbued with the religious and political sentiments then prevalent throughout the country, was more formidable to himself than to the enemy. The Scots, encouraged by the heads of the English opposition, and feebly resisted by the English forces, marched across the Tweed and the Tyne, and encamped on the borders of Yorkshire. And now the murmurs of discontent swelled into an uproar by which all spirits save one were overawed. But the voice of Strafford was still for Thorough; and he even, in this extremity, showed a nature so cruel and despotic that his own pikemen were ready to tear him in pieces.

There was yet one last expedient which, as the King flattered himself, might save him from the misery of facing another House of Commons. To the House of Lords he was less averse. The bishops were devoted to him; and though the temporal peers were generally dissatisfied with his administration, they were, as a class, so deeply interested in the maintenance of order and in the stability of ancient institutions that they were not likely to call for extensive reforms. Departing from the uninterrupted practice of centuries, he called a great council consisting of lords alone. But the lords were too prudent to assume the unconstitutional functions with which he wished to invest them. Without money, without credit, without authority even in his own camp, he yielded to the pressure of necessity.

In November, 1640, met that renowned Parliament which, in spite of many errors and disasters, is justly entitled to the reverence and gratitude of all who, in any part of the world, enjoy the blessings of constitutional government.

During the year which followed, no very important division of opinion appeared in the Houses. The civil and ecclesiastical administration had, through a period of nearly twelve years, been so oppressive and so unconstitutional that even those classes of which the inclinations are generally on the side of order and authority were eager to promote popular reforms and to bring the instruments of tyranny to justice. It was enacted that no interval of more than three years should ever elapse between Parliament and Parliament, and that, if writs under the great seal were not issued at the proper time, the returning officers should, without such writs, call the constituent bodies together for the choice of representatives. The Star-chamber, the High Commission, the Council of York were swept away. Men who, after suffering cruel mutilations, had been confined in remote dungeons regained their liberty. On the chief ministers of the crown the vengeance of the nation was unsparingly wreaked. The lord keeper, the primate, the lord lieutenant were impeached. Finch saved himself by flight. Laud was flung into the Tower. Strafford was put to death, beheaded by act of attainder. On the day on which this act passed, the King gave his assent to a law by which he bound himself not to adjourn, prorogue, or dissolve the existing Parliament without its own consent.

FOUNDING OF MONTREAL

A.D. 1642

ALFRED SANDHAM

The history of Montreal dates back to October, 1535, when
Jacques Cartier first landed on the island. An Indian village,
called Hochelaga, existed here at this time. Its outline was
circular; and it was encompassed by three rows of palisades, or
rather picket fences, one within the other, well secured and
put together. A single entrance was left in this rude
fortification, but guarded with pikes and stakes, and every
precaution taken against siege or attack. Cartier named the
place Mount Royal, from the elevation that rose in rear of the
site, a little way back from the river St. Lawrence. It first
began to be settled by Europeans in 1542, and exactly one
century afterward the spot destined for the city was, with due
solemnities, consecrated at the era of Maissoneuve and named
Ville Marie, a designation which it retained for a long period.
In 1760 it was taken by the English. Since then it has taken
great leaps in the way of progress until to-day it is the chief
commercial city in Canada and the largest city in the Dominion.
Montreal has the further advantage, in its natural situation,
of being at the head of ocean navigation. Its population
to-day, including suburbs, is in the neighborhood of 350,000.

On the death of Champlain (on December 25, 1635), M. de Montmagny was appointed governor of New France; but so little attention was paid to the wants of the colony that its prosperity was much retarded, the fur trade alone being conducted with any spirit. But great vigor was manifested in religious matters and several institutions were erected. In 1630 the Hôtel Dieu, at Quebec, was founded by three nuns sent out by the Duchesse d'Aiguillon, and Madame de la Peltrie brought out from France at her own charge another body of nuns, who established the Ursuline convent. The peopling and fortifying of the island of Montreal, with the view of repressing the incursions of the Iroquois and the conversion of the Indians, had occupied the entire attention of the first missionaries, and in 1640 the whole of this domain was ceded to a company for that purpose.

Jerome le Royer de la Dauversière, a collector of taxes at La Flêche, in Anjou, and a young priest of Paris, Jean Jacques Olier by name, having met each other, formed the idea of establishing at Montreal three religious communities: one of priests to convert the Indians, one of nuns to nurse the sick, and one of nuns to teach the children of the Indians and of the colonists. It was an easy matter to talk over these plans; but, in order to carry them out, they must first raise some money. For this purpose Olier laid the matter before some of his wealthy penitents, while Dauversière succeeded in securing the Baron de Fanchamp, a devout Christian and a wealthy man, who, considering the enterprise as one calculated to further his spiritual interests, was eager to take part in it. Shortly afterward three others were secured, and the six together formed the germ of the "Société de Notre Dame de Montréal." Among them they raised seventy-five thousand livres.

Previous to this the island of Montreal had been granted to M. de Lauson, a former president of the Company of One Hundred Associates, and his son possessed the exclusive monopoly of the fisheries on the St. Lawrence. After much persuasion Dauversière and Fanchamp succeeded in securing from him a transfer of his title to them; and to make the matter more secure they obtained, in addition, a grant of the island from its former owners, the Hundred Associates. That company, however, reserved the western extremity of the island for themselves, as a site for a fort and stores. The younger Lauzon also gave Dauversière and his company the right of fishery within two leagues of the shores of the island, which favor they were to acknowledge by a yearly donation of ten pounds of fish. These grants were afterward confirmed by the King, and thus Dauversière and his companions became "Lords of the Isle of Montreal."

They now proceeded to mature their plan, which was to send out forty men to take possession of Montreal, intrench themselves, and raise crops, after which they would build houses for the priests and convents for the nuns. It was necessary, however, that some competent person should be secured who should take command of the expedition and act as governor of the newly acquired isle. To fill this important position it was desirable that to the qualities of the statesman should be added the courage of the soldier. One in whom these were combined was found in the person of Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve, a devout Christian, an able statesman, and a valiant soldier. Maisonneuve at once accepted the position, while many wealthy ladies contributed toward defraying the expense of the undertaking and also became members of the "Association of Montreal." In February, 1641, the Associates, with Olier at their head, assembled in the Church of Notre Dame at Paris, and before the altar of the Virgin "solemnly consecrated Montreal to the Holy Family" and to be called "Ville-Marie de Montréal."

Maisonneuve with his party, forty-five in number, reached Quebec too late to ascend the river. On their arrival at that place they were received with jealousy and distrust. The agents of the Company of One Hundred Associates looked on them with suspicion, and Montmagny, the Governor, feared a rival in Maisonneuve. Every opposition was thrown in their way, and Montmagny tried to persuade Maisonneuve to exchange the island of Montreal for that of Orleans. But Maisonneuve was not to be deceived, and he expressed his determination to found a colony at Montreal, "even if every tree on the island was an Iroquois."

During the winter Maisonneuve employed his men in various labors for the future benefit of the colony, but principally in building a boat in which to ascend the river. While staying at Quebec the party gained an unexpected addition to their numbers in the person of Madame de la Peltrie, who joined them, and took with her all the furniture she had lent the Ursulines.

On May 8, 1642, Maisonneuve embarked from St. Michael, and on the 17th his little flotilla, a pinnace, a flat-bottomed craft moved by sails, and two row-boats, approached Montreal, and all on board raised in unison a hymn of praise. Montmagny was there to deliver the island, on behalf of the Company of One Hundred Associates; while here, too, was Father Vimont, superior of the missions. On the following day they glided along the green and solitary shores, now thronged with the life of a busy city, and landed on the spot which Champlain, thirty-one years before, had chosen as the fit site of a settlement. It was a tongue or triangle of land, formed by the junction of a rivulet with the St. Lawrence. This rivulet was bordered by a meadow, and beyond rose the forest with its vanguard of scattered trees. Early spring flowers were blooming in the young grass, and the birds flitted among the boughs.

Maisonneuve sprang ashore and fell on his knees. His followers imitated his example; and all joined their voices in songs of thanksgiving. Tents, baggage, arms, and stores were landed. Here were the ladies with their servants; Montmagny, no willing spectator; and Maisonneuve, a warlike figure, erect and tall, his men clustering around him--soldiers, sailors, artisans, and laborers--all alike soldiers at need. They kneeled in reverent silence as the host was raised aloft; and when the rite was over the priest turned and addressed them: "You are a grain of mustard-seed that shall rise and grow until its branches overshadow the land. You are few, but your work is the work of God. His smile is on you, and your children shall fill the land." Then they pitched their tents, lighted their fires, stationed their guards, and lay down to rest. Such was the birthnight of Montreal. The following morning they proceeded to form their encampment, the first tree being felled by Maisonneuve. They worked with such energy that by the evening they erected a strong palisade, and had covered their altar with a roof formed of bark. It was some time after their arrival before their enemies, the Indians, were made aware of it, and they improved the time by building some substantial houses and in strengthening their fortifications.

The activity and zeal of Maisonneuve induced him to make a voyage to France to obtain assistance for his settlement. Though his difficulties were great, he yet was enabled to induce one hundred men to join his little establishment on the island. Notwithstanding this addition to his force, the progress of the colony was greatly retarded by the frequent attacks of the Indians. These enemies soon became a cause of great trouble to the colonists, and it was dangerous to pass beyond the palisades, as the Indians would hide for days, waiting to assail any unfortunate straggler. Although Maisonneuve was brave as man could be, he knew that his company was no match for the wily enemy, owing to their ignorance of the mode of Indian warfare; therefore he kept his men as near the fort as possible. They, however, failed to appreciate his care of them, and imputed it to cowardice. This led him to determine that such a feeling should not exist if he could possibly remove it. He therefore ordered his men to prepare to attack the Indians, at the same time signifying his intention to lead them himself. He sallied forth at the head of thirty men, leaving D'Aillebout with the remainder to hold the fort. After they had waded through the snow for some distance they were attacked by the Iroquois, who killed three of his men and wounded several others. Maisonneuve and his party held their ground until their ammunition began to fail, and then he gave orders to retreat, he himself remaining till the last. The men struggled on for some time facing the enemy, but finally they broke their ranks and retreated in great disorder toward the fort. Maisonneuve, with a pistol in each hand, held the Iroquois in check for some time. They might have killed him, but they wished to take him prisoner. Their chief, desiring this honor, rushed forward, but just as he was about to grasp him Maisonneuve fired and he fell dead. The Indians, fearing that the body of their chief would fall into the hands of the French, rushed forward to secure it, and Maisonneuve passed safely into the fort. From that day his men never dared to impute cowardice to him.

In 1644 the island of Montreal was made over to the Sulpicians of Paris, and was destined for the support of that religious order. In 1658 Viscount d'Argenson was appointed governor of Canada, but the day he landed the Iroquois murdered some Algonquin Indians under the very guns of Quebec. The Indians seemed determined to exterminate the French. In addition to keeping Quebec in a state little short of actual siege, they massacred a large number of the settlers at Montreal. D'Argenson having resigned, the Baron d'Avagnon was appointed governor (1661), and on his arrival visited the several settlements throughout the country. He was surprised to find them in such a deplorable condition, and made such representation to the King, as to the neglect of the Company of One Hundred Associates, that M. de Monts, the King's commissioner, was ordered to visit Canada and report on its condition. At the same time four hundred more troops were added to the colonial garrison. The arrival of these troops gave life and confidence to the colonists and relieved Montreal from its dangers. The representations made by M. de Monts, as well as those of the Bishop of Quebec, determined Louis XIV to demand their charter from the Company of One Hundred Associates and to place the colony in immediate connection with the crown. As the profits of the fur trade had been much diminished by the hostility of the Iroquois, the company readily surrendered its privileges. As soon as the transfer was completed, D'Avagnon was recalled and M. de Mesy was appointed governor for three years. Canada was thus changed into a royal government, and a council of state was nominated to coöperate with the Governor in the administration of affairs. This council consisted of the Governor, the Bishop of Quebec, and the intendant, together with four others to be named by them, one of whom was to act as attorney-general.

PRESBYTERIANISM ESTABLISHED

MEETING OF THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY

A.D. 1643

DAVID MASSON

Official recognition of Presbyterianism in Great Britain marked
a distinct departure in ecclesiastical affairs. The Westminster
Assembly, whose confession and catechisms, while not accepted
in England, became, and still remain, the doctrinal standards
of the Scotch and American Presbyterian churches, was one of
the most important religious convocations ever held. The
Presbyterian form of church government has been adopted by
various sects, whose representatives are found in many parts of
the world.

The great object of the Westminster Assembly was to dictate,
dogmatically, articles of faith and a form of worship that
should be compulsory. It was mainly owing to the influence of
Oliver Cromwell, who stood for toleration and independence,
within limits, that the assembly did not have its way.

Masson, the great authority on this subject, gives in the
following pages a clear and comprehensive account of the
religious situation in Great Britain at the time, of the
composition of the assembly, and of its labors during the five
years and more of its continuance.

At the time of the meeting of the Westminster Assembly there was a tradition in the Puritan mind of England of two varieties of opinions as to the form of church government or discipline that should be substituted for episcopacy.

In the first place there was a tradition of the system of views known as Presbyterianism. From the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, if not earlier, there had been Nonconformists who held that some form of the consistorial model which Calvin had set up in Geneva, and which Knox enlarged for Scotland, was the best for England, too. Thus Fuller, who dates the use of the term "Puritans," as a nickname for the English Nonconformists generally, from the year 1564, and who goes on to say that within a few years after that date the chief of those to whom that term was first applied were either dead or very aged, adds: "Behold, another generation of active and zealous Nonconformists succeeded them: of these Coleman, Button, Halingham, and Benson (whose Christian names I cannot recover) were the chief; inveighing against the established church discipline, accounting everything from Rome that was not from Geneva, endeavoring in all things to conform the government of the English Church to the Presbyterian Reformation."

Actually, in 1572, Fuller proceeds to tell us, a presbytery, the first in England, was set up at Wandsworth in Surrey; _i.e._, in that year a certain number of ministers of the Church of England organized themselves privately, without reference to bishops or other authorities, into a kind of presbyterial consistory, or classical court, for the management of the church business of their neighborhood. The heads of this Presbyterian movement, which gradually extended itself to London, were Mr. Field, lecturer at Wandsworth, Mr. Smith of Mitcham, Mr. Crane of Roehampton, Messrs. Wilcox, Standen, Jackson, Bonham, Saintloe, Travers, Charke, Barber, Gardiner, Crook, and Egerton; with whom were associated a good many laymen. A summary of their views on the subject of church government was drawn out in Latin, under the title _Disciplina Ecclesiæ sacra ex Dei Verbo descripta_, and, though it had to be printed at Geneva, became so well known that, according to Fuller, "_Secundum usum Wandsworth_ was as much honored by some as _secundum usum Sarum_ by others."

The English Presbyterianism thus asserting itself and spreading found its ablest and most energetic leader in the famous Thomas Cartwright (1535-1603). No less by practical ingenuity than by the pen, he labored for presbytery; and under his direction Presbyterianism attained such dimensions that between 1580 and 1590 there were no fewer than five hundred beneficed clergymen of the Church of England, most of them Cambridge men, all pledged to general agreement in a revised form of the Wandsworth Directory of Discipline, all in private intercommunication among themselves, and all meeting occasionally, or at appointed times, in local conferences, or even in provincial and general synods. In addition to London, the parts of the country thus most leavened with Presbyterianism were the shires of Warwick, Northampton, Rutland, Leicester, Cambridge, and Essex.

Of course such an anomaly, of a Presbyterian organization of ministers existing within the body of the prelatic system established by law, and to the detriment or disintegration of that system, could not be tolerated; and, when Whitgift had procured sufficient information to enable him to seize and prosecute the chiefs, it was, in fact, stamped out. But the recollection of Cartwright and of Presbyterian principles remained in the English mind through the reigns of James and Charles, and characterized the main mass of the more effective and respectable Puritanism of those reigns. In other words, most of those Puritans, whether ministers or of the laity, who still continued members of the Church, only protesting against some of its rules and ceremonies, conjoined with this nonconformity in points of worship a dissatisfaction with the prelatic constitution of the Church, and a willingness to see the order of bishops removed, and the government of the Church remodelled on the Presbyterian system of parochial courts, classical or district meetings, provincial synods, and national assemblies.

During the supremacy of Laud, indeed, when any such wholesale revolution seemed hopeless, it is possible that English Puritanism within the Church had abandoned in some degree its dreamings over the Presbyterian theory, and had sunk, through exhaustion, into mere sighings after a relaxation of the established episcopacy. But the success of the Presbyterian revolt of the Scots in 1638, and their continued triumph in the two following years, had worked wonders. All the remains of native Presbyterian tradition in England had been kindled afresh, and new masses of English Puritan feeling, till then acquiescent in episcopacy, had been whirled into a passion for presbytery and nothing else. When the Long Parliament, at its first meeting (November, 1640), addressed itself to the question of a reform of the English Church, the force that beat against its doors most strongly from the outside world of English opinion consisted no longer of mere sighings after a limitation of episcopacy, but of a formed determination of myriads to have done with episcopacy root and branch, and to see a church government substituted somewhat after the Scottish pattern.

Two years more of discussion in and out of Parliament had vastly enlarged the dimensions of this revived and newly created English Presbyterianism. The passion for presbytery among the English laity had pervaded all the counties; and scores and hundreds of parish ministers who had kept as long as they could within the limits of mere Low-church Anglicanism, and had stood out, in their private reasonings, for the lawfulness and expediency of an order of officers in the Church superior to that of simple presbyters, if less lordly than the bishops, had been swept out of their scruples, and had joined themselves, even heartily, to the Presbyterian current. Thus, when the Westminster Assembly met (July, 1643), to consider, among other things, what form of church government the Parliament should be advised to establish in England in lieu of the episcopacy which it had been resolved to abolish, the injunction almost universally laid upon them by already formed opinion among the parliamentarians of England, whether laity or clergy out of the assembly, seemed to be that they should recommend conformity with Scottish presbytery. All the citizenship, all the respectability of London, for example, was resolutely Presbyterian, and of the one hundred twenty parish ministers of the city, surrounding the assembly, only three, so far as could be ascertained, were not of strict Presbyterian principles.

Nevertheless, amid all this apparent prevalence of Presbyterianism, there was a stubborn tradition in England of another set of antiprelatic views, long stigmatized by the nickname of Brownism, but known latterly as Independency or Congregationalism.

Independents and Presbyterians are quite agreed in maintaining that the terms "bishop" or overseer, and "presbyter" or elder, were synonymous in the pure or primitive Church, and applied indifferently to the same persons, and that prelacy and all its developments were subsequent corruptions. The peculiar tenet of independency, distinguishing it from Presbyterianism, consists in something else. It consists in the belief that the only organization recognized in the primitive Church was that of the voluntary association of believers into local congregations, each choosing its own office-bearers and managing its own affairs, independently of neighboring congregations, though willing occasionally to hold friendly conferences with such neighboring congregations, and to profit by the collective advice. Gradually, it is asserted, this right or habit of occasional friendly conference between neighboring congregations had been mismanaged and abused, until the true independency of each voluntary society of Christians was forgotten, and authority came to be vested in synods or councils of the office-bearers of the churches of a district or province.

This usurpation of power by synods or councils, it is said, was as much a corruption of the primitive-church discipline as was prelacy itself, or the usurpation of power by eminent individual presbyters, assuming the name of "bishops" in a new sense. Nay, the one usurpation had prepared the way for the other; and, especially after the establishment of Christianity in the Roman Empire by the civil power, the two usurpations had gone on together, until the church became a vast political machinery of councils, smaller or larger, regulated by a hierarchy of bishops, archbishops, and patriarchs, all pointing to the popedom. The error of the Presbyterians, it is maintained, lies in their not perceiving this natural and historical connection of the two usurpations, and so retaining the synodical tyranny while they would throw off the prelatic.

Not having recovered the true original idea of an _ecclesia_ as consisting simply of a society of individual Christians meeting together periodically and united by a voluntary compact, while the great invisible church of a nation or of the world consists of the whole multitude of such mutually independent societies harmoniously moved by the unseen Spirit present in all, Presbyterians, it is said, substitute the more mechanical image of a visible collective church for each community or nation, try to perfect that image by devices borrowed from civil polity, and find the perfection they seek in a system of national assemblies, provincial synods, and district courts of presbyters, superintending and controlling individual congregations. Independency, on the other hand, would purify the aggregate Church to the utmost, by throwing off the synodical tyranny as well as the prelatic, and restoring the complete power of discipline to each particular church or society of Christians formed in any one place.

So, I believe, though with varieties of expression, English Independents argue now. But, while they thus seek the original warrant for their views in the New Testament and in the practice of the primitive Church, and while they maintain also that the essence of these views was rightly revived in old English Wycliffism, and perhaps in some of the speculations which accompanied Luther's Reformation on the Continent, they admit that the theory of Independency had to be worked out afresh by a new process of the English mind in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and they are content, I believe, that the crude, immediate beginning of that process should be sought in the opinions propagated, between 1580 and 1590, by the erratic Robert Brown, a Rutlandshire man, bred at Cambridge, who had become a preacher at Norwich.

Here and there in England by his tongue during those ten years, and sometimes by pamphlets in exile, Brown, who could boast that he had been "committed to thirty-two prisons, in some of which he could not see his hand at noon-day," and who escaped the gallows only through some family connection he had with the all-powerful Lord Burghley, had preached doctrines far more violently schismatic than those of Cartwright and the majority of the Puritans. His attacks on bishops and episcopacy were boundlessly fierce; and the duty of separation _in toto_ from the Church of England, the right of any number of persons to form themselves into a distinct congregation, the mutual independence of congregations so formed, and the liberty of any member of a congregation to preach or exhort in it, were among his leading tenets.

At length, tiring of the tempest he had raised around him, he accepted a living in Northamptonshire; and, though he is not known to have ever formally recanted any of his opinions, he lived on in his parsonage till as late as 1630, when Fuller knew him as a passionate and rather disreputable old man of eighty, employing a curate to do his work, quarrelling with everybody, and refusing to pay his rates. Meanwhile the opinions which he had propagated fifty years before had passed through a singular history in the minds and lives of men of steadier and more persevering character. For, though Brown himself had vanished from public view since 1590, the Brownists, or Separatists, as they were called, had persisted in their course, through execration and persecution, as a sect of outlaws beyond the pale of ordinary Puritanism, and with whom moderate Puritans disowned connection or sympathy. One hears of considerable numbers of them in the shires of Norfolk and Essex and throughout Wales; and there was a central association of them in London, holding conventicles in the fields, or shifting from meeting-house to meeting-house in the suburbs, so as to elude Whitgift's ecclesiastical police. At length, in 1592, the police broke in upon one of the meetings of the London Brownists at Islington; fifty-six of these were thrown into divers jails; and, some of the Separatist leaders having been otherwise arrested, there ensued a vengeance far more ruthless than the government dared against Puritans in general.

Six of the leaders were brought to the scaffold, including Henry Barrowe, a Gray's Inn lawyer--of such note among those early Brownists by his writings that they were also called Barrowists--John Greenwood, a preacher, and the poor young Welshman, John Penry, whose brave and simple words on his own hard case, addressed before his death to Lord Burghley, thrill one's nerves yet. All these were of Cambridge training, though Penry had also been at Oxford. Others died in prison; and of the remainder many were banished.

Among the observers of these severities was Francis Bacon, then rising into eminence as a politician and lawyer. His feeling on the subject was thus expressed at the time: "As for those which we call Brownists, being, when they were at the most, a very small number of very silly and base people here and there in corners dispersed, they are now--thanks be to God--by the good remedies that have been used, suppressed and worn out, so as there is scarce any news of them." Bacon, doubtless, here expressed the feeling of all that was respectable in English society. For not only was it the theory of Brownism intrinsically that the Church of England was a false church, an institution of anti-christ, from which all Christians were bound to separate themselves; but the scurrilities against the bishops that had been vented anonymously by some particular nest of Brownists, or their allies, in the famous series of _Martin Marprelate Tracts_ (1589), had disgusted and enraged many who would have tolerated moderate Nonconformity.

With respect to the theory of church government called Independency or Congregationalism, the state of the case in 1640 may be thus summed up: There was an unknown amount of traditional affection for the theory, even where it could not be articulately stated, in the native and popular antiprelacy of England itself. This vague and diffused Independency had also a few champions in known Separatist ministers, who had managed to remain in England through all difficulties, and perhaps it had well-wishers in a private opinionist or two, like John Goodwin, regularly in orders in the Church of England; but the effective mass of English-born Independency lay wholly without the bounds of England, partly in little curdlings of Separatists or Semiseparatists among the English exiles in some of the towns of Holland, but chiefly, and in most assured completeness both of bulk and of detail, in the incipient transatlantic commonwealth of New England.

One thing, however, was certain all the while. These two effective aggregations of English-born Independency beyond the bounds of England--the small Dutch scattering and the massive American extension--were not dissociated from England, had not learned to be foreign to her, but were in correspondence with her, in constant survey of her concerns, and attached to her by such homeward yearnings that, on the least opportunity, the least signal given, they would leap back upon her shores.

The opportunity came, and the signal was given, in November, 1640, when the Long Parliament met. It was as if England then proclaimed to all her exiles for opinion, "Ye need be exiles no more." Accordingly, between that date and the meeting of the Westminster Assembly in July, 1643, we have the interesting phenomenon of a return of some of the conspicuous representatives of Independency both from Holland and from New England.