Chapter VII: Section II (2)

Cromwell's Established Church of England and Wales may now be imaged with tolerable accuracy. It contained two patches of completed Presbyterian organization, one in London and the other in Lancashire. The system of Presbyteries or Classes, with half-yearly Provincial Assemblies, which had been set up by the Long Parliament in these two districts, remained undisturbed. Both in London and in Lancashire, however, the system was in a languid state; and for the rest of the country, and indeed for non-Presbyterians in London and Lancashire too, the Church or Public Ministry was practically on the principle of the Independency of Congregations. Each parish had, or was to have, its regular minister, recognised by the State, and the association of ministers among themselves for consultation or mutual criticism was very much left to chance and discretion. Ministers and deacons, however, did draw up Agreements and form voluntary Associations in various counties, holding monthly or other periodical meetings; and, as it was the rule in such associations not to meddle with matters of Civil Government, they were countenanced by the Protectorate. Baxter tells us much of the Association in Worcestershire which he had helped to form in 1653, and adds that similar associations sprang up afterwards in Cumberland and Westmorland, Wilts, Dorset, Somersetshire, Hampshire, and Essex. These Associations are to be conceived as imperfect substitutes for the regular Presbyterian organization, and most of the ministers belonging to them were eclectics or quasi-Presbyterians, like Baxter himself, making the most of untoward circumstances, while the stricter Presbyterians, who sighed for the perfect model, held aloof. Perhaps the majority of the State-clergy all over the country consisted of these two classes of Presbyterians baulked of their full Presbyterianism,--the _Rigid Presbyterians_, who would accept nothing short of the system as exemplified in London and Lancashire, and the _Eclectics_ or _Quasi-Presbyterians_ grouped in voluntary Associations. But among the State-clergy collectively there were several other varieties. There were many of the old _Church-of-England Rectors and Vicars_, still Prelatic in sentiment, and, though obliged to disuse the Book of Common Prayer, maintaining some sweet remnant of Anglicanism. Some of these, not of the High Church school, did not scruple to join the quasi-Presbyterian Associations that were liberal enough to admit them; but most found more liberty in keeping by themselves. Then there were the Independents proper, drawn from all those various Evangelical Sects, however named separately, whose principle of Independency stopped short of absolute Voluntaryism, and therefore did not prevent them from belonging to a State-Church. The more moderate of these Independents might easily enough, in consistency with their theory of Congregationalism, join the quasi-Presbyterian Associations, and some of them did so; but not very many. The majority of them were simply ministers of the State-Church, in charge of individual parishes and congregations, and consulting each other, if at all, only in informal ways. Among the Independent Sectaries of all sorts thus officiating individually in the State-Church, the difficulty, as far as one can see, must have been chiefly, or solely, with the _Baptists_. How could preachers who rejected the rite of Infant Baptism, maintained the necessity of the rebaptism of adults, and thought dipping the proper form of the rite, be ministers of parishes, or be included in any way among the State-clergy? That such ministers did hold livings in Cromwell's Established Church is a fact. Mr. John Tombes, the chief of the Anti-Pædobaptists, and himself one of Cromwell's Triers, retained the vicarage of Leominster in Herefordshire, with the parsonage of Boss in the same county, and a living at Bewdley in Worcestershire; and there are other instances. Baxter's language already quoted implies nothing less, indeed, than that Anti-Pædobaptists in considerable numbers were presented to Church-livings by the patrons and passed by the Triers; and he elsewhere signifies that he did not himself greatly object to this. "Let there be no withdrawing," he says, "from the ministry and church of that place [i.e. a parish of mixed Pædobaptists and Anti-Pædobaptists] upon the mere ground of Baptism. If the minister be an Anabaptist, let not us withdraw from him on that ground; and, if he be a Pædobaptist, let not _them_ withdraw from _us_." He even suggests that the pastor of a church might openly record his opinion on the Baptism subject, if it were contrary to that of the majority of the members, and then proceed in his pastorate all the same, and that, on the other hand, private members might publicly enter their dissent from their pastor's opinion, and yet abide with him lovingly and obediently in all other things. How far, and in how many places, this method of leaving Pædo-baptism an open question was actually in operation in the Established Church of the Protectorate, and whether Infant Baptism thus fell into complete abeyance in some parishes where Anabaptists of eminence were settled, or whether the Pædobaptist parishioners in such eases quietly avoided that result by having their children baptized by other ministers, are points of some obscurity. On the whole, the difficulty can have been felt but exceptionally and here and there, for it was obviated on the great scale by the fact that most of the real Anabaptists, preachers and people alike, were Voluntaries, disowning the State-Church altogether, and meeting only in separate congregations. Even for such, however, in localities where they were pretty numerous, there seems to have been a desire to make some provision. Thus on March 13, 1655-56, it was ordered by His Highness and the Council "that it be referred to General Desborough, Major-General for the County of Devon, to take care that the Church under the form of Baptism at Exeter have such one of the public meeting-places assigned to them for their place of worship as is best in repair, and may with most conveniency be spared and set apart for that use." The Exeter Baptists may have thought it not inconsistent with their principles to accept so much of State favour. Not the public buildings, so much as the Tithes and Lay Patronage with which they were connected, were the abominations of the State-Church in the eyes of the Anabaptist Voluntaries. For let it not be forgotten that Cromwell's ardent passion for a Church-Establishment under his Protectorate had come more and more to involve, in his reasonings, the preservation of the Tithe-system and the continuance of lay Patronage. The legal patrons of livings retained their right of nominating to vacancies; the Triers only checked that right by examination of nominees and the rejection of the unfit. Cromwell himself combined in his own person, to a most extraordinary extent, the functions both of Patron and Trier. "It is observable that, his Highness having near one half of the livings in England, one way or other, in his own immediate disposal by presentation, he seldom bestoweth one of them upon any man whom himself doth not first examine and make trial of in person, save only that, at such times as his great affairs happen to be more urgent than ordinary, he useth to appoint some other to do it in his behalf; which is so rare an example of piety that the like is not to be found in the stories of Princes." We have not exaggerated, it will be seen, Cromwell's personal anxiety about his Established Church. That, indeed, is farther proved, in a very interesting manner, by certain entries in the Order Books of his Council which become more and more frequent in this middle section of his Protectorate. They refer to "augmentations of ministers' stipends." Thus, in December 1655, there is an order for the augmentation of the stipends of seventy-five ministers in different counties, all in one batch; and succeeding entries in 1656 show the steady progress of the same work by repeated orders for other augmentations, batch after batch. Clearly Cromwell had resolved that there should be a systematic increase of the salaries of the parochial clergy all over England, beginning with those who needed it most. The details of the business were managed by that body of "Trustees for maintenance of ministers" which had been appointed by Ordinance in Sept. 1654 (Vol. IV. p. 564); but the final Orders for Augmentations came from the Protector and Council, and there was no part of his work in which the Protector seemed to have more pleasure.[1]

[Footnote 1: Baxter, 96-97 and 180-188; Wood's Ath. III. 1083; Council Order Books of dates; Neal, IV. Chap. 3; Marchamont Needham's Book against John Goodwin, entitled _The Great Accuser Cast Down_, published in July 1657. The information about Cromwell's practice in his patronage of livings is from the last. The book was dedicated to Cromwell.]

But what of that Toleration of Dissent from the Established Church which he professed to be equally dear to him? That Cromwell was faithful still to the principle of Liberty of Conscience, to the fullest extent of his past professions, there can be no doubt. It may be more doubtful whether his past professions pledged him to a theory of Toleration as absolute as that which had been advocated eleven or twelve years before by Roger Williams and John Goodwin, and then adopted by the Army Independents generally, and which was still upheld by the main body of the Anabaptists. The evidence, however, rather favours the idea that he had already been in sympathy even with this extreme theory of Toleration, and so that now, though he had bitterly disappointed his old Anabaptist associates by declaring himself for the Civil Magistrate's Authority in matters of Religion, he still cherished the extreme theory of Toleration as it might be applied round about his Established Church. In his heart, I believe, he was for persecuting nobody whatsoever, troubling nobody whatsoever, for mere religious heresy, even of the kinds he himself most abhorred. But, though this might be his private ideal, his difficulties publicly and practically were enormous. The other unlimited Tolerationists in England were Anabaptists and the like, detesting his Established Church as incompatible with true Toleration, and in league for battering it down. Through the rest of the community there was but little voice for Toleration. The frantic and idiotic stringency of the Presbyterians of 1644-6 was now, indeed, rather out of fashion, and a certain mild babble about a Limited Toleration was common in the public mouth. But the old leaven was at work in many quarters; occasional pamphlets from the Presbyterian camp still wailed lamentably about "the effects of the present Toleration, especially as to the increase of Blasphemy and Damnable Errors;" and some Presbyterian booksellers had recently published _A Second Beacon Fired_, in which they insidiously tried to work upon the Lord Protector's new Conservative and State-Church instincts; by denouncing the books of some leading Anabaptists and other heretics, hostile to his Government, and humbly adjuring him to "do what might be expected from Christian magistrates" in such flagrant cases. In the late Parliament there had been much of this Presbyterian spirit, and it had been proved abundantly that the Protector's idea of Toleration would have been voted down by the national representatives. Then what a harassing definition of proper Christian Toleration had come even from Cromwell's favourite Independents, Messrs. Owen and the rest, with their twenty fundamentals! Add the difficulties arising from the nature of some of the current heresies themselves, as tending directly to the defamation of his government, the subversion of laws and institutions, and the disturbance of the peace.[1]

[Footnote 1: Various Thomason Pamphlets of 1654-1656. The _Second Beacon Fired_ was published in Oct. 1654 by six London booksellers--Luke Fawne, John Rothwell, Samuel Gellibrand, Thomas Underhill, Joshua Kirton, and Nathaniel Webb. Two of them, Rothwell and Underhill, had published for Milton in former days. The heretics chiefly denounced are Biddle, Dell, Farnworth, Norwood, Braine, John Webster, and Feake. John Goodwin replied to the booksellers in _A fresh Discovery of the High Presbyterian Spirit, or the Quenching of "The Second Beacon Fired_," published in Jan. 1654-5, and so found himself in a new quarrel. There was a reply called _An Apology for the Six Booksellers_.]

A very fair amount of Liberty of the Press, though not to newspapers, nor to publications clearly immoral, seems to have been allowed by Cromwell. Through 1655 and 1656 there were books and pamphlets of the most various kinds, and advocating the most various opinions. There were Episcopalian books and Anabaptist books, arguments for Tithes and arguments against Tithes, Fifth Monarchy tracts, Quaker Tracts and Anti-Quaker Tracts, in extraordinary profusion. Prynne would publish one day _The Quakers unmasked and clearly detected to be but the spawn of Romish frogs, Jesuits and Franciscan Friars, sent from Rome to seduce the intoxicated giddy-headed English nation_, and George Fox would print the next day _The Unmasking and Discovery of Antichrist, with all the False Prophets, by the true light which comes from Christ Jesus_. Nor, of course, was there, any interference with the religious meetings of any of the ordinary Puritan sects, Baptists or whatever else, that chose to form separatist congregations. Even those who so far passed the bounds that they were called Ranters or Fanatics were quite safe in their own conventicles; and altogether one has to conclude that much that went by the still worse names of Blasphemy, Atheism, Infidelity, and Anti-Christianism, had as quiet a life under the Protectorate as in any later time. Practically, all that is of interest in the enquiry as to the amount of Religious Toleration under Cromwell's Government lies in what is known of his dealings with five denominations of Dissenters from his Established Church--the Papists, the Episcopalians, the Socinians or Anti-Trinitarians, the Quakers, and the Jews.

(1) _The Papists._ Papists might be Papists under Cromwell's government in the sense that there was no positive compulsion on them to abjure their creed and profess another. The question, however, is as to open liberty of Roman Catholic worship. This question had passed through Cromwell's mind, and the results of his ruminations upon it appear most succinctly in one of his letters to Mazarin. After the Treaty made with France, the Cardinal very naturally pressed the subject of a toleration for Catholics in England, the rather as Cromwell was always so energetic for a toleration of Protestants in Catholic countries. "Although I have this set home to my spirit," Cromwell wrote in reply, "I may not (shall I tell you I _cannot_?) at this juncture of time, and as the face of my affairs now stands, answer your call for Toleration. I say _I cannot_, as to a public declaration of my sense in that point; although I believe that under my government your Eminency, in behalf of Catholics, has less reason for complaint, as to rigour on men's consciences, than under the Parliament. For I have of some, and those very many, had compassion; making a difference. Truly I have (and I may speak it with cheerfulness in the presence of God, who is a witness within me to the truth of what I affirm) made a difference; and, as Jude speaks, 'plucked many out of the fire,'--the raging fire of persecution, which did tyrannise over their consciences, and encroached by an arbitrariness of power upon their estates. And herein it is my purpose, as soon as I can remove impediments, and some weights that press me down, to make a farther progress, and discharge my promise to your Eminency in relation to that."[1]

[Footnote 1: Carlyle, III. 202-203. The letter is dated Dec. 26, 1656.]

(2) _The Episcopalians._ The question under this heading is not about those moderate Episcopalian divines who had conformed so far as to retain their rectories and vicarages in the Established Church, but about those Episcopalians of stronger principle, whether High Church and Arminian or not, who had been ejected from their former livings, or were trying to maintain themselves by some kind of private practice of their clerical profession in various parts of England. Against these, just at the time when the Major-Generalcies were coming into full operation, there did issue one fell Ordinance. It was published Nov. 24, 1655, under the title of _An Ordinance for Securing the Peace of the Commonwealth_, and it ordered that after Jan. 1, 1655-6 no persons should keep in their houses as chaplains or tutors any of the ejected clergy, and also that none of the ejected should teach in schools, preach publicly or privately, celebrate baptism or marriage, or use the Book of Common Prayer, under pain of being prosecuted. The Ordinance seems to have been issued merely as part and parcel of that almost ostentatious menace of severities against the Royalists by which Cromwell sought at that particular time to terrify them into submission and prevent farther plottings. At all events, it was announced in the Ordinance itself that there would be great delicacy in the application of it, so as to favour such of the ejected as deserved tender treatment; and, in fact, it was never applied or executed at all. No one was prosecuted under it; and, though it was not recalled, it was understood that it was suspended by the pleasure of his Highness, and that chaplains, teachers, and preachers, of the Episcopal persuasion, might go on as before, and reckon on all the toleration accorded to other Dissenters. On this footing they did go on, ex-Bishops and future Bishops among them, with increasing security; and gradually the notion got abroad that the Protector began to have even a kindly feeling for the "good old Church." Many Royalist authorities concur to that effect. "The Protector," says one, "indulged the use of the Common-Prayer in families and in private conventicles; and, though the condition of the Church of England was but melancholy, yet it cannot be denied that they had a great deal more favour and indulgence than under the Parliament." Burnet, on the authority of Dr. Wilkins, afterwards Bishop Wilkins, who was the second husband of Cromwell's youngest sister, adds a more startling statement. "Dr. Wilkins told me," says Burnet, "he (Cromwell) often said to him (Wilkins) no temporal government could have a sure support without a national church that adhered to it, and he thought England was capable of no constitution but Episcopacy; to which he told me he did not doubt but Cromwell would have turned." Wilkins probably liked to think this after he himself had turned; but it is hardly credible in the form in which Burnet has expressed it. Yet Cromwell, in that temper of conservatism, or desire of a settled order in all things, which more and more grew upon him after he had assumed the Protectorate, had undoubtedly the old Episcopalian clergy in view as a body to be conciliated, and employed as a counterpoise to the Anabaptists. He cannot but have been aware, too, of the spontaneous movements in some of the quasi-Presbyterian Associations of the clergy for a reunion as far as possible with the more moderate Episcopalians, as distinct from the High-Church Prelatists or Laudians. Among others, Baxter was extremely zealous for such a project; and his accounts of his correspondence about it with ex-Bishop Brownrigg in 1655, and his conversations about it at the same time with ex-Primate Usher, are very curious and interesting. Baxter and many more were quite willing that there should be a restored Episcopacy after Usher's own celebrated model: i.e. an Episcopacy not professing to be _jure divino_, but only for ecclesiastical conveniency,--the Bishops to be permanent Presidents of clusters of the clergy, and to be fitted into an otherwise Presbyterian system of Classes and Provincial Synods. They were willing, moreover, in the interest of such a scheme, to reconsider the old questions of a Liturgy, kneeling at the Sacrament, and other matters of Anglican ceremonial. Enough all this to rouse the angry souls of _Smectymnuus_, Milton, and the other Root-and-Branch Anti-Prelatists who had led the English Revolution. But, as times change, men change, and it is not impossible that Cromwell, the first real mover of the Root-and-Branch Bill of 1641, may now, fifteen years later, have looked speculatively sometimes at the old trunk in the timberyard. It is certain that he treated with profound respect the man whose advice about any remodelling of Episcopacy would have been the most authoritative generally. Ex-Primate Usher had lived in London through the Commonwealth and the Protectorate with the highest honour, pensioned at the rate of £400 a year, and holding also the preachership to the Society of Lincoln's Inn. Cromwell had shown him every attention, and had consulted him on several occasions. He had retired to Reigate a short time before his death, which happened on the 21st of March, 1655-6. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, a sum of £200 having been voted for his funeral by the Protector and Council. Eight months after his death there was published from his manuscript, by his friend and former chaplain, Dr. Nicholas Bernard, that famous _Reduction of Episcopacy into the form of Synodical Government_ which had got about surreptitiously in 1641 (Vol. II. 229-230), and which was then regarded, and has been regarded ever since, as the most feasible model of a Low-Church Episcopacy adapted to Presbyterian forms.[1]

[Footnote 1: Neal, IV. 135-137 and 101-2; Burnet (ed. 1823) I. 110; Baxter, 172-178 and 206; Thomason Catalogue, Nov. 25, 1656 (date of publication of Usher's _Reduction_); Wood's Fasti, I. 446.]

(3) _Anti-Trinitarians._ The crucial test of Cromwell's Toleration policy as regarded this class of heretics, and indeed as regarded all heresies of the higher order, was the case of poor Mr. John Biddle. The dissolution of the late Parliament had been so far fortunate for him that the prosecution begun against him by that Parliament under the old Blasphemy Ordinance of 1648 had been stopped and he had been set at liberty (March 1655). But it was only to get into fresh trouble. The orthodox in London were determined that he should not be at large, and it was reported to the Council on the 3rd of July that on the preceding Thursday, June 28, "in the new meeting-house at Paul's, commonly called Captain Chillingdon's church meeting-place, John Biddle did then and there, in presence of about 500 persons, maintain, some hours together, in a dispute, that Jesus Christ was not the Almighty or most High God, and hath undertaken to proceed in the game dispute the next Thursday." Cromwell himself was present at this meeting of the Council, with Lawrence, Lambert, the Earl of Mulgrave, Skippon, Rous, Sydenham, Pickering, Montague, Fiennes, Viscount Lisle, Wolseley, and Strickland. What were they to do? They ordered the Lord Mayor to stop the intended meeting, and all such meetings in future, and to arrest Biddle if necessary; and they referred the affair for farther enquiry to Skippon and Rous. The affair, it seems, could not possibly be hushed up; Biddle was committed to Poultry Compter, and then to Newgate, and his trial came on at the Old Bailey, again under the Blasphemy Ordinance of 1648. Having, with difficulty, been allowed counsel, he put in legal objections, and the trial was adjourned till next term. Meanwhile London was greatly agitated. The Presbyterians and the orthodox generally were eager for Biddle's conviction; but a very considerable number of persons, including not only Biddle's own followers and free-thinkers of other sorts, but also some Independent and Baptist ministers, whose orthodoxy was beyond suspicion, bestirred themselves in his behalf. Pamphlets appeared in that interest, one entitled _The Spirit of Persecution again broken loose against Mr. John Biddle_, and a numerously signed petition was addressed to Cromwell, requesting his merciful interference. The Petition, as we learn from _Mercurius Politicus_, was very badly managed. "The persons who presented a petition some few days since to his Highness on the behalf of Biddle," says that paper under date Sept. 28, "came this day in expectation of an answer. They had access, and divers godly ministers were present. And, the Petition being read in the hearing of divers of those under whose countenance it was presented, many of them disowned it, as being altered both in the matter and title of it since they signed it, and so looked upon it as a forged thing, wherein both his Highness and they were greatly abused, and desired that the original which they signed might be produced; which Mr. Ives and some others of the contrivers and presenters of it were not able to do, nor had they anything to say in excuse of so foul a miscarriage. Whereupon they were dismissed, his Highness having opened to them the evil of such a practice [tampering with petitions after they had been signed], as also how inconsistent it was for _them_, who professed to be members of the Churches of Christ and to worship him with the worship due to God, to give any countenance to one who reproached themselves and all the Christian Churches in the world as being guilty of idolatry: showing that, if it be true which Mr. Biddle holds, to wit that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is but a creature, then all those who worship him with the worship due to God are idolaters. His Highness showed moreover that the maintainers of this opinion of Mr. Biddle's are guilty of great blasphemy against Christ, who is God equal with the Father; and he referred it to them to consider whether any who loved the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity could give any countenance to such a person as he is." But, while the petitioners were thus dismissed with a severe lecture, Cromwell had made up his mind to save Mr. Biddle. On the 5th of October it was resolved by the Council that he should be removed to the Isle of Scilly and there shut up; and Cromwell's warrant to that effect was at once issued. In no other way could the trial have been quashed, and it was the kindest thing that could have been done for Biddle in the circumstances. He lived comfortably enough in his seclusion in the distant Island for the next two years and a half, receiving an allowance of a hundred crowns _per annum_ from Cromwell, and employing his leisure in the deep study of the Apocalypse and the preparation of a treatise against the Doctrine of the Fifth Monarchy.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books, July 3 and Oct. 5, 1655; _Merc. Pol._ Sept. 27-Oct. 4, 1655; Wood's Ath. III. 599-601; Thomason Catalogue (Tracts for and against Biddle).]

(4) _The Quakers._ There was immense difficulty with this new sect--from the fact, as has been already explained, that they had not settled down into mere local groups of individuals, asking toleration for themselves, but were still in open war with all other sects, all other forms of ministry, and prosecuting the war everywhere by itinerant propagandism. George Fox himself and the best of his followers seem by this time indeed to have given up the method of actually interrupting the regular service in the steeple-houses in order to preach Quakerism; but they were constantly tending to the steeple-houses for the purpose of prophesying there, as was the custom in country-places, after the regular service was over. Thus, as well as by their conflicts with parsons of every sect wherever they met them, and their rebukings of iniquity on highways and in market-places, not to speak of their obstinate refusals to pay tithes in their own parishes, they were continually getting into the hands of justices of the peace and the assize-judges. Take as one example of their treatment in superior courts the appearance of William Dewsbury and other Quakers before Judge Atkins at Northampton after they had been half a year in Northampton jail.--Seeing them at the bar with their hats on, the Judge told the jailor he had a good mind to fine him ten pounds for bringing prisoners into the Court in that fashion, and ordered the hats to be removed by the jailor's man. Then, after some preliminary parley, "What is thy name?" said the Judge to Dewsbury, who had made himself spokesman for all. "Unknown to the World," said Dewsbury. "Let us hear what that name is that the World knows not," said the Judge goodhumouredly. "It is," quoth Dewsbury, "known in the light, and none can know it but he that hath it; but the name the world knows me by is William Dewsbury." Then to the question of the Judge, "What countryman art thou?" the reply was, "Of the Land of Canaan." The Judge remarked that Canaan was far off. "Nay," answered Dewsbury, "for all that dwell in God are in the holy city, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from Heaven, where the soul is in rest, and enjoys the love of God in Jesus Christ, in whom the union is with the Father of Light." The Judge admitted that to be very true, but asked Dewsbury whether, being an Englishman, he was ashamed of that more prosaic fact. "Nay," said Dewsbury, "I am free to declare that my natural birth was in Yorkshire, nine miles from York towards Hull." The Judge then said, "You pretend to be extraordinary men, and to have an extraordinary knowledge of God." Dewsbury replied, "We witness the work of regeneration to be an extraordinary work, wrought in us by the Spirit of God." The conversation then turned on their preaching itinerancy, and abstinence from all ordinary callings, the Judge remarking that even the Apostles had worked with their hands. Dewsbury admitted that some of the Apostles had been fishermen, and Paul a tent-maker, but asserted that, "when they were called to the ministry of Christ, they left their callings to follow Christ whither he led them by his Spirit," and that he and his fellow-prisoners had but done the same. The end of the colloquy was that the Judge, with every wish to be lenient, could not make up his mind to discharge the prisoners. "I see by your carriage," he said, "that what my brother Hale did at the last assizes, in requiring bond for your good behaviour, he might justly do it, for you are against magistrates and ministers"; and they were remitted to Northampton jail accordingly.--If judges like Hale and Atkins had to act thus, one may imagine how the poor Quakers fared in the hands of inferior and rougher functionaries. Fines and imprisonment for vagrancy, contempt of court, or non-payment of tithes, were the ordinary discipline for all; but there were cases here and there of whipping by the hangman, and other more ferocious cruelties. For among the Quakers themselves there were varieties of milder and wilder, less provoking and more provoking. The Quakerism of men like Fox and Dewsbury was, at worst, but an obdurate and irritating eccentricity, in comparison, for example, with the Quakerism run mad of James Nayler. This enthusiast, once quarter-master in a horse troop under Lambert, and regarded as "a man of excellent natural parts," had for three or four years kept himself within bounds, and been known only as one of the most eminent preachers of the ordinary Gospel of the Quakers and a prolific writer of Quaker tracts. But, having come to London in 1655, he had been unbalanced by the adulation of some Quaker women, with a Martha Simmons for their chief. "Fear and doubting then entered him," say the Quaker records, "so that he came to be clouded in his understanding, bewildered, and at a loss in his judgment, and became estranged from his best friends, because they did not approve his conduct." In other words, he became stark mad, and set up for himself, as "The Everlasting Son, the Prince of Peace, the Fairest among Ten Thousand, the Altogether Lovely." In this capacity he went into the West of England early in 1656, the admiring women following him, and chaunting his praises with every variety of epithet from the Song of Solomon, till he was clapped up in Exeter jail. Nor was Nayler the only madman among the Quakers about this time. A kind of epidemic of madness seems to have broken out in the sect, or among those reputed to belong to it. "One while," says Baxter, "divers of them went naked through divers chief towns and cities of the land, as a prophetical act: some of them have famished and drowned themselves in melancholy;" and he adds, more especially, as his own experience in Kidderminster, "I seldom preached a lecture, but going and coming I was railed at by a Quaker in the market-place in the way, and frequently in the congregation bawled at by the names of Hireling, Deceiver, False Prophet, Dog, and such like language." The Protector's own chapel in Whitehall was not safe. On April 13, 1656, "being the Lord's day," says the _Public Intelligencer_ for that week, "a certain Quaker came into the chapel in sermon time, and in a very audacious manner disturbed the preacher, so that he was fain to be silent a while, till the fellow was taken away. His Highness, being present, did after sermon give order for the sending him to a justice of peace, to be dealt with according to law."--Naturally, the whole sect suffered for these indecencies and extravagances of some of its members, and the very name _Quakerism_ became a synonym for all that was intolerable. The belief had got abroad, moreover, that "subtle and dangerous heads," Jesuits and others, had begun to "creep in among them," to turn Quakerism to political account, and "drive on designs of disturbance." Altogether the Protector and Council were sorely tried. Their policy seems, on the whole, to have been to let Quakerism run its course of public obloquy, and get into jail, or even to the whipping-post _ad libitum_, for offences against the peace, but at the same time to instruct the Major-Generals privately to be as discreet as possible, making differences between the sorts of Quakers, and especially letting none of them come to harm for their mere beliefs. "Making a difference," as by the injunction in Jude's epistle, was, as we know, Cromwell's own great rule in all cases where complete toleration was impossible, and he does not seem to have been able to do more for the Quakers. He had not, however, forgotten his interview with their chief, and may have been interested in knowing more especially what had become of _him_.--Fox, after much wandering in the West without serious mishap, had fallen among Philistines in Cornwall early in 1656, and had been arrested, with two companions, for spreading papers and for general vagrancy and contumacy. He had been in Launceston prison for some weeks, when Chief Justice Glynne came to hold the assizes in those parts. There had been the usual encounter between the Judge and the Quakers on the eternal question of the hats. "Where had they hats at all, from Moses to Daniel?" said the Chief Justice, rather rashly, meaning to laugh at the notion that Scripture could be brought to bear on the question in any way whatever. "Thou mayest read in the third of Daniel," said Fox, "that the three children were cast into the fiery furnace, by Nebuchadnezzar's command, with their coats, their hose, and _their hats on_." Glynne, though he had lost his joke, and though Fox put him further out of temper by distributing among the jurymen a paper against swearing, did not behave badly on the whole, and the issue was the simple recommitment of Fox and his friends to Launceston prison. There, however, as they would not any longer pay the jailor the seven shillings a week he demanded for the board of each, they were put into the most horrible hole in the place and treated abominably. They were in this predicament when Cromwell heard of them. "While G. Fox was still in prison, one of his friends went to Oliver Cromwell, and offered himself, body for body, to lie in prison in his stead, if he would take him and let G. Fox go at liberty. But Cromwell said he could not do it, for it was contrary to law; and, turning to those of his Council, 'Which of you,' quoth he, 'would do as much for me if I were in the same condition?'" An order was sent by Cromwell to the Governor of Pendennis Castle to enquire meantime into the treatment of the Launceston prisoners, and their release followed after a little while. It was noted also, in proof of his personal kindness towards the Quakers, that, though he received letters from some of them violently abusive of himself and his government, he never showed any anger on that account.[1]

[Footnote 1: Sewel's History of the Quakers (ed. 1834) I. 137-173; Baxter, 77 and 180; _Public Intelligencer_ of April 14-21, 1656; Council Order Book, Feb. 6, 1655-6.]

(5)_The Jews._ A very interesting incident of Cromwell's Protectorate was his attempt to obtain an open toleration for the Jews in England. Since the year 1290, when they had been banished in a body out of the kingdom under Edward I., there had been only isolated and furtive instances of visits to England or residence in England by persons of the proscribed race. Of late, however, a certain Manasseh Ben Israel, an able and earnest Portuguese Jew, settled in Amsterdam as a physician, had conceived the idea that, in the new age of liberty and other great things in England, there might be a permission for the Jews to return and live and trade freely. He had opened negotiations by letter, first with the Rump and then with the Barebones Parliament, but had at length come over to London to deal directly with the Protector. "_To his Highness the Lord Protector, &c. the Humble Addresses of Manasseh Ben Israel, Divine and Doctor of Physic, in behalf of the Jewish Nation_," were in print on the 5th of November, 1655; and they were formally before the Council on the 13th, his Highness present in person. The petition was for a general protection of such Jews as might come to reside in England, with liberty of trade, freedom for their worship, the possession of a Jewish synagogue and a Jewish cemetery in London, and a revocation of all statutes contrary to such privileges. Cromwell was thoroughly in favour of the proposal and let the fact be known; but, as it was necessary to proceed with caution, the matter was referred to a conference between the Council and twenty-eight persons outside of it, fourteen of whom were clergymen (Owen, Thomas Goodwin, Nye, Cudworth, Hugh Peters, Sterry, &c.), and the rest lawyers (St. John, Glynne, Steele, &c.), or city merchants (Lord Mayor Dethicke, Aldermen Pack and Tichbourne, &c.) There were four meetings of this Conference at Whitehall in December, Cromwell himself taking part. "I never heard a man speak so well," says an auditor of his speech at one of the meetings. On the whole, however, the Conference could not agree with his Highness. Some of the city-men objected, on commercial grounds, to the admission of the Jews; and the clergy were against it almost to a man, partly on the authority of Scripture texts, partly from fear of the effects of the importation into London of the new sect of Judaism. The Conference was discontinued; and, though the good Rabbi lingered on in London till April 1656, nothing could be done. Prejudice in the religious world was too strong. Nevertheless the Protector found means of giving effect to his own views. Not only did he mark his respect for Manasseh Ben Israel by a pension of £100 a year, to be paid him in Amsterdam; he admitted so many Jews, one by one, by private dispensation, that there was soon a little colony of them in London, with a synagogue to suit, and a piece of ground at Stepney leased for a cemetery. In effect, the readmission of the Jews into England dates from Cromwell's Protectorate.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Merc. Pol._ Nov. 1-8, 1655; Council Order Book, Nov. 13; Godwin, IV. 243-251; Carlyle, III. 136, note. Prynne opposed the Readmission of the Jews in a pamphlet, in two parts, called _A Short Demurrer to the Jews' long discontinued Remitter_ (March 1656); and Durie published, in the form of a letter to Hartlib, _A Case of Conscience: whether it be lawful to admit Jews into a Christian Commonwealth_ (June 27, 1656). I have not seen Durie's letter; but Mr. Crossley (_Worthington's Diary_, I. 83, note) reports it as moderately favourable to the Jewish claim. The letter is dated, he says, from Cassel, Jan. 8, 1655-6.]

Although making no great pretensions to learning himself, Cromwell seems to have taken especial pleasure in that part of his powers and privileges which gave him an influence on the literature and education of the country. Here, in fact, he but carried out in a special department that general notion of the Civil Magistrate's powers and duties which had led him to declare himself so strongly for the preservation and extension of an Established Church. The more thorough-going champions of Voluntaryism in that day, Anabaptists and others, had begun, as we have seen, to agitate not only for the abolition of a national Church or State-paid clergy of any kind, but also for the abolition of the Universities, the public schools, and all endowments for science or learning. But, if Cromwell had so signally disowned and condemned the system of sheer Voluntaryism in Religion, it was not to be expected that the more peculiar and exceptional Voluntaryism which challenged even State Endowments for education should find any countenance from _his_ Protectorate. Nor did it.

The two English Universities had been sufficiently Puritanized long before Cromwell's accession to the supreme power--Cambridge in 1644-5, under the Chancellorship of the Earl of Manchester (III. 92-6), and Oxford in 1647-8, under the Chancellorship of the Earl of Pembroke (IV. 51-52). The Earl of Manchester, who had been living in complete retirement from public affairs since the establishment of the Commonwealth, still retained the nominal dignity of the Cambridge Chancellorship; but Cromwell had already for five years been Chancellor of the University of Oxford himself, having been elected to the office in January 1650-1, after the Earl of Pembroke's death. His interest in University matters had been naturally sustained by this official connexion with Oxford, and had shown itself in various ways before his Protectorate; but his Protectorate added fresh powers to those of his mere Chancellorship for Oxford, and brought his native University of Cambridge also within his grasp. He availed himself of his powers largely and punctually in the affairs of both, and was applauded in both as the steady defender of their honours and privileges.--To rectify what might still be amiss in them, or too much after the mere Presbyterian standard of Puritanism, he had appointed, by ordinance of September 2, 1654, (Vol. IV. p. 565), a new body of Visitors for each, to inquire into abuses, determine disputes, &c. The result was that the two Universities were now in better and quieter working order than they had been since the first stormy interruption of their old routine by the Civil War. Each reckoned a number of really able and efficient men among its heads of colleges, and in its staff of professors and tutors. In Oxford there was Dr. John Owen, head of Christ Church, and all but permanently Vice-Chancellor of the University, with Dr. Thomas Goodwin, Dr. John Wilkins, Dr. Robert Harris, Dr. Thankful Owen, Dr. John Conant, Dr. Jonathan Goddard, and others, as heads of other Colleges, and Dr. Henry Wilkinson, Dr. Lewis Du Moulin, Dr. Pocock, and the mathematicians Dr. Seth Ward and Dr. John Wallis among the Professors. Cambridge boasted of such men as Dr. Ralph Cudworth, Dr. Benjamin Whichcote, Dr. John Worthington, Dr. John Lightfoot, Dr. Lazarus Seaman, Dr. John Arrowsmith, Dr. Anthony Tuckney, Dr. Henry More, and others now less remembered. And under the discipline and teaching of such chiefs there was growing up in both Universities a generation of young men as well grounded in all the older sorts of learning as any generation of their predecessors, with the benefit also of newer lights, as was to be proved by the names and appearances of many of them in English history to the end of the century. Even Clarendon admits as much. It was a wonder to him to find, in the subsequent days of his own Chancellorship of the University of Oxford, that the "several tyrannical governments mutually succeeding each other" through so many previous years had not so affected the place but that it still "yielded a harvest of extraordinary good and sound knowledge in all parts of learning." He attributed this to the inherent virtues of the academic soil itself, which could choke bad seeds, cherish the good, and even defy barrenness by finding its own seeds; but it may be more reasonable to suppose that the superintendence of the Universities under the "tyrannical governments," and especially under Cromwell's as the latest of them, had not been barbaric.--The University Commissioners, it may be added, had authority to inspect Westminster School, Eton, Winchester, and Merchant Taylors'. But, indeed, there seems hardly to have been a foundation for learning anywhere in England that was not, in one way or another, brought under Cromwell's eye. In his inquiries after moneys that might still be recoverable out of the wreck of the old ecclesiastical revenues one can see that, next to the increase and better sustenance of his Established Ministry, additions to the endowed scholastic machinery of the country were always in his mind. It is clear indeed that one of those characteristics of conservatism by which Cromwell intended that his government should be distinguished from the preceding Governments of the Revolution was greater care of the surviving educational institutions of England and Wales, with the resuscitation of some that had fallen into decay. The money-difficulties were great, and less could be accomplished than he desired; but, apart from what may have been done for the refreshment of the older foundations, it is memorable that Cromwell was able to give effect to at least one very considerable design of English University extension. A College in Durham, expressly for the benefit of the North of England, with a Provostship, four Professorships, and tutorships and fellowships to match, was one of the creations of the Protectorate.[1]

[Footnote 1: Wood's Fasti Oxon. from 1654 onwards; Orme's Life of John Owen, 175-187; Clarendon, 623; Godwin, IV. 102-104 and 595; Neal, IV. 121-123; with references to Worthington's Diary by Crossley, and Cattermole's _Literature of the Church of England_.]

While it was chiefly through the organized means afforded by the Universities and Colleges that Cromwell did what he could for the encouragement of learning, his relations to the learned men individually that were living in the time of his Protectorate were always at least courteous, and in some instances peculiarly friendly.

Usher being dead (March 21, 1655-6), and also the great Selden (Nov. 20, 1654) and the venerable and learned Gataker (July 27, 1654), the following were the Englishmen of greatest literary celebrity already, or of greatest coming note in English literary history, who were alive at the midpoint of Oliver's Protectorate, and could and did then range themselves (for we exclude those of insufficient age) as his adherents on the whole, his subjects by mere compulsion, or his implacable and exiled enemies. We divide the list into groups according to that classification, as calculated for the year 1656; but the names within each group are arranged in the order of seniority:[1]--

[Footnote 1: There may be errors and omissions in the list; but, having taken some pains, I will risk it as it stands.]

ADHERENTS MORE OR LESS CORDIAL.

George Wither (_ætat_ 68).
John Goodwin (_ætat_ 63).
Edmund Calamy (_ætat_ 56).
Thomas Goodwin (_ætat_ 56).
John Lightfoot (_ætat_ 54).
Edmund Waller (_ætat_ 51).
John Rushworth (_ætat_ 49).
Milton (_ætat_ 48).
Benjamin Whichcote (_ætat_ 46).
James Harrington (_ætat_ 45).
Henry More (_ætat_ 42).
John Wilkins (_ætat_ 42).
John Owen (_ætat_ 40).
John Wallis (_ætat_ 40).
Ralph Cudworth (_ætat_ 39).
Algernon Sidney (_ætat_ 39).
Marchamont Needham (_ætat_ 36).
Andrew Marvell (_ætat_ 36).
Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill (_ætat_ 35).
William Petty (_ætat_ 33).
Thomas Stanley (_ætat_ 31).
John Aubrey (_ætat_ 30).
Robert Boyle (_ætat_ 29).
John Bunyan (_ætat_ 28).
Sir William Temple (_ætat_ 27).
John Tillotson (_ætat_ 26).
John Howe (_ætat_ 26).
Edward Phillips (_ætat_ 26).
John Phillips (_ætat_ 25).
John Dryden (_ætat_ 25).
Henry Stubbe (_ætat_ 25).
John Locke (_ætat_ 24).
Samuel Pepys (_ætat_ 24).
Edward Stillingfleet (_ætat_ 21).

SUBJECTS BY COMPULSION.

Ex-Bishop Hall (died Sept. 8, 1656, _ætat_ 82).
John Hales (died May 19, 1656, _ætat_ 72).
Robert Sanderson (_ætat_ 69).
Thomas Hobbes (_ætat_ 68).
Robert Herrick (_ætat_ 65).
John Hacket (_ætat_ 64).
Izaak Walton (_ætat_ 63).
James Shirley (_ætat_ 62).
James Howell (_ætat_ 62).
Gilbert Sheldon (_ætat_ 58).
William Prynne (_ætat_ 56).
Brian Walton (_ætat_ 56).
Peter Heylin (_ætat_ 56).
Jasper Mayne (_ætat_ 52).
Thomas Fuller (_ætat_ 52).
Edward Pocock (_ætat_ 52).
Sir William Davenant (_ætat_ 51).
Thomas Browne of Norwich (_ætat_ 51).
William Dugdale (_ætat_ 51).
Henry Hammond (_ætat_ 51).
Richard Fanshawe (_ætat_ 48).
Aston Cockayne (_ætat_ 48).
Samuel Butler (_ætat_ 44).
Jeremy Taylor (_ætat_ 43).
John Cleveland (_ætat_ 43).
John Pearson (_ætat_ 43).
John Birkenhead (_ætat_ 41).
John Denham (_ætat_ 41).
Richard Baxter (_ætat_ 41).
Roger L'Estrange (_ætat_ 40).
Abraham Cowley (_ætat_ 38).
John Evelyn (_ætat_ 36).
Isaac Barrow (_ætat_ 26).
Anthony Wood (_ætat_ 25).
Robert South (_ætat_ 23).

ACTIVE ENEMIES IN EXILE.

John Bramhall (_ætat_ 63).
George Morley (_ætat_ 58).
John Earle (_ætat_ 55).
Sir Kenelm Digby (_ætat_ 53).
Sir Edward Hyde (_ætat_ 48).
Thomas Killigrew (_ætat_ 45).
George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (_ætat_ 29).

The relations of Cromwell to such persons varied, of course, with their attitudes towards himself and his government.

The theologian among his adherents to whom he seems to have been drawn by the strongest elective affinity was Dr. John Owen. "Sir, you are a person I must be acquainted with," he had said to Owen in Fairfax's garden; laying his hand on his shoulder, one day in April 1649, just after he had first heard Owen preach;[1] and so, from being merely minister of Coggeshall in Essex, Owen had become Cromwell's friend and chaplain in Ireland, and had still, through his subsequent promotions, ending with the Deanery of Christ Church and the Vice-Chancellorship of Oxford, been much about Cromwell and much trusted by him. Perhaps the only difference now between them was that Owen's theory of Toleration was less broad than Cromwell's. Next to Owen among the divines of the Commonwealth, the Protector seems to have retained his liking for Dr. Thomas Goodwin, and for such other fervid or Evangelical Independents as Caryl, Sterry, Hugh Peters, and Nicholas Lockyer, with a gradual tendency to John Howe, the youngest of his chaplains. For the veteran free-lance and Arminian John Goodwin, a keen critic now of Cromwell's Commission of Triers and of other parts of his Church-policy, his liking must have been less; but Goodwin's merits were fairly appreciated, and he had at least perfect liberty to conduct his congregation as he pleased and to publish his pamphlets. So, on the other hand, eminent Presbyterian divines like Calamy, accommodated amply in Cromwell's Established Church, had all freedom and respect.--As to his dealings with non-clerical men of letters friendly to his government, we know a good deal already. Milton, of whose relations to the Protectorate we shall have to speak more at large, was his Latin Secretary; Needham was his journalist; Marvell was in his private employment and was looking for something more public. Still younger men were growing up, in the Universities or just out of them, regarding the Protectorate as now the settled order of things, in which they must pass their future lives. Cudworth, recently promoted from the mastership of Clare College, Cambridge, to that of Milton's old College of Christ's, had been asked by the Protector to recommend to him any very promising young Cambridge men he might discover;[2] and, doubtless, there had been a similar request to Owen of Oxford. Dryden, still at Cambridge, though now twenty-five years of age, and already, by his father's death, a small Northamptonshire squire of £40 a year, was looking forward, we shall find, as his family connexions with the Parliamentarians and the Commonwealth made natural, to a life in London under the great Protector's shadow.

[Footnote 1: Orme's Life of Owen (1820), p. 113.]

[Footnote 2: Life of Cudworth, as cited by Godwin, IV. 596.]