wards wealthy and distinguished churchmen, among those who moved in humble and necessitous conditions. All such feelings, however, if left to themselves, would have gradually dwindled down to their average intensity: which is not sufficient for convulsing a nation. They were driven from this even tenour, and consequently shielded from unimportance, by extraneous forces. Charles not only desired an uniform religious system to be established in all parts of his dominions; he was also anxious that the northern prelacy and clergy should be provided, like their southern neighbours, with adequate endowments. He therefore announced intentions of resuming grants of ecclesiastical estates, and of placing the tythe-property upon a footing more advantageous to the church. Such announcements filled many of the best houses with dismay, and rendered their masters anxious to fan the embers of popular prejudice against prelacy. The king's conduct also gave a great advantage to the Presbyterian party, from its rash contempt of constitutional forms. It was desirable that Scotland should possess a body of canon law. One was compiled; but Charles was so ill-advised, as to fancy that it needed no higher authority than his own. It came before the country, therefore, not as the fruits of recognised ecclesiastical deliberation, duly sanctioned afterwards by the civil power, but as the mere creature of some private consultations among the Scottish prelates, revised by their English brethren, which the sovereign was to render valid by the strength of prerogative. To make this unhappy assumption more popularly odious, one of the canons which it promulged, bound the people to use the liturgy: when, in fact, no liturgy had hitherto been provided. Thus, when one actually appeared, so great a storm of popular fury was found ready to burst upon it, as evidently occasioned general surprise in superior life'. As an extenuation of the king's imprudence in thus acting upon the strength of an ill-defined prerogative, may be mentioned the High Commission Court, which his father had established in the same illegal way, nearly thirty years be

6 Russell, ii. 116.

7 "Even in Edinburgh, at that time the focus of insurrection, only one

clergyman was hostile to the liturgy." Ibid. 136.

fore. But this precedent only served to mislead him and increase his difficulties. When the popular explosion burst forth with irresistible force, that arbitrary court was one of the first things which the government found itself under the necessity of offering to modify. This offer was accompanied with another to suspend the canons and liturgy until they should have duly passed the ordeal of constitutional forms. But it was now too late for qualified concessions on the royal side. For a long time Scottish discontent seemed only an ebullition of vulgar fanaticism, its abettors in superior life having abstained from compromising themselves by any open participation in it. But soon after the liturgical tumult in Edinburgh, in the summer of 1637, the strength of the Presbyterian party became so conspicuous, that great men thought themselves quite safe in heading it, and in the following year the famous Covenant was enthusiastically adopted by people of all conditions. It was not, indeed, accepted with equal eagerness in every part of the kingdom. On the contrary, the northern Scots received, at first, invitations to join it with considerable coolness. But gradually their objections were overcome by the fervid representations which resounded from Edinburgh and its neighbourhood. Thus, in the course of a short time, the whole kingdom imbibed a persuasion, that adherence to the Covenant was imperative upon every Scotchman who valued either his country or his salvation. It was vain for Charles to hope that his tardy concessions could stem such a raging torrent. Nothing was any longer thought of among his countrymen, but an unconditional surrender of all that haunted inferior life with fears of religious pollution, and superior, with hateful visions of tithes and church-lands again required for church purposes. The country, however, being thoroughly united and marshalled under its hereditary heads, did not supinely rest upon an enthusiastic resolution. It took the field, and remained in a formidable military attitude, in spite of royal endeavours on the other side, until its objects were completely

James's instructions for the regulation of this court may be seen in Collier, ii. 792.

"Especially at Aberdeen, where

it was opposed with much ability by the clergymen and professors of that city." Russell, ii. 144.

gained amidst the ruins of the falling monarchy. Thus when a revolutionary English party committed itself irreconcilably against the throne, it had an ally provided within the island, and without co-operation from that quarter, its own success appeared highly problematical. That co-operation, however, to any sufficient extent, was unattainable, unless England would embrace the Presbyterian system. Thus, really, the southern church, although rendered unpopular from several causes, owed its actual fall to the exigencies of desperate politicians, then uppermost in the country. Had they thought themselves able to dispense with aid from Scotland, English episcopacy might have been purged by the national troubles, instead of overthrown.

§ 7. When, accordingly, the famous Long Parliament met1, although it manifested from the first a rancorous hatred of the primate and others of his order, with a determination to reduce all clergymen so as to satisfy democratical views of their inferiority, and Puritanical notions of clerical efficiency, yet it evidently was not pervaded for some time with any determination to supersede an episcopal polity by presbyterian. On the third day of the session was, indeed, appointed a committee of the whole house to take cognisance of religion, which, within a month, gave birth to a sub-committee "for providing preaching ministers, and removing scandalous ones"." But this proved very much of an engine for the selfish purposes of party politicians. Even among the unhappy clergymen, stigmatised as "scandalous," many were, probably, rather offensive to their enemies by hostility to the tide of revolution than by any fair objections to their personal habits. The bulk, however, of those whom this committee visited with ruin, really could be charged with little solid or important, besides malignancy, a compendious term of reproach which merely meant affection to the monarch and hatred of his oppressors. Thus, if the more moderate portion of the House

1 Nov. 3, 1640.

2 "The bare convening of a clergyman before the committee (and this was always in the power of the meanest and most profligate parishioner to do) was sufficient to give him the character

of a scandalous minister." Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, Lond. 1714. p. 64.

3 "Few, or none of the loyal clergy escaped the lash." Ibid.

of Commons had seen a reasonable prospect of succeeding, without extraneous aid, in reducing the regal power within satisfactory limits, and the violent encroaching spirits of the house had been likely to secure, by English means alone, sufficient gratifications for their own pride and cupidity, the church might have kept her liturgy and some sort of bishops. With the former, indeed, it probably would have been rendered allowable to mingle extemporaneous prayers, and the latter, undoubtedly, must have descended to a level endurable by envious insolence, and placing considerable pecuniary advantages within reach of party leaders. But Charles proved an enemy that often bade fair to baffle the Parliament, and hence its more violent members must have had many hours of uneasiness, if not of despondence. The Scots were, therefore, felt of vital importance to turn the scale, and nothing would satisfy that fanatical abhorrence of episcopacy, which drove them into war, short of English adhesion to their vaunted covenant.

§ 8. When this was formally imposed upon the nation, in 1643, it became a new instrument for ejecting the clergy from their benefices, and by its means the ruling party involved in ruin such obnoxious members of the clerical body as had hitherto avoided spoliation. A fifth of their livings might, indeed, be reserved for the future subsistence of their wives and families, but loud complaints were made as to evasions of an obligation to pay this pittance. The triumphant party, however, which showed this degree of regard for the maintenance of helpless dependents upon despoiled incumbents, showed none to their religious prepossessions. In 1645 the use of the liturgy was prohibited, even in private houses, under a penalty of five pounds, and thus the church of England was, equally with that of Rome, denied any toleration. Under this prohibition it continued until the Restoration, the army, which insisted upon toleration for Protestant sectarianism, having nothing but hatred for the principles of that religious establishment which recent troubles had subverted. Nevertheless, episcopal clergymen of talent continually came before the public in ways favourable to the ultimate success of their

Fuller, b. xi. p. 230. VOL. IV.

5 Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, p. 28.

U

order, though not immediately connected with it. In particular, the London Polyglot appeared under Cromwell, who, to his honour, patronised it, although its editor was that active, well-known scholar, Brian Walton, who had been sequestered as a delinquent, and became eventually bishop of Chester. Cromwell also claims the distinction of a ready attention to Protestant distress, wherever it might occur. Not only did he interpose the irresistible weight of his authority, when the petty court of Turin turned anew the tide of persecution upon its Waldensian subjects, but also the powerful monarchy of France was alive to the imprudence of disregarding him when he remonstrated against oppressions undergone by unfortunate Hugonots in the south of that kingdom. If we might implicitly believe dissenting authorities, the Protectorate, and the years immediately bordering upon it, were likewise the season when England was much more virtuous and religious than at any other time". But some of the virtues, then unusually conspicuous, were of the class closely connected with worldly prudence, and hence fallacious marks of sterling excellence, unless combined with good qualities of a more private and disinterested character in a proportion above the average. This happy excess is necessarily very rare, and it does not seem to have been attained in any remarkable degree by the religious professors of the Commonwealth. Hence their claims to an excellence really above that of other christian communities have been successfully resisted, and even derided, by opponents. As to their outward religious profession, it undoubtedly differed from that of serious men ordinarily, by the use of a peculiar phraseology, and by making a great point of certain habits and abstinences. But in such distinctions is nothing absolutely incompatible either with interested practices, proud and angry feelings, or such a degree of personal indulgence as is not publicly offensive. Hence dissenting representations of public religion and morality, when the church was overthrown, have fairly been considered as

6 Cromwell's Memoirs of the Protector, Oliver Cromwell, Lond. 1820. p. 622.

7" It does not admit of reasonable doubt that the strength and prevalence

of religion during the period in question, was far greater than at any former age." Price's Hist. of Prot. Nonconf. ii. 644. See also Neal, iii. 46.