attempt it in a more private way; for this purpose they erected a presbytery at Wandsworth, a village five miles from the city, conveniently situated for the London brethren, as standing on the banks of the river Thames. The heads of the association were, Mr. Field lecturer of Wandsworth, Mr. Smith of Mitcham, Mr. Crane of Roehampton, Messrs. Wilcox, Standen, Jackson, Bonham, Saintloe, and Edmonds, to whom afterwards were joined Messrs. Travers, Chake, Barber, Gardiner, Crook, Egerton, and a number of very considerable laymen. On the 20th of November eleven elders were chosen, and their offices described in a register, intitled, The orders of Wandsworth. This was the first presbyterian church in England. All imaginable care was taken to keep their proceedings secret, but the bishop's eye was upon them, who gave immediate intelligence to the high commission, upon which the Queen issued out a proclamation for putting the act of uniformity in execution; but though the commissioners knew of the presbytery, they could not discover the members of it, nor prevent others being erected in neighboring counties. While the Queen and bishops were defending the outworks of the church against the puritans, and bracing up the building with articles, canons, injunctions, and penal laws, enforced by the sword of the civil magistrate, the papists were sapping the very foundation; for upon publishing the pope's bull of excommunication against the Queen, great numbers deserted the public worship, and resorted to private conventicles to hear mass, while others who kept their stations in the church were secretly undermining it. "There "were at this time (says a learned writer*) certain ministers of the church that were papists, who subscribed and ob'served the orders of the church, wore a side gown, a square cap, a cope and surplice. They would run into corners, and say to the people, Believe not this new doctrine, it is 'naught, it will not long endure; although I use order 6 among them outwardly, my heart is not with them, but with the mother church of Rome. No, no, we do not 'preach, nor yet teach openly; though we read their *Strype's Ann. p. 98.1 "new devised homilies for a colour to satisfy the time for "a season." In Yorkshire they went openly to mass, and were so numerous, that the protestants stood in awe of them. In London there was a great resort to the Portugal ambassador's chapel; and when the sheriff, by order of the bishop of London, sent his officers to take some of them into custody, the Queen was displeased, and ordered them immediately to be released. Sad was the state of religion (says Mr. Strype) at this time; "the substantials being lost in contending for externals; the churchmen heaped up many benefices upon themselves, and resided upon none; neglecting their cures.§ Many of them alienated their lands, made unreasonable leases, and waste of woods, and granted reversions, and advowsons to their wives and children.-Among the laity there was little devotion; the Lord's day greatly profaned, and little observed; the common prayers not frequented; some lived without any service of GoD at all; many 'were mere heathens and atheists; the Queen's own court 'an harbor for epicures and atheists, and a kind of lawless 'place, because it stood in no parish; which things made good men fear some sad judgments impending over the 'nation." The governors of the church expressed no concern for suppressing of vice, and encouraging virtue; there were no citations into the Commons for immoralities: but the bishops were every day shutting the mouths of the most pious, useful and industrious preachers in the nation, at the time when the Queen was sick of the small-pox, and troubled with fainting fits, and the whole reformation depended upon the single thread of her life. This precarious state of religion was the more terrible, because of the Parisian massacre, which happened this very summer [1572] on the 24th of August, being Bartholomewday, when great numbers of protestants having been invited to Paris, on pretence of doing honor to the King of Navarre's marriage to the King's sister, ten thousand were massacred in one night, and twenty thousand more in other parts of the kingdom, within the compass of a few weeks, § Life of Parker, p. 395. by his majesty's commission; no distinction being made. between lords, gentlemen, justices, lawyers, scholars, physicians, and the meanest of the people ;* they spared neither women, maids, children in the cradle, nor infants in their mother's womb. Many who escaped fled to Geneva and Switzerland, and great numbers into England, to save their lives. The protestant princes of Germany were awakened with this butchery; and the Queen put the coasts into a posture of defence, but made no concessions for uniting her protestant subjects among themselves. This year died the reverend and learned Mr. John Knox, the apostle, and chief reformer of the kirk of Scotland. This divine came into England in the reign of King Edward VI. and was appointed one of the itinerant preachers for the year 1552; he was afterwards offered a parochial living in London, but refused it; upon King Edward's death he retired beyond sea, and became preacher to the English exiles at Frankfort, till he was artfully spirited away by the contrivance of Mr. Cox, now bishop of Ely, for not reading the English service. He afterwards preached to the English at Geneva; and upon the breaking up of that congregation in the year 1559, he returned to Scot land, and was a great instrument in the hand of providence for the reformation of that kirk. He was a son of thun, der, and feared not the face of any man in the cause of religion, which betrayed him sometimes into too coarse treatment of his superiors. However, he had the respect of all the protestant nobility and gentry of his country; and after a life of great service and labor, he died comfortably in the midst of his friends, in the 67th year of his age,† being greatly supported in his last hours from the 17th chapter of St. John, and 1 Cor. 15th chapter; both which * Strype's Ann. p. 160. 6 It has been justly observed, "That though the praise of sincerity and piety cannot be denied him, it is to be regretted that those virtues were accompanied with a narrow and bigotted turn of mind. In the time of John Knox, the having suffered persecution, did not hinder men from exercising persecution when it was in their power. The New Annual Register for 1789. History of Knowledge, p. 31. + Life of Parker, p. 366. he ordered to be frequently read to him: His body was attended to the grave with great solemnity and honor. Letters The Queen being incensed against the puritans for their late applications to parliament, reprimanded the bishops for not suppressing them, resolving to bend all the powers of the crown that way. Accordingly commissioners were appointed under the great seal, in every shire, to put in execution the penal laws by way of Oyer and Terminer, and the Queen published a proclamation in the month of Oct. declaring her royal pleasure, that all offenders against the act of uniformity should be severely punished. were also sent from the lords of the council to the bishops, dated Nov. 7th, 1573, to enforce her majesty's proclamation;t in which, after having reproached them with holding their courts only to get money, or for such like purposes, they now require them in her majesty's name, either by themselves, which is most fit, or by their archdeacons, personally to visit and see that the habits, with all the Queen's injunctions, be exactly and uniformly observed in every church of their diocese; and to punish all refusers according to the ecclesiastical laws. The lord treasurer also made a long speech before the commissioners in the star chamber,§ in which by the Queen's order, "He charged the bishops with neglect, in not enforcing her majesty's proclamation; ' he said the Queen could not satisfy her conscience without 'crushing the puritans; for she thought none of her subjects worthy of her protection that favored innovations, or that directly or indirectly countenanced the alteration of any thing established in the church: That by too much lenity some might be apt to think the exceptions of these novelists Life of Parker, p. 447, 479. Strype's Ann. vol. ii. p. 260. § Life of Parker, p. 456, 458. The letter from the lords of the council, and the speech of the lord treasurer, are alledged by bishop Maddox, as convincing proofs of the mild conduct of the bishops. How far his conclusion is justly drawn ; whether it prove any thing more than that the zeal and activity of the bishops did not keep pace with the wishes of the court, the reader will judge from the facts Mr. Neal's history has exhibited. But, however this evidence may exculpate the bishops, it certainly impeaches the lenity of the Queen, and is a direct proof of the severity, the unyielding severity, of her government. Ep. against the ceremonies were reasonable and well founded, 6 or but trifling matters of disputation ; but the Queen was resolved that her orders and injunctions should not be con❝ temned; that the public rule should be inviolably observed; and that there should be an absolute obedience, be'cause the safety of her government depended upon it." The treasurer, therefore, or some other member, proposed in council, that all ministers throughout the kingdom should be bound in a bond of 2001. to conform in all things to the act of uniformity, and in case of default their names to be returned into the exchequer by the bishop, and the bond to be sued.* If this project had taken place, it would have ruined half the clergy of the kingdom. Another occasion of these extraordinary proceedings of the court, is said to arise from the accidental madness of one Peter Birchet, of the Middle Temple, who had the name of a puritan, but was disordered in his senses; this man came out of the Temple in his gown, Oct. 14, 1573, about eleven in the morning, and seeing Mr. Fitz-Gerard, lieutenant of the pensioners, Sir Wm. Winter, and Mr. Hawkins, officers of the Queen's navy, riding through the Strand, with their servants on foot, came up to them, and suddenly struck Hawkins with a dagger through the right arm into the body about the arm-hole, and immediately ran into the Bell-Inn, where he was taken, and upon examination being asked, whether he knew Mr. Hawkins? he answered he took him for Mr. Hatton, captain of the guards, and one of the privy chamber, whom he was moved to kill by the spirit of GOD, by which he should do GoD and his country acceptable service because he was an enemy of God's word and a maintainer of papistry. In which opinion he persevered, without any signs of repentance, till, for fear of being burnt for heresy, be recanted before Dr. Sandys bishop of London, and the rest of the commissioners. The Queen asked her two chief justices, and attorney-general, what corporal punishment the villain might undergo for his offence; it was proposed to put him to death as a felon, because a premeditated attempt with an intention of killing had been so punished by King Edward II. though the party wounded did not die; but the Strype's Ann. p. 260. Life of Grindal, p. 185. |