Chapter II (1)

WORK IN PARLIAMENT AND THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY DURING THE SIXTEEN MONTHS OF THE NEW MODEL--THE TWO CONTINUED CHURCH CONTROVERSIES--INDEPENDENCY AND SECTARIANISM IN THE NEW MODEL: TOLERATION CONTROVERSY CONTINUED: CROMWELL'S PART IN IT: LILBURNE AND OTHER PAMPHLETEERS: SION COLLEGE AND THE CORPORATION OF LONDON: SUCCESS OF THE PRESBYTERIANS IN PARLIAMENT-- PRESBYTERIAN FRAME OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT COMPLETED: DETAILS OF THE ARRANGEMENT--THE RECRUITING OF THE COMMONS: EMINENT RECRUITERS--EFFECTS OF THE RECRUITING: ALLIANCE OF INDEPENDENCY AND ERASTIANISM: CHECK GIVEN TO THE PRESBYTERIANS: WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY REBUKED AND CURBED-- NEGOTIATIONS ROUND THE KING AT NEWCASTLE--THREATENED RUPTURE BETWEEN THE SCOTS AND THE ENGLISH: ARGYLE'S VISIT TO LONDON: THE NINETEEN PROPOSITIONS--PARLIAMENT AND THE ASSEMBLY RECONCILED: PRESBYTERIANIZING OF LONDON AND LANCASHIRE: DEATH OF ALEXANDER HENDERSON.

During the sixteen months of those New Model operations in the field which had brought the war so decisively to an end (April 1645--August 1646), there had been a considerable progress in Parliament, in the Westminster Assembly, and in the public mind of England, on the seemingly interminable Church-business and its collaterals.

THE TWO CONTINUED CHURCH CONTROVERSIES.

That the Church of England should be Presbyterian had been formally decided in January 1644-5 (_antè_, pp. 172--175). Not even then, however, could the Presbyterians consider their work over. There were two reasons why they could not. (1) Although the essentials of Presbytery had been adopted, the details remained to be settled. What were to be the powers of the parochial consistories and the other church courts respectively? What discretion, for example, was to be left to each minister and his congregational board of elders in the matter of spiritual censure, and especially in the exclusion of offenders from the communion? Was there to be any discretion; or was the State to regulate what offences should be punished by excommunication? Again, were the various Church-courts, once established, to act independently of the Civil courts and the State; or was there to be an appeal of ecclesiastical questions at any point from Presbytery, or Synod, or the entire National Assembly, to the Civil courts and Parliament? (2) Another great question which remained undetermined was that of Toleration. Should the new Presbyterian State Church of England be established with or without a liberty of dissent from it? A vast mass of the English people, represented by the Army-Independents and some leading Sectaries, demanded an absolute, or at least a very large, freedom of religious belief and practice; the Independent Divines of the Assembly claimed a certain amount of such freedom; nay, Parliament itself, by its Accommodation Order of September 1644, had recognised the necessity of some toleration, and appointed an inquiry on the subject. In the universal belief of the Presbyterians, on the other hand, Toleration was a monster to be attacked and slain. Toleration was a demon, a chimera, the Great Diana of the Independents, the Daughter of the Devil, the Mother and Protectress of blasphemies and heresies, the hideous Procuress of souls for Hell!

Such were the questions for continued controversy between the Presbyterians and their opponents in England in the beginning of 1645, when the New Model took the field. What progress had been made in these questions, and what changes had occurred in the attitudes of the two parties mainly concerned, during the victorious sixteen months of the New Model?

INDEPENDENCY AND SECTARIANISM IN THE NEW MODEL: TOLERATION CONTROVERSY CONTINUED: CROMWELL'S PART IN IT: LILBURNE AND OTHER PAMPHLETEERS: SION COLLEGE AND THE CORPORATION OF LONDON: SUCCESS OF THE PRESBYTERIANS IN PARLIAMENT.

The New Model itself, as we know, had been a great chagrin to the Presbyterians. Fairfax, indeed, was understood to be Presbyterian enough personally; but the Army was full of Independents and Sectaries, it was largely officered by Independents, and its very soul was the Arch- Independent Cromwell. For a while, accordingly, it was the secret hope of the Presbyterians that this Army might fail. But, when evidently it was not to fail, when NASEBY was won (June 14, 1645), and when all the while the Scottish Presbyterian army in England was doing so ill in comparison, a sense of departing superiority sank on the spirits of the Presbyterians. "Honest men served you faithfully in this action," were Cromwell's words to Speaker Lenthall in his letter from Naseby field: "Sir, they are trusty; I beseech you, in the name of God, not to discourage them. I wish this action may beget thankfulness and humility in all that are concerned in it. He that ventures his life for the liberty of his country, I wish he may trust God for the liberty of his conscience, and you for the liberty he fights for." [Footnote: Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 176.] This immediate use by Cromwell of the victory of Naseby as an argument for Toleration did not escape the notice of the Presbyterians. "My Lord Fairfax," writes Baillie, June 17, "sent up, the last week, an horrible Anti-Triastrian [Anti-Trinitarian]: the whole Assembly went in a body to the Houses to complain of his blasphemies. It was the will of Cromwell, in his letter of his victory, to desire the House not to discourage those who had ventured their life for them, and to come out expressly with their much-desired Liberty of Conscience. You will see the letter in print, by order, as I think, of the Houses." [Footnote: Baillie, II. 280] The horrible Anti-Trinitarian here mentioned was Paul Best (see _antè_, p. 157). He was accused of "divers prodigious blasphemies against the deity of our Saviour and the Holy Ghost." Parliament, informed thereof by the Assembly, had been appalled, and had committed the culprit to close confinement in the Gatehouse to await his trial (June 10). The next day (June 11) the impression had been deepened by a complaint in the Commons against another culprit on similar grounds, and the House had instructed Mr. Millington, member for Nottingham, to prepare an ordinance on the subject of blasphemy generally. [Footnote: Commons Journals of dates given. Paul Best's case lasted two years.] All this only a day or two before Naseby; and now from the field of Naseby, in Cromwell's hand, a pleading of that victory on behalf of Toleration! Would Cromwell tolerate a Paul Best?

What Cromwell and the Army-Independents would have said about Paul Best must be left to conjecture. What they were saying about the state of things in general we learn from the Presbyterian Richard Baxter. Being at Coventry at the time of the battle of Naseby, Baxter, then a pious preacher of twenty-nine years of age, with a lean cadaverous body, and the gauntest hook-nosed face ever seen in a portrait, paid a visit of curiosity to the field immediately after the battle, and went thence to the quarters of the victorious army at Leicester, to seek out some of his acquaintances. "When I came to the army, among Cromwell's soldiers," he says, "I found a new face of things which I never dreamt of: I heard the plotting heads very hot upon that which intimated their intention to subvert both Church and State. Independency and Anabaptistry were most prevalent; Antinomianism and Arminianism were equally distributed; and Thomas Moor's followers (a weaver of Wisbeach and Lynn, of excellent parts) had made some shifts to join these two extremes together. Abundance of the common troopers, and many of the officers, I found to be honest, sober, orthodox men, and others tractable, ready to hear the Truth, and of upright intentions; but a few proud, self-conceited, hot- headed sectaries had got into the highest places, and were Cromwell's chief favourites, and by their heat and activity bore down the rest, or carried them along with them, and were the soul of the Army. ... They said, What were the Lords of England but William the Conqueror's colonels, or the Barons but his majors, or the Knights but his captains? They plainly showed me that they thought God's providence would cast the trust of Religion and the Kingdom upon them as conquerors." They were full of railings and jests, Baxter adds, against the Scots or _Sots_, the Presbyterians or _Priest-biters_, and the Assembly of Divines or _Dry- vines_; and all their praises were of the Separatists, Anabaptists, and Antinomians.--Grieved at what he found, and thinking he might be of some use by way of antidote, Baxter at once gave up his charge at Coventry, to become chaplain to Col. Whalley's regiment. He had the more hope of being useful because he had some previous acquaintance with Cromwell. But his reception was far from satisfactory. "As soon as I came to the army," he says, "Oliver Cromwell coldly bid me welcome, and never spoke one word to me more while I was there, nor once all that time vouchsafed me an opportunity to come to the headquarters, where the councils and meetings of the officers were." Baxter never forgave that coolness of Cromwell to him. Hugh Peters, who was constantly with Cromwell as his chaplain, and would make camp-jokes at Baxter's expense, was never forgiven either. [Footnote: Baxter's Autobiography (_Reliquiæ Baxterianæ), 1696, pp. 50, 51.]

Not only in the New Model Army was there this ferment of Anti- Presbyterianism, Anti-Scotticism, Independency, and Tolerationism, passing on into a drift of universally democratic opinion. Through English society, and especially in London, there was much of the same.

Since the publication of Edwards's _Antapologia_ in July 1644 the war of pamphlets on the questions of Independency and Toleration had been increasingly virulent. The pamphleteers were numberless; but the chief of them, on the side of Presbyterianism and Anti-Toleration, were perhaps Prynne, Bastwick, and John Vicars, and, on the side of Independency and Toleration, Henry Burton, John Goodwin, and Hanserd Knollys, If Bibliography were to apply itself to the investigation of the popular English Literature of the latter half of the year 1644 and the first half of the year 1645, it would come upon these, and other controversialists whose names have been long forgotten, writhing together like a twisted knot of serpents, not to be uncoiled except by a distinct enumeration of several scores or hundreds of the most quaintly-entitled pamphlets, in the exact order of their publication, and with an account of the nature of each. London contained so many of these pamphleteers that the most deadly antagonists in print could not avoid each other in the streets, and Burton, for example, meeting Dr. Bastwick, would ask him with irritating politeness when his new book was coming out. Many of the pamphlets, however, and these the most daring and intemperate in expression, were anonymous. Such was _The Arraignment of Persecution_, purporting to be "printed by Martin Claw-Clergy for Bartholomew Bang-Priest," and to be on sale at "his shop in Toleration Street, right opposite to Persecution Court." In this and other popular squibs, to which neither authors nor printers dared to put their names, the toleration which Goodwin and Burton argued for gravely and logically was demanded with passionate vehemence, and with the most unsparing abuse of the Presbyterians, the Scots, and the Westminster Assembly. [Footnote: Wood's Ash. III. 860 (Prynne) and 308-9 (Vicars); Jackson's Life of John Goodwin, 61--79; Hanbury's Memorials, II. 385 et seq. (Prynne and Burton), and III. 68, 69 (Bastwick, Burton, and others). Notes of my own from the Stationers' Registers.]--One Tolerationist, here deserving a notice by himself, was John Lilburne. An avowed Independent even before the meeting of the Long Parliament, and forward as a Parliamentary captain from the very beginning of the war (Vol. II. 175, 458, and 588- 9), Lilburne had been one of those who regarded the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643 as incompatible with Liberty of Conscience, and whom no persuasions could induce to sign that document. He had risen, nevertheless, by Cromwell's arrangement, to be Lieutenant-colonel in Manchester's own dragoon regiment, and he had served bravely at Marston Moor. Between him and Cromwell there was the most friendly understanding. Lilburne looked upon Cromwell as "the most absolute single-hearted great man in England;" and Cromwell owned a kindly feeling for Lilburne. But there was a pig-headedness in Lilburne's honesty which even Cromwell could not control. "If only John Lilburne were left in the world, then John would quarrel with Lilburne and Lilburne with John" was Henry Marten's witty, and yet perfectly true, description of him. Having been a witness for Cromwell in Cromwell's impeachment of Manchester, he thought Cromwell culpably weak in allowing the impeachment to drop and not bringing Manchester to the scaffold; and he had himself brought a charge against a superior officer, named King. Then he had become utterly disgusted with the general conduct of affairs and the subservience of Parliament to the Presbyterians. He would leave the army; he would "dig for turnips and carrots before he would fight to set up a power to make himself a slave." His two brothers, Robert and Henry, continued to hold commands in the New Model; but not all Cromwell's arguments could induce Lilburne himself to come into it. On the 30th of April, 1645, he had resigned his commission, presenting at the same time a petition to the Commons for his arrears of pay, amounting to £880 2_s_. He had resolved to be thenceforward a political agitator, a link between the Independency of the Army and what Independency there was already in London itself. Accordingly, from the beginning of 1645, Lilburne, still not more than twenty-seven years of age, is to be reckoned as one of the most prominent Anti-Presbyterians in London, an especial favourite of all the sectaries, and even of the populace generally, on account of his boundlessly libertarian sentiments and his absolute fearlessness of consequences. There was talk of trying to get him into Parliament on a convenient opportunity. Meanwhile he took to pamphleteering, selecting as his first object of attack his old master, Prynne. In the first half of 1645 Lilburne and Prynne were seen wrestling with each other, Lilburne for toleration and Independency, and Prynne for coercion and Presbyterianism, with a ferocity hardly paralleled in any contemporary duel, and made more piquant to the public by the recollection of the former intimacy of the duellists. [Footnote: Godwin's Hist. of the Commonwealth, II. 1-24, and 418-19; Wood's Ath. III. 353-4, and 860; Edwards's _Gangræna,_ Part I. 46, 47, Part II. 38, and Part III. 153 _et seq._; Commons Journals, Jan. 17, 1644-5; Prynne's _Fresh Discovery._]

The denunciation of Paul Best (June 10, 1645) was a Presbyterian masterstroke. Even moderate people stood aghast at the idea of tolerating opinions like his; and that the wretched owner of them could plead his liberty of conscience (which Best did in prison) was more likely than anything else to put people out of patience with Conscience and its Liberty. But, about the same time that Paul Best was put in prison to be tried for his life for Blasphemy, there were persecutions and punishments of others, whose offence was far less theological heterodoxy than mere Independency or Anti-Presbyterianism. "Blessed be God," writes Baillie, July 8, 1645, "all the London ministers are with us: Burton and Goodwin, the only two that were Independent, are by the Parliament removed from their places." In other words, John Goodwin had just been ejected from his vicarage of St. Stephen's, Coleman Street, and Henry Burton for the second time from his living in Friday Street, nominally for irregular practices in their ministry, but really because they were in the way of Prynne and the Presbyterians. Mr. Goodwin, who had a large following in the City, had little difficulty in setting up an Independent meeting- house of his own in Coleman Street; but poor old Mr. Burton seems to have been in sad straits for some time. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 299; Jackson's Life of Goodwin, 79 _et seq._; Hanbury's Memorials, III. 78, note.-- Burton, I believe, migrated to Stepney.]----Burton and Goodwin having been called to account, the next blow was at John Lilburne. With characteristic bluntness Lilburne had been for some months pressing the business of his own petition for arrears of pay upon the House of Commons, going to the House personally, waiting on the Speaker, circulating printed copies of his petition among the members, and always with outspoken comments on affairs, and attacks on this person and on that. On one occasion he and Prynne had met by chance, and there had been a violent altercation between them. Twice, in consequence, Lilburne had been in custody for examination as to his concern in certain Anti- Presbyterian pamphlets, but on each occasion he had been discharged. He had then gone down to the Army, and procured a letter from Cromwell, recommending his case to the House. "He hath done both you and the kingdom good service," wrote Cromwell, "and you will not find him unthankful." Returning to London, Lilburne had caused this letter to be printed and had circulated copies of it. No effect followed, and Lilburne still haunted Westminster Hall, waylaying members as they went into the House, till they abhorred the sight of him. On the 19th of July he was in the Hall, and was overheard by his enemies Colonel King and Dr. Bastwick taking part in a conversation in which dreadful things were said of the Speaker, his brother, and other public men. The information was immediately reduced to writing by King and Bastwick, and sent in to the Speaker, with this result: "_Resolved_, That Lieutenant-colonel Lilburne be taken into custody, and so kept till the House take further order." Questioned in custody by a committee of the House, Lilburne refused to answer, stood on his rights as a freeborn citizen, &c. He also caused to be printed _A Letter to a Friend_, stating his case in his own way; this Letter, as increasing his offence, was reported to the House, Aug. 9; and, on the 11th of August, having been again contumacious in private examination and committed to Newgate, he was ordered to remain there for trial at Quarter Sessions. He remained in Newgate till Oct. 14, when he was discharged, by order of the House, without trial. [Footnote: Godwin's Hist. of the Commonwealth, II. l5-21; Commons Journals of dates given; Wood's Ath. III. 860.]

Such prosecutions of individuals formed an avowed part of the method of the Presbyterians for suppressing the Toleration heresy. Cromwell, away with the Army, could only continue to hint his remonstrances to Parliament in letters; but this he did. The greatest success of the New Model after Naseby was the storming of Bristol, Sept. 10, 1645; and in the long letter which Cromwell wrote to the Speaker, giving an account of this success (Sept. 14), he recurred to his Toleration argument. "Presbyterians, Independents, all," he wrote, "have here the same spirit of faith and prayer, the same presence and answer; they agree here, have no names of difference: pity it is it should be otherwise anywhere! All that believe have the real unity, which is most glorious, because _in_ the Body and _to_ the Head. For being united in forms, commonly called Uniformity, every Christian will, for peace sake, study and do as far as conscience will permit. And for brethren, in things of the mind, we look for no compulsion but that of light and reason." By order of Parliament this Letter was read in all the churches of London on Sunday, Sept. 21, and also circulated in print. It does not seem, however, to have sunk very deep. [Footnote: Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 188.--As late as 1648 I find this passage of Cromwell's letter quoted and largely commented on by the Scottish Presbyterian Rutherford (_A Survey of the Spiritual Antichrist._ 1648, p. 250 _et seq._) in proof of Cromwell's dangerousness, and his sympathy with Familism, Antinomianism, and other errors.]

Cromwell's hints from the field in favour of Liberty of Conscience may be regarded as little "Accommodation Orders" in his own name, reminding Parliament and the Westminster Assembly of that formal "Accommodation Order" which he had moved in the House a year before, and which had then been passed (_antè,_ pp. 168-9). What had become of this Accommodation Order? The story may be given in brief:--The Grand Accommodation Committee had immediately appointed a small Sub-Committee, consisting of Dr. Temple and Messrs. Marshall, Herle, and Vines, for the Presbyterians, and Messrs. Thomas Goodwin and Philip Nye for the Independents. The business of this Sub-Committee, called "The Sub-Committee of Agreements," was to reduce into the narrowest compass the differences between the Independents and the rest of the Assembly. The Sub-Committee did their best, and reported to the Grand Committee; but for various reasons the Grand Committee postponed the subject. Meanwhile these proceedings had obtained for the Independents a re-hearing in the Assembly itself. The five original Independents in the Assembly, Messrs. Goodwin, Nye, Bridge, Burroughs, and Simpson, with Mr. William Carter and Mr, William Greenhill now added to their number, presented in writing (Nov. 14, 1644) their Reasons of Dissent from the propositions of Presbytery most disagreeable to them; [Footnote: The increase of the number of avowed Independents in the Assembly at this point from Five to Seven is worth noting. From the very first, however, there must have been a few in sympathy to some variable extent with the leading Five. Thus Baillie, as early as Dec. 7, 1643 (Letters, II. 110), speaks of "the Independent men, whereof there are some _ten_ or _eleven_ in the Synod, many of them very able men," and mentions Carter, Caryl, Phillips, and Sterry, as of the number. (See our List of the Assembly, Vol. II. 516-524,) There had been efforts on the part of the Independents in Parliament to bring more representatives of Independency into the Assembly. Actually, on the 2nd of Nov. 1643, the very day on which the Lords agreed with the Commons in the nomination of John Durie to succeed the deceased Calibute Downing, the Lords on their own account nominated John Goodwin of Coleman Street to ho of the Assembly, and with him "Dr. Homes of Wood Street, and Mr. Horton, Divinity Lecturer at Gresham College" (Lords Journals of date). The Commons, whose concurrence was necessary, seem quietly to have withheld it, and thus the Assembly missed having John Goodwin in it as well as Thomas. "Homes" (Nathaniel Holmes: Wood's Ath. III. 1, 168) was also an Independent, and probably "Horton" leant that way (Thomas Horton: Wood's Fasti, II. 172).] and the Assembly produced (Dec. 17) an elaborate Answer. Copies of both documents were furnished to Parliament; but, without reference to the objections of the Independents, the essential parts of the Frame of Presbyterial Government had been ratified by Parliament in January 1644-5. [Footnote: The Reasons of Dissent by the Seven Independents and the Assembly's Answer were not published till 1648. They then appeared by order of Parliament; and they were republished in 1652 under the title of _The Grand Debate concerning Presbytery and Independency_.] Affairs then took a new turn in the Assembly. The Independents having often been taunted with being merely critical and never bringing fully to light their own views, one of them was led in a moment of heat to declare that they were quite willing to prepare their own complete Model of Congregationalism, to be contrasted with that of Presbytery. The Assembly eagerly caught at the imprudent offer, and the Seven Independents were appointed to be a committee for bringing in a Frame of Congregational Church Government, with reasons for the same. This was in March 1645; and from that time the Seven, supposed to be busy in Committee upon the work assigned them, had a dispensation from attendance at the general meetings. Spring passed, summer passed, September arrived; and still the Independents had not brought in their Model. The Assembly became impatient, and insisted on expedition. At length, on the 13th of October, the Seven presented to the Assembly-- what? Not the Model on which they were supposed to have been engaged for seven months, but a brief Paper of Reasons for not bringing in a Model at all! "Upon these considerations," they said in concluding the Paper, "we think that this Assembly hath no cause to require a Report from us; nor will that Report be of any use: seeing that Reports are for debates, and debates are for results to be sent up to the Honourable Houses; who have already voted another Form of Government than that which we shall present."--It was the astutest policy that the Independents could possibly have adopted; and the Presbyterians, feeling themselves outwitted, were furious. The machinery of the Accommodation Order had again to be put in motion by Parliament (Nov. 14). There were conferences of the Divines with members of the two Houses. What was the upshot? "The Independents in their last meeting of our Grand Committee of Accommodation," writes Baillie, Nov. 25, "have expressed their desires for toleration, not only to themselves, but to other sects." That was the upshot! Army Independency and Assembly Independency had coalesced, and their one flag now was Indefinite Toleration. [Footnote: Hetherington's Hist. of the Westminster Assembly (1843), pp. 220-236; Hanbury's Memorials, II. 548-559, and III. 1-32; Baillie, II. 270-326; Commons Journals, Nov. 14, 1645.]

The Presbyterians behaved accordingly. There was an end to their endeavours to reason over the few Independents in the Assembly, or arrange a secret compromise with them; and there was a renewed onset on the Toleration principle by the whole Presbyterian force. As if on a signal given, there was a fresh burst of Anti-Toleration pamphlets from the press. Prynne published one; Baillie sent forth his _Dissuasive_ (_antè_, p. 142); and Edwards was printing his immortal _Gangræna_ (_antè_, p. 141). But appeals to the public mind through the press were not enough. The real anxiety was about the action of Parliament. The expectation of the Presbyterians, grounded on recent experience, as that Parliament, even if left to itself, would see its duty clearly, and repudiate Toleration once and for ever. Still it would only be prudent to bring to bear on Parliament all available external pressure. Through December 1645 and January 1645-6, accordingly, the Presbyterians were ceaseless in contriving and promoting demonstrations in their favour. And with signal success:--Only a certain selected number of the parish-clergy of London and the suburbs, it is to be remembered, were members of the Assembly: the mass of them remained outside that body. But this mass, being Presbyterian almost to a man, had organized itself in such a way as both to act upon the Assembly and to obey it. Since 1623 there had been in the city, in the street called London Wall, a building called SION COLLEGE, with a library and other conveniences, expressly for the use of the London clergy, and answering for them most of the purposes of a modern clubhouse. Here, as was natural, the London clergy had of late been in the habit of meeting to talk over the Church-question, so that at length a weekly conclave had been arranged, and Sion College had become a kind of discussion forum, apart from the Assembly, and yet in connexion with it. At Sion College the London Presbyterians could concoct what was to be brought forward in the Assembly, and a hint from the Assembly to Sion College in any moment of Presbyterian difficulty could summon all the London clergy to the rescue. At the moment at which we have arrived such a hint was given; and on the 18th of December, 1645, there was drawn up at Sion College a Letter to the Assembly by all the ministers of the City of London expressly against Toleration. "These are some of the many considerations," they say in the close of the Letter, "which make a deep impression upon our spirits against that Great Diana of Independents and all the Sectaries, so much cried up by them in these distracted times, namely, A Toleration--A Toleration. And, however none should have been more rejoiced than ourselves in the establishment of a brotherly, peaceable, and Christian _accommodation_, yet, this being utterly rejected by them, we cannot dissemble how, upon the fore- mentioned grounds, we detest and abhor the much-endeavoured _Toleration_. Our bowels, our bowels, are stirred within us, &c." The Letter was presented to the Assembly Jan. 1, 1645-6, and the Assembly took care that it should be published that same day.[Footnote: Cunningham's London, Art. _Sion College_; Hanbury's Memorials, III. 97-99; Stationers' Registers, Jan. 1, 1645-6.]--The Corporation of London was as staunchly Presbyterian as the clergy, and they too were stirred up. "We have gotten it, thanks to God, to this point," writes Baillie, Jan. 15, "that the Mayor, Aldermen, Common Council, and most of the considerable men, are grieved for the increase of sects and heresies and want of government. They have yesterday had a public Fast for it, and solemnly renewed their Covenant by oath and subscription, and this day have given in a strong Petition for settling Church-government, and suppressing all sects, without any toleration." The Petition was to the Commons; and it was particularly represented to that House, by Alderman Gibbs, as the spokesman for the Petitioners, that "new and strange doctrines and blasphemies" were being vented in the City by women-preachers. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 337; Hanbury, III. 99, 100; Commons Journals, January 15, 1645-6.]

Environed by such a sea of Presbyterian excitement, what could the Parliament do? They did what was expected. They shook off Toleration as if it had been a snake. Not only did they assure the Aldermen and Common Council that there would be due vigilance against the sects and heretics; but on the 29th of January, or within a fortnight after they had received the City Petition, they took occasion to prove that their assurance was sincere. The two Baptist preachers Cox and Richardson, it seems, had been standing at the door of the House of Commons, distributing to members printed copies of the Confession of Faith of the Seven Baptist Congregations in London (see _antè_, p. 148). It was as if they had said, "Be pleased to look for yourselves, gentlemen, at the real tenets of those poor Anabaptists who are described as such monsters." But the Commons were in a Presbyterian panic; Cox and Richardson were taken into custody; and orders were issued for seizing and suppressing all copies of the Baptist Confession that could be found. This alone would prove that as late as the end of January, 1645-6, the Presbyterians, in their character of Anti-Tolerationists, were still masters of the field. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Jan. 29, 1645-6.]

PRESBYTERIAN FRAME OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT COMPLETED: DETAILS OF THE ARRANGEMENT.

Hardly less successful had the Presbyterians been in their more proper task of perfecting their Frame of Church-government. Here, indeed, they had encountered little or no opposition from the Independents. The essentials of the Presbyterian scheme having been voted by Parliament, the Independents had quietly accepted that fact; and, though they tended, as was natural, more and more to doubts whether there ought to be any National Church at all, they had left Parliament and the Presbyterians of the Assembly to construct the detailed machine of the future English Presbytery very much as they pleased. [Footnote: Absolute Voluntaryism, as we know, was already represented in Roger Williams. The _Seekers_, his followers, were bound to the same conclusion; and accordingly, I find a little tract of six pages, in 1645, by John Saltmarsh, the Seeker and Antinomian (_antè_, p. 151-3), entitled "A New Quere, at this time seasonably to be considered, &c.. viz. Whether it be fit, according to the principles of true Religion and State to settle any Church-government over the Kingdom hastily or not." Burton was already in the same mood of hypothetical Voluntaryism (_antè_, p. 109), and I think it was spreading now among the Independents. Certainly, however, the perception of the necessary identity of the principle of Independency with absolute Voluntaryism, or the doctrine of No State Church, was not universal among them.] It was the Erastians rather than the Independents that were here the clogs upon the thorough-going Presbyterians. Selden especially was their torment. He was quite willing, O yes! that the Church of England should be thenceforward Presbyterian; but then what about the rights of the individual subject and the relations of the Church to the State? The State or central Power in every community must be, in the last resort, the guardian of all the rights and liberties of the individual subjects; there had been but one Sanhedrim in the Jewish Commonwealth, supreme in causes ecclesiastical as well as in causes civil; but the Presbyterian Divines of the Assembly, with the Scots for their advisers, wanted the Church in England to be a separate Sanhedrim, supreme in ecclesiastical causes, and irresponsible to the State! Plying his learning in this fashion, and assisted by Whitlocke, St. John, and the other lawyers in the Assembly and in Parliament, Selden had, throughout 1645, kept up an Erastian obstruction to the Presbyterians. Now, as Prynne out of doors, with all his Presbyterianism, was also lawyer-like, and therefore staunchly Erastian, and as the Independents in Parliament made common cause with the Erastians wherever they could, the obstruction had been very formidable. "The Erastian party in the Parliament is stronger than the Independent, and is like to work us much woe," wrote Baillie in May 1645; "Mr. Prynne and the Erastian lawyers are now our _remora_" he wrote in September; and he kept repeating the complaint throughout the year. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 277, 315, and also in intermediate and following pages.]

Nevertheless great progress had been made in devising and settling the details of the Presbyterian system. What it was will be best exhibited in a dated series of paragraphs, digesting the proceedings of the Assembly and the Parliament:--

_May 1645: Presbyterian Arrangements for all England prospectively, and for London to begin with_:--That every English Congregation or Parish have its lay-elders along with its minister, just after the Scottish fashion; That the meetings of the Presbyterians be once a month; That the ecclesiastical provinces of England be about sixty in number (about co- numerous with the shires, and, in most cases, identical with them), and that the Synods of these provinces be held twice a-year, and consist of delegates from the Presbyteries; That the National Assembly be held once a year, and consist of delegates from the sixty Synods, at the rate of three ministers and two ruling elders from each, so as to form a House of about 300 members.--That London, reckoned by a radius of ten miles from its centre, be one of the Synodical Provinces, and that the number of Classes or Presbyteries in the Synod of London be fourteen.-- _Baillie_, II. 271, 272.

_Aug._ 23: Ordinance of Parliament, calling in all copies of the old Liturgy, enforcing the use of the new Westminster Directory of Worship, and forbidding any use of the Liturgy, even in private houses, under penalties.--_Commons Journals._

_July-Sept. 1645; Directions for the Election of Ruling Elders in Congregations, and for the Division of the English Counties into Presbyteries._ July 23, the Commons resolved that Ruling Elders in congregations should be chosen by the ministers and all members duly qualified by having taken the Covenant and being of full age, save that servants without families were not to have votes: no man to be a ruling elder in more than one congregation, and that in the place of his usual residence. July 25, they appointed a committee of forty-seven of their own body to find out the fittest persons to be a committee for superintending the elections of Elders for the Congregations and Presbyteries of London, and at the same time to prepare a letter to be sent down into the counties by the Speaker, giving instructions for the formation of County-Committees to consider the best division of the counties respectively into Presbyteries. The letter was ready Sept. 17, when it was ordered to be sent down into the counties, with a copy of the Votes and Ordinances on the subject of the election of Elders that had then passed and been concurred in by the Lords.--_Commons Journals._

_Sept.-Dec. 1645: Special Presbyterian Arrangements for London._ It having been resolved by the Commons (Sept. 23) that there should be a choice of Elders forthwith in London, the aforesaid Committee of forty- seven reported to the House (Sept. 26) the names of the persons judged most suitable to be TRIERS of the ability and integrity of the Elders that should be elected, and of the validity of their election according to the Parliamentary regulations. In each of the twelve London Classes or Presbyteries (there were only _twelve_ as yet) there were to be nine of these Triers--three ministers and six lay citizens; and they were to decide all questions by a majority of votes. Thus there were to be 108 Triers in all in London. Their names are all registered. The machinery being thus ready, the Lord Mayor was requested, Oct. 8, to intimate to all the London ministers the desire of Parliament that Congregations should at once proceed to the election of their Elders.--Dec. 5, it was ordered that the whole world of the lawyers--_i.e._ the Chapel of the Rolls, the two Serjeants' Inns, and the four Inns of Court--should be constituted into a Presbytery by itself, but divided into two Classes. Triers were also appointed for the Elders in this peculiar Presbytery, one of them being William Prynne.--_Commons Journals of dates cited._

_Nov._ 8, 1645: _New Ordinance for the Ordination of Ministers._ In this long Ordinance the original identity of Bishop and Presbyter is asserted, and consequently the right of Presbyters, without any so-called Bishop among them, to ordain; nevertheless the ordinations by the late Bishops are recognised as valid. Directions are then given to Presbyters for the examination of candidates for the ministry in future, and for the formalities to be observed in their ordination. Every candidate must be twenty-four years of age at least, and must be tried not only in respect of piety, character, preaching ability, and knowledge of divinity, but also in respect of skill in the tongues and in Logic and Philosophy; and congregations were to have full opportunity of stating exceptions against ministers offered them. From a clause in the Ordinance it appears that certified ordination in Scotland was to be accepted in England.--_Lords Journals._

_Powers of the Congregational Elderships in suspending from Church- membership, and excluding from the Communion._ This was perhaps the most important subject of all, for it involved the mode of the action of the new Presbyterian system at the heart of social life and its interferences with the liberties of the individual. Parliament was naturally slow and jealous on this subject, so that the discussion of it, part by part, extended over the whole year 1645. The briefest sketch of results must suffice here:--The Assembly having sent in to Parliament a Paper concerning the exclusion of ignorant and scandalous persons from the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the Parliament had desired a more particular definition by the Assembly of what they included in the terms _ignorant_ and _scandalous_. The Assembly having then sent in an explanation, in which, under the head of the _ignorance_ that should exclude from the Lord's Table, they mentioned "the not having a competent understanding concerning the Trinity," the Commons (March 27, 1645) had desired to know what the Assembly considered to be a competent understanding concerning the Trinity, The Assembly having farther declared, under the same head of _ignorance_, that no persons ought to be admitted to the Lord's Table who had not a "competent understanding" of the Deity, of the state of Man by Creation and by his Fall, of Redemption by Jesus Christ and the means to apply Christ and his benefits, of the necessity of Faith, Repentance and a Godly life, of the Nature and Use of Sacraments, and of the Condition of Man after this Life, the Commons had still demurred about the "competent understanding," and had begged the Assembly to be more precise and business-like (April 1). At length, some resolutions having been come to about the "competent understanding," and there being less difficulty in deciding who should come under the category of the _scandalous_, the Commons had before them a pretty extensive index of the kinds of persons, whether _ignorant_ or _scandalous_, whom the Congregational Elderships were to be empowered to suspend or debar from the Communion. The index was not complete, I think, till January 1645-6; by which time, after numerous discussions, it included, in addition to the grossly ignorant in the elementary articles of Christianity, and to murderers, notorious drunkards, swearers, _et hoc genus omne_, a considerable list of such varieties of offenders as these-- makers of images of the Trinity, worshippers of saints, persons sending or accepting challenges, persons playing at games selling wares or unnecessarily travelling on Sunday, persons consulting witches, persons assaulting magistrates or their own parents, persons legally convicted of perjury or bribery, persons consenting to the marriage of their children with Papists, and, finally, the maintainers of errors that subvert the prime Articles of Religion. To provide, moreover, for cases not positively enumerated, there were to be commissioners in every ecclesiastical province authorized to decide on such cases, when represented to them by ministers and the elderships. All this, with much more of the same kind, was partly agreed upon, partly still under Parliamentary consideration, in the beginning of 1646.--_Commons Journals, with references there to the Lords Journals_.

THE RECRUITING OF THE COMMONS; EMINENT RECRUITERS.

January 1645-6, I think, was the month in which Presbyterianism was in fullest tide. After that month, and through the spring and early summer of 1646, there was a visible ebb. The cause may have been partly that continued triumph everywhere of the New Model Army which had brought the War obviously to its fag-end, and now, perhaps, suggested to Parliament and the Londoners the uncomfortable idea that the marching mass of Independency, relieved from its military labours, would soon be re- approaching the capital, and at leisure to review the proceedings of its masters. There was, however, a more obvious cause. This was the increase of the Independent Vote in the House of Commons by the gradual coming in of the RECRUITERS.

By the outbreak of the Civil War in August 1642, and the consequent desertion of the House of Commons by two-thirds of its members, most of whom were then or afterwards formally disabled, the House, as we know, had been reduced to a mere stump of what it ought to have been constitutionally. There had been complaints about this outside, and regrets within the House itself; but it was felt that a time of Civil War could not be a time for Parliamentary elections. How could there be such elections while the King's forces were in possession of large regions of England, and these the very regions where most seats were vacant? For three years, therefore, the House had allowed the vacant seats in it to remain vacant, and had persisted in the public business in the state to which it had been reduced, _i.e._, with a nominal strength at the utmost of about 280, and a constant working attendance of only 100 or thereabouts. Not till after Naseby, and the recovery of more and more of English ground for Parliament by the successes of the New Model, was it deemed prudent to begin the issue of new writs; and even then the process was careful and gradual.

The first new writs issued were in Aug. 1645, and were for Southwark, St. Edmundsbury, and Hythe; in September there followed 95 additional new writs for boroughs or counties; in October there were 27 more; and so on by smaller batches in succeeding months, until, by the end of the year, 146 new members in all had been elected. This did not complete the process; for 89 new members more remained to be elected in the course of 1646, bringing the total number of the Recruiters up to about 235. Now, among these Recruiters, all of them Parliamentarians in the main sense, there were both Presbyterians and Independents. As Presbyterians, more or less, may be reckoned, among those elected before January 1645-6, Major- general RICHARD BROWNE (Wycombe), Major-general EDWARD MASSEY (Wootton Bassett), WALTER LONG, Esq. (Ludgershall, Wilts), and CLEMENT WALKER, Esq. (Wells): this last a very peculiar-tempered person from Somersetshire, a friend of Prynne's, and described by himself as an "elderly gentleman, of low stature, in a grey suit, with a little stick in his hand." Decidedly more numerous among the Recruiters, however, were men who might be called Independents, or were at least Tolerationists. Among such, all elected before January 1645-6, or not later than that month, may be named Colonel ROBERT BLAKE (Taunton), Sir JOHN DANVERS, brother of the late Earl of Danby (Malmesbury), the Hon. JOHN FIENNES, third son of Viscount Saye and Sele (Morpeth), GEORGE FLEETWOOD, Esq. (Bucks), Colonel CHARLES FLEETWOOD (Marlborough), Sir JAMES HARRINGTON (Rutland), the Hon. JAMES HERBERT, second son of the Earl of Pembroke (Wilts), Colonel JOHN HUTCHINSON (Notts), Commissary-general HENRY IRETON (Appleby), HENRY LAWRENCE, Esq., a gentleman of property and some taste for learning and speculation (Westmoreland), Sir MICHAEL LIVESEY (Queenborough), Colonel EDMUND LUDLOW (Wilts), SIMON MAYNE, Esq. (Aylesbury), young Colonel EDWARD MONTAGUE (Hants), Colonel RICHARD NORTON (Hants), Colonel CHARLES RICH (Sandwich), Colonel EDWARD ROSSITER (Great Grimsby), THOMAS SCOTT (Aylesbury), young Colonel ALGERNON SIDNEY (Cardiff), Colonel WILLIAM SYDENHAM (Melcombe Regis), and PETER TEMPLE, Esq. (Leicester). Of this list, nearly half, it may be noted, were or had been officers in the New Model. The fact was very significant. It was still more significant that among these New Model officers elected among the first Recruiters there was a knot of men who were already recognised as in a special sense Cromwellians. Almost all the New Model officers were devoted to Cromwell; but Ireton was his _alter ego_, and young Fleetwood, young Montague, young Sidney, and young Sydenham, belonged to a group known in the Army as Cromwell's passionate admirers and disciples. [Footnote: The statistics of the Recruiting in this paragraph are from my own counting of the New Writs from Aug. 1645 onwards in the Commons Journals, checked by Godwin's previous counting or calculation (Hist. of Commonwealth, II. 38, 39), and by the noting of new writs in the list of members of the Long Parliament given in the Parl. Hist. (II. 599-629). Among the individual Recruiters named I have tried not to include any whose election was _later_ than Jan. 1645-6, and have trusted, in that particular, to the notices of new writs in the Commons Journals and the Parl. Hist.; but one cannot be perfectly sure that in each case an election immediately followed the new writ. My often-cited fly-sheet authority, Leach's _Great Champions of England_, has been of use. It distinguishes 131 Recruiters as of Parliamentary note before the end of July, 1646; but its list of Recruiters up to that date is neither complete nor accurate.--The description of Clement Walker is from his own _Hist. of Independency_ (edit. 1660), Part I. p. 53.--The county in which there had to be most Recruiting, _i.e._in which there were most vacant seats, was Somersetshire. Nearly all the seats were vacant there. A large proportion of the seats was vacant in Notts, Yorkshire, Sussex, Westmoreland, and Wales.--The Recruiting went on not only through 1646, but also in stray cases through subsequent years; and FAIRFAX, SKIPPON, HARRISON, INGOLDSBY, among military men, and PRYNNE himself among civilians, came at length into the House.]

Not _called_ Recruiters, but practically such for the Independents, were two original members who, after having been out of the House for a long while, were now restored to their places. These were Nathaniel Fiennes, _alias_ "Young Subtlety," and the witty and freethinking Henry Marten. Fiennes, having been tried by court-martial and sentenced to death in December 1643, for his surrender of Bristol (_antè_, p. 6), had been forgiven and allowed to go abroad; but opinion of his conduct in that affair had meanwhile become more favourable, and before the end of 1645 he returned and resumed his seat. Marten (Vol. II. p. 166) had been expelled from the House by vote, Aug. 16, 1643, for words too daringly disrespectful of Royalty--in fact, for premature Republicanism; but, the House having become less fastidious in that matter, and his presence being greatly missed, the vote was rescinded January 6, 1645-6, and the record of it expunged from the Journals. [Footnote: Godwin's Commonwealth, II. 77, 78; Wood's Ath. III. 878 and 1238; and Commons Journals of dates given.]

Although as many as 146 Recruiters had been elected before the end of the year, they appear to have taken their places but slowly. Not till January 26, 1645-6, does one perceive any considerable effect on the numbers of the House. On that day there was a House of at least 183, the largest there had been for many a day--larger by 13 than the House that had made Fairfax commander-in-chief twelve months before. And thenceforward the numbers keep well up. On two occasions early in February there were Houses of 203 and 202 respectively; and before the summer of 1646 there were members enough at hand to form on great field-days Houses of from 250 to 270. By that time some of the military men among the Recruiters were able to be present. [Footnote: My notes of Divisions, from the Commons Journals.]

EFFECTS OF THE RECRUITING: ALLIANCE OF INDEPENDENCY AND ERASTIANISM: CHECK GIVEN TO THE PRESBYTERIANS: WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY REBUKED.

As soon as the Recruiting had begun to tell upon the _numbers_ of the House, an effect on the _policy_ of the House is also perceptible. Thus on Feb. 3, the very day when the Commons mustered a House of 203, a division took place involving Toleration in a subtle form. The question was whether in a Declaration setting forth the true intentions of the House in Church-matters this clause should be inserted: "A fitting care shall be taken of tender consciences, so far as may stand with the Word of God and the Peace of the Kingdom." This, though mild enough, displeased the Presbyterians, and was proposed from their side that the words "Church and" should be inserted before the word "Kingdom." On a division the _Yeas_ (for adding the words and so making the pledge of a toleration weaker) were 105, and had for their tellers the Presbyterian party-chiefs, Denzil Holles and Sir Philip Stapleton; but 98 _Noes_ rallied round Sir Arthur Haselrig and Sir Henry Mildmay, the tellers for the Opposition. [Footnote: Commons Journals of date.] A wavering of the balance towards Independency and Toleration was indicated by this vote; but it was not till the following month that the balance was decisively turned, and then not directly on the Toleration question, but on that great related question of the "Power of the Keys" which the Presbyterians of the Assembly wanted to see settled in their favour before they could consider the Presbyterian establishment perfect. If the phrase "Power of the Keys" should seem a mystic one to English readers now, it will perhaps be cleared up by the following story of what happened in March 1645-6.

On the 5th of that month the Commons passed and sent up to the Lords one all-comprehensive Ordinance, recapitulating in twenty-three Propositions the substance of their various Presbyterian enactments up to that date. [Footnote: See the Ordinance in the Commons Journals of the date. It is a clear and excellent summary of what had been done and what was intended in the matter of Presbyterian Establishment.] What these were we have just seen (_antè_, pp. 397-400). They amounted, as one might now think, to a sufficiently strict Presbyterianizing of all England, with London first by way of example. The Presbyterian Divines were not ill satisfied on the whole; but they had not succeeded to the full extent of their wishes, and there were various matters in the Recapitulating Ordinance that they hoped yet to see amended. In particular, notwithstanding all their efforts for months past to indoctrinate the Parliament with the right Presbyterian theory of the independent spiritual jurisdiction of the Church, the natural Erastianism of the lay mind had been so strong in the Commons that the 14th Proposition of the Recapitulating Ordinance stood as follows:--

"XIV. That, in every Province, persons shall be chosen by the Houses of Parliament that shall be Commissioners to judge of scandalous offences (not enumerated in any Ordinance of Parliament) to them presented: And that the Eldership of that Congregation where the said offence was committed shall, upon examination and proof of such scandalous offence (in like manner as is to be done in the offences enumerated), certify the same to the Commissioners, together with the proof taken before them: And before the said certificate the party accused shall have liberty to make such defence as he shall think fit before the said Eldership, and also before the Commissioners before any certificate shall be made to the Parliament: And, if the said Commissioners, after examination of all parties, shall determine the offence, so presented and proved, to be scandalous, and the same shall certify to the Congregation, the Eldership thereof may suspend such person from the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, in like manner as in cases enumerated in any Ordinance of Parliament."