way, as it has been seen in several of them, into the number of the martyrs: the movements of these attracted the notice of the Council, and increased their suspicion of political mischief. The continual endeavours that were made in England to supply the exiles with money, and the intercourse that was maintained with them, betrayed at times the secrets of the large number of persons who neither fled nor conformed, nor dared the authorities, but sought safety in absolute concealment, like Parker, or in change of abode, passing rapidly from county to county, like the numerous victims of Rich or of Tyrrell. On the other hand the sufferings of the exiles ought not to be without consideration. The hardships and dangers of the way, the separation from country and friends, the upbreaking of connections, the loss of trades, and in the learned of stipends and promotions, the poverty and dependence into which many sank, were undeserved and cruel. "What is exile? A thing painful only in imagination, provided you have wherewith to subsist," exclaimed one of them*: but even Ponet, who had the best adjutaments of Melanchthon, Bullinger and Martyr, found, like the merry Morison, that exile might include a premature grave. But beyond their sufferings it is to be lamented that so many of the most embittered children of the Reformation were thrown together in banishment : for they were destined to return, and to influence themselves throughout the Church of their own country: and the most memorable part of their history in exile is concerned with the dissensions that arose among them. The very Book of prayers, service, and offices which their countrymen at home were braving gaols and faggots to * Ponet to Bullinger, Orig. Lett. p. 116. In the letters of Dean Haddon, of Banks, and of Reniger in the same volume are some instances of the shifts to which some of the learned exiles were reduced. They beg to be employed in printing offices, and so on. defend, was to them the cause of strife: it was depraved and abandoned by some of them and it could not be forgotten afterwards that the controversy concerning the worship of the Church, behind which lay the question of Church government, had been carried to extremity among them in a mean and miserable contest. Even in those who are versed in the dishonesty of zeal, it may move surprise that men who had fled from the government of Mary were found to argue that the English Prayer Book ought no longer to be observed because the use of it had been forbidden by the government of Mary. From the countries indeed and cities of the German Protestants the exiles were generally repulsed: the hospitality of Saxony was refused to them; and the remonstrances of Melanchthon and the Phillippists prevailed nothing in their favour with the more numerous and fiercer part that preferred the name of Martinists to that of Lutherans, and, somewhat too indiscriminately, supposed the English to hold the opinions of their eternal foes the Calvinists.* In two or three of the free or imperial cities the fugitives were received: but the great part of them passed into camps where other flags were flying, into Switzerland the most. At Embden in East Friesland a church of English was settled, not without the countenance of Laski, who had found a refuge there, side by side with a church of French. Bishop Scory late of Chichester was head of it: who, it is to be regretted, took the title of superintendent. The unmeaning hatred of the episcopal title, which was the weakness of the Reformation, led the exiles * "Here the Martinists (as the Lutherans in general choose to be called rather than Lutherans) cease not openly to censure and reprove their orthodox fellow ministers (whom also they denominate Calvinists) in their public discourses and with the utmost boldness." So wrote Richard Hilles from Antwerp in 1566. Martyr to Bullinger, Feb. 1554. Zurich Letters, 174. everywhere to make a distinction between episcopacy and pastoral episcopacy: to choose for the latter the names of pastor, or of superindendent: and while men like Scory, who were consecrated bishops, took such titles in some places, in other places such titles were assumed by men of lower degree: the incongruity was evaded that might have been felt if these had been termed bishops, and at the same time the superiority of orders was broken down. At Wesel, a Lutheran city, a small number of English had a meeting for some time, but under continual trouble. The magistrates remarked that they differed in some particulars from the Augustan Confession, and would have expelled them at once but for the intercession of the great Melanchthon.* The pastor whom they chose deserted them and they invited the famous preacher Lever to take his place: who came, but only to share the expulsion which was determined at last. Twenty-five families took their journey from the inhospitable city with the cry that they were driven from their country by popery, from their refuge by Lutheranism: from every point of the dominions of the King of Germany, Ferdinand, they were repulsed, till they climbed the mountains and found an asylum in the little town of Arau in Bernet To the intervention of Melanchthon was owing the allowance of the magistrates of Frankfort on the Maine, where the English seated their most conspicuous or contentious church under the condition of using the building wherein they met in alternation with a French congregation: an arrangement which was the cause of woes unnumbered; which must be told anon. Many of the most considerable of the exiles gathered themselves together in Strasburg around the chair of Peter Martyr, who gave them a warm * Strype's Cranmer, Bk. iii. ch. 15: which is one of the most important of the authorities on the exile. + See Lover's letters in Orig. Lett. p. 169, sq. welcome. These were Bishop Ponet, Dean Haddon, Sir John Cheke, Sir Antony Cook, Sir Richard Morison, Sandys, Grindal, Thomas Sampson, Eaton, Goodman, Banks, Becon, some other not undistinguished names." At Zurich, under the patronage of the well-known Bullinger, there was no formed church or congregation: but thirteen or fourteen learned exiles, among them Horn, Chambers, at one time Lever, John Parkhurst, Laurence Humfrey, were lodged together beneath the roof of the benevolent pastor himself, where they maintained themselves in various ways, not without the aid of the town, it may have been, although they were as little burdensome as might be. To Basil the printing press of Operinus drew Bale, Fox, and others: others and the Scottishman Knox were drawn to Geneva by the fascination of Calvin: but in neither place, nor whereso else the exiles found harbour, appears it that churches were formed at least at the beginning. That they found sufficed them. Why endured they not to the end in peace, returning, when tyranny was overpast, to their own country without dissension? Why were they troubled: and what is the historical episode known by the name of the troubles of Frankfort? A spirit of vainglory entered into the English congregation of Frankfort early in the exile, and bred a strife of which the sweat and tears have soaked through many a page of English history. For Pullanus, late of Glastonbury, now the French pastor of that city, saluting the English exiles on their first coming with the In all these churches or congregations Fuller (Bk. viii.) has given the names of the leading men, which he collected from their subscriptions to the letters that passed between them, out of the book called "Troubles at Frankfort." I have obtained some others from Original Letters (Park. Soc.), and other sources. Some of the exiles wandered about from colony to colony. Pilkington was at Zurich, Basil, Geneva and Frankfort: Lever, Fox, Bale, went to several places. offer of his church for their worship,* would have had them join with his own congregation and increase it: which they refused, that they knew not the French language and it being agreed thereon that they should occupy the building alternately with his people, they, thinking it not meet that their customs should shock him, resolved, their consciences agreeing thereto, to disuse the surplice, omit the responses and the Litany, to change the General Confession for another, and leave out the most of the rest of the Morning Order. They entered upon this course in June, 1554: and soon after they wrote a circulatory letter of ambiguous tenor to the other English settlements of Emden, Strasburg, Zurich, Wesel. "We have," said they, " preaching, ministration and discipline. We have not been negligent. We would make you partakers of our consolation. Let no persuasions blind us, no respect of worldly policy stay us from this desire. God's children should be as pigeons, which fly by flocks into their dovehouse, the place where the word is preached, the sacraments ministered, and prayer used. May we rightly ponder the matter, follow our challenge, serve the turn, hear the speaker, walk in obedience, and resist our enemies." The meaning of this curious effusion was greatly pondered where The church of the White Virgins, in which the exiles began to worship April 20, 1554: when Pullanus manifested his contempt for fonts and baptisteries by baptising his infant son in the river. Anne Hooper to Bullinger, Orig. Lett. 110. The "Brief Discourse of the Troubles begun at Frankfort in Germany, A.D. 1554," which was first published without name in 1575, is the great authority for these events. The Scottish writer McCrie thinks it was written by Whittingham. It has also, more probably, been ascribed to Whitehead, another of the Frankfort exiles. It might be expected to be one-sided but it may be checked to some extent by contemporary letters. Fuller, Neal, Heylin, have used it; also Carwithen (in his Hist. of the Ch. of Engl. ch. xiv.). It was reprinted in the Phoenix, vol. ii. in 1708; and again in 1846. (Notice "omit the responses and the Litany.") August 2, 1554 Troubles, p. 48 (Phoenix reprint). VOL. IV. Y Y |