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Gift of
George L. Fox

TURNING POINTS

OF

ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY

TURNING POINTS

OF

ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY

BY THE LATE
REV. EDWARD L. CUTTS, B.A.
HON. D.D. UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH U.S.A.
VICAR OF HOLY TRINITY, HAVERSTOCK HILL
AUTHOR OF
'TURNING POINTS OF GENERAL CHURCH HISTORY,' *A DICTIONARY OF THE CHURCH
OF ENGLAND,' *A HANDY BOOK OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND,'
'CONSTANTINE THE GREAT,' 'CHARLEMAGNE,' ETC

TWENTY-SEVENTH THOUSAND

PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE TRACT COMMITTEE

LONDON
SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE
northumberland avenue, w.c. ; 43, queen victoria street, e.c
Brighton: 129, North Street
New York : E. S. GORHAM
1908

RICHARD Clay & Sons, Limited,
BREAD SQ-REET HILL, B.C., AND
JBUNGAY, SUFfOLK.

PREFACE
The plan of this little book is, not to give a
connected history of the Church of England, but
to put before the reader some of its principal
points, especially those which will help him to
understand the Church questions of the present
day. It has not been thought necessary in such a
sketch as this to quote authorities ; but it may be
desirable to state that pains have been taken to
make the work accurate and impartial. To secure
this the more effectually, the writer is permitted to
say, that the proof sheets have been carefully
revised by the Rev. W. Stubbs, Regius Professor
of Modern History at Oxford, one of our greatest
authorities on ecclesiastical history. He is not to
be held answerable for any opinions the work may
contain, but his corrections and suggestions have
added to its value, and his supervision will give
the reader confidence in its general correctness.

CONTENTS CHAPTER I
BRITANNIA PAGE
Situated outside the ancient world ; Caesar's first invasion ;
description of the country and people j the Druids ; Csesar's
second invasion ; the conquest under Claudius ; the Roman
province  I
CHAPTER II
THE BRITISH CHURCH
The legends of the introduction of Christianity : St. Paul ;
Bran, the father of Caractacus ; the Glastonbury legend ;
the legend of King Lucius ; the Christian Church intro
duced into Britain from Gaul about 250 a.d. ; the martyrdom
of St. Alban ; British bishops at the Council of Aries — of
Sardica ; the Pelagian heresy ; prevalence of Christianity in
Roman Britain j peculiarities of the British Church ... 10
CHAPTER III
TIJE SAXON CONQUEST
The Romans withdraw frora Britain ; the Saxon conquest j
the British Church destroyed or driven away ; the religion
of the Anglo-Saxons  .23

Vlll CONTENTS
CHAPTER IV
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST PAGE
Episcopal constitution of the primitive Church ; Bishops of
equal power and authority ; gradual grouping of sees into
provinces — into patriarchates ; attempt of the Bishop of
Constantinople to make himself head of the Church —
resisted by the Bishop of Rome  z8
CHAPTER V
THE SAXON CONVERSION : THE ITALIAN MISSION
The Saxon slaves in the Roman forura ; Augustine's mission ;
Kent converted.; Italian mission in East Anglia — in Essex
— in Northumbria ; discussion of Christianity before the
Northumbrian Witan ; apostasy of the East Anglians, East
Saxons, and Northumbrians ; conversion of Wessex ... 36
CHAPTER VI
THE FOUNDING OF lONA
St. Patrick born near Glasgow — educated and ordained in Gaul
— becomes the Apostle of Ireland ; St. Columba born —
educated and ordained in Ireland — founds lona, which be
comes a great centre of missionary v/ork  45
CHAPTER VII
THE CELTIC MISSION
Oswald gains the throne of Northumbria — sends to lona for
missionaries ; Aidan sent — founds the monastery of Lindis
farne, which becomes a centre of missionary work ; character
of Aidan ; Mercia and Essex converted by Lindisfarne
priests ; East Anglia converted by Felix the Burgundian ;
Wessex converted by Wilfrid of York ; the ancient British
Church ; Augustine's conference with British bishops — they
decline to unite or to co-operate with him ¦ .... 52

CONTENTS IX
CHAPTER VIII
THE HEPTARCHIC CHURCHES PAGE
Missionary phase of the Church in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms —
the mode of work ; Anecdotes ; differences between the
Italian and the Celtic religious customs  63
CHAPTER IX
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
The Italian and the Celtic schools agree to unite under an
archbishop ; Wighard sent to Rome for consecration as
archbishop — he dies at Rome ; the Pope Vitalian consecrates
Theodore of Tarsus ; Theodore makes a visitation — holds
the Council of Hertford, in which the Heptarchic Churches
are combined into a united Church of England — encourages
learning — subdivides dioceses — initiates parochial division ;
our constitution in Church and State ; formation of the
Province of York ; the Danish invasion, and conversion ;
summary view of the Anglo-Saxon Church ; present Church
property acquired in the Saxon period ....... 70
CHAPTER X
THE GROWTH OF THE PAPACY
Corruption of the Continental Churches in the gth and loth
centuries ; a spirit of reform springs up in the Roman
Church — Popes put themselves at the head of it — Hilde
brand the soul of the party — becomes Pope Gregory VII. ;
the theory of the spiritual supremacy founded on the forged
Decretals ; the theory of the Theocracy started by Gregory
VII  84
CHAPTER XI
THE NORMAN CONQUEST
Little intercourse between the Saxon Church and the rest of
the world — the Norman Conquest throws it open ; consti-

CONTENTS

tutional changes in the Church made by William the
Conqueror ; Gregory VII.'s demand of homage — William's
reply ; Lanfranc's life — Prior of Bee — Abbot of St. Stephen's,
Caen — made Archbishop of Canterbury ; summary of changes
introduced at the Norman Conquest  gi
CHAPTER XII
THE QUARREL OF INVESTITURE
Ancient mode of appointing bishops ; Charlemagne introduces
royal investiture ; Gregory VII. opposes lay investiture ;
quarrel between the Pope and the Emperor ; Rufus king ;
archbishopric of Canterbury vacant ; St. Anselm — ^his life-
Prior and Abbot of Bee — appointed archbishop ; the king
and archbishop quarrel ; Anselm goes to Rome ; on the
death of Rufus, Henry I. welcomes Anselm back ; Anselm
refuses lay investiture ; protracted dispute ; compromise,
which leaves the substantial victory with the king ; the
present mode of appointing English bishops  loi
CHAPTER XIII
THE CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON
Henry II. reduces the kingdom to order — establishes his juris
diction over the people— desires to abolish the privilege of
clergy; Becket — his birth — made chancellor — made arch
bishop—opposes the king's plan ; the Council of Clarendon ;
the archbishop's exile — reconciliation with the king — return
to England — murdered in his cathedral  112
CHAPTER XIV
THE pope's VASSAL
The archbishopric vacant ; King John nominates John de Grey ;
part of the Chapter secretly elect Reginald the sub-prior ;
the matter referred to the Pope, Innocent IIL— he sets aside
both candidates, and nominates Stephen Langton ; the king
refuses to admit him to the kingdom ; the Pope lays the

CONTENTS XI

PAGE
kingdom under interdict ; the king persecutes the clergy
and seizes the property of the Church ; the Pope excom
municates the king ; Philip of France gathers an army to
invade the kingdom and depose John ; John collects the
forces of the kingdom ; John submits, surrenders his kingdom
to the Pope, and receives it back as his vassal ; Reign of
Henry III. ; the Pope's plunder of the Church ; mandates ;
provisors ; foreigners intruded into English benefices . .124

CHAPTER XV
THE MONKS

The Ascetic life ; the Egyptian Hermits ; the Laura ; the
Community life ; the monastery ; the Celtic and Anglo-
Saxon monasteries ; the Rule of St. Benedict ; the Reformed
Orders ; the sites of monasteries ; Clairvaux ; Fountains ;
beneficial influence of the monasteries ; appropriation of
benefices; its evil results on the parochial "system . . , 132
CHAPTER XVI
the FRIARS
Mediaeval towns ; foundations of the Orders of Friars ; Domi
nican ; Franciscan ; their early beneficial influence ; Dete
rioration ; evil results on the Parochial system  146

CHAPTER XVII
FALSE DOCTRINES AND SUPERSTITIOUS PRACTICES OF
the MEDIEVAL CHURCH
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary ; the Immaculate Con
ception ; Marlolatry; Mediatrix; the theory of Transub
stantiation started by Paschasius Radbert— opposed by
Ratramnus — opposed by Berengarius — defended by Lanfranc
— defined in the Council of the Lateran ; the Cup withheld
from the laity ; the sacrificial aspect exaggerated ; sacra
mental aspect obscured ; reservation; Purgatory; Indul
gences; Saint Worship  '5°

xn CONTENTS

CHAPTER XVIII
THE RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY : SKETCH OF
^-' THE CHURCH IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY
^^..'^ PAGE
The country ; villages ; cathedrals ; towns ; monasteries ; the
Church on the side of the people ; morality of the people ;
parochial work and teaching ; Chaucer's Parish Priest . . 163
CHAPTER XIX
THE REACTION
Grostete, Bishop of Lincoln — opposes abuses ; Edward I.'s Law
against Provisors ; his Parliament opposes Papal preten
sions ; Papal exactions ; Edward III.'s Statute of Provisors ;
appeals to Rome forbidden ; tribute to Rome withheld ;
Parliamentary' remonstrance ; Wiclif ; Parliamentary pro
posals for Reform in the time of Henry IV.; Richard II.'s
Statute of Praemunire  I77

CHAPTER XX
THE REFORMATION : THE REPUDIATION OF THE PAPAL
SUPREMACY
Councils of Constance and Basle; Wolsey; Henry VIII., his
marriage ; question of the divorce ; act of submission ; title
of Head of the Church tantum fer Christi legem licet ;
Cranmer pronounces the king's marriage void ; repudiation
of the Papal supremacy by the king and the Convocation , 1 85
CHAPTER XXI
THE REFORMATION : SUPPRESSION OF THE REGULAR
CLERGY AND DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIES
Dissolution of some by Wolsey ; suppression of the smaller
Houses by the Act of 1535 ; the enforced surrender of the
great Houses ; Glastonbury ; the Second Act of Suppression,
1540 ; foundation of new sees ; foundation of new families . ig6

CONTENTS XUI
CHAPTER XXII
THE DOCTRINAL REFORMATION PAGE
The Ten Articles.; ' The Institution of a Christian Man ; ' the
Act of Six Articles ; ' The Necessary Doctrine for any
Christian Man ; ' reform of the Breviary ; publication of the
Bible ; mediaeval versions of the Bible ; the Bible the Rule
of Faith ; the Church's authority in controversies of faith ;
Coverdale's Bible placed in the churches ; Cranmer's Bible 203
CHAPTER XXIII
THE FOREIGN ELEMENT IN THE ENGLISH REFORMATION
Edward VI. ; suppression of the chantries ; plunder of Church
property ; suppression of ancient ceremonies ; destruction of
' Images ' ; history of the Liturgy of the Church ; First
Prayer Book of Edward VI. j influence of foreign Re
formers ; Second Prayer Book of Edward VI. ; bishops
persecuted ; merits of the Reformation — it was a Reform
ation of the Church by itself — its wisdom and moderation ;
defects of the Reformation — it pulled down but failed to
build up — plunder of Church property — loss of Church
discipline  212
CHAPTER XXIV
THE MARIAN PERSECUTION
Deposed bishops restored, and reforming bishops deposed ;
foreign Protestants leave the country with some English;
Parliament repeals the Reform legislation; the Church
reconciled to Rome ; attempt to secure conformity by perse
cution ; martyrdom of Ridley and Latimer — of Cranmer . 225
CHAPTER XXV
THE FINAL SETTLEMENT OF THE REFORMATION
Elizabeth's accession ; position of parties ; Parker ; Papal
supremacy again repudiated; Act of Uniformity passed;

CONTENTS

Second Prayer Book of Edward VI. adopted with alter
ations ; bishops who refuse to take the Oath of Supremacy
deposed ; Parker consecrated archbishop ; the " Nag's Head
Fable " ; the Pope's offer to recognize the Reformation if
the Church will acknowledge his supremacy ; the Pope
excommunicates the queen ; the Popish Schism ; the Puritan
agitation  234
CHAPTER XXVI
THE PURITANS
Calvinism ; Arminianism ; the Synod of Dort ; Puritanism pre
dominant in the Church of England ; the Anglo-Catholic
revival  246
CHAPTER XXVII
THE GREAT REBELLION
Charles I. 's accession ; political situation ; the Puritans ally
themselves with the Parliamentary party; the Anglo-
Catholics support the king ; the Long Parliament ; the
king accepts constitutional principles and redresses griev
ances ; Strafford's execution ; Cavaliers and Roundheads ;
Civil War ; Parliament victorious over the king ; Cromwell
disperses Parliament and seizes power ; Committee of Re
ligion attacks the clergy ; the Assembly of Divines ; the
Solemn League and Covenant ; murder of Archbishop Laud ;
Prayer Book suppressed ; Presbyterianlsm established ;
Presbyterians refuse toleration to Independents ; summary
of the political and religious situation ; Independency in the
ascendant  253
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE SUFFERINGS OF THE CLERGY
The Committee of Religion — persecutes the clergy — ejects them
from their benefices and imprisons them ; mob violence ;
cases of Mr. Sefton ; Mr. Phare ; Mr. Tarleton ; Mr.

CONTENTS XV
PAGE
Tyllot; Mr. Buck; Mr. Sterne; Mr. Powell; Mr. Honi-
field ; Mr. Wild ; Mr. Weyborough ; Mr. Whitby ; Mr.
Randall ; Mr. Clark  265
CHAPTER XXIX
THE RESTORATION
Cromwell's despotism — his death ; Monk marches to London —
reassembles Parliament — proclaims Charles II. ; the Savoy
Conference ; Act of Uniformity : holders of Church livings
required to be episcopally ordained and to accept the Praysr
Book, or to retire ; the Five Mile Act ; the Conventicle
Act ; the Test Act ; the king's Declaration of Indulgence —
withdrawn  277
CHAPTER XXX
THE REVOLUTION
James II.'s design to restore Romanism — officers the army with
Romanists — allows perverts still to hold their benefices ;
mass set up in two colleges in Oxford ; High Court of Com
mission revived ; Declaration of Indulgence ; bishops petition
against the Declaration — are sent to the Tower, tried, ac
quitted ; the clergy refuse to read the Declaration ; William
of Orange invited over ; the king's flight ; William and
Mary ; the Bill of Rights  285
CHAPTER XXXI
RELIGIOUS TOLERATION
The principles of toleration held to be culpable ; all the religious
parties persecuted in tum — Henry, Mary, Elizabeth, James,
Charles, the Romanists, the Puritans, the Anglo-Catholics,
the Presbyterians, the Independents ; opinions of Baxter,
Edwardes, the Nonconformist ministers ; the Independents
in New England ; persecution of Ultra-Calvinists, of Quakers,
of Roman Catholics ; the Toleration Act ; progress of toler
ation under the Church of England ; assault of Dissent upon
the Church ; Papists and Independents still intolerant . . 294

XVI CONTENTS
CHAPTER XXXII
THE MODERN PERIOD PAGE
Condition of religion at the end of the l8th century; the
Evangelical Revival — its characteristics — its defects; the
Anglican Revival— its origin, theology, ecclesiology, char
acteristics, results — its dangers ; the increase of Dissent ; the
Administrative Revival ; Tithe Commutation ; Ecclesiastical
Commission ; Church Building Acts ; new parishes ; restor
ation of churches ; parsonage houses ; hamlet chapels ;
mission rooms ; increase of numbers of clergy ; new sees ;
suffragan bishops ; women's work ; educational work . . 304
CHAPTER XXXIII

Independents: Theories of Church government — Republican
theory — establish a politico-religious sect — persecuted — flee
to Holland — their extravagances — obtain power in England
under Cromwell — their conduct. Roman Catholics secede
from the Church in 1570 — political character of their schism
— persecuted ; Catholic emancipation ; the Papal aggression ;
the Immaculate Conception ; Papal infallibility. Ana
baptists: early Anabaptists — modern sect a secession from
the Independents in 1633 — their tenets, history. Wesleyans :
John Wesley ; G. Whitfield — form a society at Oxford —
principles — encouraged by the bishops ; Wesley's voyage to
Georgia — adopts new doctrines and practices from the
Moravians — discountenanced by the Church authorities;
meeting-houses built ; split between Arminian and Calvin
istic Methodists — latter under Whitfield become a sect;
first Wesleyan Conference in 1744; Deed of Declaration,
1784; Wesley opposes the usurpation of the ministry by
his l-iy preachers, and the separation of his societies from
the Church — soon after his death Conference formally secedes
from the Church and preachers usurp the administration of
quasi-sacraments— subdivisions of the sect ; conclusion . . 313

TURNING POINTS
OF
ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY

CHAPTER I
. BRITANNIA
Look at an ancient map of Europe. At the date of
the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ the blue, sunny, tide-
less Mediterranean Sea was what its name implied — the
Sea in the middle of the World ; for all the principal
nations of the world lay around it — Italy, Greece,
Syria, Judea, Egypt, Libya, Spain, Gaul ; all the great
cities were on its coasts — Rome, Athens, Corinth, Ephe
sus, Antioch, Alexandria. And all these nations of
Southern Europe and Western Asia and Northern Africa
had become subject to the power of Imperial Rome.
Outside the Pillars of Hercules, bounding the western
side of the world, was the stormy outer ocean, with its
mysterious tides and vast waves, a wild waste of waters
stretching no one knew how far toward the north and
south and west. The Island of Britain, which lay in
this outer ocean, beyond the coasts of Gaul, was looked
upon as lying outside the world : toto divisos orbe
Britannos. Julius Csesar made this island known to the rest of
the world. Seeking some new exploit with which he
B

TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY

might dazzle the imagination of the Romans, he pro
jected the conquest of Britain. In the year 55 B.C., he
gathered together the shipping of the Gallic harbours,
carried two legions and a small body of horse across the
strait, and effected a landing on the opposite shore in
spite of brave opposition.. But his force was insufficient
for conquest ; he could not venture to move out of reach
of his entrenched camp and fleet. He repulsed, how
ever, an attack on his camp, sallied out and inflicted a
severe defeat on his assailants, and then gladly accepted
their offers of peace, and withdrew his troops before the
winter came. This first expedition was little more than
a reconnaisance in force. Before he returned to Rome
he left orders with his lieutenants in Gaul to make all
preparations for an invasion of Britain on a greater scale
in the following spring.
Csesar was an historian as well as a statesman and a
general, and wrote a history of this war, from which we
derive nearly all we know of the condition at that period
of Britain and the Britons. A comparison of the Britain
of those times with the New Zealand of our own will
help the reader to realize its condition. The land was
for the most part covered with forest, such as in New
Zealand and Australia we call bush. The climate con
sequently was more humid than now, and the unrestrained
rivers flooded wide tracts of land after every rain, and
formed great marshes in the lowlands, and drained into
numerous meres. These forests, meres, and marshes
harboured wolves, bears, wild boars, wild cattle, deer,
fox, wild cat, otter, badger, beaver, and game of many
sorts which can find no shelter now in a land which has
only a corner here and there left in its native wildness.
The island was chiefly inhabited by two Celtic races,
the Gaels and the Britons, each divided into numerous

BRITANNIA

tribes. These Celtic races inhabited the interior and the
north and west of the island, wandering from place to
place with their cattle without any settled habitations.
A more civilized race, allied to the Belgians of the op
posite coasts, inhabited the sea-board from the Humber
to Devonshire, stretching inward so far, perhaps, as to
occupy the modern counties of Hertford, Buckingham,
and Berks. They had " towns " — portions of forest sur
rounded by a stockade, like the New Zealand " pahs " —
within which their cattle could be driven for safety. Two
or three great roads traversed the south of the country ;
they may have been little more than trackways across
hill and down, crossing the rivers at fords, with clearings
cut through the forests, but their existence indicates a
degree of intercourse among the different tribes. The
Britons tilled the land as well as kept cattle ; they carried
on some commerce with Gaul ; they had a coinage in
silver and gold, and a written language; they trained
horses and drove chariots, which they used also with
scythed wheels in war.
From Cffisar and PUny, with what modern research
has gleaned from other sources, we learn something about
their religion.
The Druids formed a sacred caste among them. What
we know of the Druids leads to the conclusion that in
some past time a number of men of higher race and in
a more advanced state of civilization came among the
ruder tribes of Britain, and were received with the vener
ation with which the Peruvians and Mexicans 300 years
ago, and the Pacific Islanders of later times, looked up
to their first European visitors. The, Druids, however,
would seem to have been a community of priests or
philosophers rather than of ambitious soldiers or mer
cenary traders, and contented themselves with establishing

4 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
a hierarchy, conferring many blessings of religion and
civilization on the people among whom they settled, and
taking certain moderate privileges and advantages in
return. Csesar says : " The Druids act in all sacred
matters ; they attend to the sacrifices, which are offered
either by the tribe in general or by individuals, and
answer all questions concerning religion .... they
decide in all controversies, whether public or private,
and they judge all cases, whether of murder, of a dis
puted inheritance, or of the boundaries of estates. They
assign both rewards and punishments, and whoever re
fuses to abide by their sentence is excommunicated. . . .
Young men are gladly placed with them by their parents
and relations to learn their doctrines. In their schools
the pupils are said to learn by heart a large number ot
verses, and in this way some of the scholars pass twenty
years in completing their education. The Druids enjoy
peculiar privileges : they are exempt from service in war
and from the payment of taxes ; they have also many
other immunities. . . . The Druidic system is thought
to have had its origin in Britain, from whence it was
introduced into Gaul, and it is still customary for those
who wish to study it more thoroughly to pass over into
Britain for that purpose." It seems probable that the
system came from the East, perhaps from Northern
India. The Druids had no supreme chief, and for the
most part lived in communities, apparently in retired
places. They wore the hair short and the beard long,
dressed in a long robe, wore a " serpent's egg," enclosed
in gold, suspended from the neck, and bore a staff. In
their secret teaching they are said to have taught the
initiated to believe in one God, but the popular religion
had a number of gods (to whom Csesar gives the names
of the classical divinities), and the mountains, lakes,

BRITANNIA

rivers, trees, and fountains had their several divinities.
They taught the immortality of the soul. Their religious
rites consisted chiefly of sacrifices, which on extraordinary
occasions were of human victims. Cssar tells us that
on some great national occasions they made immense
images of wicker-work, which they filled with men, who
were thus burnt alive in offering to their deities.^ They
professed to divine the future. They seem to have used
open-air temples surrounded by a grove of oaks, or en
closed by upright stones arranged in circles, with which
are sometimes connected winding avenues of upright
stones, as at Stonehenge and Avebury in Wiltshire, and
at Carnac in Brittany. Pliny tells us of their veneration
for the oak, and the mistletoe which grows upon the
oak, and of the ceremonial with which it was gathered
in their new-year solemnities. They had midsummer
rites connected with the veneration of fire, and other
rites connected with the harvest in May and October.
It is curious to observe how tenacious of life the
customs of a people are. It is 2000 years since Druidism
was driven out of the land, and yet traces of Druidical
superstitions and observances continued from age to age.
In the 6th, 7th, and Sth centuries there were numerous
edicts of emperors, and canons of councils, against the
worship of the sun and moon, of mountains, rivers, lakes,
and trees. Even in the nth century a law of Canute
' A recent writer points out that if these images of wicker-work
were upright figures, as they are represented in the imaginary illus
trations of our school histories, the lower part would be at once
burnt, and the image would fall down, and there would be a
scramble for life among the liberated victims. He suggests that
they may have been such images as the gigantic figures traced out
in the turf of some of our hills, like the White Horse in Berkshire,
and the Long Man at Wilmington, near Hastings : and that these
spaces were enclosed by hurdles within which the sacrifices took
place.

6 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
shows US that the local veneration for the old sacred
springs and trees, and superstitious observances con
nected with them, still remained. And even to the
present day the universal use of mistletoe as a decoration
of our houses at Christmas time, and the social customs
attached to it, are , a tradition of its Druidical use and
meaning; while the fact that it is never used for the
Christmas decoration of churches indicates that the early
Christian teachers would not allow the symbol of the
false religion to be introduced into the Christian temples.
The next year, 54 b.c, great preparations having been
made in the meantime, Csesar came again to Britain with
five legions and 2000 horse, in a fleet of 800 vessels,
prepared for conquest. The Britons, also, had not been
idle ; they had united their forces under Cassivellaunus,
the most powerful king in the south of the island ; and
they gave the finisst troops and the greatest general in
the world very considerable trouble and anxiety. In the
end, after a campaign of about five months, the greater
part of the south of the island was compelled to submit.,
But C«sar did not retain possession of the country.
The Britons gave hostages, and promised, a tribute,
which seems to have been very irregularly paid; and
their bravery secured for them neariy another century of
practical independence of the Roman yoke.
The islands, however, were thus made known and
opened up to intercourse with the Roman worid. The
British chiefs and upper classes began to adopt the
Roman civilization. Britons began to visit Rome
and strangers came to visit Britain. A more active
commerce sprang up with the Continent, and London
began to be noted as the emporium of that commerce.
It was near 100 years after, in the year 43 a.d., that
the conquest of the island was again undertaken by the

BRITANNIA

Emperor Claudius. He did not find the conquest an
easy one ; the progress of the Roman arms met with an
obstinate resistance ; conquered tribes frequently broke
out into rebellion, and sometimes inflicted heavy reverses
on their enemies. It took forty years before the con
quest was complete, and then Northern Britain success
fully resisted the power of Rome. It was only those
parts of the island which constitute England and Wales
and the lowlands of Scotland, which were finally annexed
to the Roman Empire. A chain of forts from the Forth
to the Clyde was erected to protect these conquests from
the turbulent northern tribes. Hadrian, after repressing
their incursions, drew back the frontier line to the isthmus
between the Solway and the Tyne, and erected the more
formidable barrier of a stone wall strengthened by forts
and stations. A little later Antoninus once more pushed
forward the frontier to the old line of the more northern
isthmus and strengthened it with an earthen wall.
The conquerors proceeded without delay, according to
their usual pohcy, to civilize their new acquisition. They
built cities adorned with forums, temples, and theatres.
Many of these cities were fortified, and were connected
by noble high-roads, with convenient Stations (/. e. post-
stations) at regular distances. Roman capitalists invested
laif ely in British agriculture ; the land was extensively
cultivated, and soon exported great quantities of corn to
Rome ; the Villas of the great landed proprietors, which
have their counterpart in the Estancias of South America,
or more remotely in the Stations of Australian and
African settlers, were scattered over the south of the
country. They established manufactures, worked mines,
promoted commerce, and cultivated the fine arts. The
upper classes of the Britons adopted the new civilization,
dressed and lived like Romans, spoke Latin, and inter-

8 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
mixed with the conquerors. In short, the Britons became
Romanized ; and for 350 years, a period as long as from
the Reformation to the present day, Britain was a province
of the Roman Empire.
This province was ultimately divided into five depart
ments : Britannia Prima, Britannia Secunda, Flavia
Csesariensis, Maxima Csesariensis, and Valentia. The
first of these consisted of the whole south of the island
up to the Thames and the Bristol Channel. The second
coincided with the modern principality of Wales.
Flavia comprised the middle of the island from the
Thames to the Humber and the Mersey. North of this,
to a distance of twenty-five miles beyond Hadrian's Wall,
was the Maxima Csesariensis, and Valentia coincided
with the lowlands of Scotland. We have the names of
thirty-three cities and towns of various rank and impor
tance scattered all over the province. These towns had
municipal institutions and formed each a little self-govern
ing republic. There was an elaborately organized civil
government, extending its ramifications over the province.
There was a distinct military organization. Three
legions formed a permanent garrison, the 6th at York,
the 20th at Chester,! and the 2nd at Caerleon ; the
northern frontier and the east and south coasts were
guarded by a chain of military settlements of irregulars.
These troops were not changed from time to time,
but occupied the same stations permanently, with wives
and families, forming military colonies rather than
garrisons. The religion of the province of Britannia was that of
the rest of the empire. Claudius proscribed the Druids,
who were forthwith driven out of the province. The rude
1 This was withdrawn from the island in the latter part of the
Roman period.

BRITANNIA

grandeur of the stone circles and the religious gloom of
the oak groves were superseded by elegant classical
temples of Jupiter and Apollo ; the foreign settlers and
the mercenaries, who were recruited from all parts of the
world, introduced their native superstitions ; but many of
the people, no doubt, still clung to the proscribed religion,
and still paid superstitious reverence to stone circles and
oak groves and sacred fountains.

CHAPTER II
THE BRITISH CHURCH
Who first preached the Gospel in Britain ? When and
by whom was the Church of Christ first planted here ?
The sketch of ancient Britain, and its reduction to a
Roman province, in the last chapter, have been introduced
in order to place us in a condition to give an intelligent
consideration to the numerous conflicting answers to these
questions. Some naturally desire to claim St. Paul as the Apostle
of Britain, and they adduce evidence to show the
probability of the claim. There are eight years of St.
Paul's life, between his first and second imprisonments at
Rome, during which the Acts ofthe Apostles fails to reveal
to us the scene of his apostolic labours. When we look
to the early Christian writers in the hope of being able to
fill up the gap, we are tantalized by vague general phrases
which do not assert that St. Paul visited Britain, and do
not exclude the possibility of such a visit. Clement of
Rome, who was contemporary with the Apostle, tells us
that he extended his labours to the " utmost bounds of
the west." This is a phrase in which writers of the time
often included Britain ; but it is a vague rhetorical phrase,
which would be equally true if St. Paul had not done
more than fulfil the intention he expressed in his letter to
the Romans (chap, xv.) of travelling into Spain. Tertullian
says that the Gospel had already (200 a.d.) penetrated
into parts of Britain not subject to the Roman power.

THE BRITISH CHURCH

Other vague expressions of a similar kind occur in Jerome,
A.D. 390, and in Theodoret, a.d. 423. Eusebius, the
historian ofthe early Church, a.d. 325, after speaking of
the spreading of the Gospel among the Romans, Persians,
Armenians, Parthians, Indians, and Scythians, adds that
" some passed over the ocean to those which are called
the British Isles." Venantius Fortunatus, a.d. 560, and
Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, a.d. 560, are usually
quoted as the first who expressly state that St. Paul visited
Britain. But Fortunatus only says that the teaching of
St. Paul, stylus ille, spread to Britain and Ultima Thule :
he limits St. Paul's personal travels to Illyricum. Sophro
nius is quoted by the Magdeburg centuriators and others
as bringing St. Paul in person to Britain, but there is no
thing to that effect in the printed fragments of Sophronius,
and (says Mr. Haddan ^) his authority is worthless if there
were. There is, in short, no authority earlier than the
Welsh Triads, whose date is more than a thousand years
later, for supposing that there was any special local venera
tion for St. Paul in Britain ; and there is absolutely no
authority whatever for the supposition that the Apostle
ever personally visited these islands.
We all remember the interesting story which Tacitus
tells us of Caractacus, the leader of the confederate armies
of the Britons against the invasion of Claudius, that, when
he was carried prisoner to Rome and saw its magnificence,
he exclaimed, " How is it that the possessors of so much
magnificence could envy me my cottage in Britain ? " and
that he made so eloquent an appeal to Claudius that the
Emperor set him at hberty. The Welsh Triads (collected
in the 13th century, but conveying the traditions of an
earlier time) assert that Bran, the father of Caractacus,
being left seven years in Rome as a hostage for his son,
1 Haddan and Stubbs's ' Concilia.'

12 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
was converted to Christianity, and carried the faith back
with him to Britain. The fact that St. Paul's imprison
ment in Rome coincided with the last two years of that
of the father of Caractacus gives occasion to a lively
imagination to conjecture that the Druid priest (for so
he was) may have been converted to the faith by the
Apostle of the Gentiles. But we cannot accept the
story as history ; it is inconsistent with Tacitus and Dio
Cassius, and it rests solely on the testimony of the Welsh
Triads. The Glastonbury thorn, which blossoms at Christmas,
was for many centuries accepted as a miraculous testimony
to the legend of the place that Joseph of Arimathea, after
a sojourn in Gaul, came, accompanied by Lazarus and
his sisters Martha and Mary, bringing with him the holy
grail,^ and preached the Gospel in the Isle of Avalon, and
confirmed his preaching by striking into the ground his
staff of thorn, which forthwith broke out, like Aaron's rod,
into leaf and blossom, and grew into a tree, which always
blossomed at the same Christmas season. But when we
come to examine the evidence of the story, it turns out
to be of post-Norman date : William of Malmesbury is the
earliest authority for any part of it. And though Glaston
bury is an ancient British foundation, and perhaps one
of the earliest Christian settlements in the island, yet the
story of its foundation by Joseph of Arimathea is purely
mythical. Another legend says that we owe our Christianity to
Lucius, King of the Britons, who in the 2nd century, hav
ing heard of Christianity, sent an embassy to Eleutherius,
Bishop of Rome, asking to have the Gospel sent to him
and his people ; and that his ambassadors, having been
instructed and consecrated, returned and founded a
* The vessel in which our Lord consecrated the Eucharist.

THE BRITISH CHURCH 1 3
Church here. The historical critic traces the origin and
growth of the story. The Catalogus Pontificum Roman
orum was originally written shortly after the year 353,
and in it is recorded the name of Eleutherius, and the
date of his pontificate. In the year 530 this catalogue
had considerable additions made to it, and among
these additions is a note under the entry of Eleutherius's
name, that in his time Lucius, King of Britain, was
converted. Gildas, a.d. 560, the great authority for
the history of the British Church, makes no mention
of Lucius. Bede, in the Sth century, introduced the
story into England. Nennius, in the 9th century, ex
panded the story into the conversion of the whole of
Britain. Between that time and the 12th century
it came to be connected with North Wales. The
Book of Llandaff (a compilation of the 12th century)
gives the names of Lucius's ambassadors, and tells us
where they founded their sees. The whole story rests
on the interpolated note in the Catalogue of Roman
Pontiffs, and cannot be received as historical.
It is well that we should know these stories : they are
the myths of our early ecclesiastical history ; they enter
into our English literature ; but none of them can be
accepted as anything more than legendary stories. In_
mediseval times there was a theological motive for en
couraging the belief that Rome had special claims on the
gratitude and obedience of the Christian world ; and in
more modern days there was an equal motive for trying
to show that we owe our Christianity to St. Paul and
not to the representatives of St. Peter. Our business is
to guard ourselves against all prepossessions, to sift all
legendary histories, and to endeavour to arrive at the
truth. We have seen that, after the invasion of Julius Csesar,

14 TURNING POINTS OF. ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
the island was opened up to intercourse with the rest of
the world, and that after the conquest of Claudius it be
came an integral part of the empire. Still the chief
intercourse between Britain and the civilized world was
through Gaul, and there are many reasons for believing
that Christianity came to us through that channel. In
Gaul a few scattered churches were planted from 150 a.d.
to 170 A.D., of which Lyons was the chief; and they did
not extend far northward from that city. The Christian
izing of Gaul as a whole is due to a great missionary effort
in the time of Decius, about 250 a.d.; and the historical
probability is that, though there may have been isolated
believers in Britain previous to that time, yet the planting
of the Church in Britain was not earlier than that date.
The only remaining legend which we need to mention
and to investigate is that of St. Alban. The legend as it
is told by Bede is as follows : — During the Diocletian
persecution (304 a.d.), Alban, a citizen of Verulamium,
sheltered in his house a priest who was fleeing from his
persecutors. The sight of the good man's life, his watch
ings and prayers, impressed his entertainer's mind, and
he became a convert. After some days it became known
where the priest was concealed, and soldiers were sent
to seize him ; but Alban put on the priest's dress, and
allowed himself to be taken, while the priest made his
escape. On being brought before the judge he was
ordered to sacrifice to the gods, but, refusing and declar
ing himself to be a Christian, he was ordered to execution.
The place of execution was a grassy hill at some httle
distance outside the city walls, and divided from it by a
river. The people of the city rushed out in such numbers
to witness the martyrdom that the bridge over the river
was crowded and made impassable; whereupon Alban,
impatient for the crown of martyrdom, walked to the

THE BRITISH CHURCH 1 5
river bank, and the waters opened, like those of Jordan,
and made a dry road for the party to pass over. The
executioner, seeing this, threw down his sword and
declared himself converted to the Christian faith. Arrived
at the summit of the hill, Alban prayed for water to
quench his thirst, and immediately a fountain burst forth
from the earth. One of the soldiers at length struck off
the martyr's head, and his own eyes fell upon the ground
together with the victim's head. The converted execu
tioner was beheaded also at the same time. Then the
judge, astonished at these miracles, ordered the persecu
tion to cease. When the Church had peace under
Constantine, a church was built on the spot, which
existed in Bede's time. There in 793 King Offa founded
a monastery, which was destroyed by the Danes. The
noble Abbey Church, founded in the 12th century on
the site of its predecessor, is still one of the most interest
ing churches in England. The mediseval town of St.
Albans gradually grew up about the monastery, and the
ruined walls of deserted Verulam are still to be seen half-
a-mile off across the little river.
There are some discrepancies between the narrative
and the known history of the times which throw a shadow
of doubt over it. But the tradition was known at the
time (429 a.d.) that Germanus and Lupus visited Eng
land ; for we read that Germanus paid a visit to the site
of the martyrdom ; and the history is not in its general
outline improbable ; so that we shall probably be safe in
accepting that St. Alban did suff'er death in the Diocletian
persecution ; and we may continue to honour him as the
proto-martyr of Britain.
At length, at the date a.d. 314, we arrive at an his
torical fact, on which we can stand as on a rock; and
from which we can look back and draw some safe deduc-

I 6 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
tions as to the previous years. In that year, a.d. 314, a
council was summoned to meet at Aries to consider the
question of the Donatist schism in Africa ; and in the
Acts of the Council we find recorded the names of three
British bishops who sat in the council, attended by a
priest and a deacon. They were — (i) Eborius, Bishop
of York; (2) Restitutus, Bishop of London; (3) Adelfius,
Bishop of Colonia Lodinensium, which has been variously
conjectured to be Colchester, Lincoln, and Caerleon-on-
Usk ; 1 (4) Sacerdos, a priest ; (5) Arminius, a deacon.
We have, then, the certain fact that at the beginning
of the 4th century there were Christian Churches estab
lished in cities of the British Province; that they had the
constitution of diocesan bishops, priests, and deacons;
and that they were in full communion with the rest of
the Church of Christ. Standing on this rock, we look
around and conjecture that these three bishops were only
representatives of the British Church, and that there were
other bishops in others of the cities of Britain. We look
back, and conclude that a Church thus spread over the
land from York to London, and from London to Caer
leon, and thus fully organized, and recognized by the
other Churches of the world, was not a new thing which
had sprung up in a night ; it must have been the work
of years.
Again, there were British bishops at the Council of
Sardica, a.d. 347, who joined in the condemnation of
Arius. And still again at the Council of Ariminum, in
A.D. 360. The Emperor had ordered apartments to be
allotted to the clergy attending this council, and all their
1 The probability is that Adelfius was of Caerieon ; this would
make them bishops of the capital cities of three of the provinces into
which Roman Britain was then divided, and it would be correct at
this special period of Constantine the Great to place'York as the
first in rank. (Haddan and Stubbs.)

THE BRITISH CHURCH 1 7
expenses to be paid ; but it was deemed unbecoming to
accept this bounty on the part of the Aquitanians, Gauls,
and Britons, who preferred to take the expenses of the
journey on themselves; but Sulpicius Severus adds,
"Three only of those from Britain, on account of
poverty, made use of the public gift, rejecting the con
tributions offered by the other bishops, because they
considered it more proper to burden the treasury than
individuals.'' In the middle of the 4th century the British Churches
signified by letter to Athanasius their adhesion to the
Nicene faith. In the latter part of the 4th century (386
— 400), extracts from the writings of Chrysostom, Jerome,
and Sozomen show satisfactorily that there was a settled
Church in Britain, with churches, altars, scriptures,
and discipline, holding intercourse both with Rome and
Palestine. At the beginning of the 5th century the British Church
was troubled with the heresy of Pelagius. Pelagius him
self was perhaps a native of Britain (his name, Pelagius,
is a Grecized form of Morgan), and this may account for
his doctrines becoming popular here. They seem to
have spread to such an extent, and to have been so
influentially supported, that the orthodox party found it
desirable to send to the Church of Gaul in a.d. 429,^ to
ask for help to combat the heresy. The Gallican Chufch
summoned a synod, which deputed two of its greatest
men — Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, and Lupus, Bishop
of Troyes — to go into Britain and confirm it in the
faith. At a synod which seems to have been, held at
or near Verulam, their arguments and their authority
silenced the heretical party for a time ; but the heresy
seems to have revived, since in a.d. 447 Germanus
and Severus, afterwards Bishop of Treves (Lupus having
c

l8 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
died in the meantime), paid a second visit to Britain on
a similar errand.
The traditions recorded by Geoffrey of Monmouth
speak as if Christianity became the religion of the people
generally. They tell us of three archbishops presiding
over the three provinces into which the country was
divided, and twenty-eight bishops in the principal cities,
who were amply provided for by the endowments of the
old heathen priests, together with the offerings of the new
converts ; and they would lead us to conclude that the
old heathenism lingered on only in the remote corners of
the land. Mr. Haddan says : " The general tenor of
Geoffrey of Monmouth's history (obvious fable apart) is
in accordance with probability so far as regards the
fortunes and acts of the British Church,' its details are
wholly untrustworthy." But of late years the archseolo-
gists have brought evidence against these traditions.
They assure us that among the vast number of relics of
Roman times which remain on the Continent, there is a
fair proportion of Christian reUcs, such as montlmental
inscriptions, and articles of ornament and domestic use
marked with the cross or other Christian symbol ; but
that among the Roman relics found plentifully enough in
England there is a remarkable absence of such traces of
Christianity ; that, on the other hand, the Roman relics
in our museums include a great number and variety of
pagan altars and other symbols of heathenism, which
prove that heathenism extensively prevailed. And these
facts, they say, unless they can be accounted for in some
other way, must be taken as a proof that there were few
Christians, at least among the. better classes of society,
among the classes for whose tastes the manufacturers of
ornaments and utensils cater while they are alive, and to
whose memory monuments are erected after they are dead.

THE BRITISH CHURCH , , 19

Perhaps the traditions and the archseological deductions
may be harmonized. It may be that the Welsh traditions
give a picture of the Church which the heathen Saxons
swept away, coloured by the natural exaggerations of
regret ; that British churches did exist in the chief cities,
but that their members were of the lower classes of the
town populations; and that heathenism still held its
ground, and the old classical temples were still frequented
by fashionable worshippers. In the country districts it
is not improbable that the classical heathenisms still
prevailed among the wealthy and isolated landowners,
and obscure local cults among the masses of their half-
civilized serfs. But that the Gospel was preached in this
country in the 2nd century is probable, and that the
Christian Church was established by the end of the 3rd
century at latest, the facts which we have above related
put beyond all question.^
^ Mr. Haddan, in his most valuable collection of documents
relating to the Church of England, quotes historical notices of the
existence of British churches at Canterbury (two in number), Caer
leon (two), Bangor Iscoed near Chester, Glastonbury, Whithern, in
Galloway, and near Evesham ; and notes existing remains or traces
of others at Dover Castle, Richborough, Reculver, Lyminge, and
Brixworth. He notes Christian sepulchral monuments at St. Mary-
le- Wigford, Lincoln, with a Christian inscription ; at Caerleon with
palm branch ; a sarcophagus at Barming ; a stone with Christian
symbols at Bath. Other remains — pottery with the cross and
monogram at Padstow, Cornwall ; Samian ware with monogram at
Catterick, Yorkshire ; a silver cup with monograms at Corbridge,
Northumberland ; a cross on the pavement of a villa at Harpole,
Hants ; a pavement with monogram in a villa at Frampton, Dorset ;
A pavement with a cross at Horkstow, Lincolnshire; two tiles
with monogram in a villa at Chedworth, Gloucestershire ; a coin of
Decentius, brother of Magnentius, one of the many who usurped the
purple in Britain, with a monogram between a and w ; pins with
cross heads found in London ; a human figure with a glory at
Ilkley, Yorkshire ; metal stamps with monogram, &c., found in the
Thames ; to whicli may be added the medallion of a hair-pin with
head of Constantine looking upwards at the XP monogram founa
in London, and a bone pin with cross head found at Colchester.

20 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
We naturally look to the history of the Welsh Church
for additional information on the previous history of the
Church in Roman Britain. A critical examination of the
materials rejects much of the legendary details, but, on
the other hand, it leaves a residuum of facts which is
very valuable. As soon as the history of Wales emerges
from the darkness which conceals it for a century
after the departure of the Romans, we find a diocesan
episcopate established there, with a monastic establish
ment as the centre of each see, apparently newly ar
ranged to correspond with the Principalities into which
Wales had been newly divided, and without any archi
episcopate. The earlier post-Reformation writers on English
Church history believed that they found evidences in
the early history of the British Church that it had
derived its Christianity directly from an Oriental source.
But the latest writers on the subject assure us that this is
an erroneous deduction from facts which are to be other
wise explained. " The early British Church," says Mr.
Haddan, " was in no other sense Oriental than that its
Christianity originated, like all Christianity, in Asia, and
found its way to Britain through (most probably) Lyons,
and not through the then equally Greek Church of Rome,
but without imprinting one single trace upon the British
Church itself of any one thing in a pecuhar sense Greek
or Oriental." The mode of computing Easter was not
the Greek as distinguished .from the Roman mode ; it
was (though really of earlier date) the cycle called by the
name of Sulpicius Severus, a disciple of St. Martin of
Tours, which had been adopted by the Western Churches,
and which continued to be used by the British Church
after the continental Churches had adopted the more
correct cycle of Victorius Aquitanus. The tonsure was

THE BRITISH CHURCH

neither Greek nor Roman, but peculiar to the British
and Scottish Churches.
But if modern criticism establishes the fact that these
peculiarities are not proofs of a direct Eastern origin for
the British Church, it leaves them equally evidences of
customs diff'erent from those of Rome ; and it adds other
evidences of the independence of the British Church of
still greater interest and value : the absence of an archi
episcopate in the British Church from the beginning down
to the end of the period of Welsh independence, i. e. at
the earhest, down to the 12th century; the consecration
of bishops by a single bishop ; peculiar rites in the con
secration of deacons and priests different from those of
other Churches ; a peculiarity in the mode of administer
ing baptism (it consisted probably in single instead of
trine immersion) ; a custom in the consecration of
churches and monasteries, the chief point being the
dedication not to some departed saint but to the living
founder.! There are indications that the British Church
had a liturgy peculiar to itself ; and still more, that it had
a Latin version of the Bible, founded on the old Latin,
and different from the Vulgate, peculiar to itself We do
not, perhaps, need these evidences that the British
Church was independent of Rome ; there is no shadow
of pretence for assuming any such dependence. The
true historical value and interest of these facts is that
they show an unexpected vigour of initiation in the
British Church, and probably indicate a greater isolation
from the Churches of the Continent than we should have
anticipated. *
^ Some of these are noted by Maskell in the early Anglo-Saxon
Church, and especially the Northumbrian branch of it ; one of them
was certainly borrowed from the British Church, and the rest most
probably were so.

22

CHAPTER III
THE SAXON CONQUEST
At the beginning of the 5th century after Christ the
Roman Empire was in a different condition from that in
which the opening of our first chapter described it.
Then it had grasped nearly the whole of the civilized
countries of the known world, and, in the very wanton
ness of power and feverish thirst for new achievements,
crossed the ocean to add to its conquests this barbarous
island outside the civilized world. At the time of which
we now speak the Empire had grown old and feeble ; it
was distracted by rebellions and usurpations, and the
barbarians had grown strong and bold, and made attacks
on the frontiers which it demanded all the power of the
failing giant to repel.
At length the Emperor Honorius determined to
abandon some of the more distant provinces of the
empire in order to concentrate his resources for the
defence of the rest. In the year 410 a.d., he withdrew
from this island the staff of Imperial officers who had
carried on the civil government, and the 20,000 troops
who had formed its garrison, leaving the inhabitants to
form a government of their own and provide for their
own safety. This exclusion of Britain from the Empire
helped to give it in after ages a peculiar independence of
the rest of Europe, as will be seen in the sequel of the
history. The history of the Saxon conquest is not told us by

THE SAXON CONQUEST 23

any contemporary historian ; the traditions preserved by
later writers are scanty and not very lucid ; but by help
of these traditions, eked out by the deductions which
archseology has drawn from the actual remains of the
people, we have come to have a general notion of its
history. We gather that when the Romans thus withdrew
both government and garrison, an attempt was made to
carry on a native government on the old' hues, which soon
broke in pieces ; and the ensuing confusion and disputes
and wars among the people left the land helpless against
the incursions of the pirates from the opposite coasts of
Germany. For many years previous those coasts had
sent forth the surplus population for whom there was not
occupation and food enough at home, in bands of hardy,
reckless adventurers, who harried the sea-board of
Europe, often carried their small ships with sail and oar
up the rivers far inland, and sometimes formed perma
nent conquests and settlements. The Roman masters of
the island had long maintained a fleet in the narrow seas
to guard their coasts — and not always successfuUy — from
these marauders. No wonder then that when the island
was left in this distracted and defenceless condition the
adventurers flocked to it like vultures to a carcass, and no
wonder they in the end made a conquest of the country.
The conquest was, however, a very slow and desultory
one. The first Saxons are said to have come over in
429 A.D., and the wars between the old inhabitants and
the invaders were not concluded for near 200 years after.
The Saxon conquest was not like the Roman conquest,
systematically carried on by one great military power : it
was the work of a number of unconnected efforts.
Different fleets of adventurers landed on diff'erent parts
of the coast ; reinforcements of their countrymen followed
from time to time and spread further and further inland.

24 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
Sometimes they would meet with resistance, and a battle
ensued. Sometimes one of the fortified cities would
offer an obstacle to the progress of the invaders, and had
to be taken by siege. Slowly, but surely, the Romano-
British people were driven back on all sides.
Following different independent leaders, they at last
founded seven or eight independent kingdoms. The
Jutes founded the kingdom of Kent. Different chiefs
of the Saxon race formed the kingdom of Essex (which
included the counties of Essex, Middlesex, and Herts)
and the kingdom of Sussex. Three chiefs of the Angles
founded the kingdom of East Anglia (whose division
into Norfolk and Suffolk— North-folk and South-folk—
seems to point to some original subdivision of the
kingdom). The Angles founded the kingdom of North
umbria, which also was subdivided into the kingdom
of Bernicia north of the Tees, and Deira between the
Tees and Humber, kindred states, sometimes held by
independent princes, and sometimes united in one
hand. The kingdom of Wessex — which included the
counties of Hants, Wilts, Berks, Dorset, and parts of the
adjacent counties — was the result of a long series of
aggressions by a single line of Saxon princes with their
dependent under-kings. Lastly, Mercia, which ultimately
occupied the middle of the island, was organized into
one kingdom out of a considerable number of petty
states, chiefly of the Anglian race, created by the later
immigrations under insignificant chiefs — the petty gleaners
of the great harvest which their predecessors had reaped
with their swords.i The boundaries of these different
* Mr. Haddan gives the following dates of the Saxon conquest :—
A.D. 450—516. The district south of Thames, and the forest of
Anderida, and westward from Kent (inclusive) to the Avon on the
borders of Wilts and Dorset, becomes gradually Saxonized.
A.D. 516—577. The eastern side of Britain Saxonized.

THE SAXON CONQUEST 25
conquests, starting from so many different centres, only
gradually extended, and at last met and covered the
land. Only when driven into the peninsulas of Cornwall
and Wales were the hunted Britons able permanently to
arrest the course of the invaders, and to maintain their
independence in these last corner^ of the land.
When we try to discover what remnants of the British
Church survived the Saxon conquest, we are met by the
remarkable fact that the Church seems to have perished
in the struggle, or to have retreated before the conquerors,
so that when the conquest was completed there is no
remnant of the British Church to be found, and hardly
a trace of Christianity left throughout the conquered
country. In this respect the history of England notably
differs from that of the other provinces of the Roman
Empire. The Teutonic hordes which founded kingdoms
out of the dismembered provinces of the continent of
Europe found there the civil institutions of the Empire
and the organizations of the Church ; and while the
conquering race brought their rude energy and primitive
virtues into an effete civilization, they themselves received
from the conquered race its language, its civilization, and
Jts Christianity. But from Britain the institutions of the
Empire had been withdrawn ; many of the better class oi
inhabitants had departed with the civil government and
the legions ; the force of the Church also may well have
been weakened by these defections ; and the Teutonic
conquerors of England continued barbarous, illiterate,
A.D. 577—635. Wessex pushed on to the Severn. Mercia
founded from Northumbria, but not extending over the centre of
Britain till 626.
A.D. 63s — 681. The death of Caedwalla at the battle of Hefen-
felt (635) closes the contest for Northumbria, and the battle of
Winwsed, 656, for Mercia. But the Welsh claim to the sovereignty
of Britain lingers on to the (supposed) death of Cadwallader.

26 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
and heathen. In the course of generations habits of
peace, however, and growing prosperity, gradually tamed
their manners and loosened their hold on their fierce
and wild superstitions, and prepared them to receive
Christianity and civilization when at length these came
to them from without..
It is desirable to give a sketch, though ever so brief,
of the religion of the race which, more than Briton,
Roman, Dane, or Norman, is the ancestor of the English
man and of the now widespread English-speaking race.
It is not difficult to trace in the mythology of the Scan
dinavian races the remnants of an earlier and purer
religion. This earlier religion taught, according to
Tacitus, the being of "a supreme God, Master of the
universe, to whom all things were submissive and
obedient." The ancient Icelandic mythology calls Him
" the Author of everything that existeth ; the eternal,
the ancient, the living and awful Being; the searcher
into concealed things, the Being that never changeth."
It attributes to Him an infinite power, a boundless
knowledge, an incorruptible justice. His worshippers
were forbidden to represent Him under any corporeal
form, or to worship Him within the enclosure of walls;.
From this supreme God were sprung an infinity number
of inferior deities or genii, which inhabited and ruled
each part of the visible creation. The earth, water, fire,
air, the sun, moon, and stars, the trees, forests, rivers,
mountains, rocks, winds, thunder, tempests, had each
their deity, and on that account were worthy of vener
ation. To serve the divinity with sacrifices and prayers,
to be brave, to do no wrong to others, were the moral
consequences they derived from their belief Lastly,
they believed in a future state of happiness or misery
dependent upon their conduct here.

THE SAXON CONQUEST 27
In later times the superstition of the people had added
to the supreme God, Odin or Woden, twelve others
whom they called the .^sir, with twelve goddesses, their
wives. To these they built temples, in which they
placed a representation of the divinity, and worshipped
it with prayer and sacrifices. They still retained a belief
in the immortality of the soul. The souls of the brave
and good they believed went to Asgard, the abode of
the M&vt: ; there the warriors fought all day, and spent
the night in feasting in Valhalla, the hall of the gods ;
the wicked went to Niflheim, a place of pain and terror.
But the time would come when the earth, and sun, and
stars, and Valhalla, and the gods, and giants, and elves,
should be consumed in a great and general conflagration,
and then Gimli and Nastrond — the eternal heaven and
hell — should be revealed. " A new earth, that is, Gimli,
shall spring forth from the bosom of the waves, adorned
with green meadows, where the fields bring forth without
culture, and calamities are unknown, where there is a
palace more shining than the sun, and there righteous
and well-minded men shall abide." And far from thence
is Nastrond, " a place full of serpents, who vomit forth
floods of venom, in which shall wade evil men and
women and murderers and adulterers."
" There were three great festivals in the year — one at
the winter solstice, called Jul or Yule, from which many
social customs no doubt have descended to our Christian
festival of the Nativity ; the second at the first quarter
of the second moon of the year ; the third at the be
ginning of spring. Sacrifices of fruits, animals, and men
were offered, and the people feasted and drank to excess.
Their priests were not a separate caste ; they professed
to divine the future from the entrails of sacrifices.

28

CHAPTER IV
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
Before we enter upon the history of the mission
which Gregory the Great sent for the conversion of the
English to the faith of Christ, it will be well to put the
reader on his guard against the error of antedating the
rise of the Papal system and the introduction of corrup
tions of doctrine into the mediseval Church. He must
not be misled by the early existence of names and
phrases which subsequently acquired a diff'erent signi
ficance. He must bear in mind that Romish corruptions
grew gradually. Otherwise he will grievously misunder
stand the history ; he will do injustice to the ages which
preserved for a thousand years the faith and discipline
of the early Church, not without some incrustation of
superstitions and some abuses, but without any authori
tative inculcation of false doctrine and without any
constitutional usurpations ; he will fail to understand the
comparatively modern date of the system of Church
constitution and false doctrine which we call Popery.
For example, the title Pope means nothing but Father,
and at first was commonly given to all ecclesiastics, a?
it is to this day in the Eastern Church, where the clergy
generally are called Popes. The title Papa — Pope —
gradually passed into the languages of the various coun
tries, as Padre, Pfere, and the like, which have exactly
the same venerable and unobjectionable meaning as the
word Pope accidentally retained by the Bishops of Rome.

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 29
So that there is a list of Roman " Popes " from the time
of the Apostles downward ; but what we call " The
Papacy" belongs not to primitive but to mediseval
Christianity. So, again, a presence of our Lord in the Sacrament
of the Lord's Supper had been maintained in the Church
from the beginning downwards, but that particular mode
of it which we call transubstantiation was first heard of
in the 9th century; and the practical deductions from
it which so much shock us, followed afterwards one
by one.
Phrases implying great veneration for the Blessed
Virgin Mary may be found in Church writers from the
5 th century, but the blasphemous system of which the
modern Church of Rome has made her the centre, did not
become part ofthe popular religion till the 13th century.
Confession was practised commonly in Saxon times as
.a useful discipline, but it was not taught that it was
necessary for the forgiveness of sins committed after
baptism until later times.
It will be useful to sketch the early constitution of
the Church, and the gradual rise of the Papal pretensions,
in order to enable the reader to see the true relations of
the Church of England to other branches of the Church
of Christ.
Wherever the Aposdes by their preaching gathered
together a number of converts, there they ordained a
presbyter to continue the work which they had begun ;
as Paul and Barnabas on their mission in Asia Minor
"ordained them elders in every Church." At first the
Apostles retained in their own hands the government of
the churches thus established ; and we find in St. Paul's
Epistles abundant evidence of the constant and detailed
oversight which he exercised over them. After a while

30 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
they consecrated bishops to take the oversight of the
congregations in a city or in some specified district. So
St. James was appointed Bishop of Jerusalem and (pro
bably) of the dependent congregations in the Holy Land ;
Timothy was appointed Bishop of Ephesus and its de
pendent country; Titus, Bishop of the churches of the
island of Crete.
This constitution of the Church obtained universally
in the first age. We will only quote in support of the
assertion the well-known passage of Tertullian (c. 200
A.D.) ; he utters this challenge to some heretical con
gregations of his time : — " Let them show us the original
of their churches, and give us a catalogue of their
bishops in an exact succession from first to last, from
which it shall appear that their first bishop had some
Apostle, or some apostolical man living in the time of
the Apostles, for his author or immediate predecessor.
For thus it is that apostolical churches make their
reckoning. The Church of Smyrna counts up to Poly-
carp, ordained by St. John; the Church of Rome to
Clemens, ordained by St. Peter ; and so all other
churches in like manner exhibit their first bishops or
dained by the Apostles, by whom the apostolical seed
was propagated and conveyed to others." This implies
that the Apostles settled bishops in the churches which
they founded ; and that this might be proved from the
records and archives of every Church, most of which
were then probably remaining.
As all the Apostles vrere equal, so in primitive times
it was held that all bishops were equal as to their
spiritual power and authority. The whole Church was
one flock, and the whole world one diocese ; and there
was one episcopate in the Church, in which every bishop
had his share. Still, for the sake of order, every bishop

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 31
presided over a particular diocese, and no bishop was
ordinarily to interfere in the diocese of another.
Yet notwithstanding this equality a certain subordina
tion of bishops naturally arose. In some cases this
sprang originally out of the influence of a great name.
For example, St. John in the latter part of his life pre
sided over the Church of Antioch, and consecrated
bishops in the country round about. During his life all
those bishops would look up to St. John, and after his
death it was natural that they should continue to pay a
certain respect to his successor in his see, make him
president over their meetings, and refer disputes to him
as an umpire. In other cases a city was of such im
portance that it reflected a proportionate importance on
the bishop who presided over its churches, and he
naturally commanded a certain respect from his brethren
of the neighbouring country. In all cases it was the
custom of the churches to meet occasionally for the dis
cussion and determination of questions of common
interest, and convenience dictated that there should be
a recognized territorial organization. The ecclesiastical
divisions usually followed the civil divisions of the
Empire and the national divisions of those countries
which lay outside the Empire. The bishops of a par
ticular province or country formed a group. Usually
the bishop of the metropolitan city was the primate or
metropolitan of the college of bishops, and they were
called his suffragans ; but sometimes, as in Africa, the
senior bishop, wherever his see, was acknowledged as
metropoUtan. So now in the English Church, whoever
is Archbishop of Canterbury is Primate of all England,
but in the Scottish Church the bishops elect their Primus,
who may be of any see. In the Canadian Church the
Archbishop of Rupertsland is Primate, and in the African

32 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
Church the Bishop of Capetown ; but in New Zealand,
as in Scotland, the Primate is elected by the College of
Bishops. Gradually, for the sake of order; certain powers were
exercised by these metropolitans, e.g. to summon councils
of their suffragans, to publish the canons made by
councils and see them observed, to decide controversies
arising among their suffragans, and receive appeals from
them. StiU, as to their spiritual power and authority
bishops were all equal. Each bishop was independent
in his own see, and the Metropolitan was only Primus
inter pares — first among equals.
Following the same law of organization in groups, and
the same convenient acceptance of the organization of
the civU government, we find these metropolitan provinces
again grouped into patriarchates. Thus in after ages there
were two provinces in England — the northern dioceses,
grouped about the Archbishop of York as their metro
politan, formed one province, and the southern dioceses,
grouped about Canterbury, formed another province;
but it was obviously desirable to bring all the dioceses
into a national unity, which was effected by making
them a virtual patriarchate under the Archbishop of
Canterbury. These divisions of the Church underwent some changes
to adapt them to the political changes of the world ; and
ultimately three principal Churches obtained a certain
superiority over others. Rome from its political import
ance obtained a certain superiority in the West, Antioch
in the East, and Alexandria in the South of Christendom.
When the seat of Empire was subsequently moved to
Constantinople that city was raised to a similar superi
ority; and Jerusalem was raised to the same rank by
the Council of Chalcedon. But the centralization was

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 33
never carried any further. These patriarchates have
throughout all ages remained, and stiU to this day re
main, independent of one another. This is one of the
strongholds of our argument against the Papal claim to be
the head of the tJniversal Church. Rome has tyrannized
over the churches of her own patriarchate, but the other
patriarchates have never acknowledged or submitted to
her claims over them. The patriarchates of Antioch
and Alexandria have faded into insignificance, but they
remain, together with that of Constantinople, recognized
by the Orthodox East as the centre of its unity, the in
controvertible witnesses that Rome is not, and never has
been, the Head of the whole Christian Church. Outside
these patriarchates there were always certain metropolitans
who had never been placed under the jurisdiction of any
patriarch, and the Council of Ephesus, a.d. 431, decided
that these outlying provinces of the Church should con
tinue as they had done from the beginning. The Patriarch
of Antioch at that time claimed to include one of them,
Cyprus, under his patriarchate. But the Council decided
that " the prelates of the Church of Cyprus should retain
their rights uninjured and inviolate according to the
canons of the sacred fathers and the ancient customs,
and the same shall be observed in all other dioceses
( = patriarchates) and provinces whatsoever, so that none
of the bishops shall take another province which has
not been formerly and from the beginning subject to
him." Since the organization of the Church had thus far
followed that of the Empire, it was very natural that
there should be an endeavour to carry the parallel one
step further, and to give the Church a spiritual Emperor.
The endeavour was made ; and it is a fact full of interest
that it was not made first by Rome. It was the Bishop
D

34 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
of Constantinople, after the seat of Empire had been
transferred thither, who drew the deduction that the
bishop of the capital of the Christian empire was marked
out by providential circumstances as the head of the
Christian Church. It is very interesting also to find the
Bishop of Rome protesting against this assumption of
superiority over the other patriarchs. John, the Bishop
of "New Rome," in a.d. 589, had assumed in a public
document the title of "Universal Bishop." It was a
title which might be explained in a good sense ; but it
might be taken in a bad sense, and in this latter sense
John probably had appropriated it. It was St. Gregory
the Great who vehemently protested against the title,
and the assumptions which it inferred. He writes on
the subject to the Emperor : " I confidently aflfirm that
whosoever calls himself, or desires to be called, Universal
Priest, is in his pride going before Antichrist, because,
through pride, he prefers himself to the rest." To his
brother Patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria he wrote :
"This name 'Universal' was offered during the Holy
Synod of Chalcedon to the Pontiff of the Apostolic See,
a post which, by God's providence, I fiU. But no one
of my predecessors consented to use so profane a term,
because plainly if a single patriarch is called ' universal,'
the name of patriarch is taken from all the rest ....
wherefore let your Holiness in your letters never call
any one 'universal,' lest in offering undue honour to
another you should deprive yourself of that which is
your due." To John himself he wrote that "the sole
Head of the Universal Church is Christ," and asks him
" what account he wiU have to render to God at the last
day if he thus tries to subject to himself as Universal
Bishop the members of Christ, aU of whom are equal."
This, be it remembered, is the Gregory who sent

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 35

Augustine and his companions on their mission for the
conversion of the EngUsh; so that we may be sure the
Italian element in the English Church did not import
with it the modern notion of the supremacy of the Pope.
It was the pubhcation, towards the close of the gth
century, of the false Decretals, forged in the name of
Isidore, which laid the foundation for the usurpation by
the Bishops of Rome of this very authority which Gregory
so forcibly argued against. These Decretals purported
to be a collection of decrees ofthe early Bishops of Rome,
and went to establish that the Popes of those early times
did occupy the position of Head of the Church, and ex
ercised an appellate jurisdiction over the whole Church.
Still the power of the Popes made only gradual progress
till the time of Gregory VII. in the nth century. The
English Church down to the Norman Conquest was not
troubled with any serious pretensions of the See of Rome.
It will be seen in a subsequent chapter that Wilfrid of
York was the only bishop who carried an appeal to the
Bishop of Rome against a decision of the English Church,
and the way in which his appeal was treated is most
worthy of note. The answer of the English Church was
to call a Council, at which Wilfrid was condemned to
imprisonment for making the appeal. And when Wilfrid
returned a second time from Rome, bringing the decision
of another Pope in his favour, Archbishop Theodore, the
first Archbishop of the whole English Church, although
he had been nominated and consecrated Archbishop by
the Pope, utterly disregarded the Pope's sentence.

36

CHAPTER V
THE SAXON CONVERSION : THE ITALIAN MISSION
The Saxons received their first Christian teachers from
Rome. Bede tells us a picturesque story of the occasion
of the mission, which, he says, he had received from the
men of old. One morning as Gregory, the Archdeacon
of the Church of Rome, was crossing the forum of the
Eternal City, his attention was directed to the groups of
slaves of various countries who were, as usual, exposed
there for sale. One group of children especially attracted
his notice by their fair complexions, blue eyes, and flaxen
hair, so diff'erent from the sun-burnt skins and black hair
of Italy, and he stopped to ask from what country they
came. He was told they were Angles. " They would
not only be Angles, but angels " (non Angli sed angeli), he
replied, " if they were Christians. And from what province
do they come ? " He was told they came from Deira.
" Truly, they should be called de ira " (from the wrath of
God) " and brought to the mercy of Christ. And how
is their king named ? " " ^Ua," was the reply. " Yea,
may Alleluias be sung there ! " And so the archdeacon
went on his way.
But the incident made a strong impression on Gregory's
mind, and he resolved to leave his high office at Rome,
and go as a missionary to the people whose children had
thus touched his heart. He actually set out upon his
journey ; but his friends and fellow-citizens, by whom he

THE SAXON CONVERSION: THE ITALIAN MISSION 37

was much beloved and highly valued, prevailed on the
bishop to command him to return. Pope Benedict I.
died, and Gregory was chosen in his place. He had
never forgotten that group of fair English children, and,
now that he had the power to befriend them, he took
effectual steps to do so. He had himself founded a
monastery on the Cselian HUl, and to that community he
now turned for the agents of his mission to the Angles.
He selected Augustine, the prior, and fbrty of the monks
of his convent, and furnished them with necessaries, and
letters of recommendation to the bishops and kings of
France. The mission did not, however, go to North
umbria, the country from which Gregory's little friends of
the Roman forum had come. Another place offered a
more promising opening to the mission. The kingdom
of Kent was the earliest settled of all the Saxon kingdoms.
In the time of the Empire it had probably been one of
the most completely civilized parts of the province ; its
conquest by the Jutes had probably been effected with
less social disturbance and less destruction of property
than had taken place elsewhere. The Kentish men had
thus originally acquired a tincture of civilization from the
conquered people, which was maintained by their inter
course with the opposite coasts of Gaul ; and probably at
this time Kent was the most civihzed and most prosperous
of the Heptarchic kingdoms. The undefined authority
represented by the title of Bretwalda was held by
Ethelbert, its present king. He had allied himself in
marriage to the Frank kings, his wife Bertha being a
daughter of Charibert, King of Paris. At her marriage it
had been stipulated that she should enjoy freedom to
follow her religion, and a Frank bishop named Liudhard
formed part of her household. The king repaired for
their use a ruined church of the old Britons, which stood

38 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
outside the walls of the royal town of Canterbury.^
Ethelbert, therefore, already knew something of Chris
tianity, had tolerated it, and might be brought by his
wife's influence to embrace it. It is even said that
application had already been made on the part of the
Kentish men to the Frank bishops to send them mis
sionaries.^ Kent, therefore, clearly offered the most
likely opening for a mission, and thither the mission was
directed to proceed.
Augustine and his forty companions landed in the Isle
of Thanet in 596 or 597 a.d., and sent to announce their
arrival to the king. Some days afterwards the king came
to them, and gave them audience under an ancient oak
in the open air, a precaution against their exercising any
influence over him by magical arts, which were supposed
to be more easily practised within a building. But they
came furnished not with magical but with Divine power ;
they approached him in orderly procession, preceded by
a silver cross, and for their banner a picture of our Lord
painted on a panel, and singing a Litany. At the king's
command they sat down and preached to him and his
attendants. The king did all that could be expected.
He gave them leave to remain in his kingdom, and
permitted them to preach and make converts. With his
permission they proceeded at once to Canterbury ; and we
can picture to ourselves the crowds of fair-haired, blue-
eyed Saxon men and women and children lining the rude
streets of the royal town to see these forty Italians, in
their long dark robes, entering the town in procession,
with the silver cross glancing in the sunlight, and the
painted banner of our Lord borne aloft, chanting their
' The church — that of St. Martin — was rebuilt in the 13th century ;
there is a good deal of Roman brick built up in its walls, the material,
no doubt, of the original Romano-British Church.
' Kemble's 'Saxons in England,' II. p. 356.

The SAXON CdNVERSIdN: THE ITALIAN MISSION 39
Litany in an unknown language. As they entered the
city, Bede tells us, they added, the prayer, " We beseech
Thee, O Lord, in all Thy mercy, that Thy anger and
wrath be turned away from this city, and from Thy holy
house, because we have sinned. Hallelujah."
Not till a year after the arrival of the missionaries did
Ethelbert become a convert to their teaching ; and when
the king was baptized the people followed his example in
considerable numbers. At Christmas 597 a.d., Augustine
is said to have baptized 10,000 converts in the river
Irwell. Before long the king gave the Italians an old
British church in Canterbury, and a settled residence in
the city, and such possessions of diff'erent kinds as were
necessary to their subsistence.
The course of conversion of the other kingdoms
followed the precedent of Kent with curious uniformity.
In the case of Northumbria, Mercia, and Sussex, a
princess of a Christian royal house was married to a
heathen king, with the condition that she should retain
her religion, and should be allowed a chaplain. The
chaplain addressed himself first to the conversion of the
king. In Northumbria, the king, when he had made up
his mind to adopt Christianity, laid it before his Witan as
a matter of national concern. The Witan came to a
resolution to change the national religion ; and then the
people generally submitted to teaching and baptism.
We conclude that, with growing civilization, their old
heathenism had lost its hold on the national mind, and
that it had become, as their religion had to the Romans
of the later Republic and the Empire, a piece of State
machinery ; and thus the people were willing to change
it at the desire of their king and chiefs.
Gregory had directed Augustine, if he were successful
in his mission, to seek consecration as Archbishop of

40 TURNING POINTS OE ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY

the English nation at the hands of the Gallic bishops.
As soon, therefore, as Augustine had met with this
great success in Kent he went to the continent, where
the Bishop of Aries and other French bishops, pursuant
to Gregory's request, consecrated him Bishop of the
English. For many years little progress was made beyond the
kingdom of Kent. Redwald, the King of East Anglia
(Norfolk and Suffolk), was induced by Ethelbert to be
baptized and to take one of Augustine's companions
to preach the Gospel in his kingdom. The new faith
was, however, opposed by his queen and other influential
people ; he himself cannot have been a very sincere
convert, since, while he worshipped at a Christian altar,
he allowed the queen to retain her heathen worship at
another altar in the same building. It is not to be
wondered at that in these circumstances the Gospel
made no progress in East Anglia.
The missionaries had better success in the kingdom of
Essex, which from 6x6 to 623 a.d. was under the rule of
Sebert, the nephew of Ethelbert. To him MeUitus was
sent, and he succeeded in converting the king and many
of his subjects, and was consecrated Bishop of the East
Saxons, establishing his see in London.
In 625 A.D., twenty-eight years after the landing of
Augustine, Ethelbert being dead, and Eadbald his son
reigning in Kent, Edwin, King of Northumbria, sought
Ethelburga, the daughter of Ethelbert and sister of Ead
bald, in marriage. The alliance was agreed to on the
same conditions on which her mother had married
Ethelbert, viz., that she should have freedom to practise
her religion, and should have a Christian priest with
ner as chaplain. Paulinus was the one chosen. King
Edwin readily heard Paulinus's teaching, but hesitated to

THE SAXON CONVERSION: THE ITALIAN MISSION 41

embrace the new faith. He aUowed his child and other
converts to be baptized, he gave up the worship of idols,
he held frequent conversations with the bishop about the
faith, and with his chiefs about the step which he was
urged to take. At length, after about a year's hesitation,
he assembled the Witan, and laid the matter before the
assembly. Bede gives a report of what took place, which is very
interesting for the light it throws on the state of mind in
which the preaching of the Gospel found our heathen
forefathers. The king asked those assembled one by
one what they thought of the new doctrine and the new
worship that was preached. The chief of the heathen
priests, Coifi by name, was the first to answer: "I declare
to you that the religion we have hitherto professed has,
so far as I know, no virtue in it ; for none of your people
have worshipped the gods more diligently than I, and
yet there are many who receive greater favours from you,
and are more prosperous in all their undertakings. Now,
if the gods were good for anything, they would rather
prosper me, who have been more careful to serve them.
If, therefore, upon examination, you find these new
doctrines more efficacious, let us at once receive them."
This speech gives us the view of one class of men, who
look upon religion as a system by which temporal pros
perity is to be obtained as the reward for the diligent
performance of the outward observances of a superstitious
worship. Another speech of one of the thanes shows
us that there were some minds prepared to welcome a
religion which could throw light on the mystery of human
life. "The present life of man, O king, seems to me,
in comparison of that time which is unknown to us,
like the swift flight of a sparrow through the hall wherein
you sit at supper in winter with your commanders and

42 TURNING POINTS OE -ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
ministers. There is a good fire in the midst, whilst the
storms of rain and snow prevail abroad. The sparrow
flies in at one door and immediately out at another.
While he is within he is safe from the wintry storm,
but, after a short space of fair weather, he immediately
vanishes out of your sight again into the dark winter
from which he came. So this life of man appears here
for a short space, but of what went before or what is
to follow we are utterly ignorant. If, therefore, this new
teaching contains some more certain information, it
deserves to be followed." Paulinus was therefore invited
to address the assembly. Bede describes the missionary's
personal appearance from the recollections of one who
as a boy had seen him, and enables us to present before
our minds the tall, thin, rather stooping figure of the
Italian, with dark hair and aquiline features, in his dark
flowing robes, standing in the midst, whUe the king and
the thanes and the freemen sit round the rude timber
hall, in their snowy tunics and cloaks fastened at the
shoulder by a great circular brooch. Bede has not re
corded his sermon, but he tells us the results it produced.
When he had finished, Coifi the high priest spoke again,
and even his mind had been attuned to a higher strain
of thought by what he had heard : " I have long since
been sensible that there was nothing in that which we
worshipped, because the more diligently I sought after
truth in that worship the less I found it. But now I
freely confess that such truth evidently appears in this
preaching as can confer on us the gifts of life, of salvation,
and of eternal happiness ; for which reason I advise, O
king, that we instantly abjure and set fire to those
temples and altars which we have consecrated without
reaping any benefit from them."
In fine, the king publicly declared that he embraced

THE SAXON CONVERSION: THE ITALIAN MISSION 43

the religion of Christ. The high priest volunteered to
set the example of overthrowing the old heathenism by
a public act. Borrowing of the king a horse and arms,
which it was unlawful for him to wear, he rode forth to
the neighbouring temple at Goodmanham, in Yorkshire,
cast his spear into it, and bade those who accompanied
him set fire to it. "King Edwin, with all the nobility of
the nation, and a large number of the common people,
received the faith and the washing of regeneration in the
year 627." While they were being instructed a wooden
oratory was buUt over a spring, in which the king was
baptized, and then at once he commenced a larger and
nobler church of stone round about the oratory. The
church of stone has grown into the glorious pile of York
Minster ; and the well in which Edwin was baptized still
remains in the crypt. His subjects followed the example
of their king as readily as the men of Kent had done,
and Paulinus too is said to have baptized his 10,000 in a
day. Thus, in a little more than a quarter of a cen
tury, the Italian missionaries sent over by Gregory had
introduced the Christian Church into four out of the
seven Saxon kingdoms.
But it is remarkable that in aU but one of these places,
when the sovereign died under whose influence the faith
had been introduced, the nation at once relapsed into
its old idolatry. In Essex, when Sebert died, his sonsj
who succeeded to his kingdom, returned to their old
religion ; Bishop MeUitus fled to Canterbury, and the
East Saxon converts relapsed. In East Anglia the faith
did not flourish under the lukewarm patronage of
Redwald; we do not hear of the consecration ofa bishop
for this kingdom ; and his son and successor was a
heathen, under whom no fresh attempt to estabUsh the
Church was made. When Edwin, King of Northumbria,

44 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
was slain in battle in 634 a.d., Paulinus retired into Kent
with the widowed queen and her children, and the
Church Tseems to have collapsed in Northumbria. In
Kent alone the Church held its ground ; and even there
it was very near suffering the same fate as in the other
kingdoms ; for on the death of Ethelbert, his son
Eadbald relapsed into heathen customs and married
his father's widow; Justus, Bishop of Rochester, and
MeUitus of London were expelled by their people, and
crossed over to Gaul; Laurentius, who had succeeded
Augustine in his see, was about to follow their example,
when Eadbald was restored to the faith, and the Church
of Kent was saved.
Just at this time, viz., in 635 A.D., another Italian
missionary named Birinus, who was sent on an inde
pendent mission at his own request by Honorius, Bishop
of Rome, landed in the kingdom of Wessex (which in
cluded Surrey, Hants, WUts, Berks, Dorset, Somerset,
and Devon), and being successful in his labours both
with the king and the people, established his see at Dor
chester, in Oxfordshire. This is the extent of the share
which the Italians had in the conversion of England.
The recovery of the relapsed Northumbrians and East
Saxons, the establishment of the Church in East Anglia,
and the conversion of Mercia and Sussex, are due to
other agencies, to which we must next direct attention.

45

CHAPTER VI
THE FOUNDING OF lONA
Half England was evangelized by the monks of Lindis
farne ; their influence is still, after a thousand years have
elapsed, to be traced in our English Christianity. The
House of Lindisfarne was a colony from lona ; lona was
founded by St. Columba, who came from Ireland ; Ire
land was converted by St. Patrick; and St. Patrick,
whether or not a native of Northern Britain, received his
training and holy orders, not from Rome, but from the
Gallic Church. It is so important to our purpose that
the magnitude of the part this Celtic element has had in
the formation of our English Church should be realized,
and' its ecclesiastical character understood, that before
we speak about the work of the Celtic missionaries
among the Angles and Saxons, we shaU look back
and study the community of lona; and, that we may
thoroughly appreciate the character of lona, we shall
look back stUl further to the great Apostle of Ireland
from whom they derived their Christian doctrine and
their ecclesiastical customs.
The birth name of Patrick was Succath. He was born
of Christian parentage, his father, Calphurnius, being a
deacon, and his grandfather, Potitus, a priest.^ Cal
phurnius is said also to have held the rank of a Becurion,
equivalent to that of an alderman of a corporate town,
1 Examples of a married clergy in the Church of the 4th century.

46 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
 ——  ^  r—
and was therefore probably one who had adopted the
Roman civUization. Patrick was probably born about
387 A.D., and probably at a place now called Kirkpatrick,
between Dumbarton and Glasgow.
As the eastern coasts of England were exposed to the
incursions of the Northmen, so the western coasts were
harried by the Irish. When Patrick was sixteen years
old, a band of these Irish marauders ravaged the country,
and carried off himself and two sisters, among hundreds
of others, into captivity. For seven years Patrick was a
slave in th^t part of the Irish kingdom of Dalraida which
is now the county Antrim. At the end of that time he
escaped home, was again taken, and after a short time
made good his escape. He now felt within himself a
call to preach the Gospel to these people among whom
he had been a slave, and set out to the monasteries of
Southern Gaul to prepare himself for this work. It seems
certain that he went to the monastery of St. Martin at
Tours, and submitted for some time to the strict discipline
of that famous school of learning and devotion. After
wards it is probable he studied with Germanus at Auxerre,
and then visited for a time the famous school at Lerins, in
the Tuscan Sea, where Hilary of Aries and Lupus of Troyes
had been educated. He was in all probability ordained
deacon and priest in Gaul. When he was now forty-two
years old, in the year 432 a.d., Palladius, who had been
sent by Pope Celestine to take charge of some congre
gations of Christians which had been gathered together
in Ireland, and to carry on missionary work there, retired
to England, reporting the failure of his mission. There
upon Patrick saw the way open to him. It is claimed
on behalf of Rome that Patrick was consecrated bishop
by Celestine, but the claim seems quite untenable ; and
it is all but certain that he sought consecration where he

THE FOUNDING OF ION A 47
had received his training and holjj orders, at the hands
of the bishops of Gaul. In the year 432 a.d., he sailed
with twelve companions to the work for which he had
during twenty years been preparing himself We need
not recount how successfully he laboured. We need
only notice that his method of establishing the Church
among the wild people was that which he had seen in
the monastery of St. Martin, the Abbot-Bishop of Tours,
and in the other great religious schools of Gaul : he
planted monasteries under abbot-bishops — Christian
colonies — as centres of education, civilization, and
evangelization. St. Patrick died probably about the
year 465 a.d.
Some years after the death of St. Patrick, Ireland
seems to have been indebted to the Church of Wales for
a revival of learning and religion. The Irish saints of
the second order are represented in their legendary lives
as going to Britain, and especially to St. David, for their
religious training. For example, St. Finian of Clonard
is said to have been thus indebted to the great Welsh
saint. This St. Finian of Clonard was the abbot-bishop
of one of the great Irish monastic schools of learning.
Bede says that his monastery and that of St. Comgall
of (the Irish) Bangor each numbered as many as 3000
inmates. Fifty-six years after the death of the Apostle of Ireland,
Columba was born, of a princely family ruling a tribe
among the wildest of the Donegal mountains. Sent early
to the monastic school of the St. Finian of Clonard above
mentioned, he obtained some celebrity for learning and
rehgious zeal. In due time he was ordained deacon and
priest, and himself founded one or more monasteries.
We have seen that it was usual for the heads of these
Irish monasteries to be bishops as weU as abbots. The

48 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
. legend says that Columba went to a famous anchorite
bishop fo be consecrated.^ The bishop by some mis
understanding ordained him over again to the priesthood.
Columba accepted this as a providential interposition,
and would never allow himself to be consecrated to the
episcopate. There is always a tendency in the followers
of a great man to imitate his peculiarities, and it became
a custom of the rulers of abbeys of the Columban suc
cession to remain priests. In the year 563 a.d., being
now forty-two years old, he undertook a mission to Scot
land. There are diff'erent accounts of the occasion of
this mission. One account attributes it solely to his zeal
for the spread of the Gospel. Another account gives us
a curious picture of the times. It tells us that Columba,
on a visit to his old master, Finian, took opportunities
to make a surreptitious copy of " Finian's Psalter " ; that
Finian, aware of what was being done, waited till the
copy was finished, and then laid claim to it ; that the
dispute was referred to the king, Diarmid, who gave
judgment in the proverbial sentence, "To every cow
belongeth her calf," and so to every book its copy, and
decided against Columba. At the same time the son
of a king of Connaught, who was living at the court of
Diarmid as a hostage, in a quarrel with the son of one
of the nobles, accidentally killed him, and fled for sanc
tuary to Columba ; but the privilege which attached to
sacred persons and places was not allowed, apparently
on the ground that the similar privilege of the royal
court had been violated by the homicide being committed
' One of the peculiarities of the British Church was, that conse
cration was performed by a single bishop, instead of by three ac
cording to the canon of the Council of Nice. Such a consecration
would be valid though irregular. This irregularity, we shall see,
was one of the points which Theodore had to deal with when he
came to settle the constitution of the Church of England,

THE FOUNDING OF ION A 49
within it. Columba went away in anger ; at his instig
ation his kinsmen joined the King of Connaught and
marched against Diarmid, and a battle ensued. A synod
subsequently determined that Columba, as the author
of the slaughter, ought to quit his country and win from
the heathen as many souls to Christ as had perished in
the battle. Accordingly, having selected twelve com
panions, he sailed for the western coast of Scotland. If
the reader will look at the map he wUl be better able to
follow the next paragraph. About sixty years before a
chieftain of the house of Eire, head of the Irish Dalraida,
had crossed over with a considerable body of followers
to the coast of Argyleshire, and founded the kingdom of
British Dalraida or Scotia.^ These were Christians, and
Columba was alhed to them by blood. The Picts to
the south of the Grampians, between these mountains
and the Frith of Forth, had received Christianity through
the preaching of Ninian, a bishop of North Wales, who
taught among them from 412 to 432 a.d., establishing
the see of Candida Casa (Whithern). Columba directed
his mission to the Picts who inhabited the country be
tween these two Christian kingdoms, i.e. the country
south of Dalraida and north of the Grampians.
If the reader wUl look at the map before him, he wiU
see a little island then caUed Hii, afterwards Latinized
into lona. Here Columba and his twelve companions
landed. It will be seen that it is on the confines of two
of the kingdoms above mentioned — of the kingdom of
Dalraida and of the Pictish kingdom to the south of it—
and it was claimed by both kings. Columba obtained
^ Let it be borne in mind that the name Scot belonged in the first
instance to the inhabitants of Ireland ; was carried by Irish con
querors into northern Britain ; and was by degrees appropriated by
the Caledonian Picts ; the gradual advance of the name marking
the footsteps of the Irish missionaries. E

50 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
from both the cession of their claims, and proceeded to
establish himself upon it. We gather from his historian,
Adamnan, that his monastery consisted of a church built
of timber, and a few rude buildings, constructed, in the
usual Celtic manner, of wattle, i. e. of osiers interwoven
between posts. There was a dwelling for the abbot and
his monks, another for the entertainment of strangers, an
eating-room, and a kitchen, all arranged round a green
court; this group of cloister-buildings was enclosed by
a rampart, and outside this was a byre for cows, a barn
and storehouse for grain, and other outbuUdings. The
rule of the house enjoined obedience, humUity, and
chastity. The occupations of the day were devotion,
reading and writing, and manual labour. The devotions
consisted of daily morning and evening prayer. The
brethren were skilful writers and illuminators of books,
for the Irish ecclesiastics had formed a famous school
of calligraphy. Some of the books written by Columba
himself still remain — the " Book of Kells " and the " Book
of Durrow " — and are very fine examples of the clear,
bold, handsome writing and wonderfully elaborate orna
mentation of this Irish school. For manual labour they
ploughed, sowed, reaped, milked the cows, made cheese,
fished. Columba himself was a remarkable man : of
princely birth, tall, athletic, powerful, of a ruddy and
joyous countenance ; he was an eminent teacher in all
the learning of his time, a guide of deep spiritual devo
tion ; and with these attainments of a scholar and an
ascetic, he combined the qualities of a practical man ;
he superintended the farm, ground the corn in the quern,
steered the coracle over the stormy seas. lona was his
head-quarters for thirty-four years. He stUl retained the
superintendence of the establishments which he had
founded in Ireland, and visited them from time to time.

THE FOUNDING OF ION A £1
On the other side he made missionary tours through
Scotland. Aided by his disciples, he preached the Word,
gathered converts, caused them to erect osier churches ;
left one or two of his scholars to carry on the work ; and
so passed on from place to place, till he had penetrated
Scotland from sea to sea. Embarking in their frail
coracles — -boats formed of hide stretched over a frame
work of osiers — he braved the northern seas and carried
the Gospel to the distant Hebrides and Orkneys — the
" Polynesia " of the missions of that day. He died at
lona in the year 597 a.d. His monastery became famous,
and the mother of other monasteries. His disciples had
a great share in converting the English and the Germans,
and in quickening the spiritual life of Northem France,
reproducing the monastery of Hii at Lindisfarne, at St.
Gall, at Luxeuil, and Bobbio, and elsewhere.
We shall see in the next chapter that as Rome was
the source of the Italian mission, and Kent was the
scene of its operations, so lona was the source of the
Celtic mission, and Lindisfarne the English centre of its
activity.

52

CHAPTER VII
THE CELTIC MISSION
We have seen in a former chapter how Christianity
was introduced into Northumbria by Paulinus, under
Edwin the king.
In 633 A.D., the fierce Penda, King of Mercia, entered
into a confederation with CaedwaUa, King of the Britons,
and defeated this Edwin of Northumbria in a great battle
at Heathfield ; the British prince made himself master
of the whole of Northumbria and ruled cruelly for one
year. Then the heir of the Bernician branch of the
royal house of the Northumbrian Angles, which had
been dispossessed by Edwin, the representative of the
rival Deiran branch, assayed to recover the kingdom.
Returning with a small band of his companions in
exile, some of his countrymen rallied round his banner.
Csedwalla marched against him, and Oswald awaited the
assault in a favourable position at Hefenfelt near Hexham.
Before engaging the numerous forces of Csedwalla,
Oswald caused a wooden cross to be fixed in the ground,
before which he and his little army knelt and prayed for
the Divine help on their just cause. Bede mentions that
there was no sign of the Christian faith, no church, no
altar erected throughout all the nation of the Bernicians
until Oswald set up this cross, before giving battle to his
barbarous enemy. This was one of the decisive battles
of the Anglo-Saxon conquest, for in it the British king
suffered a total defeat, and the Angles gained permanent

THE CELTIC MISSION 53

possession of Northumbria. Oswald united in him
self again the sovereignty over the two Northumbrian
kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia.
During the seventeen years' exile of his family, Oswald
had received instruction from the Scottish missionaries ;
and that he was in earnest in his Christianity seems proved
by his whole hfe, from his prayer before the battle of
Hefenfelt onwards. As soon as he was established on
the throne he took steps to recover his people to the faith.
He did not send to recall Paulinus to his abandoned
work. PauHnus had been the bishop of Edwin, the
enemy of his house, and had fled with Edwin's widow
and chUdren to Kent, and was now ruling in the see
of Rochester. Nor did he commission Jacob the deacon,
whom Paulinus had left behind him, to send to Canter
bury for some other of the Italian missionaries. He
naturally turned to the Scottish priests, by whom he had
himself been instructed, and sent messengers inviting
Segenius,' the Abbot of Hii — the fourth abbot from
Columba — to undertake the work of re-establishing the
faith among his people. The abbot first sent one of his
monks named Gorman, a man of austere disposition, who
met with little success, and after a while retumed to Hii,
admitting the failure of his mission. In an assembly of
the brethren he reported that he had not been able to do
any good to the nation he had been sent to preach to,
because they were uncivilized men and of a stubborn and
barbarous disposition. The assembly debated what was
to be done, for they desired that the nation should receive
the salvation they had asked, and were grieved that they
had not more favourably received the preacher sent them.
WhUe they considered it, one of the brethren said, " I am
of opinion, brother, that you were more severe to your
unlearned hearers than you ought to have been, and

54 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
did not, as the Apostle bids, first give them the milk of
more easy doctrine, till, being by degrees nourished with
the Word of God, they should be capable of greater
perfection." The brethren approved what this speaker,
Aidan, had said, and came to the conclusion that they
could not do better than send him to their friend King
Oswald. Off" the coast of Northumbria the reader will find in the
map a httle island, connected at low tide with the main
land, called Lindisfarne, or Holy Island ; Aidan begged
this from King Oswald that he might make it a second
lona, and there he commenced the mission which gradu
ally extended its labours over Northumbria and Mercia
and the kingdom of the East Saxons.
Aidan is a man to be placed side by side with Augustine
in the estimation of Englishmen, for they were the co-
apostles of the English Church. Bede has left us a
charming portrait of his character : " He was a man of
singular meekness, piety, and zeal." " It was thfe greatest
commendation of his doctrine with all men, that he taught
no otherwise than he and his followers lived. He neither
sought nor loved anything of this world, but delighted in
distributing immediately among the poor whatsoever was
given him by the kings or rich men of the world. He
used to travel both town and country on foot, and he
would address all whom he met, rich or poor — if not
Christians, inviting them to embrace the faith; if believers,
confirming them in the faith and stirring them up to
almsgiving and good works. All who accompanied him,
whether monks or laymen, were employed in reading the
Scriptures or learning the Psalms." In another place,
Bede says: "He was beloved and venerated by all,
even by the Bishops of the ItaUan school, Honorius of
Canterbury, and Felix of the East Angles." The king,

THE CELTIC MISSION 55
"Oswald, zealously seconded his bishop's efforts. He
himself, while Aidan was imperfectly acquainted with
the English tongue, would interpret his discourses to
his companions, as King Kamehameha IV. of Hawaii did
in our days for his bishop. He foUowed the bishop's
virtues too, was humble and affable, and generous to
the poor. Under such hands the work prospered.
Many of the Scots came into the kingdom to help in
it. The Holy Island became a flourishing monastery :
churches were bmlt here and there over the kingdom ;
the people flocked joyfuUy together to hear the Word,
and were instructed in Christianity and civilization ;
money and lands were given of the bounty of the
king and his thanes to build and endow churches.
Here is an anecdote of Aidan's generosity. Oswin
(of the family of Edwin, who on Oswald's death ruled for
seven years over Deira) had given him an extraordinarily
fine horse which he might use in crossing rivers or in any
journey that needed haste, for, as we have said, he usually
journeyed on foot. Soon after a poor man meeting him
and asking alms, he at once dismounted, and bade the
horse with all its royal furniture be given to the beggar,
" for he was very compassionate to the poor, and as it
were the father of the wretched." When the king heard
of it he was, not unnaturaUy, a little provoked ; and as
they went in to dinner he remonstrated with him, " Why
did you give that horse which I had particularly chosen
for yourself? had not we other horses which would have
done as weU to give away to a beggar ? " To whom the
bishop replied, " What is it you say, O king ! is that foal
of a mare more dear to you than a chUd of God ? " Upon
this they went in to dinner. The bishop sat down in his
place; but the king, who was come in from hunting, stood
warming himself at the fire. Suddenly calhng to mind

56 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
what the bishop had said, he ungirt his sword and gave
it to a servant, and fell down at the bishop's feet,
and asked his forgiveness. " From this time forward I
win not judge of what, or how much of our money, you
shall give to the children of God." The bishop was
much moved at the sight, and starting up, raised the king,
saying " he was entirely reconciled to him if he would sit
down to his meal and lay aside all sorrow."
The good bishop died in the seventeenth year of his
episcopacy, and the story of his death throws still further
light on the labours of his life. He was at the king's
country house not far from Bamborough, " for having a
church and a chamber there he was wont often to go
and stay there, and to make excursions to preach in the
country round about ; which he likewise did at other of
the king's country seats, having nothing of his own
besides his church and a few fields about it. When he
was sick they set up a tent for him close to the wall at
the west end of the church ; therein he gave up the
ghost, leaning against a timber buttress which supported
the church wall." It is right that the memory of the
founder of the mission to which half England owes its
Christianity should be kept alive among us; and the
particulars of his story admirably illustrate the life of a
missionary bishop of those days, and the way in which
England was evangelized.
Oswy succeeded his brother Oswald in Bernicia, and
after seven years, by the slaughter of Oswin, re-united the
two Northumbrian kingdoms in 642 a.d. Some years
after, Peada, the son of Penda, King of Mercia, sought
the daughter of Oswy in marriage. Oswy would not
consent unless Peada would become a Christian. This
he did, and returned to Mercia with four Lindisfarne
jpriests ; and though old King Penda did not embrace

THE CELTIC MISSION 57
the new religion, he allowed it to be preached under his
son's patronage ; and Diuma, one of the four priests, was
consecrated Bishop of Mercia.
In 653 Sigebert succeeded to the throne of Essex.
He was on terms of great friendship with Oswy, and,
visiting him after his accession to the throne, -he was
converted by Finan, the successor of Aidan, and returned
to his kingdom, taking back with him two of the Lindis
farne priests, who succeeded in establishing the faith
among his subjects, and one of them, Cedd, the brother
of Chad of Lichfield, was consecrated bishop.
Sigebert, who succeeded to the kingdom of East
Anglia in 636 A.D., had spent some years in banishment
in France, where he was baptized; and, when he re
turned to take possession of his kingdom, Felix, a
Burgundian bishop, came to him and undertook the
conversion of his people. Felix was very successful in
his work, and was assisted in it "by Fursey, a priest who
came over from Ireland.
Only the kingdom of the South Saxons remains to be
accounted for, the latest of the kingdoms to receive the
faith of Christ. It owed its conversion to the able,
restless, turbulent Wilfrid of York ; who, when he was
banished from the Northumbrian kingdom for his offence
in appealing to Rome, was driven by a storm upon the
coast of Sussex, where he found the people stUf heathens.
Here again the king had married a Christian princess,
and some Christian monks had settled down in their
neighbourhood ; but they had not succeeded in winning
any of the people. WUfrid commenced the task with
characteristic energy, and gained many converts, estab
hshing a monastery at Selsey. WUfrid was a Northumbrian
by birth, though an ardent partisan of the Roman school.
Thus we find that Itahan missionaries Christianized

58 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
Kent and Wessex ; the Celtic missionaries Christianized
Mercia ; and a Northumbrian, with a Roman education,
introduced Christianity into Sussex. The work was
begun by the Italians and finished by the Scots in
Northumbria and Essex. So about equal credit is due
to Rome and to lona ; for if Rome may claim the special
merit of having been the first to send the Gospel to the
heathen Anglo-Saxons, lona may perhaps fairly balance
that claim by the fact that when the work was finished,
the evangelization of by far the larger portion of England ^
was found to be due to her children. Nor must we
overlook the aid which we received from the Frankish
Church, first in the influence of the French princess
Bertha and her bishop in preparing the way for the
conversion of Kent; in the consecration of Augustine,
and lastly, in the founding of the East Anglian Church
by Felix the Burgundian.
The reader will have noticed that the ancient British
Church took no part in this conversion of their conquerors,
and a few words ought to be said on the subject.
King Ethelbert, at Augustine's request, arranged a
conference between Augustine and some of his com
panions on one side, and some bishops of the British
Church on the other, which took place under an oak,
still, in Bede's time, called Augustine's oak, probably at
Aust on the Severn, in Gloucestershire. His object was
to invite them first to conform to the Roman customs
in the time of keeping Easter and other points, and,
secondly, to co-operate with him in evangelizing the
Saxons. When the arguments of the Italians failed to
induce the Britons to consent to forsake the ancient
customs of their Church, Augustine is said by Bede to
have supported his views by miraculously giving sight
' In territory, not in then existing population.

THE CELTIC MISSION 59
to a blind man. The Britons, though influenced by this,
declared that they could not depart from their ancient
customs without the consent of their people, and asked
for a second meeting at which more of their number
might be present. On the second occasion seven
bishops 1 were present, and many learned men, especially
of the monastery of Bangor Iscoed. On their way to
the conference they consulted a hermit, who had a great
reputation for wisdom and sanctity, whether they ought
to agree to Augustine's proposals. He gave them the
oracular answer, " If he is a man of God, follow him."
" But how shall we know that ? " said they. He rephed,
" Our Lord hath said, ' Take My yoke upon you and
learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart ' ; if,
therefore, Augustine is meek and lowly of heart, it is to
be believed that he has taken upon him the yoke of
Christ, and offers the same to you to take upon you.
But if he is stern and haughty, it wUl appear that he is
not of God, and we are not to regard his words." They
StiU asked further, " How shaU we discern this ? " " Take
care," he said, "to arrive last at the place; if, at your
approach, he shall rise to receive you, hear him, for he
is a servant of Christ ; if he treats you haughtUy and
does not rise to you, then let him be despised by you."
Unhappily Augustine stood upon the dignity of arch
bishop, which he claimed, and did not do the British
representatives the courtesy to rise to receive them ; and
thus the result of the synod was determined before a
word was spoken. Augustine had reduced his proposals
to three heads : if they would keep Easter at the due
time, and baptize according to the Roman custom, and
> This is a large number of bishops for the Church of Wales. It
may be that there were among them bishops of Cumbria and of the
peninsula of Cornwall and Devon, which were still unconquered.

6o TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
unite with him in preaching the Gospel to the English,
he would readily tolerate all their other deviations from
the Italian usages. The proposals were reasonable
enough, and would have been accepted; but, as in all
the subsequent rivalry of the native and the Italian
Churches, there was another question in the background.
Bede shows us what it was which really influenced the
British ecclesiastics when he says, "They answered,
' They would do none of those things, nor receive him as
their archbishop ; ' for, they said among themselves, if he
would not now rise up to us, how much more will he
contemn us as of no worth if we shall put ourselves
under his subjection." This clearly was the meaning
of the test which the old hermit gave them, whether if
they accepted him as archbishop he would be a brother
in Christ—primus inter pares — or whether he would
make himself a lord over them. The interview ended
with some words of Augustine to the effect that if they
would not preach the Gospel to the Saxons as brethren,
it would not be surprising if they were slain by them as
enemies — a very natural reflection, which was afterwards
looked upon as a prophecy, fulfilled when 1200 of the
monks of Bangor were massacred by the Northumbrians
at the battle of Carlegion.
It is idle to speculate what different results might have
followed if Augustine had been more courteous. As it
was, the British Church withdrew into itself and took no
part in the conversion of the Saxons. This was made an
occasion of reproach against them down to the time of
Bede, who complains, that " to this day it is the custom
of the Britons not to pay any respect to the faith and
religion of the Enghsh, nor to correspond with them any
more than with pagans." We must do them the justice
to remember that when the Italian missionaries landed

THE CELTIC MISSION 6l
in the long-settled kingdom of Kent, the Saxon conquest
was not even yet complete in the west and north, and for
many a year after, it remained uncertain whether the
British might not recover some of their lost ground, or
whether, on the other hand, the tide of invasion might
not send forth one last wave which would sweep the
British race entirely out of the corners into which it had
been driven. This must have kept up a Constant feeling
of hostility between the Saxon and the British races, and
may well explain why the British Churches for so long a
time took no part in the Saxon conversion. While the
conquered race was yet in arms against further aggression,
they were little likely to be organizing peaceful missions
to convert the fierce aggressor ; and while the conquering
race was still fiUed with warlike and aggressive designs,
it was httle likely to receive the teaching of the people
whom they must have despised because they had con
quered them, and hated because they had injured
them. The British Church was not wholly negligent of the
duty of spreading the Gospel. We have already mentioned
the mission of Ninian to the Picts in 412 ; and the fact
that about 544 — 565, missionaries ofthe British Church,
under the auspices of St. David, St. GUdas, and St. Cadoc,
restored or revived the faith in Ireland. Thus indirecdy
the British Church had some influence in the conversion
of the Saxons.
The place which the British Church refused to take in
the Saxon conversion was, we have seen, taken by a
kindred Church, which brought precisely the same
ecclesiastical elements to the moulding of the character
of the Church of England ; and the unity which Augus
tine failed to give to the English Church was afterwards
accompUshed by Theodore, but with probably the impress

62 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY ,
oi a more independent national spirit, and a less tendency
to lean upon Rome.
These detaUs, however briefly given, may have been
found a little uninteresting, but they were very necessary
to establish the fact that Rome has no claim to the
obedience of the Church of England on the ground that
she gave us our Christianity. God forbid that we should
be ungrateful to the good Bishop Gregory, or to Augustine
and Paulinus and MeUitus and Justus and Laurentius,
and the rest of their fellow-labourers, for the share they
took in the work ; neither may we be ungrateful to the
holy fathers of lona and Lindisfarne, to Aidan and Finan,
and Chad and Cedd, for labours which were equally self
denying, and which left wider and more lasting results.

63

CHAPTER VIII
THE HEPTARCHIC CHURCHES
So far the work ofthe Church among the Saxons was a
missionary work. There was no " Church of England "
yet. Indeed, there was no " England " yet, but a number
of separate and independent Jute and Anglian and Saxon
kingdoms, perpetually at war with one another.
Each kingdom had a separate and independent mission
at work in it. The way in which these missions were
organized and carried on was alike in all the kingdoms.
The missionary bishops, both Italians and Celts, had been
trought up in religious communities ; it was natural that
they should adopt a similar organization, and probably
it was the organization best suited to the circumstances.
Each bishop established himself in some convenient
central place, where he lived, together with his clergy.
His first care, of course, was to set up the Divine worship.
His second was to provide for the education of the youth
ofthe kingdom, and the training ofa body of native clergy.
The early missionaries were all learned men, and they
came among a rude, unlettered people ; and, in addition
to the gift of the Christian faith, they conferred on them
the gifts of learning and civihzation also. But while some
of the clergy were employed in devotion, study, and edu
cation at head-quarters, others were sent out to itinerate
among the towns and scattered hamlets in the forest clear
ings, first to convert the people and form them into
churches, and then to re-visit them from time to time, to

64 TURNING POINTS OF ENGJ.ISH CHURCH HISTORY
teach, to celebrate Divine worship, and to administer*the
sacraments. The bishop himself was the busiest of all. Part of his
time was spent at his cathedral, superintending its manifold
work ; himself the chief adviser of the king and his
councU, the chief teacher of the schools, the diligent
preacher in the cathedral on Sundays and holidays, the
overseer ofthe work of his itinerating priests. At other
times he himself made long and laborious visitations
through the whole kingdom, visiting the congregations
which had been formed, confirming the children, preach
ing to the people, extending, strengthening, settling the
work which his missionaries had begun. Bede gives us
some graphic sketches of the way in which a bishop
would ride through the country, attended by his clerks
and servants, singing the psalms as they rode ; and how
the country people would lay down their tools in the field
and run to kneel down and ask the bishop's blessing.
Some of the bishops used to go on foot on their missionary
journeys, after the example of the Apostles. We have
seen that Aidan used to do so, and that when King
Oswin gave him a horse he gave it away to the first
beggar he met. Chad also " used to travel about, not on
horseback, but after the manner of the Apostles, on foot,
to preach the Gospel in towns, the open country, cottages,
villages, and castles, for he was one of the disciples of
Aidan, and endeavoured to instruct his people by the
same actions and behaviour, according to his and his
brother Cedd's example." Theodore bade him ride when
ever he had a long journey to undertake, and, finding
him very unwUling, he with his own hands helped him
on his horse.
But seeing the vast extent of those dioceses, it was as
necessary for a Saxon bishop to ride as for a missionary

THE HEPTARCHIC CHURCHES 65

bishop now of an Australian diocese. Accordingly we
find that the bishops commonly travelled on horseback,^
and with them often a considerable company of priests
and clerks, and of young laymen who were under the
bishop's care and instructions. We can easUy picture to
ourselves the company of ecclesiastics and young nobles
and their attendants, some on foot, some on horseback,
riding along the green bridle-roads, through forest, and
over moor, and across /ord, singing the " Hours " at the
proper times as they rode along. They were not always
singing their office ; and no doubt, as they rode up hii'
and down dale; they enjoyed the bright sunshine, and
pleasant landscape, and open-air life, and chatted cheer
fully with one another! A passage in Bede shows us
that they were not insensible to the temptation which a
group of young men on horseback naturally feel when
they come to a stretch of level turf One of the priests
of John of Beverley tells us' how in the prime of youth he
lived among that saint's clergy, applying himself to read
ing and singing, but not having yet altogether withdrawn
his heart from youthful pleasures. It happened one day,
as they were travelling with the bishop, that they came
to a plain and open road, well adapted for galloping their
horses. The young men that were with him, and
particularly those of the laity, began to entreat the bishop
to give them leave to gallop, and make trial of the good
ness of their horses. He at first • refused, saying it was
an idle request, but at last, being prevailed on by their
unanimous wishes, he gave them leave, and off they went
for a good race across the turf Our young priest was
forbidden to ride with them, but when they had galloped
backwards and forwards several times, the bishop and he
*
' Earconwald, Bishop of the East Saxons, being lame, wai
carried about his diocese in a horse-litter. F

66 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
looking on, his wanton humour prevailed, and he struck
in among them, and rode off at speed with the rest.
The bishop called after him, " Alas ! how much you
grieve me by riding after that manner." But though he
heard him he raced on, and immediately his horse threw
him, and in falling he hit his head against a stone, and
lay motionless. Finding that he could not be moved,
they stretched a tent over him and watched over him till
evening and then carried him home. And the bishop,
expecting his death, would not stay that night as he was
wont among his clergy, but spent it alone in watching
and prayer, imploring the Divine Goodness for his sick
clerk's recovery. Coming to him in the morning early,
having first said a prayer over him, he called him by
name, and, as it were, waking him out of sleep, asked him
" if he knew who it was that spoke to him " ; and he-
opened his eyes and said, "I do : you are my beloved
bishop." And the bishop laid his hands on his head
with words of blessing and returned to prayer.
Their route did not always lie through quiet places,
where they could sing their office without disturbance, or
ride races without scandal. They passed through the
clearings, where the people were at work in the fields,
and Sb into the villages, which were the objects of their
journeys. Bede in another place enables us to follow
them there : " The religious habit was at that time in
great veneration, so that wheresoever any clergyman or
monk happened to come he was joyfully received by all
persons as God's servant. And if they chanced to meet
him upon the, way they ran to him, and were glad to be
signed with his hand or blessed with his mouth. And if
any priest happened to come into a village, the inhabit
ants flocked together to hear from him the Word of Life.
For the priests and clergymen went into the villages on

THE HEPTARCHIC CHURCHES 67

no Other account than to preach, baptize, visit the sick,
and, in few words, to take care of souls."
On their journeys the clergy were accustomed, not
only, as we have seen, to say their Hours as they rode,
but also daily to celebrate the Holy Communion before
they started. This we learn from Bede's account of the
two Hewalds, English priests who, about a.d. 690, went
as missionaries among the people of Old Saxony. " The
barbarians," he says, "found them to be of another
religion by their continual prayer and singing of psalms
and hymns, and by their daily offering the sacrifice of
the daily oblation, for they had with them sacred vessels
and a consecrated table for an altar." ^
It is very interesting to compare this missionary work
in England more than a thousand years ago with that
which our missionary bishops and clergy are now doing
in some of the colonies of England. The work of a
Selwyn in New Zealand is the best Ulustration of that of
a Chad in Mercia ; and the early history of the Church
of England helps us to anticipate the grand results in
the future of which we in this generation are laying the
foundations in new countries.
The king under whose protection a bishop had been
established seems usually to have given him the means
of support for himself and his clergy, and in most
instances he endowed the see sooner or later with lands.
Moreover, the missionaries believed, and taught their
converts, that Christ had ordained for the maintenance
of His Church a provision similar to that which He had
before ordained for the priests and Levites of the Old
Testament Church. The inspired Scripture drew the
' Such a portable altar, of Saxon date, was found in St. Cuthbert's
grave in Durham Cathedral, and is engraved in the Rev. James
Raine's ' St. Cuthbert.' Others are noticed in Dr. Rock's ' Church
of our Fathers,' I. 250.

68 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
parallel, "They who served the altar lived of the altar,
and so they who preached the Gospel should live of the
Gospel." They taught that this parallelism extended to
the proportion of the provision that was to be made, so
that it was every Christian man's duty to give a tithe of
his substance to God. We are told that obedience to
this doctrine came the easier to the Saxons because they
had been accustomed to give a tithe of their substance to
their heathen priests. This tithe at first was all paid into
a common fund, which was under the control of the
bishop. Though the Churches of the Conversion were inde
pendent, they naturally grouped themselves round two
great centres — those which sprang from the missionaries
of lona round Lindisfarne, and those which followed
the Italian usages round the see of Canterbury. The
points of difference between them were small matters of
ecclesiastical detail, such as those which had been in
debate between Augustine and the British Church ; the
mode of making the tonsure and the time of keeping
Easter were the chief ostensible subjects of debate. No
doubt the latter caused some inconvenience, and it was
brought home to King Oswy of Northumbria in a very
striking way, for his wife, Eanfleda, the daughter of Edwin
and Ethelburga, had been brought up in the Italian
customs, while he had embraced the Celtic customs;
consequently it sometimes happened at Oswy's court
that the king was celebrating the great Easter feast
while his queen was keeping the solemn and penitential
season of Lent. Probably the matter at issue went
deeper than this, and involved tUte point of honour
whether the Celtic Churches should or should not, by
giving way, acknowledge a certain superiority of the see

THE HEPTARCHIC CHURCHES 69
of Canterbury. The differences of custom must have
caused a good deal of confusion throughout North
umbria. Jacob, the deacon who had been left behind
by Paulinus, taught the Roman customs to his converts ;
so did Romanus, the queen's chaplain ; so did the able
and energetic Wilfrid, who was the friend of Alchfrid,
the king's son ; and Wilfrid was introducing a spirit of
acerbity and intolerance into the question, when Oswy
was induced to hold a conference at Whitby, heard
what both sides had to say on the subject, and decided
to adopt the customs of the rest of the Western worid.
Whereupon Colman (who had succeeded Finan in the
see of Northumbria) retired with some of his adherents
to Scotland, while the rest of the CeUic clergy of his
kingdom accepted the decision of Oswy. Cedd, bishop
of the East Saxons, happened to be present at
the conference at Whitby, and he also adopted the
Continental customs.

?o

CHAPTER IX
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
We now arrive at one of the chief turning points in the
history of the English Church. On the death of Deus-
dedit, the sixth Archbishop of Canterbury (664 a.d.),
Egbert, King of Kent, and Oswy, King of Northumbria,
the great patrons of the two schools — the Italian and the
Celtic — consulted together on the affairs of the Churches,
and, with the consent of the Churches themselves, agreed
to take steps to arrive at a uniformity of customs through
out England. It is evident that the Celtic party, which
had already yielded on the Easter question, was prepared
to make further concessions on the points in which they
differed from nearly all the other Churches of Europe.
They agreed to select a man in whom both parties had
confidence, and to send him to Rome, to which all the
semi-barbarous nations of the north and west looked up
as the ideal of learning and orthodoxy, that he might
come back with all the experience to be gathered in the
imperial city, and with all the prestige of consecration by
the Bishop of the most famous see of Christendom, and
then regulate the aff'airs of the English Churches. They
chose Wighard, an Englishman by birth, who had been
one of the chaplains of Archbishop Deusdedit, and sent
him with attendants and presents — "many vessels of
silver and gold " — to Rome. He arrived at Rome, and
was kindly received by Pope Vitalian ; but before his
consecration he and most of his companions died of a

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND "J I
pestilence which happened at the time. To avoid further
delay the English Chur.ches requested' Vitalian to select
another man. They no doubt saw that their object
would be still better attained if the Bishop of Rome
should induce some distinguished man, to whom all
would defer, to undertake the task of setting in order
the aff'airs of these rude and remote Churches.^ The
action which he took honestly and effectually furthered
the object in view. Some writers have represented that
the Pope sought to establish his supremacy over the
English Churches ; but there seems no good reason to
suspect that Vitalian acted otherwise than in perfect good
faith in the matter. The man selected was not at all
a likely man to carry out any ambitious designs on the
part of Rome ; and we shall see in the sequel that he
acted with perfect independence, and when the occasion
arose dechned to defer to the judgment of the Roman
see in a matter relating to the discipline of the Church
of England. It . is not possible to doubt that the Pope
knew quite well, from the official letters sent, and from
his communications with Wighard and his companions,
what was the object of the kings and the Churches. His
choice was a judicious one, and the result was in every
way successful.
- In fact there was some difficulty in inducing any of
the distinguished Roman ecclesiastics to undertake the
task. The Pope first selected Hadrian, the abbot of a
monastery near Naples, an African by birth, a man
famous for classical learning and for knowledge both of
' Our colonial Churches of to-day, with English clergymen of their
own of University training and home experience, are nevertheless
often glad to leave it to the Archbishop of Canterbury to select a
bishop for them out of the Church of England at home, and it is
often difficult to induce any distinguished English clergyman to
undertake the laborious duty.

72 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
monastic discipline and of Church affairs. But Hadrian
begged to be excused, and named a monk named Andrew,
who by all who knew him was judged worthy of a
bishopric. But Andrew also begged to be excused, and
the Pope pressed the duty again upon Hadrian. He
obtained a respite for a time to see if he could find
another substitute, and at length suggested a Greek
monk of his acquaintance, called Theodore, as a suitable
man. Theodore was a native of Tarsus, the birthplace of
St. Paul, which was still, as in St. Paul's time, a Greek
city in the midst of a rude population, and the great
commercial city of the eastern end of the Mediterranean.
He had already acquired at Constantinople such a repu
tation for learning as to be called "Theodore the
Philosopher " before he came to Rome. His coming to
Rome was at the same time that the Emperor Constans
II. visited it, and perhaps he came in the Emperor's
train. He was now 66 years old. AU these circum
stances made Theodore a most unlikely person to be
selected by a Pope of Rome to carry out any policy of
promoting the supremacy of the Church of Rome over
other Churches. In the first place, Theodore was a
Greek ; in the second place, if he had- been in the train
of Constans his orthodoxy was not above suspicion, for
during his middle-life the Eastern Church had been
shaken to its centre by the monothelite heresy, and the
Emperor had taken part in the controversy, and issued
two famous edicts which displayed a leaning to the
heretical opinions. This Eastern monk, this "philo
sopher," patronized by Constans, was, therefore, a sus
picious person in the eyes of the Bishop of Rome. But
Hadrian knew him well, and vouched for him ; and at
length Vitalian reluctantly accepted him on condition

ESTABLISHMENT OP THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 73
that Hadrian would go with him to England, and help
him in his work, and take care that he did not, " accord
ing to the custom of the Greeks, introduce anything
contrary to the true faith in the Church over which he
presided." Soon after Archbishop Theodore's arrival he made
a general visitation of the whole of England, and his
authority was universally recognized. In the year 673
A.D. he summoned a council of the English Churches at
Hertford, which was attended by all the English bishops
and a great number of the clergy ; and then with unan
imous consent a uniformity of customs as to the time
of Easter, &c., was adopted, the rights of the several
Churches were regulated, and their confederation into
one province, under the Archbishop of Canterbury as
Metropolitan, was assented to. The several Churches,
with their different nationalities between which were
frequent wars, with their diff'erent religious customs and
mutual ecclesiastical jealousies, were thus organized into
what was virtually a National Church. It is very worthy
of note that the unity of the Church preceded the unity
ofthe kingdom by 150 years; for it was not till the year
82S a.d. that Egbert, King of Wessex, had reduced by
conquest the other kingdoms, and became the first ruler
of the whole of England.
Theodore and Hadrian, both eminent scholars, gave
a great impulse to the cultivation of learning throughout
England. Through their influence, and partly by help
of their personal teaching, the monasteries, and even the
nunneries, became schools of learning. Bede says that
in his time there were scholars of Theodore and Hadrian
who were as well versed in Greek and Latin as in their
own tongue. In Bede's time the eyes of learned men
throughout Western Christendom were attracted to the

74 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
monasteries of Deira, partly, indeed, by the vast repu
tation and wonderfully rapid circulation of his own Eccle
siastical History. Archbishop Egbert founded a noble
hbrary at York, and taught in the schools; scholars
flocked to them. These schools produced Alcuin, one
of the greatest scholars of his age. It happened that
this brightest period of Saxon learning coincided with the
darkest period of literature among the Franks. Charle
magne invited Alcuin to his court, and in him England
repaid the debt which it owed to the Gallican Church in
pastages. When the Churches had been thus organized into one
united Church, Theodore proceeded next to the important
step of a subdivision of the dioceses.^ This was not
effected without some opposition, and one instance of
this opposition we shall have presently to mention.
Hitherto each king had had his bishop, and no doubt
there was a good deal to be said in favour of the main
tenance of the arrangement. To subdivide the sees
would be to diminish the prestige and influence of the
episcopate, it would' even seem like breaking up the
unity of the national Churches, and altering their very
constitution. But it was manifest that now the whole
population had become Christian, their adequate super
vision needed a larger number of bishops, each acting
within a more manageable area, and Theodore persisted
in his plan. In 673, the year of the council of Hertford,
he divided East Anglia into two sees at Elmham and
Dunwich. Soon after he constituted Hereford and
Worcester. In 67S he divided the see of Northumbria,
notwithstanding the opposition of WUfrid, its bishop, into
four — York, Hexham, Lindisfarne, and Lindsey — besides
' Kent had been divided by Augustine in 604 A.D., by the
erection of a second see at Rochester.

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 75

reviving the ancient British diocese of Whithern, and
consecrating a see at Sidnacester for the province of
Lindsey, lately transferred by conquest from Mercia to
Northumbria.i The initiation of the parochial sub
division of the dioceses is also commonly attributed,
with some probabihty, but without any positive authority,
to Theodore. He, it is said, encouraged the thanes to
build churches on their estates for the honour of God,
and the comfort of themselves and their people, and to
provide dwelling-houses for the clergymen to live in.
As an inducement, he is said to have permitted that
every thane so doing should in future pay the tithe of
his manor to his own pastor instead of sending it to the
bishop's common fund; and, further, that he should
select his own pastor out of the general body of the
clergy. The system thus commenced or promoted by
Theodore was gradually carried out over the whole
1 The following list of Saxon sees may be useful to the reader ; —
Kingdoms. Sees.

Kent . .
East Saxons.
East Angles..
West Saxons

Mercia . .

South Saxons
Northumbria

founded about 909.

Canterbury Rochester
London
DunwichKlmham Winchester Sherborne
Crediton
Wells Ramsbury Cornwall LichfieldHereford Worcester Lindsey (Sidnacester)
Leicester, removed to Dorchester about 870.
Selsey York Lindisfarne Hexham
Whithern.

76 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
kingdom, so that by the time of the Norman Conquest
the diocesan and parochial organization of the Church
of England was completed.
Our existing constitution in Church and State thus
gradually and naturally grew. Each kingdom at first was
the bishop's diocese, and when the dioceses were divided
by Theodore he followed the divisions of the sub-
kingdoms. The first, bishops did not begin their work
without the permission of the kings, Ihe kings when
converted endowed the sees out of their own property,
and thus the patronage of the sees, i. e. the approval of
one of the clergy to succeed to a vacant see, came
naturally into the hands of the several kings, and so
into the hand of the king of the whole country. When
the king was a pious one, he had regard to the choice of
the diocesan clergy; if he were a self-willed king, he
appointed his bishops without seeking any one's consent ;
but the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury
seems usuaUy to have received the sanction of the great
council of the nation. The township became the sphere
of duty of a single priest, and later it was called his
parish, and he was caUed its rector. The landowners
gave their tithe willingly for the support of religion, and
after a while the law recognized and protected the right
of the clergy to these endowments. The thane selected
his own parish priest out of the body of the clergy, and
so the patronage of the benefice continued to be vested
as of right in the lord of the manor. The bishop stUl
retained a number of the clergy about him in the
cathedral city, and as things began to get into permanent
order their position graduaUy became defined. The
number of clergy on the cathedral establishment became
settled, a rule of life was drawn up for them, and they
were organized into a collegiate body with a dean and

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 7 7
Other officers. The estates of these clerks ultimately
became separated from those of the bishop ; married
clerks or canons hved in separate houses. Anybody
who liked established a monastery, and adopted his own
rule and regulations for it, but they were all under
the supervision of the bishop.
" Church and State " had then a deeper meaning than
the phrase can have now. The two powers were every
where co-ordinate. In the council the bishops and
abbots sat with the other notables and assisted in making
laws ; the same assembly seems often to have considered
both civil laws and ecclesiastical canons. The bishop
sat beside the shire reeve (sheriff) in administering the
laws ; the parish priest led the people of his township to
the hundred moot. For the clergy were not foreigners,
nor a separate caste ; their interests and those of the
people were the same. The people looked up to and
trusted the clergy. Jealousies between Church and State
were the growth of subsequent times and other circum
stances; and dissent was unknown in England for 1500
years after Christ.
This sketch of the origin of our ecclesiastical constitu
tion would be incomplete without a few words as to the
subsequent division of the Church into two provinces, of
Canterbury and York. When Gregory sent his mission
to England, he laid down large plans for the future
ecclesiastical constitution of the country. There were
to be two provinces, of London and York, each consisting
of twelve dioceses. Augustine was to be the Primate for
his hfetime, and after his death the senior by consecra
tion of the two archbishops. We have seen that at the
death of Augustine the Church was stiU hmited to Kent ;
the independent sources of the conversion of the other

78 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
kingdoms did not tend to their recognition of any obe
dience to the Kentish see. Theodore was the first bishop
who was recognized and obeyed as archbishop by all the
Heptarchic Churches.
In 735 A.D., however, circumstances led to the
realization in a modified way of Gregory's idea of a
division of England into two provinces. At that time
Northumbria was the most powerful of the Heptarchic
kingdoms ; its Church was flourishing ; Egbert, a member
of the royal family, and a man of great learning, was
Bishop of York. The schools of York were famous
throughout Western Christendom. Bede had recently
published his ecclesiastical history, containing the letters
of Gregory the Great, with copies of which Nothelm,
afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, had supplied
him, and so had made known the original plan of a
northern province. The Archbishop of Canterbury
made no opposition ; and so it was arranged that York
should be erected into a metropolitan see, embracing the
sees of the Northumbrian kingdom — York, Hexham,
Lindisfarne, and Whithern. The king, unwilling that
his archbishop should be in any mark of dignity inferior
to other metropolitans, bade Bishop Egbert apply to the
Bishop of Rome for the honour of the pall, which was
granted, and he was recognized as Archbishop pf York.
In another half-century, Mercia, under King Offa,
made conquest of Kent, Wessex, and East Anglia, and,
in its turn, became the leading kingdom. Offa thought
that it became his dignity to have his chief see, Lichfield,
erected into a metropolitan see, having Mercia for its
province. He seized all the property of the see of
Canterbury which was within the kingdom of Mercia
to increase the endowments of Lichfield. On applica
tion to Rome for the honour of the pall, the Pope sent

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND 79
two legates to England, who passed through Kent,
visited Northumbria, and were everywhere weU received.
They attended a council which was held at Cealchythe
(Chelsea?), 785 a.d. ; but they did not assume to preside
at the council, or take any ostensible part in it. The
council consented to the wishes of Offa — the Archbishop
of Canterbury not venturing for political reasons to make
any open opposition — and sanctioned the erection of
Lichfield into a metropolitan see over the dioceses of
Mercia, viz., Lichfield, Hereford, Worcester, Lindsey,
and Leicester. Thus each of the leading kingdoms
in turn assumed for its chief church this metropolitan
organization and dignity. The province of Lichfield,
however, lasted but a short time. After eighteen years
another council at Cloveshoo reversed the decision of
Cealchythe, and Canterbury regained its authority over
the whole Church south of the Humber.
When Wessex in turn brought the other kingdoms
into subjection, and its sovereigns, retaining the title of
kings of Wessex, and leaving the other kingdoms to be
governed by their own under-kings, were yet virtually
kings of England, they did not foUow the example of
Northumbria and Mercia, but left the organization of
the Church undisturbed.
The invasion, conquest, and permanent settlement of
the Danes in England must not be passed by in silence,
though it is remarkable how httle permanent trace they
have left in the history of the Church of England. The
Saxon chronicle records in 787, in the reign of Offa, the
arrival of three ships of Northmen — " the first ships of
Danish men which sought the land of the English nation."
These were the harbingers of the last ^eat descent of
the northern barbarians. For several generations during
the gth century Denmark and Scandinavia continued

8o TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
to pour out hordes of pirates distinguished by warlike
force and courage, by merciless ferocity, and by hatred
of Christianity. The Saxons suffered in their turn the
miseries they had inflicted upon the Britons. The
country was repeatedly ravaged, the cities sacked and
sometimes burnt, churches and monasteries burnt, whole
provinces laid waste. The fierce struggle was protracted
by alternate fortunes ; now all resistance was overcome,
and Alfred was in hiding, and the land was at the mercy
of the freebooters ; again the Danes were defeated, and
compelled to settle in the north-eastern districts, and to
embrace Christianity, as Charlemagne had imposed it on
the Saxons of Ost and Westphalia, probably as a means
of reclaiming them from their barbarism. Fresh invaders
were aided by an outbreak of the settled Danes, and after
renewed struggles the kingdom was divided between
Edmund Ironside and Canute the King of Denmark.
At length the north ceased to send forth fresh swarms ;
the two races began to settle down side by side ; the
Danes learnt the religion of the Enghsh ; the churches
were rebuilt ; the results of a century of strife and con
fusion, and the destruction of the seats of learning, were
seen in the want of learning of the clergy ; but by the
time of the Conquest the constitution of the Church and
the religion of the people bore little trace of this long
contest. In the person of Edward the Confessor, the
heir of Cerdic was once more on the throne, and it was
only in the more stalwart persons and diff'erent dialect
and peculiar customs of the men of the Danelagh that
the traces of the Danish invasion remained discernible.
So much for the outward organization of the Anglo-
Saxon Church ; what were the doctrines which it held
and taught? We have seen what curiously various

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 8 1
elements were concerned in the planting of this Church
of England : Augustine and his Italians ; Birinus the
Italian, whose work was followed up by Agilbert, the
Frenchman with an Irish training ; Aidan and his Scots ;
Felix the Burgundian, helped by Fursey the Irishman ;
Wilfrid the Northumbrian with a Roman training ; all
harmonized and organized into a united Church of
England by Theodore the Asiatic Greek and Hadrian
the African. What differences there were between one
school of thought and another, between Augustine and
the British, between the Italians and the Scots, all related
to minor questions of ecclesiastical detail — a blunder in
the calculation of Easter-day, a difierence in the shape
of a tonsure. Among all these varied elements we hear
of no differences of doctrine, and only of partial and
occasional differences of opinion and feeling. Before
the end of the Saxon period Rome had begun to put
forth her pretensions to supremacy, and some of the
corrupt doctrines of the mediseval Church had begun to
be spread abroad. But the Anglo-Saxon nation and the
Anglo-Saxon Church had wonderfully little intercourse
with the rest of the world, and her mere isolation and
old-fashionedness preserved her from the inroad of the
new ideas ; while her constitution in Church and State,
and the simple habits of the people, had preserved the
Church from the moral corruption and the ecclesiastical
abuses with which the continental Churches were deeply
gangrened. There is an impression in the minds of many people
that we owe our religion almost entirely to Augustine,
who, having been sent by Pope Gregory, necessarily,
they suppose, made the Church of England subject to
the See of Rome, and introduced Roman Catholic
doctrine. From this impression some ver^ important G

82 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
practical deductions are drawn. On one side there is the
deduction that the sentiments of gratitude and loyalty
ought to induce us very strongly to admit the claims of
Rome to the obedience of England. Such sentiments
might h9,ve some weight with regard to the county of
Kent, but they have no foundation with respect to the
rest of Saxon England, or to Cornwall and Wales. We
have seen that in those days when the English Church
looked up to Rome with deserved veneration, she yet
SteadUy repudiated aU notion of subjection to her. In
the whole course of Saxon Church History only one
man, Wilfrid of York, made an attempt to appeal to
Rome as to a superior authority. He appealed twice ;
on both occasions the appeal was distinctly refused, and
the appellant was punished for making the appeal as for
an act of disloyalty.
Again, people often take for granted that the property
of the Church of England was acquired when the Church
was Roman Catholic, and that the Roman CathoUcs
have therefore a sort of equitable claim to it, on the
ground that it was given by people who held their doc
trines for the purpose of preaching and maintaining their
doctrines and worship. The truth is, that nearly all the
property which the Church at present possesses was ac
quired either before the Norman Conquest or since the
Reformation. The episcopal and capitular estates, tithes,
and most of the glebe lands were given by the Saxon
kings and landowners before there were any " Roman
Catholics" in the modern sense of the word. The
parsonage houses have been rebuilt by the clergy since
the Reformation; most of the churches have had so
much spent upon their maintenance and restoration since
the Reformation as to give the present Church of England
a very fair equitable title to them on that ground ; and

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 83
much more of Church property has been added since
the Reformation than people generally are aware of
The property which the Church acquired during the
period from the Conquest to the Reformation, when
people were growing more and more " Roman Catholic,"
consisted chiefly of the property of the monasteries and
the endowments of chantries ; of all this she was de
prived again at the Reformation — and at that same
period she was deprived of many a manor with which
the Saxon kings and nobles had endowed her bishops
and cathedrals, and of the great tithes of nearly half the
parishes of England.

84

CHAPTER X
THE GROWTH OF THE PAPACY
We are about to enter upon the next great turning
point in the history of the Church of England, when she
was brought under the spiritual supremacy of Rome, and
thrown open to the influence of the ideas which were
current on the continent of Europe. It becomes there
fore necessary to an' intelligent comprehension of this
phase of our own history that we should have some pre
liminary knowledge of the condition of the continental
Churches. We had occasion to point out in a previous chapter
how at the time of the Saxon conversion the several
Churches were independent of one another, and all held
substantially the same doctrines which had been handed
down from the early ages of the Church. During the
interval between that period and the period at which
we have now arrived — between the 7th century and the
uth — Europe had passed through the darkest ages of
its history.
During the 9th and loth centuries the continental
Churches had fallen into great corruption. The episcopal
sees had gradually become offices of so great wealth and
power that the princes into whose patronage they had
fallen endowed the members of their own families with
them, or bestowed them as rewards of service or gifts of
favour upon men who were often very unfit to fulfil the
spiritual duties of the offices. It naturally followed that

THE GROIVTH OF THE PAPACY 85
ambitious men sought these great prizes by unworthy
means, by intrigue and bribery. The Roman see itself
during the latter part of the 9th, and the first half of the
I oth century affords the most terrible example of the
corruption into which the Church of Christ had fallen.
Baronius, one of the great Roman Catholic historians,
describes the whole Church during the 9th and loth
centuries as "exceedingly foul." He says that in that
period no less than fifty Popes succeeded one another
on the Pontifical throne, " of whom many secured pos
session of it by fraud, by money, or by worse expedients."
And many of them lived lives of open and extreme pro
fligacy. SimUar, if not equaUy great, corruption existed
all over the continental Church. Simony was almost
universal. Men took Orders only to enable themselves
legally to hold Church benefices, and.lived like laymen.
Ecclesiastics of this character could not be expected to
be successful in the spiritual work of the Church and in
the care of souls ; and so learning grew scarce ^nd dis
cipline lax among the clergy ; the people were neglected
and grew up ignorant and irrehgious. There was a
strong tendency in feudal times to make all offices here
ditary. Why should not a prince-bishop, who was much
more a sovereign prince than a Christian bishop, transmit
his possessions and dignity to his son, as other princes
did ? why should not an archdeaconry be hereditary like
a seneschalship ? why should not a benefice be transferred
to the heir on payment of fine to the lord just as the rest
of his fiefs were ? This treatment of Church benefices
had aheady begun, and the Church was threatened with
general secularization.
In the latter part ofthe loth century a spirit of reform
sprang up in the Roman Church, and a desire for the
correctioif of these abuses began to prevaU far and wide

86 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
The pretensions of the Popes of the nth century re
ceived so much support, and had so great a success,
because these Popes put themselves at the head of the
reforming party in the Church, espoused the interests of
the Christian laity against the vices of the hierarchy, and
asserted the rights of the Church against the abuse of
their patronage by the kings and princes. The powers
which the Popes claimed seemed to offer the only means
of effecting the desired reforms, and removing the causes
which had led to the universal corruption. It is very
curious, but it is true, that the strength of the ultra
montane movement in its rise was that the Papacy was
reforming and democratic.
This new epoch in the Church begins with Pope Leo
IX., in the year 1049, and extends through the papacies
of Victor II., Stephen IX., Benedict X., Nicholas II., and
Alexander IL, who was Pope at the time of the Norman
Conquest of England. During the reign of these Popes,
Hildebrand was the guiding and animating soul of
the reforming party, and had long been virtually the
ruling head of the Roman Church before he succeeded
Alexander in the Papal chair, under the name of Gregory
VII. This remarkable man has been the object of
extravagant veneration on one side, and of extravagant
abuse and hatred on the other. That he was a man
of extraordinary genius is allowed on all sides. He
seems to have been of ascetic purity, of entire personal
disinterestedness ; but, blinded by the grand ideal which
he had conceived of a universal theocracy to be wielded
by the Bishops of Rome, he disregarded all rights of
Church and State which were inconsistent with the fulfil
ment of this ideal. Assume his principles to be true,
and it is possible to admire the energy and consistency
with which he carried them out; but since hi? principles

THE GROWTH OF THE PAPACY 87
were wrong, those acts were consequently wrong, and
his energy becomes unscrupulous tyranny and wrong
doing. In a previous chapter (chapter IV.) we have traced
the gradual development of the organization of the
Church, and have seen how Gregory the Great, in
denying to the see of Constantinople, had repudiated for
the see of Rome, any claim to a universal headship of
the Church. But for some generations after the publica
tion of the pseudo-Isidorian decretals in the latter half
of the 9th century, the see of Rome gradually pressed
forward the claim' to an ultimate appellate jurisdiction,
and consequently to the headship of the Church. The
Roman theologians had put this claim, not on the ground
that such an organization had gradually grown up and
was practically advantageous, and thereupon ought to
be accepted by all Christian people, but they had declared
it to be of Divine right. Christ, they asserted, had given
to Peter and his successors a supremacy over the
Church ; and the Popes of Rome were the successors of
Peter ; and so they claimed, as of Divine right, that the
Pope was the centre of Christian unity, and the head
of the Church on earth, and the representative and
vicegerent of Jesus Christ her Lord. But the genius
of Hildebrand had gone beyond even this, and had
conceived the idea of making the Papacy a universal
monarchy. No doubt the idea was one of dazzling
grandeur, and was supported by considerations of a kind
which have great attractions for some minds. Taking
for granted that the Papal supremacy was of Divine
right, the rest foUowed easily. Christ had given to the
successors of St. Peter authority to rule the Universal
Church. Now kings rule over nations, which are only
provinces of Christendom; and they rule only over

88 TURNING POINTS OF -ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
temporal things, which are as inferior to spiritual things
as the body is inferior to the soul. Therefore the
spiritual sovereign of the whole of the kingdom of
Christ must be the superior of these mere temporal
sovereigns of its parts. Moreover kings and princes are
beyond question the spiritual sons and subjects of the
Church, and ought therefore to look upon the Pope as
their father and lord. This universal spiritual sovereignty
had many obvious benefits to offer to mankind. There
is no denying that the Church of the Middle Ages, with
all its faults, was the protector of the people against the
violence and rapacity of their feudal lords ; and the
beneficent action of this spiritual sovereignty was at once
manifested in the hands of Gregory VII. by his effectual
protection of subjects from the oppression of their princes,
whom no other earthly power pretended the right, or
possessed the inclination, to control. This sovereignty
also afforded that international tribunal for the peaceful
settlement of the disputes of kings and nations, for
which we have not yet invented any efficient substitute.
The laws, of all Christian nations are professedly based
upon the Divine law; what more reasonable than that
there should be an appeal from the administrators of these
narrower national laws to the acknowledged sovereign
guardian and interpreter of the law of Christ ? was it not
a fulfilment of the Gospel command, "Tell him his
fault before two or three witnesses," i. e. the minor
authorities of your nation ; " if he wiU not hear them,
tell it to the Church," /. e. to the sovereign Pontiff", the
head of the Church; "and if he wiU not hear the Church,
let him be unto thee as a heathen and a publican," i. e.
let him be excommunicated ? For that was the coercive
power of this spiritual kingdom. A Pope might indeed
occasionaUy commission two or three kings to enforce a

THE GROWTH OF THE PAPACY 89
judgment by arms against a rebellious prince, but his
true weapon — that which he ordinarily used and found
sufficient — was the sentence of excommunication against
an individual, and the corresponding sentence of interdict
against a kingdom.
This HUdebrandine theory was certainly a grand one,
and found a wide acceptance, and had a great influence
on the affairs of men and nations in the Middle Ages.
It has been revived even in our own days by the
encyclical of 1864, and is honestly believed by men of
high culture to be the only refuge from the infidelity and
anarchy which now seem to them to threaten Christen
dom. The subject is, therefore, not only one of historical
interest but of practical importance. This idea of a
theocracy was a grand idea, but it was a false one.
There is no such idea to be found in the New Testament.
There was no suoh idea in the mind of the early Church.
It was never heard of tUl the Church of Christ had
existed more than a thousand years. It has always
been resisted in the Western Church from that day to
this ; and it has never been admitted for a moment in
the other branches of the Church. It was based on the
doctrine of the Papal supremacy, which again was based
on the forged decretals of Isidore, supported by ex post
facto interpretations of one or two' texts of Scripture. It
had to get over as it could such texts as " My kingdom
is not of this world," " Render therefore to Csesar the
things that are Csesar's, and to God the things that are
God's," " Let every soul be subject to the higher powers,
the powers that be are ordained of God," and such hke.
And however beneficent the sway of a universal monarchy
might be, Gregory had no more right to seek to attain it,
in the name of religion, by fraud and usurpation, than
Napoleon, in the name of liberty and fraternity, by force

90 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
of arms. A very short experience was enough to prove
that such a power coi^d be no more safely entrusted to
a bishop than to a layman, to a line of Popes than to a
line of Caesars.
HUdebrand set himself to work out his idea by a bold
assertion of his claim, and by a skilful use in its support
of all the opportunities which the politics of the world
afforded him. Did two sovereigns quarrel and refer
their dispute to the arbitration of the Bishop of Rome,
the Pope gave his decision in the tone of their common
superior. Did a conqueror or usurper feel that his title
would be strengthened by the sanctions of religion, the
Pope confirmed his title in words which implied that he
exercised the power of a superior granting a fief. Let a
tyrant, in danger of being dethroned by his outraged
subjects, appeal to the Pope for assistance, and he would
support him in his kingdom on condition that he would
consent to hold it of the Papal see, and overawe his
rebels by threats of interdict.
These general remarks will explain a whole series of
transactions in our English history, to which we now
return.

91

CHAPTER XI
THE NORMAN CONQUEST
When the empire of Charlemagne was broken up,
there was but httle political intercourse between any of
the nations of Europe in the 9th and loth centuries,
though that empire left among the dismembered king
doms some sort of sentiment of federal relation, which
laid the foundation of the political system of modern
Europe. But England had not been included within
the Frankish empire ; and the English people, owing to
their insular position and their difference of race,
language, and laws, were especially secluded from the
rest of the world. The Churches of the Continent
maintained a rather considerable mutual intercourse, but
the English Church had little correspondence with the
other Churches. In the age of Bede and Alcuin there
was some correspondence between learned ecclesiastics.
On two or three occasions legates came from Rome,
but it was as inquirers or ambassadors, not yet claiming
any authority. Two or three English bishops visited
Italy, and were hospitably entertained at the Lateran ;
but English bishops were a greater rarity in the councils
of the 7th to the uth centuries than British bishops
had been in those of the 4th. The Danish inyasions
harried the Enghsh Church for a whole centrfry, and
after that time the English bishops and clergy were an
unlearned, homely, pious people, with very little in
common with the secularized prelates and worldly-

92 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY'
minded clergy of Italy, Germany, and France. Edward
the Confessor, with his Norman education and predi
lections, had introduced the French language at court,
and put some Norman favourites into high offices ; but
had only thereby created a patriotic dishke of foreigners
aniong the Saxon nobles and people. The Norman
Conquest introduced England again, as the Roman Con
quest had originally done, into the family of European
nations, and threw her wide open to the influx of the
continental ideas as represented by the conquering
Norman race.
The Norman was perhaps at this time the most vigor
ous race in Christendom. Its bold northern valour and
spirit of enterprise were being tempered and refined into
the spirit of chivalry. Moreover, in throwing aside their
ancestral heathenism, the Normans had embraced Chris
tianity with the zeal of new converts, and were an
eminently religious people. The monasteries of Caen
and Bee had acquired great reputation under Lanfranc
and Anselm as schools of learning, and they were on
the side of the reforming party in the Church.
While William's conquest was still precarious, and he
was trying to conciliate the nation, he paid studious
respect to Archbishop Stigand and to the Church ; and
after he had entered on a stern and unsparing policy
towards the conquered people, he still seems to have
sincerely aimed at promoting the true interests of the
nation through the Church. He filled the sees and
abbeys with Normans; but his Church appointments
were generally good. He did not quarrel with his
bishops, and leave the sees and abbeys vacant, like his
successor. His nobles generaUy followed his example.
Summing up the Norman period — i. e. to the end of the
1 2th century — in a sentence, the Normans founded

THE NORMAN CONQUEST 93
abbeys and brought over monks of the reformed orders
to fill them ; they filled the land with cathedrals, abbeys,
and churches, in an improved style of architecture, and
on a scale of grandeur hitherto unseen in England ; in
short, they brought in the learning and science,, the
architecture and ritual, the spirituality and energy which
had been lately attained by the foremost spirits of the
age, to elevate a Church which had grown torpid and
backward by lying out of reach of the great movements
of European thought in this remote and isolated corner
of Christendom.
On the other hand, this throwing open of the Church
of England brought it at once within the range of the
HUdebrandine aggression, which was the great movement
of the age ; and introduced, in the person of the Norman
archbishop, Lanfranc, a champion of that doctrine of the
Eucharist which was one of the first corruptions of the
mediseval faith.
The very first event which we have to record after the
Conquest is the putting forth of the boldest claim of the
Pope, to be not only the head of the Church, but also
the suzerain of the kingdom of England. When Edward
the Confessor died, and Harold succeeded him by the
election of the people, William appealed to the Pope,
Alexander II., on the subject of the English succession.
He stated that Edward had nominated him by wiU to
be his successor, and that Harold had formeriy solemnly
swom to aid him to the peaceful succession. This was
an ecclesiastical question — a question of the validity of
a testament and the obligation of an oath. WUliam had
previously acknowledged the jurisdiction of the Roman
see in such questions when he sought the Papal dis
pensation for his marriage, with MatUda of Flanders;
and WiUiam, like all the princes of his time, was thank-

94 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
ful to obtain, when he could, the great moral support
of the countenance of the Holy See. The Pope gave
his decision in favour of WiUiam, and proceeded to
afford him all the moral support in his power. He
excommunicated Harold and his abettors; he bade
WUliam take possession of the crown by force of arms ;
he proclaimed the war which he should undertake for
the purpose a holy war, and gave him a banner, em
broidered with a cross and blessed by the Pope, as the
standard of this crusade.
Next year HUdebrand himself succeeded to the Papal
chair under the title of Gregory VIL, and shortly after
sent a nuncio to William, demanding that he should do
homage for his crown, and pay the Peter Pence which
Rome had been accustomed to receive from England.
This was the condition on which the Roman court had
consented to maintain WiUiam's claim; very possibly
the condition was not expressed, but was tacitly assumed
on the part of Rome. WUliam had appealed to the
assumed authority of the Pope over the affairs of nations ;
he effected the conquest under the Pope's banner ; he
could not with a good grace repudiate the Papal claims
when he had thus appealed to, and acted under, and
profited by them. Consistency and gratitude seemed to
bind him to accede to the Pope's demand. But WUliam
was not a prince to yield to such a claim, or allow him
self to be entangled by such sophistries. He acknow
ledged the Pope to be the head of the Church, and had
appealed to him on a great ecclesiastical question. To
acknowledge him as his feudal superior for the kingdom
which he had inherited from Edward, and taken posses
sion of with his sword, was quite another question. His
plain and peremptory refusal of the Pope's demand is on
record, and is worth giving : —

THE NORMAN CONQUEST 95
"Thy legate, Hubert, Holy Father, hath called upon
me in thy name to take the oath of fealty to thee and
to thy successors, and to exert myself in enforcing the
more regular payment of the money which my prede
cessors were accustomed to remit to the Church of Rome.
One request I have granted, the other I refuse. Homage
to thee I have not chosen, nor do I choose, to do. I
never made a promise to that eff'ect, neither do I find
that it . was ever performed by my predecessors to
thine." To William, however, we owe the acknowledged sub
jection of the Church of England to the spiritual
supremacy of the Roman see. When the rebellion of
1069 had provoked him, or given him the pretext, to
treat the Enghsh as a conquered people, he proceeded
to effect such changes as he desired in the Church.
The first step was to place the Church under the author
ity of the Pope and to get rid of Archbishop Stigand.
William solicited the Pope to send two legates to hold
a councU of the Church and make provision for its
regulation. Two cardinals accordingly presided at a
synod at Winchester in 1070. It was the first time the
Pope's right to exercise jurisdiction in the aff'airs of the
English Church had been admitted. The ostensible
charges against the patriotic archbishop were three in
number : (i) That he had held the Bishopric of Win
chester with Canterbury (the practice was only too
common throughout the Church) ; (2) That he had
officiated in the paU of his predecessor ; and (3) That
he had received his own pall from the anti-Pope
Benedict. On these charges he was deposed, and Lan
franc was consecrated in his stead. In this appointment
the Conqueror passed over his half-brother Odo, Bishop
of Bayeux, who perhaps had been contemplated for this

96 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
powerful position, and did well for the Church by giving
her the ablest ecclesiastic in Normandy.
By birth an Italian, a native of Pavia, Lanfranc had
studied law in the famous schools of that city; subse
quently he removed to Avranches, in Normandy, where
he established a school and obtained a considerable
reputation as a teacher. Here he passed through a
religious crisis, which led him to abandon the world.
Wandering through the forest from Avranches, he
came by accident upon the monastery of Bee, then
newly founded, and in its primitive state of poverty and
spirituality. He became a monk of the house ; scholars
attracted by his fame came to Bee, and the house was
rebuilt on a larger scale. He was elected prior. Anselm,
his successor, came as one of his scholars, was induced
to join the community, and assisted Lanfranc in his
teaching. Some strong words which Lanfranc had used
against Duke William's breach of the ecclesiastical laws
in marrying Matilda were reported to the duke, who
bade him quit his dominions. On his way he met the
duke, some conversation ensued, the result of which was
that Lanfranc was sent to Rome to negotiate the obtain
ing of a dispensation. One of the conditions on which
the dispensation was granted was, that WiUiam and
Matilda should each found an abbey. These abbeys
were both erected at Caen, and WUliam desired Lanfranc
to take charge of his monastery of St. Stephen. Here
again his reputation for learning and wisdom grew ; and
he was offered and refused the position of Archbishop
of Rouen, the head of the Church of Normandy. After
Tthe Conquest William nominated him to the government
of the Church of England, which also he at first refused,
but on this occasion he was not excused. He resisted
the repeated commands of the king, and the entreaties

THE NORMAN CONQUEST g>J
oi the queen, but he yielded at length in deference to
the wishes of the Pope, Alexander IL, an old friend and
pupil of his own at Bee. An abbot and scholar of sixty-
six years of age might well shrink from the task of ruling
the Church in so distracted a State as England. But
his was perhaps the best appointment the Conqueror
could have made. He was not only a man of learning
and ascetic piety, but he had the practical wisdom which
the office and the crisis required. Like the rest of the
continental churchmen of the time, he believed in the
appellate jurisdiction of the see of Rome ; but he had
been trained in an Imperial city, and his family had
probably had to leave it through their adherence to the
Imperialist side in the quarrel between the Emperor
and the Pope ; and he did not accept the HUdebrandine
claim of universal sovereignty.
The policy of the Church of England during the Con
queror's reign bears the impress of Lanfranc's character.
The initiative may very probably have been taken in
many cases by the king, but it had the concurrence of
the archbishop. They maintained with a high hand the
prerogative of the Crown against the claims of the Pope.
The Church was forbidden to recognize either of the
rival Popes who at that time divided Christendom, with
out the king's decision. No letters were to be received
from Rome without the king's leave. No ecclesiastic
was to quit the kingdom without the king's leave. The
Church was to make no canons without the king's con
sent. The king told Lanfranc he intended to have all
the crosiers in the kingdom in his own hand. No
sentence of ecclesiastical censure was to be passed on
any of the king's chief vassals (tenants in capite) without
the king's precept.
Another practical improvement was the transfer of
H

98 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
the sees of several of the bishoprics. The Gallican
bishops had their sees in the principal cities, but the
English sees had been founded for the most part in
monasteries and smaller towns. The Synod of London,
1075, wisely transferred some of them to the principal
cities within their jurisdiction : Sherborne to Old Sarum
(afterwards removed with the transfer of the population
to Sahsbury) ; Selsey to Chichester ; Lichfield to Chester
(afterwards to Coventry in 1095) ; Elmham to Thetford
(moved again to Norwich in 1094) ; and subsequently,
in 1095, Dorchester to Lincoln.
Four Saxon bishops, including Stigand, and a few
abbots, were displaced by the Conqueror ; the Confessor
had already made several foreign bishops, and vacancies
were filled up by Normans.
Another important change was in the administration of
the law. We have seen that, in Saxon times there was
no distinction between the lay and the spiritual courts.
In the same court, in which both churchmen and laymen
sat, were decided both lay and ecclesiastical causes.
William and Lanfranc introduced the continental system,
better adapted no doubt to the more complex affairs of a
more artificial civilization, by separating the civil from
the ecclesiastical courts.
A general improvement was introduced in the form
and method of rendering the Divine service. We may
give the whole story as an illustration of the high-handed
way in which the government both of Church and State
was carried on.
One of the Saxon prelates deposed was Egelnoth,
Abbot of Glastonbury, who was succeeded by Thurstan,
a monk of Caen. The new abbot governed his monks
tyrannically, enforcing the observance of the Benedictine
rule with severity. He also required them to abindon

THE NORMAN CONQUEST 99
the Gregorian way of singing to which they had been
accustomed, and to adopt the latest improvements intro
duced from the model abbey of Caen. It is probable
that he also desired to make some modifications in the
substance of the offices. This the monks refused to
admit. The abbot ordered his men-at-arms into the
church to coerce them : the monks snatched up benches
and candlesticks, and stood upon their defence. Some
of the soldiers were wounded, three of the monks were
kUled and eighteen wounded. In the end they were all
brought to trial before the king, who sent Thurstan back
to Normandy, and removed the monks from their house.
This scandal set Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, upon a
revision of the Church offices of his diocese, and he
effected it with such success that the office of Precentor
of the province of Canterbury was attached to his see in
after years. The " Use of Sarum," thus approved by the
bishops of the southern dioceses, was generally adopted
in the south of England, and in some other places in the
country, though other local Uses stUl continued, the chief
of which were the Use of York, Hereford, and Bangor.
Thurstan's dragooning the monks of Glastonbury was
an extreme example, but by no means a solitary one, of
the peremptory conduct of the Normans. Lanfranc
himself converted his chapter.of secular clerks at Canter
bury into a community of Benedictines. It was done,
indeed, in legal form by a vote of the chapter ; the dean
and the majority of the canons yielding to the archbishop's
wishes and retaining their places ; but the minority, who
refused to become monks, were expelled by force.
The changes, then, which the Norman Conquest
brought to the EngUsh Church may be briefly summed
up thus : it brought the Church of England under the
spiritual supremacy of the Roman see, but it still firmly

100 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
maintained the independence and authority of the
Crown; it brought the Church of England within the
influence of the currents of thought which were moving
through the continental Churches, and laid her open to
the introduction of doctrinal novelties. On the other
hand, the superior learning and zeal of the Norman
bishops and clergy, abbots and monks, who were intro
duced into the Church, the erection of noble cathedrals,
abbeys, and churches, the introduction of practical im
provements of various kinds, elevated the tone of the
Church, and amounted to a revival of religion.

lOI

CHAPTER XII
the QUARREL OF INVESTITURE
The next king, William Rufus, and the next arch
bishop, Anselm, bring us to the next of our turning
points, the quarrel of investiture, the real point at issue
being who should appoint the bishops. The quarrel on
this question here in England, between Kings Rufus and
Henry on one side, and Archbishop Anselm on the
other, was only a branch of a great contest which dis
tracted all Europe for half-a-century, in which the
Emperor and the Pope were the chief combatants. The
compromise by which our quarrel was terminated afforded
a precedent for the solution of the greater and wider
dispute. To a satisfactory understanding of the question,
a glance at the whole history of which it formed an
episode is necessary.
We have already stated that one of the great cor
ruptions of the Church in the loth and uth centuries,
and one which led to a hundred other abuses, was that
kings bestowed the episcopal sees on improper persons.
One of the reforms at which Hildebrand aimed was to
obtain for the Head of the Church a control over the
appointment of bishops. This he sought to eff'ect by
denying to the sovereigns, and claiming for the Pope, the
right of investiture.
According to the primitive custom of the Church, a
bishop was elected to a vacant see by the clergy and
people of the diocese. Usually the clergy took the

102 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
leading part in the selection, but the consent of the laity
to their selection was also necessary. Lastly, the metro
politan and the other bishops of the province, having the
power to refuse to consecrate, possessed indirectly a veto
on the election. It does not appear that the early
Christian emperors interfered with the freedom of choice
any further than to make their own confirmation necessary
in the great patriarchal sees, such as Rome and Constan
tinople. The Gothic and Lombard kings of Italy followed
the same hne of conduct. In the French monarchy a
more extensive authority was assumed by the sovereign,
who generaUy interfered in the choice either by direct
nomination or by recommendatory letters to the electors.
But independently of this ancient prerogative of
Christian sovereigns in the election of bishops in their
kingdoms, the temporalities which attached to the sees
gave the sovereigns an indirect but extensive power of
controlling episcopal appointments. The bishop was
invested with great estates, political functions and legal
jurisdiction. The sovereign might fairly claim some
right to refuse these to a man in whom he had not con
fidence, and without them a bishop practically could not
fulfil the duties of his ofBce. Charlemagne is said to
have introduced the practice of treating these spiritual
offices in the same way as the temporal offices of the
empire, by requiring an oath of fealty from the tenant,
and investing him by the presentation of the episcopal
ring and the pastoral staff as symbols of his office. To
this custom of investiture Gregory VII. took exception.
The ring and staff", the Papal advocates argued, were the
symbols of the spiritual authority, which kings and
emperors could not bestow. Even if a less objectionable
symbol were chosen for investiture, which should clearly
typify the conveyance of the temporalities only, still the

THE QUARREL OF INVESTITURE 103
power of the sovereign over the temporalities gave him
virtually power to control the free election by the Church
of its bishops; and though the temporalities might
rightly be subject to the king's pleasure, yet they had
been inseparably annexed to the spiritual office, and it
was just that the spiritual office should carry with it these
accessories. Moreover, it was known to all men that
the practical result of lay nomination had been to fill the
sees with improper persons, and to corrupt the Church
with simony. The contest about investiture begun by
Gregory VII. was continued byhis successors. Urban II.,
Paschal IL, and Calixtus II. , against the contemporary
emperors, Henry IV. and Henry V. It lasted fifty-six
years, and occasioned sixty battles and the loss of count
less lives. At length both parties grew weary of the
strife, and terminated it by a compromise in the CouncU
of Worms, a.d. 1122, between the Emperor Henry V.
and Pope Calixtus II. By this treaty it was settled that
aU elections of bishops should be freely conducted
according to the laws of the Church, but under the
supervision of the Emperor ; that the right of spiritual
investiture by ring and staff" should belong to the Pope,
and that of enfeoffment into the temporalities by the
sceptre to the Emperor. This agreement was confirmed
by the first Lateran CouncU, a.d. i i 23.
WiUiam and Lanfranc had, as we have seen, placed
the Church of England under the spiritual supremacy
of the Roman see, but they had made a firm stand
against the pretensions of the Pope to a temporal
authority, and in both their concession and their resist
ance the king and the archbishop acted together. But
the next archbishop, Anselm, was an ultramontane,
while the sons of the Conqueror, William and Henry,
maintained the prerogative as firmly as their great father

104 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
had done ; and the next stage of our history shows us a
quarrel between the sovereign and the archbishop, the
cause of which is the firmness of the kings in maintaining
their own prerogative, against the endeavours of the
archbishop to cede it to Rome.
When Lanfranc died, the eyes of the Church and
nation turned to Anselm, Abbot of Bee, as the fittest
man to succeed him. Anselm, born in 1033 of noble
parents, at Aosta, in Piedmont, was a pupil of Lanfranc'."
at Bee, assisted him in his teaching, and became a monk
at 2 7 years of age. When Lanfranc was moved to Caen,
Anselm succeeded him as Prior of Bee ; and when the
Abbot Herluin died, Anselm was unanimously elected
abbot. Holy and gentle, of great learning, a profound
metaphysician, an eloquent writer and speaker, he was
more famous than Lanfranc, and perhaps the most
famous scholar of his day ; and he was not merely the
great scholar of a particular generation, his fame still
endures as the founder or forerunner of the scholastic
theology of the Middle Ages. Some of his writings are
still read by the theologian, and some are still current in
books of popular devotion. Under him the fame of the
school of Bee rose higher even than under Lanfranc.
But he had not Lanfranc's political skill.
WiUiam Rufus had not his father's regard for the
Church, and when bishoprics and abbeys fell vacant he
kept them so for years, appropriating their revenues to
his own uses. Thus after Lanfranc's death he kept the
archiepiscopal see vacant four years, and it was only a
sickness, which terrified him with the prospect of death,
which induced him at length to nominate Anselm to the
see. But there sprang up at once a disagreement between
them. It was the custom of the bishops to make a
present to the king on their nomination ; Anselm justly

THE QUARREL OF INVESTITURE 105

disapproving the custom, which bore the appearance of
a simoniacal transaction, offered so small a present that
the king contemptuously refused it, and Anselm bestowed
it in alms upon the poor. Next Anselm asked leave to
go and receive his pall from the Pope. Now this was
during the existence of a schism, when there were two
Popes — Urban II. , the successor of Gregory VIL, who
was ultimately regarded as the rightful Pope, and Clement,
the anti-Pope set up by the German emperor. Urban
occupied the Lateran, while Clement maintained himself
in the castle of St. Angelo. " Which Pope ? " asked the
king. "Urban," at once replied the archbishop. "But
I have not acknowledged him," retorted the king, and
he accused the archbishop of a violation of his oath of
fealty. It was quite true that William I. and Lanfranc
had reserved to the Crown the right of deciding between
rival pretenders to the Papacy; but since Anselm, as
Abbot of Bee, had already, in common with the Church
of Normandy, recognized Gregory and his successor, he
could hardly be expected now to retract and declare
himself ready to recognize the anti-Pope if the king
should so decide. The subject was allowed to drop,
and meantime the king secretly sent two chaplains to
Rome. Probably he had made up his mind which Pope
to recognize, but desired to take a politic advantage of
Urban's difficulties to obtain certain concessions from
him as the price of his recognition. One of the con
cessions appears to have been on the subject of investiture.
He aimed at obtaining for himself the right of conferring
the badge of office on his archbishop. This will explain
why the king was enraged that the archbishop took upon
himself to recognize Urban, and that he desired to
accede to the Papal demand that an archbishop should
go in person to receive the pall at Rome. The king's

I06 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
chaplains succeeded in their mission : they returned
accompanied by a legate from Urban, bringing the pall
with him. The legate passed through Canterbury without
holding any communication with the archbishop; and
the king caused Urban to be proclaimed as Pope without
consultation with him. But the legate compromised the
question of the pall : Anselm was not required to go to
receive the pall at the hand of the Pope, nor did the
legate give it him in the Pope's name. Neither, on the
, other hand, did the legate hand it over to the king that
he might confer it ; he laid it on the altar of the cathedral,
and Anselm took it thence.
Still the king and the archbishop quarreUed, and the
archbishop asked leave to go to Rome and seek counsel
of the Pope. This the king was determined not to
permit, and it was unlawful for the archbishop to go
without his permission. At last Anselm declared his
resolve to go without permission, and "William threatened
if he did to seize the archbishopric and never allow him
to return. Anselm went in October, 1097, and by so
doing put himself in the wrong, and the king fulfilled his
threat. When William Rufus died in iioo, Anselm set out on
his return to England. Messengers from Henry met
him, bearing the king's apologies for not having waited
to be crowned by him, and urging his immediate return.
The king received him with all honour, and proposed to
re-invest him in his forfeited estates ; whereupon a new
difSculty arose. Anselm refused to do homage or receive
his archbishopric at the hands of the king. Gregory
VIL, in the Lateran Council of 1080, had declared that
a bishop receiving investiture of a layman should not be
reckoned as a prelate. The question which arose was a
new one in England. Hitherto, all bishops and abbots

THE QUARREL OF INVESTITURE 1 07
— including Anselm — had been invested by the king
with the symbols of the staff" and ring. Not only the
king and barons but also the bishops and clergy were
opposed to Anselm. They declared themselves ready
to pronounce sentence of banishment again on the arch
bishop, and to break ofi" all intercourse with Rome,
rather than submit to this unprecedented invasion of the
customs of the Church and kingdom. Hereupon began
a new contest between the archbishop and the king, but
it was conducted in a very diff'erent spirit from that
between Anselm and William Rufus. Anselm was as
impracticable and persistent as ever; but Henry kept
his temper, and behaved with great kindness and for
bearance, treating Anseim's conscientious scruples with
respect and doing his best to find some way of satisfying
them without yielding the matter in dispute. First he
suggested that an embassy should be sent to Rome,
not — the king was careful to guard himself — that the
king sought any concession from the Pope, but that
perhaps the Pope might find some way to satisfy the
archbishop's conscience, and enable him to conform to
the law of England. Of his sovereignty over all persons
in his dominions he declared firmly that no one should
divest him. Meantime he allowed the archbishop to
enjoy the revenues and discharge the duties of the see.
The ambassadors returned from Rome bringing word
that the Pope refused to permit the archbishop to receive
investiture from the king. Thereupon the king gave
Anselm the alternative to take the oath of allegiance and
receive investiture according to the law of England, or
to quit the kingdom. Anselm pleaded the canon of
the Roman Council, which forbade him. The king
replied, " What have I to do with a Roman canon ? I

Io8 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
will never renounce a right which I have inherited, and
no one shall remain in my kingdom who dpes not do
homage to me as his suzerain." The bishops generally
supported the king, and maintained the customs of the
English Church. It was agreed to send another embassy
to Rome. The Archbishop of York, the Bishops of
Norwich and Lichfield, men who sided with the king on
the question, were sent with a letter, in which the king
declared that " so long as he lived he would, God helping
him, never permit the rights and privileges of the kingdom
of England to be diminished ; and even if he should be
inclined to yield, which God forbid, his nobles would
not tolerate it. He hoped that the Pope would there
fore, on reconsideration, not drive him to the extreme
measure of renouncing all intercourse with the see of
Rome." The father brought the Church of England
under subjection to the see of Rome, and the son already
talked of re-asserting its independence. The reader will
find this right to resume its independence asserted over
and over again by the kings and people of England until
at last the right was exercised by Henry VIIL, with the
concurrence of the Church and Parliament.
The Pope sent a public document in reply, in which
he upheld the decision against lay investiture ; but the
ambassadors brought a verbal message to the eff'ect that
if the king and the bishops acted according to the law
of England they would not be troubled by the Court of
Rome. Anselm refused to believe in the verbal mes
sage, and at the king's suggestion he sent messengers to
Rome to inquire. The Pope by these messengers con
firmed the formal document, and repudiated the private
understanding. Next it was suggested that Anselm
should go in person to Rome and consult the Pope.

THE QUARREL OF INVESTITURE 109
The Pope temporized as long as he could, and when
obliged to give a decision he acted as before ; he sup
ported Anselm publicly, but privately told the king that
the question might remain open. As Anselm was return
ing to England, the king's ambassador informed him
that unless he was prepared to submit to the king he
was desired not to return. Anselm accordingly remained
on the Continent. The king seized the archbishopric.
Anselm was about to issue sentence of excommunication
against him ; when the king, then in Normandy, had an
interview with him, and offered a compromise — that the
bishops should do homage and take the oath of fealty
to the king, but should not receive investiture by the
ring and crosier. Anselm again, at the king's suggestion,
sought the counsel of the Pope, and the Pope agreed to
this compromise, the king surrendering the right to
nominate bishops, and promising to give the chapters
a conge d'tlire — permission to elect. A council held in
London in 1107 ratified this arrangement, reducing it
to the following terms — (i) That for the future no one
should be invested by the king or any lay hand in any
bishopric or abbey by the delivery of a pastoral staff or
a ring ; (2) That no one elected to a prelacy should be
denied consecration on account of the homage he does
the king.
The substantial victory remained with the king, for at
first by his influence on the chapters, and before long by
a letter missive which accompanied the congt d'elire, he
retained the actual nomination.
This continues to be the mode in which bishops are
appointed in the Church of England. When a see is
vacant, the sovereign sends to the chapter a document

1 10 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
called a congi d'ilire — z. licence to elect a new bishop.
This election to a vacant see is in theory vested in the
chapter of the cathedral, who may be supposed to repre
sent the clergy of the diocese. But in fact the chapter
have no voice or influence in the matter; for together
with the congi d'elire is sent another document — a letter
missive — in which is named the person whom the sove
reign desires the chapter to elect. There is a further
step called the confirmation, in which the name of the
bishop elect is proclaimed in the face of the public (at
Bow Church, London), and the people are invited to
state any valid objection which may exist to the appoint
ment. In the case of Bishop Hampden, the dean of
Hereford and a minority of the chapter refused to elect
the person named in the letters patent, but the opposition
at this stage failed. Again, at the confirmation, objections
were tendered by a proctor on behalf of the laity, but
the presiding officer ruled that the Act of 25 Henry VIII.
required the archbishop to confirm, and that objections
could not be legaUy entertained. Therefore, in fact, as
the election is overridden by the letter missive, so the
confirmation is by the statute ; and the Church's rights in
the appointment of her chief ministers are controlled by
the State. Finally, the Crown issues a mandate to the
archbishop and certain other bishops to consecrate.
The old forms, kept up at every appointment of a
bishop through all these centuries, are the Church's asser
tion of the right way of appointment, and they still
remain in use, ready to have new vitality put into them,
and capable, without any violent constitutional change,
of giving the clergy of the diocese their right of election,
the laity their right of objection, and the Crown the
influence in the appointment which seems to be its

THE QUARREL OF INVESTITURE

due so long as the bishops exercise legal jurisdiction
in their courts, and sit in the Upper House of ParUa
ment ; while the bishops of the province still retain,
their ancient power of veto by refusing to consecrate an
unfit person.

112

CHAPTER XIII
THE CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON
Henry of Anjou, by his inheritance of Normandy and
Anjou and his marriage with the heiress of Aquitaine,
was the most powerful sovereign who had yet reigned in
England ; and was not less able than any of his prede
cessors. He found England in great disorder after the
civil war and anarchy of the previous twenty years. In
Stephen's reign every petty baron had built himself a
castle, waged war on his neighbours, ruled his own estates,
and made himself almost an independent king; while
the king was left little more than a great baron, ruling
his own estates, and possessing certain feudal claims upon
the rest of the baronage. Henry set himself to work,
with a statesmanlike plan, great ability, and wonderful
energy, to organize this aggregation of petty tyrannies
into an orderly kingdom. His first step was to reduce
the power of the barons. He compelled the dismantling
of all castles which had been illegally erected without
royal licence. He excused the nobles from serving under
his banner in his foreign wars, requiring payment of a
sum of money — scutage — instead ; and with the revenues
so raised he engaged mercenary soldiers to fight his battles
abroad ; at the same time he re-organized the ancient
popular force of the fyrd or militia to secure order at
home. WiUiam I. had organized a government, consist
ing of a Justiciar, who was the king's minister, under
whom the king's clerks or chaplains formed a body of

THE CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON 113
secretaries, the chief of whom was caUed the ChanceUor.
Henry still further organized the legal department of the
government, and estabhshed the system of judges of
assize and justices in eyre. His aim was to reduce the
hereditary jurisdiction of the nobles within the smaUest
possible limits ; to obtain a pure and effectual system of
royal law and justice over the whole kingdom ; and to
make all men eq^ial before the law. In his measures
with the barons he was successful. But there was another
body in the kingdom with special privUeges, to which he
next turned his attention.
As a consequence of the division of jurisdictions estab
hshed by WiUiam I. (see p. 98), the whole body of the
clergy were exempt from the common law, and had a
system of courts of their own. If an ecclesiastic com
mitted a crime, he could not be tried and punished by
the king's justices, but must be taken before the Ecclesi
astical Court ; all who were in any clerical office could
claim the privilege. In those days learning was so en
tirely limited to the clergy, that it was enough for a man
to be able to read Latin to establish the presumption
that he was a clerk ; and it is only in very late times that
the last example occurred of a criminal claiming the obso
lete but unrepealed " privilege of clergy," and escaping
thereby the punishment of his crime. The king desired
to reduce the power of these ecclesiastical courts, as he
had of the ancient feudal jurisdictions, and to make the
clergy, hke the laity, subject to the general law of the
land. But the clergy formed a very powerful body of men.
The archbishop ruled great estates, and was one of the
most powerful of subjects ; the bishops and great abbots
were powerful barons ; the clergy formed a great organiz
ation, extending over the whole country, exercising a

114 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
vast influence. The Church was a popular institution.
From the days of the Conquest it had interposed between
the tyranny of the nobles and the people. Throughout
the Middle Ages the Church was on the side of the
people ; it set itself against the virtual slavery of serfage ;
it taught the equahty of Saxon and Norman, rich and
poor, in the sight of God. It acted upon its hberal
theories, and formed the great channd by which a man
could raise himself by his merit ; the viUage lad, taught
Latin by the village priest, and sent to the school of the
monastery, might rise to the highest wealth and rank.
At the time of which we speak, the son of a London
merchant was about to be made Archbishop of Canter
bury, and another Englishman, Nicholas Breakspear, was
about to mount the Papal throne. Thanks to its power,
to the influence it had with the people, and to the moral
support it was sure to receive from the whole Papal
organization, the Church was an imperium in imperio,
which made its chief, the archbishop, far more powerful
than any one except the king ; and when we call to
mind also the reserve of spiritual weapons — excommuni
cation and interdict — in store for those who should assail
the rights of the Church, it is evident that it needed
great caution, even in so powerful and able a sovereign
as Henry, to carry out the designs which he entertained.
But he proposed to eff'ect his plan by placing at the
head of the Church a man who agreed with him in his
views, and who would aid, instead of opposing him, in
reducing the Church into subjection to the law of the
land. The man he had in view was Thomas Becket,
his chancellor. There is a romantic story about the birth
of Becket which we give as one of the legends which
graduaUy gathered about the story of the most popular
of the English mediaeval saints. GUbert Becket, the

THE CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON 115
legend says, went, like many of his countrymen in those
days, on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. There he and
his servant were taken captive by the Saracens, and
became slaves to an Emir. The Emir's daughter fell in
love with Gilbert, and offered to release him if he would
carry her with him as his wife; but Gilbert escaped
without her assistance, and left her behind. Some
months after, the citizens of London saw a maiden in
an Eastern dress wandering through the streets, and
crying, " Gilbert ! Gilbert ! " The shipmen who had
brought her said that she had found her way to London
by a simUar repetition of the word " London ! " and that
these were all the words of English she could speak. At
length she wandered through Southwark, and Gilbert
Becket, attracted by the crowd which followed her, came
to the window and recognized the Emir's daughter, who
thus uttered her plaintive appeal to him. The Bishop
of London, and other prelates who were with him when
Gilbert asked his counsel, advised that she should be
baptized, and that he should marry her.
The parentage and early life of Becket are weU known.
His father, Gilbert Becket, was a Norman, a merchant in
Cheapside, his mother's name was Roesia, or MatUda ;
he received a good education at the house of the canons
regular at Merton, and finished his education at Paris.
Then he spent some years in the household of Richer de
Aquila, at Pevensey Castie. When he was twenty-one,
his father faUed in business, and Thomas returned to
London, and entered as a clerk into the office of a
relative, who was the clerk to the Sheriff's of London.
After three years of this apprenticeship to business, he
was made known to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who
took the promising young man into his household ; he
was ordained deacon, and provided for with several

U6 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
benefices; the archbishop recommended him to the
young king, who took him as his chancellor and one
of his most trusted ministers, and gave him the dignity
and emoluments of Archdeacon of Canterbury — the
highest dignity in the Church next to that of the bishops.
The chanceUor was only thirty-eight years old, and was
not only an able statesman, but also a most attractive
companion; handsome in person, cultivated in mind,
gay and cheerful in disposition, fond of field sports and
eminently skUful in them, and magnificent in his tastes ;
the young king, a little over twenty, became much attached
to him, and treated him with great familiarity.
The chronicler says that the chanceUor was famous for
the magnificence of his household and his profuse and
costly hospitality. Earls and barons sat daily at the high
table on his dais, and knights and gentlemen crowded the
long tables of his hall, so that it was necessary to spread
clean rushes every day on the floor for those to sit on
who could find no room at the tables, that they might
not soil their robes. Many of the sons of the nobility,
according to the custom of the times, were placed as
pages in his household : — the king himself sent his son
to him as his pupU. Gold and silver dishes decked the
table, the most costly viands and choicest wines were
provided. The young king would sometimes ride into
the hall in the midst of the meal, throw himself off his
horse, leap over the high table, and sit down beside the
chancellor, and join in the festivity. His biographers say
that the gay chanceUor was a man of pure life, and that
amidst all this magnificence he fed on the plainest fare,
and wore sackcloth under his costly robes ; was liberal
in alms, and the protector of the poor.
When Henry went to war with France, the chancellor
brought to his aid 700 knights of his own household, and

THE CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON II 7

1200 more in his pay, attended by 4000 foot; he
himself in armour commanded them. When peace was
made, the chancellor was sent as ambassador to conclude
the treaty. He was attended by 200 men on horseback
and a magnificent train, who went through France in
procession, singing from time to time as they went, so
so that aU beholders said, " If such was the chancellor,
what must be the king ! " . . . One of the conditions of
the treaty was the betrothal of the French king's daughter,
who was seven years old, to the httle Prince Henry, and
she, as well as the prince, was committed to Becket's care.
This was the man whom the king, on the death of
Theobald, proposed to make archbishop, in the expecta
tion that he would aid in carrying out his plans for
subjecting the clergy to the king's justice. Becket said
words, when the king spoke of it, which might have
warned him : " If you do as you say, my lord, you will
soon hate me as much as you love me now; for you
assume an authority in Church aff'airs to which I shall
not consent ; and there will be plenty of persons to stir
up strife between us.''
One of the chief abuses by the English kings of their
episcopal patronage was using it to remunerate the great
officials of their government. We have already seen that
most of the men who entered into the civil service of the
State were nominally clergymen, and thus were legally
capable of holding Church benefices ; and in the absence
of any other mode of remunerating them for their
services to the State, they were rewarded with benefices,
whose spiritual duties they performed chiefiy by proxy.
Secretaries of State, and ambassadors and judges, were
salaried by making them bishops, and probably Henry
expected that Becket when promoted to Canterbury
would continue to be more of a statesman than a bishop.

II 8 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
Hitherto Becket was only a deacon. On Whitsun-day,
II 6 2, he was ordained priest, and on Trinity Sunday
bishop. His secretary went to Rome to fetch the pall,
which was laid on the altar of Canterbury, whence the
archbishop took it. With his consecration as priest and
bishop, Becket broke with his former life, and became
another man. He resigned the chancellorship, assumed
a more ascetic manner of life, and seemed to seek only
to fulfil the duties of a good bishop.
The king had been on the Continent at the time of
the archbishop's consecration. He returned in the
foUowing year, and speedily set about the prosecution
of his plans. A council was summoned at Westminster,
and the king's proposal was laid before it : that when a
clerk should be proved guilty of a crime he should be
deprived of his orders, and handed over to the king's
officers to receive punishment as a layman. The pro
posal seems just to us. It was part of a great and wise
plan for the organization of a sound system of judicature
throughout the kingdom. The king was right in en
deavouring to effect it — politic in seeking to effect it
through Becket, the confidant of his plans, and hitherto
one of his ablest agents in carrying them out. Our
modern sympathies are with the king. But if we want
to understand the subject, we must throw ourselves back
to the 1 2th century, and see it as it presented itself to
men's minds then. When at the Conquest the old Saxon
courts of justice were remodelled and the civil and eccle
siastical jurisdictions were divided, the clergy had obtained
the privUege of being tried in their own courts. In the
feudal times, when every petty lord had his rights of
judicature, to be able to claim benefit of clergy was a
protection from provincial tyranny, which no cleric was
likely to be willing to give up. There are foreign coun-

THE CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON II 9
tries at this day where justice is so imperfectly adminis
tered that Englishmen resident there have justiy secured
for themselves the privilege of being tried by their own
consular authorities; in an English dependency even
(India) Englishmen wUl not trust themselves to the
imperfect justice of the native courts. True, the king
desired to establish a system of equal justice throughout
the kingdom, and sought only that clerics as well as lay
men should be subject to the same system of law. But
the experiment of the king's justice had still to be tried.
Between subject and subject, lay or clerical, it might be
wisely and impartially administered ; but with the medi
seval notions of law and habits of injustice, would it have
been wise in the clergy to surrender their privileges and
put themselves at the mercy of the Crown ? If we look
to much later times, when the liberty of the subject was
better understood, and public opinion was a considerable
check upon the power of the sovereign, we shall see that,
with judges removable at the king's pleasure, the subject
had a very small chance in any case in which the interests
or the passions of the sovereign were concerned.
To take the people from under the feudal nobles and
place them under the king's justices was no doubt an
advantage to the people, but to take the clergy from
under their own courts and put them under the king's
courts would have been a disadvantage to the clergy.
However far-sighted and statesmanlike the king's plans
might be, to make all subjects, noble and simple, clerical
and lay, equal before the law, we must not be surprised
if the clergy declined to sacrifice themselves to the
symmetry of a system.
When the king's proposal was laid before the councU
at Westminster, the bishops were inclined to take the
king's view of the matter, but the archbishop thought it

ISO TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
the duty of his office to maintain the privUeges of the
clergy, and the arguments of the archbishop brought the
bishops with one exception to his side. The king was
probably unprepared to find the archbishop his opponent,
and he was greatly enraged.
The archbishop wrote to the Pope for counsel, but the
king also sent ambassadors and used great influence at
Rome, and the Papal court treated Becket as it had
treated Anselm : temporized, gave ambiguous replies,
said enough to encourage the archbishop to fight the
battle, and did not say enough to cause a breach with
the king ; declared that what the king required was
wrong, and recommended the bishop to keep friendly
with him.
Becket seems to have tried to follow this temporizing
policy. He agreed to consent to the laws proposed by
the king without introducing the saving clause — "saving
the privUeges of his order '' — with which he had hitherto
guarded and practicaUy invalidated his consent. The
king required that this should be done in legal form by
the Church assembled in council under the presidency
of the archbishop; and a council was convoked at
Clarendon in Wiltshire for the purpose. There the
proposed laws (or Constitutions, as the acts of a council
were called) were read, and Becket, having verbally
assented to them, was required to execute them legaUy
by affixing his archiepiscopal seal to them, whereupon
he declared with much emotion that he would never
consent to set his seal to them, and great confusion
ensued. The king left the room in anger, and, while
the bishops continued in consultation, sent them angry
and threatening messages. But the council broke up
without anything being done, and the king's plans were
thwarted.

THE CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON 121
Becket condemned himself to penance for his temporary
yielding to the king's demands. The king, on the other
hand, began to persecute him under the forms of law.
He charged him with a failure of justice, which he alleged
had taken place in the archbishop's own court ; and
when the archbishop appeared by proxy instead of in
person to answer the charge, he condemned him to for
feiture of his whole personal property. Then he accused
him of malversation in his office of chancellor, the king's
avowed object being to drive him to submission or
resignation. When the sentence was about to be pro
nounced, the archbishop pleaded that no one had a right
to call him to account for what he had done as chancellor,
since on his appointment to the archbishopric the king
had legally released him from all former claims. He
appealed from the king to the Pope, and placed himself
and his Church under the protection of the apostolic
see. Then, fearing that his life was not safe, he fled to
the Continent. Henry was tyrannical enough to plunder
all his relations and adherents, and banish them the
kingdom, to the number of 400. Becket remained in
exile six years. Two interviews with the king during
that time, held through the mediation of the King of
France, were fruitless. At a third interview a reconcUi-
ation was effected, and in a friendly conversation, in
which old feelings were for the time rekindled, Henry
exclaimed, " Why will you not do as I wish ? I would
put all my aff'airs into your hands."
The archbishop returned to England, and was received
with great demonstrations of joy by the people. But
the archbishop had sent before him a sentence of excom
munication on the Archbishop of York and the Bishops
of London and Salisbury, for usurping his own functions
during his absence. The three bishops at once set out

122 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
to Normandy to lay their complaints before the king.
" What would you have me do ? " said Henry. " Your
barons must advise you," answered one of the bishops,
"but as long as Thomas lives you will never be at peace."
"A curse on aU the false varlets I have maintained,"
5aid the king, " who have left me so long subject to the
insolence of a priest, without attempting to rid me of
him ! " Four of his knights who had heard the rash
words set out for England. They hastened to Canter
bury, calling on their way at Saltwood Castle, the
residence of Randolf de Broc, one of the archbishop's
bitterest personal enemies, and taking with them some
of his retainers armed. The history of the archbishop's
death is recorded at length by one of his own household,
and gives us a vivid picture of the consternation and
confusion of the monks and clerks, the calmness and
dignity of the archbishop, the mixed violence and irreso
lution of the four knights, who found it difficult to slay
in cold blood an unarmed man, unresisting, and he the
archbishop, in his own cathedral. At length the knights
began to fear that the people of Canterbury would hear
of the archbishop's danger and come to the rescue. The
archbishop had long made up his mind to martyrdom.
He had been taunted with it five years before at Pontigny.
When the knights first broke in upon him, he expressed
his readiness to suff'er ; he would not flee ; when he
entered the church he would not suff'er the doors to be
secured ; when he was struck he did not move hand or
foot, but said, " In the name of Christ, and for the de
fence of the Church, I am ready to die." His monks
accepted his death as a martyrdom, and laid out his
body on the high altar. The news of the crime ran
throughout Europe, and the archbishop was everywhere
honoured as a saint and martyr who had laid down

THE CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON 1 23

his life in defence of the rights of the Church. Henry
showed symptoms of sincere grief for the death of his
old friend, and horror that his hasty words should have
been the occasion of it. He sent an embassy to the
Pope to excuse himself and entreat forgiveness. He
obtained forgiveness on condition of giving up his plan
to subject the Church to the law of the State, and main
taining 200 knights for three years in the Holy Land.
Shortly came reports that miracles were wrought at the
tomb of the martyr, and Pope Alexander canonized him.
A beautiful chapel, buUt at the east end of the cathedral,
contained his shrine, and Thomas of Canterbury became
the most popular saint, and his shrine the greatest place
of pilgrimage, among the English people. When Henry
next came to England, in 1174, he rode from South
ampton to Canterbury without resting, dismounted at
the gate of the city, walked barefoot through the streets
to the cathedral, and prostrated himself on the ground
before the martyr's shrine. In the chapter-house he
caused each of the monks to strike him with the disci
pline, and afterwards he spent the whole night in the
church beside the tomb. The murderers were avoided
by every one, and were sent to Rome to put themselves
at the Pope's disposal. He ordered them to go on
pilgrimage to the Holy Land. A doubtful legend says
that one died on the road, and that the others died
within three years, and were buried before the door of
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Statutes of Edward III. and Henry VII. at length re
stricted the privilege of clergy, but it was the Reformation
statutes of the i6th century which finaUy made clerical
offenders liable to the same punishments as others not
ill holy orders.

124

CHAPTER XIV
THE pope's VASSAL
When Hubert Walter, the Archbishop of Canterbury
and Grand Justiciary, died at Canterbury on the 13th of
July, 1205, a party among the monks, without waiting for
King John's conge d'elire and letter of nomination, as
sembled in the chapter-house the same night and elected
Reginald, their sub-prior, conducted him into the cathedral
and instaUed him in the archiepiscopal throne, and then
sent him off to Rome to obtain the Pope's confirmation
of his election, binding him to secrecy tiU the Pope's sup
port had been secured. The king issued his conge d'ilire
to the chapter in the usual way, and recommended to them
John de Grey, Bishop of Norwich, who was one of the
justiciaries of the kingdom. Meantime it became known
that as soon as the sub-prior Reginald had reached the
Continent he had given it out that he was the elect of
Canterbury, and begun to assume the state of an arch
bishop. His supporters, being ashamed of his conduct,
and alarmed for the consequences of their intrigue, aban
doned him, and joined with the rest in electing the king's
nominee. Twelve of the monks of Christ Church were
sent to Rome with a handsome present to oppose the
claims of Reginald, and bring back the pall for John de
Grey. But in the election of Grey, an alleged right of
the suffragan bishops of the province of Canterbury to
be consulted, had been neglected, and they, too, sent
an embassy to the Pope to guard their interests.

THE POPES VASSAL 1 25
Innocent III. was Pope, one of the greatest of the suc
cessors of Gregory VIL, and who carried highest the
HUdebrandine claim to universal sovereignty. It was
the policy of the Popes to seize every such opportunity as
this for advancing their own claims. Accordingly the
Pope declared Reginald's election irregular, as was mani
festly the case ; but then he declared John's election irregu
lar also, because it had been made before the irregularity
of the previous one had been decided by the competent
tribunal, /. e. by the Pope. Then, both candidates being
set aside, the Pope called upon the monks of Canterbury
who were present in Rome to proceed to a new election,
and nominated Stephen Langton to them to be elected.
The case had been foreseen, and the ambassadors had
received their instructions ; they had been sworn to ac
cept no one but the king's nominee. They pleaded their
oath; from which the Pope forthwith absolved them.
They pleaded that the right of election was in the cathe
dral chapter, not in them, and that the king's consent was
necessary ; whereupon the Pope threatened them with
excommunication. Finally, with the exception of one
bold man, who stUl refused to concur, they accepted the
Pope's nomination. No doubt Stephen Langton was a
fitter man for the Archbishopric of Canterbury than either
Reginald, the indiscreet sub-prior, or John, the justiciary.
An Englishman by birth and Prebendary of York, a man
of piety, learning, and ability, he had lately been the head
of the University of Paris, then the most famous school
of theology in Europe, and at present was high in office
in Rome, and had lately been nominated a cardinal. It
was an excellent appointment. The Pope was a man of
the highest character for piety, and sought to exercise
the vast power? which he claimed in the interests of
rehgion; he deprived himself of a personal friend and

126 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORV
valuable official in order to send to Canterbury the man
who seemed best fitted for the important office ; but
it was an encroachment of the Pope on the rights of
the chapter and of the king.
The king drove the monks of Canterbury out of the
country for electing without his C07igi d'elire ; wrote to the
Pope insisting upon his confirmation of Grey's election ;
and declared that Langton should never set foot in Eng
land. John was so utterly bad as a man and as a king,
that our sympathies are apt to go against him under aU
circumstances ; but in the present case he was not without
some show of right. The Pope virtually acknowledged
that John had some ground of complaint ; and went so
far as to press the king to accept Langton, with a promise
that the present transaction should not be drawn into
a precedent. John refused to yield ; the Pope, equally
resolved not to recede, proceeded to the extreme step
of putting the kingdom under an interdict.
We have before had occasion to speak of the Pope's
spiritual weapons of excommunication and interdict ; this
is the place to explain them. The excommunication of
an individual cut him off from the visible Church ; he
was shunned by all Christian people ; he might not enter
a church ; he must live without its sacraments, and be
buried like a dog ; moreover, it carried with it civil dis
abilities ; he was without the pale of the law ; the civil
power would not defend him from spoUation or personal
injury, or revenge his death. The sentence of interdict
was passed against a whole nation. Its effect was to
deprive the whole people of the offices of religion. The
churches were closed, the new-born might be baptized,
and the last sacraments given to the dying, but all pubhc
services were suspended ; and the people were required to
observe the penitential mortifications of Lent, for the land

THE POPE'S VASSAL 1 27
lay under the ban of the Church. Innocent had already,
eight years before, used the terrible weapon with effect
against Philip Augustus, one of the ablest of the kings of
France, and compeUed him by means of it to separate
himself from a second wife and receive again the wife
whom he had unlawfully put away.
The Bishops of London, Ely, and Worcester received
a commission from Innocent to pronounce the interdict.
They made one last attempt to move the king ; but he
threatened them, with rage, that if any of the bishops
dared to pubhsh the sentence he would banish them and
seize their property, and if any Roman priest dared come
into the kingdom to publish it he would put out his eyes.
At midnight, however, towards the end of Lent, 1208,
the three bishops pronounced the sentence and fled. The
rest of the bishops left the kingdom also, except the
Bishop of Winchester and John de Grey, the Bishop of
Norwich, who disregarded the sentence, as did individual
parishes in other dioceses. Grey, the justiciary, was
shortly sent to govern Ireland, and the Bishop of Win
chester was the only bishop remaining in England. The
king was greatly enraged with the clergy ; he persecuted
the relations of the bishops, seized the property of the
bishops and clergy, confined the monks to their cloisters,
and threatened to drive out of the kingdom the clergy
who obeyed the interdict. Ultimately he allowed the
clergy a scanty maintenance out of their estates and bene
fices, whUe he converted the rest to his own use. Month
after month passed away leaving the kingdom in this
condition, whUe John pursued his pleasures and provoked
his nobles by acts of lawless tyranny. The Roman court,
however, had other weapons in its armoury, and seeing
that the interdict failed to reduce the king to obedience,
it proceeded to bring forward its reserves. In 1209, the

128 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
sentence of excommunication was uttered against the king.
The effects of it appeared at once. For example, Geoffrey,
Archdeacon of Norwich, one of the judges of the Court
of Exchequer, heard, while sitting on the bench, that the
sentence had been pronounced, and at once rose from
his seat and left the court with some expression about the
danger of serving an excommunicated king. John had
him thrown into prison and a leaden cope put over his
head, and by this and other severe usage put an end
to his life.
The king now sought a conference with the archbishop
at Dover, and offered to submit to the Pope, to acknow
ledge Langton as primate, to restore the exiled clergy,
and to pay a limited sum as compensation for their con
fiscated rents. But Langton demanded restitution in
full ; and the conference was broken off. The sentence
of deposition followed. The king's subjects were absolved
from their allegiance, and the Pope granted the forfeited
kingdom to PhUip of France, and bade him raise an army
and take possession of it. John on his side called out
the mihtary force of the kingdom, and assembled a con
siderable body of men at Dover to oppose the threatened
invasion. But the tyrant dared not trust his own subjects,
and he secretly sent the Abbot of Beaulieu to Pandulph,
the legate whom the Pope had sent as his representative
with the French invading force, to offer terms of sub
mission. Pandulph sent back two knights of the Temple
to John, and to them he promised an entire submission.
Pandulph then came over in person. The king signed a
charter in which he said that, not constrained by fear,
but of his own free will, and with the common advice and
consent of his barons, he had for the remission of his
sins, and those of his family, resigned England and Ireland
to God, St. Peter, and St. Paul, and to Pope Innocent

THE POPE'S VASSAL I 29
and his successors in the apostolic chair. He agreed to
hold these dominions as feudatory of the Church of
Rome by the annual payment of a thousand marks.
And he agreed that if he or his successors should revoke
or infringe this charter they should forfeit all right to their
dominions. John took before Pandulph the oath of
fealty, the same in form which vassals customarily took
to their lords ; and a few months later he did homage to
the Cardinal of Tusculum. In the Temple Church at
Ewell, near Dover, on the eve of the Ascension, 1213,
the legate sat enthroned. King John knelt before him,
laid his crown at his feet, put his hands between those of
the legate, and took the customary oath of fealty to the
Pope as to his superior lord.
The exiled prelates returned in triumph with ¦ Langton
at their head. The king went forth to meet them, threw
himself on the ground before them, and entreated them
to have compassion on himself and on the kingdom.
The cardinal gave him absolution, and the Church
recalled its anathemas.
It is not within the scope of our plan to detail how the
archbishop, thus illegally forced upon the kingdom, at
once identified himself with its interests, put himself at
the head of a confederacy of the barons to control the
king's abuses of his power ; disregarded the displeasure
of the Pope, who would have protected his vassal ; and
at Runnymede extorted from the king the great charter
which still forms the basis of the liberties of Englishmen.
The simple explanation of this unexpected turn of affairs
is that Stephen Langton was an Englishman, and that
the Church of England was always throughout the
Middle Ages found on the side of freedom.
When John died in the midst of the war with the
K

130 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
rebel barons, the guardians of the young King Henry III.
found it necessary that he should renew the oath of fealty
to the Pope in order to obtain his support. The Pope
was regarded as the feudal superior of England through
out this reign, and used with little restraint the extra
ordinary power thus acquired over the Enghsh Church.
His legates frequently visited the kingdom, made
progresses, were sumptuously entertained, and extorted
money from the bishops and clergy and abbots and
convents. The unwise, feeble king, instead of protecting
his clergy, made common cause with the Pope and
accepted a share of his extortions.
At this period the Popes were attempting to take the
whole patronage of the Church into their own hands, and
England throughout the reign of Henry III. especially
lay at their mercy. Adrian IV. had begun by requesting
some bishops as a favour to confer the next benefice that
should fall vacant on a particular clerk. Alexander III.
used to solicit similar favours. These recommendatory
letters were called Mandates, and it was difficult for a
bishop to refuse to comply with them. Sometimes the
Popes gave away next presentations to particular livings
before they were vacant, by letters of what was called
Provision. Innocent III. continued the custom of giving
mandates. Gregory IX. and Innocent IV. used the
patronage of England almost as if it were their own, and
Italians were introduced into the best benefices in Eng
land. Two or three facts wiU illustrate the condition of
things. Gregory IX., in 1240, sent orders to the Arch
bishop of Canterbury, and the Bishops of Lincoln and
Salisbury, to appoint no one to a benefice until 300
Italians had been provided for. Three Italians walked
one day into York Cathedral and asked which was the
¦Qean's stall ; then twp of them, acting under the Pope's

THE POPES VASSAL I3I
authority, installed the third as dean; when the arch
bishop refused to admit the appointment he was excom
municated and an interdict was laid on the see. One
Italian held 700 benefices. A remonstrance was pre
sented in the name of the nation before the Council of
Lyons, irt which it was asserted that the court of Rome
drew from England in the middle of the 13th century
60 or 70,000 marks every year, a sum far exceeding the
royal revenue. The people not only remonstrated, but
in the face of Christendom showed the greatness of their
exasperation by outward acts. Bands of rioters, organ
ized, and headed, it was said, by men of position, used to
seize the tithes of the foreign incumbents and distribute
them among the poor.

132

CHAPTER XV
THE MONKS
The orders of monks and friars occupied so prominent
a place, and played so important a part, for several
centuries, in the history of the Church of England, that
it seems desirable to give an account of them ; the more
so as their history and character were at their dissolution
very much misrepresented, and are still very generaUy
misunderstood. If we want really to estimate these institutions fairly,
we must first try to enter into the spirit which gave rise
to them. In the midst of the ordinary sort of religious
people, there have always been some of a more earnest,
enthusiastic spirit, who have aimed at hving a more un
worldly life, and in closer communion with God. In
the Church of the old dispensation we find individual
examples, as Elijah, John the Baptist, Anna the prophet
ess ; and we find, moreover, institutions founded on this
basis, as the Nazarites, the schools of the prophets, and
the Essenes. Unworldliness of life, entire self devotion
to God, continual communion with Him — a life " hid
with Christ in God " — are still more in accordance with
the spirit of the Christian Church. Certain precepts of
our Lord, taken in their literal sense, teach a high degree
of asceticism ; the lives of the Apostles are examples of
it ; the community of goods in the primitive Church of
Jerusalem was a remarkable illustration of it ; and while
their first zeal lasted the most striking characteristic of

THE MONKS 1 33

the Christians in the eyes of their Jewish and heathen
neighbours must have been their asceticism. Among the
Christians themselves it was held that there was a certain
mode of holy living for those who hved in the world,
engaged in its ordinary business, and not forbidden to
enjoy its innocent pleasures; but that others might
lawfully, and even laudably, withdraw from the ordinary
pursuits of life in order to devote themselves to a life of
more entire devotion. They believed that some were
called — " had a vocation ". — ^by God to the one and some
to the other mode of hfe. They took Martha and Mary
as the types of the two classes of Christians : Martha,
laudably busied in the affairs of her household for the
service of our Lord and His Apostles, is the type of the
active Christian life ; Mary, defended by our Lord from
blame for leaving all the household cares to Martha,
while she sat at Jesus' feet listening to His words, is the
type of the contemplative Christian life.
It is in Egypt, in the 2nd century, that we first find
these Christian ascetics forming an organized institution.
Many, both men and women, had fled from the fierce,
sensual, persecuting heathen world into the wilderness, to
live a peaceful, contemplative religious life as hermits.
The mountainous desert on the east of the Nile valley
was their favourite resort. There they hved in little
separate hermitages of rudely piled-up stones, or in caves
scooped out of the mountain side, or in the rock-hewn
cells of the ancient Egyptian tombs, cultivating a little
garden, keeping a few goats, feeding on pulse, and herbs,
and wild fruit, and milk, and water from the neighbour
ing spring. People were often attracted by the fame of
the wisdom and sanctity of some hermit to come and
settle in his neighbourhood for the advantage of his
instruction and guidance in a holy life. In time this

134 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
arrangement became systematized ; a number of separate
ceUs grouped round a common oratory contained a
company of recluses, who agreed to certain rules and to
the guidance of a chosen head ; an enclosure wall was
generaUy built round this group of cells ; and the estab
lishment was called a Laura. The transition from this
arrangement of a group of anchorites occupying the
anchorages of a Laura, under the oversight of a spiritual
head, to that of a community living together in one
building under the rule of an abbot, was natural and
easy. The authorship of this community life is attributed
to St. Anthony, who occupied a ruined castlp in the Nile
desert with a company of disciples in the former half of
the 4th century. The first written code of laws for the
regulation of the life of these communities was drawn up
by Pachomius, a disciple of Anthony. St. Basil, after
wards Bishop of Csesarea, who died a.d. 378, introduced
this monastic system into Asia Minor, whence it spread
over the East. He drew up a code of laws founded on
those of Pachomius, which was the foundation of all
succeeding monastic rules, and is still followed by the
monasteries of the Greek Church. The Rule of St. Basil
enjoins poverty, obedience, and chastity. The habit of
the monks and nuns was, and still is universally in the
Greek Church, a plain, coarse black robe, reaching down
to the ankles, girt round the waist with a girdle of leather
or cord, and a cowl to protect the head when needful ;
the monks went barefoot, and shaved the hair in a
crescent off" the fore part of the head. Hilarion is
reported to have introduced the institution into Syria,
St. Augustine into Africa, St. Martin of Tours into
France, and St. Patrick into Ireland, in the 5th century.
Who introduced it into the British Church we do not
know, but it was introduced here about the same

THE MONKS 1 35

period, probably by way of France, and flourished
greatly. We have already had occasion to speak of the Celtic
monasteries in chapter V., to which we refer the reader.
In the British monasteries, the vows do not appear to
have been perpetual, for in the legends of the British
saints we constantly find that a monk quitted the cloister
without scruple. We have seen in chapter VIII. that
in the early phase of the Anglo-Saxon Church, the
monastery was the great centre of Church life in each
diocese, the seat of education, and the centre of mission
ary work, and the bishop in his proper place at the head
of it. There are indications that the exigencies of our
missionary work among the heathen may lead to our
establishment among them in these days of somewhat
similar institutions to these missionary communities to
which we ourselves owe our Christianity.
In the year 529 a.d. St. Benedict, an Itahan of noble
birth and great reputation, introduced into his new
monastery on Monte Cassino — a hill between Rome and
Naples — a new monastic rule ; and set such an example
of monastic life as led to a reform of the system
throughout Europe. To the three vows which lie at the
foundation of all monastic rules, of obedience, poverty,
and chastity, he added another, that of manual labour,
for seven hours a day, not only as a means of self-sup
port, but also as a duty to God and man. He also made
the vows perpetual. His rule speedily became popular,
and was adopted - all over the continent of Europe ; but
the Celtic monasteries did not embrace the new rule.
Since Saxon England was converted, partly by Augus
tine and his monks, partly by the missionaries of lona
and Lindisfarne, it was natural that the monastic system
should flourish in the Saxon Church. Bede tells us

136 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
that in his time it had spread very much among the
nobility, as well as among persons of private condition.
Several of the Saxon kings anticipated Charles V. in
putting off" the crown and entering into the quiet, con
templative life of the cloister to prepare for heaven.
The Saxon monasteries, however, seem to have had no
uniform rule, and under the one name of monastery were
included establishments of very different character, some
communities of ascetics under the rule of Benedict, others
of secular priests living in community, others with very
modified rules, which did not even prevent their inmates
from marriage. About the middle of the loth century
King Edgar reformed the English monasteries, which had
fallen into the hands of seculars, and compelled them
all to adopt a strict monastic rule.
A century after, the Benedictine rule having in many
places come to be very laxly observed, several new re
formed orders sprang up out of its bosom. One of
the most popular of these was the Cistercian ; owing
much of its reputation to the fame of the great St.
Bernard, who joined it (in 1113 a.d.) soon after its
establishment. The Norman conquest of England took place at the
time of this revival of learning and religious life in the
monasteries. The Normans were among the foremost
people in Europe in energy, intellectual cultivation, and
religious zeal ; and the nobles and gentlemen, in setting
in order their newly-acquired possessions in England,
not only rebuilt the cathedrals and many of the parish
churches in the grand new style of architecture which
had been introduced by the genius of the Norman archi
tects, but they also built monasteries and introduced
many communities of these newly-reformed orders of
monks. It may be doubted whether, under the circum-

THE MONKS 1 37

Stances of the time, they could have done anything better
calculated to promote the spread of learning, civihzation,
and religion among the people.
There is a good deal of popular misunderstanding
about the way in which these religious houses were
founded. People talk as if the monks went up and
down the country and selected for themselves the most
beautiful and fertile tract of land they could find ; and
the owner at once made them a present of it ; and some
body built them a stately house and a magnificent
church; and then they took possession, and settled
down to a life of dignified and luxurious leisure. The
facts are far otherwise. England in the 12 th and 13th
centuries was half covered with forest, and moor, and
marsh. What was given to the founders of a monastery
was generally a tract of such country as this. It was
all they asked. The monks desired to settle in remote
places ; they gladly accepted the task of reclaiming the
waste land. And to give a tract of unreclaimed land to
people who would settle on it and bring it into cultiva
tion, was not then a much greater sacrifice than it is
now to allot a few acres of land to a family of emigrants
to Canada, to induce them to settle there.
We have a contemporary account of the founding of
the great abbey of Clairvaux by St. Bernard, which may
serve as an example. "Twelve monks and their abbot,"
says his Life in the Acta Sanctorum, " representing our
Lord and His Apostles, were assembled in the church.
Stephen (the abbot of the mother house of Citeaux)
placed a cross in Bernard's hands, who solemnly, at the
head of his small band, walked forth from Citeaux. . . .
Bernard struck away to the northward. For a distance
of nearly seventy miles he kept his course till he arrived
at La Fert^. About four miles beyond La Fertd was a

138 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
deep valley opening to the east. Thick umbrageous
forests gave it a character of gloom and wildness ; but
a gushing stream of limpid water which ran through it
was suflScient to redeem every disadvantage. In June,
A.D. 1 1 15, Bernard took up his abode in the Valley of
Wormwood, as it was called, and began to look for
means of shelter and sustenance against the approaching
winter. The rude fabric which he and his monks
raised with their own hands was long preserved by
the pious veneration of the Cistercians. It consisted
of a building covered by a single roof, under which
chapel, dormitory, and refectory were all included.
Neither stone nor wood hid the bare earth which served
for floor. Windows scarcely wider than a man's hand
admitted a feeble hght. In this room the monks took
their frugal meal of herbs and water. Immediately above
the refectory was the sleeping apartment. It was reached
by a ladder, and was in truth a sort of loft. Here were
the monks' beds, which were peculiar. They were made
in the form of boxes or bins, of wooden planks, long and
wide enough for a man to lie down in.^ A small space
hewn out with an axe allowed room for the sleeper to
get in or out. The inside was strewn with chaff" or dried
leaves, which, with the wood-work, seem to have been
the only covering permitted. . . . The monks had thus
got a house over their heads, but they had got very little
else. Autumn and winter were approaching, and they
had no store laid by. Their food during summer had
been a compound of leaves intermixed with coarse grain.
Beech-nuts and roots were to be their main support
during the winter. And then to the privations of in
sufficient food was added the wearing out of their shoes
1 Very similar beds are provided for the houseless vagrants of
London in the Field Lane JRefuge.

THE MONKS 1 39

and clothes. Their necessities grew with the severity of
the season, till at last even salt failed them, and presently
Bernard heard murmurs, and the monks requested to
be led back to Citeaux. But a stranger gave them an
alms of ten livres, and enabled them to supply their most
pressing necessities."
So in the history of the foundation of the great abbey
of Fountains, whose ruins and whose gardens now com
pose one of the most beautiful places in England. The
history is abridged by Burton ^ from the narrative of
Hugh, a monk of Kirkstall.^
The fame of the sanctity of the Cistercian monks at
the neighbouring abbey of Rivaulx having extended to
the Benedictine monastery of St. Mary at York, several
of the monks became discontented with the relaxed
rule observed there, and proposed to withdraw and
found another community which should observe the new
Cistercian rule. The abbot was opposed to their with
drawal from their proper house and rule ; whereupon,
A.D. II 32, Richard the Prior, who was one of the re
forming party, called upon Thurstan, the Archbishop of
York, to visit the abbey, and regulate what was amiss,
and urged him also to aid those who desired to with
draw. On the day fixed for the visitation, the archbishop,
attended by many clergy and a great retinue, went to
the abbey ; but the abbot had gathered a great number
of monks to oppose him, who refused the archbishop ad
mittance to the chapter-house, and an uproar ensued ;
whereupon the archbishop placed the abbey under inter
dict, and withdrew. He took away with him under his
protection the prior and sub-prior and eleven monks,
' ' Monasticon Eboracense,' p. 141.
^ In a MS. in the possession of the Royal Society, published in
extenso by Dugdale in his ' Monasticon.'

140 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
who desired to withdraw from the abbey, and he enter
tained them in his own house for eleven weeks and five
days. At Christmas the archbishop, being at Ripon, assigned
to the seceders from St. Mary's some land about three
miles distant that they might there found a monastery
for themselves. The spot of ground had never been
inhabited unless by wild beasts, being overgrown with
wood and brambles, lying between two steep hills and
rocks, covered with wood on all sides, more proper for
a retreat of wUd beasts than the human species. This
was called Skell-dale, that is, the Vale of Skell, a rivulet
running through it from the west to the eastward part
of it ; the archbishop also gave to them a neighbouring
viUage called Sutton. Richard, the Prior of St. Mary's
at York, was chosen abbot of the monks, being the first
of this monastery of Fountains, with whom they with
drew into this uncouth desert, without any house to
shelter them in that winter season, or provisions to
subsist on, but entirely dependent on the Divine pro
vidence. There stood a large elm in the midst of the
vale, on which they put some thatch or straw, and under
that they lay, ate, and prayed; the bishop for a time
supplying them with bread, and the rivulet with drink.
Part of the day some spent in making wattles to erect a
little oratory, while others cleared some ground to make
a little garden.
Burton records a tradition that the Ihonks lived under
a group of yew-trees on the hill-side until their house was
built. On the south side of the house, where the abbey
stood, about midway in ascending the hill, are five or six
yew-trees all (in 1757) growing except the largest, which
was blown down a few years ago ; they are of an almost
incredible size — the circumference of the trunk of one of

THE MONKS 141

them is at least fourteen feet at about a yard from the
ground, and the branches in proportion to the trunk.
They are all nearly of the same bulk, and are so near each
other as to make an excellent cover, almost equal to that
of a thatched roof We may suppose that they took
shelter first under the elm-tree, and in a day or two found
out this group of yews amidst the wood which clothed the
hUl-side, and removed to the better shelter of the thick
evergreen foliage tUl they had built themselves a more
substantial shelter.
The winter being over, the monks resolved to follow
the rule of the Cistercian order, and accordingly they sent
messengers to St. Bernard at Clairvaux, and the arch
bishop wrote hkewise on their behalf With the mes
sengers who had been sent to Clairvaux, St. Bernard sent
back one Geoffrey, a monk of his own monastery, who
instructed these monks of Fountains in the Cistercian
rule, and caused them to build cottages for their cells and
offices. Their number was likewise increased by ten
priests and laymen, who resorted to them, and were
received as novices ; but their possessions were not yet
enlarged, nor had they any other sustenance than what
the archbishop allowed them ; and that year proving
scarce, they were reduced to such straits, that after the
abbot had been round the neighbourhood to beg, without
success, they were reductd to feed on the leaves of trees
and herbs gathered in the fields, and boUed with a little
salt. At this time a stranger coming to beg a morsel of
bread, only two loaves and a half were found for all the
monks, one of which the abbot caused to be given to the
stranger, saying, God would provide for them ; which
was accordingly done ; for immediately two men came
from the neighbouring castle of Knaresborough with a

142 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY

cart-load of fine bread, sent by Eustace Fitz John, who
had been informed of their great want. Thus they
passed that summer till the harvest, when they gathered
some small store.
After they had laboured two years under those hard
ships, and were upon the point of leaving the place, and
going away to St Bernard at Clairvaux, who was about
to assign to them one of the granges belonging to his
abbey, Hugh, Dean of York, falling sick, ordered himself
and all that he had to be carried to the monastery of
Fountains, and being'a wealthy person he brought relief
to the house. Not long after two canons of York, both
very rich in gold and silver, devoted themselves and all
that they had to this monastery. Soon after, Robert de
Sartis, a knight, and Reganelda his wife gave their town
of Harleshowe, with the adjacent fields, and the forest
of WarkesaU, and they were both interred here. And
Serlo de Pembroke, being very UI, and near death, gave
the viUage of Caiton, and dying at Fountains, was there
buried. Soon after this the abbot obtained the grange
of Aldeburgh, with all thereto belonging ; and from this
time the abbey increased in possessions without, and in
number of monks within.
But the monks were industrious and skilful farmers,
and flourished as industrious settiers in the backwoods
often do. Barren commons wefe soon dotted over with
sheep; rushy valleys were drained, and became rich
pastures filled with cattle ; great clearings in the forest
waved with ripening rye and barley. The revenues of
the monastery rapidly augmented; littie of them was
required for the coarse dress and frugal fare of the
monks; they did not, like the lay landowners, spend
them on gilded armour, and jewelled robes, and troops
of armed retainers, and journeys to court ; and so they

THE MONKS . I 43

had enough for plentiful charity and hberal hospitality,
and the surplus they spent in gradually rearing those
magnificent buildings whose very ruins are among the
architectural glories of the land. As the monasteries
became wealthy, their abbots took rank among the
neighbouring nobles ; and these great corporations,
united by ties of sympathy and interest, exercised great
influence in the country.
No one who is really acquainted with the history of
England in the Middle Ages will underrate the value of
the religious houses. The monks set the example of
skilful cultivation of the waste lands of the country;
they were beneficent lords to their tenants and servants ;
protectors of the liberties of the people in the midst of
the tyranny of the feudal ages ; the great cultivators of
learning and the arts ; the great educators of the people ;
the centres of religious zeal. These were times when
all men with common interests banded together for
combined defence against oppression, and for mutual
help in their pursuits ; and so religious men banded
together into these powerful corporations, and their
houses were the great citadels of the Church, without
which religion would hardly have held its ground
amidst the violence, and ignora'nce, and worldliness of
the age.
But while so much is to be said in favour of the mon
astic communities, there was one very serious drawback
to their beneficial influence on the nation. The support
given to these great auxihary institutions which were
added to the system of the ancient Church of England
tended to weaken the hands of the bishops and clergy
who had the cure of the souls of the people. This came
to pass partly through the system of Appropriation,

144 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
which has had so disastrous an eff'ect on the Church of
England from that day to this that it needs to be described
here. The Normans introduced the custom into England of
endowing the monasteries which they founded or sup
ported, not only with land and money, but also with
the rectories of which they had become patrons. They
gave the benefice to the convent, and the convent, as a
religious corporation, took upon itself the office of rector,
and provided a vicar to perform the spiritual duties of
the cure. The apportionment of the temporalities of
the benefice usually was that the convent took the great
tithe, of corn, &c., which formed the far larger portion
of the benefice, and gave the vicar the small tithe and
fees, and (if it were not too large) the rectory house and
glebe for his maintenance. The position of a poor vicar
was very diff'erent in dignity and emolument, in prestige
in the eyes of his parishioners, and in the means of
conferring temporal benefits upon them, from that of
the old rectors, his predecessors in the cure. The
fashion of appropriating benefices was gradually ex
tended to the support of cathedral chapters, hospitals,
guilds, &c. By the time of the Reformation about half
of the livings of England and Wales had thus become
appropriated. We can only briefly mention here some other causes
which diminished the usefulness of the secular clergy :
tlie Papal provisions which conferred English benefices
on foreigners ; the allowance of pluralities ; the permitting
men in minor orders to hold benefices; the use of
bishoprics, dignities, and benefices as rewards to those
engaged in the civil service of the country. All these
causes together did much to deteriorate the influence
and usefulness of the secular, /. e. the parochial clergy,

THE MONKS 1 45

Suffragan bishops may have been learned, pious, and
zealous, but they could not wield the authority or
exercise the influence of the diocesan ; so curates in
charge of a parish could not really fill the place of the
rector ; no locum tenens can fulfil the duties of an
absentee.

146

CHAPTER XVI
THE FRIARS
We have seen in the preceding chapters how the ancient
parochial system of the Church of England was over
shadowed by the greater prestige of the monastic orders,
and how its resources were drained off on every side to
feed other interests than the cure of souls and the help
of the poor. The consequences were soon felt. As the
population increased, the clergy were not able to supply its
spiritual needs. In the towns of England, the condition
of the poor in the 13th century bore a resemblance to
that which forms the great and painful problem of our
own days. Foul, crowded dwellings, in undrained and
unscavenged quarters of the towns, inducing leprosy
and occasional visitations of plague, extreme poverty,
ignorance, vice, and misery, were among the character
istics of the Middle Ages as they are of our own.
It was to meet this condition of things that the orders
of friars were founded in the 13th century, and they
occupy an important place in the subsequent history of
the Church down to the Reformation.
The friars were a diff'erent order of men from
the monks; their institution was based on a totaUy
diff'erent idea. The principle of monachism was seclusion
from the world and abstraction from worldly affairs, for
the sake of religious meditation and spiritual self culture.
To this end monasteries were founded in places remote
from the abodes of men, and he who least often suffered

THE FRIARS 147

his feet or his thoughts to wander beyond the cloister
was, so far, the best monk. The principle which inspired
the friars was that of self-devotion to the performance
of active religious duties among men. Dominic saw
infidelity spreading over Christendom, and founded
an order of men who should be learned and eloquent
preachers, capable of deahng with the infidelity of the
time. Francis was impressed with the miseries of the
poor, especially those of the towns, and founded an order
of men who should give themselves to works of charity,
and to an earnest, affectionate proclamation of the Gospel
among the poor. The friars were, in fact, the home
missionaries of their .time ; and the zeal and earnestness
and self-devotion of their early labours, faUing upon times
when such agencies were greatly needed, produced very
striking results. "Till the days of Martin Luther," says
Sir James Stephen-, " the Church had never seen so great
and effectual a reform as theirs. . . . Nothing in the
histories of Wesley or of Whitfield can be compared with
the enthusiasm which everywhere welcomed them, or with
the immediate visible result of their labours." Both
Francis and Dominic took great pains to fit their followers
for the office of preachers and teachers, sending them in
large numbers to the universities, and founding colleges
of their own there, to receive their students. They
cultivated the whole range of science and art, holding
(rightly) that theology is the queen of sciences, and that
the man of God should be thoroughly furnished with all
knowledge, human and divine. So successful were they
that in a short time the professorial chairs of Europe
were almost monopolized by the learned members of
the mendicant orders. Their numbers rapidly increased.
Their houses were usually built in the suburbs si the
towns, because their work lay among the masses of

148 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HIStORY
the people; but they seem also to have parcelled out
the country districts, and organized a regular system of
itinerant preachers among them. They did not restrict
their labours to the ignorant and poor, but were equaUy
diligent among all classes. They were immensely popular;
the profession of asceticism impressed the unreasoning
crowd, which is always affected by the dramatic exhibi
tion of austerity and the profession of extraordinary
sanctity, and undervalues the virtue which is only seen
in the godly regulation of a life of ordinary every-day
occupations. The Pope had given them a constitution
which made them independent of the authority of the
bishops, and empowered them to exercise their oflfice
everywhere without regard to the territorial rights of
the parochial clergy. They were something like what
the Wesleyan preachers would have been if the Church
of that day had adopted Wesley's movement, and
incorporated his preachers into a special order of clergy, .
and given them hcence to go and execute their mission
in all the parishes of England.
It was very hard on the parochial clergy to see their
parishes intruded into by popular rivals who did not
always spare to satirize them to their faces, and to see
their influence undermined and their spiritual functions
superseded. The lord monks were the aristocratic order
of the clergy ; the friars were the popular order ; to the
secular clergy fell the humble duty of caring regularly
and daily for the souls of the people committed to their
charge, as well as they could, with these irregular helps
and under all these disadvantages.
There came at length a reaction. The monastic
orders, as they grew wealthy, suffered a diminution of
their primitive zeal. They were accused by the lower
classes of pride, and envied by the higher classes for

THE FRIARS 1 49

their wealth and power. The friars suffered a like
deterioration of their original self-denial and spirituality ;
the fact that they lived entirely on the alms of the
people tended to encourage the use of those little acts
of popularity-hunting which injure the usefulness of a
minister of religion, and lower his moral tone. And by
the middle of the 14th century we find Chaucer elabor
ating a beautiful description of the evangehcal virtues of
the poor parson of a town, while he satirizes the jolly
fox-hunting monk and the hypocritical cant and money-
getting tricks of the friar.

15°

CHAPTER XVII
FALSE DOCTRINES AND SUPERSTITIOUS PRACTICES OF
THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH
It is not within the scope of our plan to consider all
the errors in doctrine and all the superstitious practices
which gradually arose in the Middle Ages, but we shall
treat of some of them which exercised special influence
on the faith and practice of Christian people, or which
have a special interest in relation to the history of the
Reformation or to the questions of the present day.
It may be convenient to give at once a list of those
which have been selected. The cultus of the Blessed
Virgin Mary ; the doctrine of the Holy Communion ;
purgatory, and the subjects connected with it, viz.,
prayers and masses for the dead ; indulgences ; saint
worship. The gravest of all the errors of the mediseval Church
was that by which the Blessed Virgin Mary was gradually
raised in the popular devotion to a rank above that of
a mere mortal, and put into the office of a mediator
between sinners and Christ. The position of the Virgin
— mother of Incarnate God — was very wonderful and
mysterious ; but that it did not give her any special
rights over her Son, or special relation to His redeeming
work, seems to be intentionally and clearly indicated in
the passages of Holy Scripture which speak of her relations
to Him. " Son, why hast Thou thus dealt with us ?
, , , How is it that ye sought Me ? wist ye not that I

FALSE DOCTRINES AND SUPERSTITIOUS PRACTICES 15I
must be about My Father's business?" "Thy mother
and Thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with
Thee. . . And He stretched forth His hand to His
disciples and said. Behold My mother and My brethren.
For whosoever shall do the wUl of My Father which
is in heaven, the same is My brother and sister and
mother." And strongest of all, both in the natural
feeling which attributed a special character to the Virgin,
and in our Lord's warning response to it, " Blessed is the
womb that bare Thee, and the paps which Thou hast
sucked. . . Yea, rather, blessed are they that hear the
Word of God and keep it."
The discussions about the heresy of Nestorius in the
4th century seem first to have led to a general and
deep consideration of the subject. The decision of the
Council of Ephesus, that from the moment of the con
ception in the womb of the Virgin of the human nature
of our Lord the Divine nature was united with it, and
the title in which the truth was expressed — -Theotokos,
served to perpetuate a realization of the wonderful
honour which had been conferred on the lowly maiden ;
and titles of reverence and affection began to be given her.
The first unfounded honour attributed to her is that
on her death she was taken body and soul to heaven.
In the 4th century Epiphanius says her end was not'
known. The tradition of her assumption to heaven on
her death is first mentioned by Sophronius in the 5th
century as a doubtful tradition. John Damascenus, in
the Sth, first relates it as a fact.
The first attribution of anything remarkable to the
birth of the Virgin occurs in the 12th century. Until
that time the universal behef of the Church was
that she, like all other mortals, was conceived in s;'.n
and shapen in iniquity. The Fathers frequently point

152 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
out the difference between the conception without sin
of Jesus, and the conception in sin of His mother. To
limit ourselves to those connected with the history
of our own Church, Gregory the Great, the Venerable
Bede, Alcuin,^ Anselm,^ write very clearly on the subject.
It was in the middle of the 12th century that some
monks of Lyons, during a vacancy of the see, desired
to celebrate a festival of the Conception of the Virgin.
St. Bernard wrote to them against it as " a novelty," " an
error," and "a superstition," arguing that only Jesus
Christ was conceived without sin. But the opinion
of the immaculate conception of the Virgin began to be
entertained. Duns Scotus, in the 14th century, stated
it as a scholastic proposition, and argued in favour of it.
Thomas Aquinas opposed it. Scotus was a Franciscan,
Aquinas a Dominican; the two orders took up the
dispute warmly, and the whole Church was ranged on
one side or the other. It remained an open question till
in our own day the Council of the Vatican decreed the
dogma of the Immaculate Conception as an article of
faith. But throughout the r3th and following centuries an
excessive veneration was paid to the Virgin above that
which was paid to aU other saints. The Roman theo
logians distinguish it indeed from the worship paid to God ;
but it is often difficult to reconcile the language offered
to her with anything short of the highest worship. For
example, in Saint Bonaventura's Psalter of the Virgin,
which substitutes the name of "our Lady" for that of
' "The body of Jesus Christ was derived from that of the Virgin,
who was corrupted by original sin."
" "Though the conception of Jesus is pure and without any siri
of the flesh, yet the Virgin herself, from whom He was derived,
was conceived in sin, and her mother conceived her in sin, and she
was born with original sin."

FALSE DOCTRINES AND SUPERSTITIOUS PRACTICES 153
"our Lord," we have such results as these : Psalm xxx.,
" In Thee, O Lady, have I trusted ; " and Psalm Ixvii.,
" Let Mary arise, and let her enemies be scattered." Or,
again, in the paraphrase of the Te Deum —
"We praise thee, Mother of God, we acknowledge thee, Mary
the Virgin !
O Lady, save thy people.
Vouchsafe, O sweet Mary, to keep us, now and for ever, with
out sin."
The Roman theologians admit that the Virgin is put
in the place of a mediatrix between us and Christ.
Gabriel Biel expresses the doctrine clearly thus : " You
are afraid of approaching the Father. As He gave you
Jesus for a Mediator, what could not such a Son obtain
from such a Father? But perhaps even in Him you
fear the Divine Majesty, because although He became
man; yet He remained God. Betake yourself to Mary,
for Mary is pure humanity. The Son will surely hear
the Mother, and the Father wUl hear the Son." And
these were not merely pious opinions of a few, which
had no great practical influence on the religion of the
people ; the worship of the Virgin, and the resort to her
as a compassionate intercessor, formed a very consider
able part of the practical religion of a large proportion
of the people. The effect was to intercept the worship
due to God ; to obscure the truth that there is only one
Mediator — all-sufficient and infinitely merciful — between
God and man ; and to encourage laxity of life by leading
men to hope for an easier pardon through Mary, than
they could obtain through Christ.
Transubstantiation. — -To use the words of Bishop
Harold Browne, in his 'Exposition of the Thirty-nine
Articles,' " Thus much is unquestionable, the whole primi-

154 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
tive Church evidently beheved in a presence oi Christ in
the Eucharist. All spoke of feeding there on Christ —
eating His body and drinking His blood. But then was it
a spiritual presence or a carnal presence ? Did they teach
a carnal eating and drinking of Christ's natural flesh and
blood ? or did they intend a spiritual manducation — an
eating spiritually and a drinking in by the soul of the
life-giving efficacy of the body broken and the blood
shed? Did they believe the bread and wine to be
actuaUy and literally transmuted into flesh and blood?
Did they think the bread and wine still to remain bread
and wine, though constituted sacraments of Christ, means
in God's hand of conveying to us Christ's body and
blood, and so, after Christ's own example, to be called
by the name of His body and blood?" And, after
quoting from the Fathers, he asks, " May it not be safely
concluded that, weighing all considerations, and notwith
standing some remarkable phrases, the doctrine of the
early ages was not in favour of a miraculous change in
the consecrated elements, not in favour of a carnal pre
sence of the natural Body of the Lord, but in favour of
a real, effectual, life-giving presence of Christ's spiritual
Body communicated to the faith and feeding the souls
of His disciples ? " It was not in the spirit of the early
ages to give accurate definitions of such doctrinal points ;
the tendency was rather to veil them in reverential
mystery, to accept the religious facts and not to enter
into philosophical explanations of the facts. But in the
Middle Ages arose a new spirit of philosophical inquiry,
which, accepting the doctrines of religion, analyzed and
defined and explained and systematized them, and showed
their conforrhity with sound reason. To this spirit of
the scholastic philosophy we owe the long controversy
as to the mode of Christ's presence in the Eucharist.

FALSE DOCTRINES AND SUPERSTITIOUS PRACTICES 155
The controversy begins about a.d. 831 with Paschasius
Radbert, a monk and afterwards abbot of Corbie, who
was the first to expound and defend at length the doctrine
of a change after consecration in the substance of the
elements of bread and wine. The work created a great
sensation in the Church, and Rabanus Maurus, Arch
bishop of Metz, a divine of the highest credit and repu
tation, wrote against Paschasius. . The famous Johnnes
Scotus Erigena, probably a native of Ireland, wrote at
the desire of King Charles the Bald a book against the
substantial change in the sacrament. These two answers
are lost, but another, written by Bertram or Ratramnus,
another monk of Corbie, by desire of Charles the Bald,
is StUl extant, and is one of the great works on the
subject.^ His doctrine is contained in this brief extract :
"The change [produced bythe consecration ofthe bread
and wine] is not wrought corporeally, but spiritually and
figuratively. Under the veU of the material bread and
wine the spiritual body and blood of Christ exist. . . .
Both (the bread and wine) as they are corporeally handled
are in their nature corporeal creatures ; but according to
their virtue, and what they become spiritually, they are
the mysteries of Christ's body and blood. ... By all
that hath been hitherto said, it appears that the body
and blood of Christ, which are received by the mouths
of the faithful in the Church, are figures in respect of
their visible nature ; but in respect of the invisible sub
stance, that is, the power of the word of God, they are
truly Christ's body and blood. Wherefore as they are
visible creatures they feed the body ; but as they have
the virtue of a more powerful substance, they do both
feed and sanctify the souls of the faithful."
^ It was the perusal of Ratramnus which influenced Ridley and
Cranmer in their views ofthe Holy Communion.

156 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
The dispute continued for ages, and the principles of
Paschasius slowly gained ground. The Saxon Church,
protected by its insular position, withstood longer the
growing opinion. Some of the writings of one of the
most learned of the ecclesiastics of the later Anglo-Saxon
Church, Elfric, the homilist, contain clear statements on
the subject. "This is not," he says, "that body in which
He suffered for us, but spiritually it is made His body
and blood." " That housel (/. e. the Eucharist) is Christ's
body, not bodily but ghostly [spiritually] ; not the body
which He suffered in, but the body of which He spake,
when He blessed bread and wine to housel, a night
before His suffering, &c." Berengarius, Archdeacon of
Angers, one of the most famous teachers of the middle
of the uth century, opposed the opinion of Paschasius,
which by that time had become the most generally re
ceived opinion. The passions of the clergy were aroused
against him ; he was condemned once and again as a
heretic, and on both occasions recanted under fear of
death. What specially concerns us is that his former
friend Lanfranc, then Prior of Bee, at the height of his
reputation as a scholar, entered actively into the con
troversy against Berengarius; so that we may be sure
that when the Norman Conquest opened the Church of
England to the influence of the religious ideas of the
Continent, under the guidance of Lanfranc as arch
bishop, the current opinions on the subject of the
Eucharist would begin to spread among the English
clergy and people.
It was not till a.d. 12 15, in the fourth Council of
Lateran, held by Innocent IIL, that the full form of the
doctrine of transubstantiation was sanctioned and made
authoritative. One of its chapters declared that in the
sacrifice of the Mass " Christ's body and blood are really

FALSE DOCTRINES AND SUPERSTITIOUS PRACTICES 1 57
contained under the species of bread and wine, the bread
being transubstantiated into His body, and the wine into
His blood." And this doctrine became an article of the
faith in all the Churches which held the Roman com
munion. This definition, however, still left room for a
wide difference of opinion. The vulgar, perhaps, received
it in its most gross obvious meaning, as gross as that
indicated by the stories of people seeing a little child,
instead of the consecrated host, lying on the paten ; or
as that indicated in the story of the Jew who blasphem
ously stabbed the host with his knife, and blood issued
from the wounds. But the philosophy of the Middle
Ages made a distinction between the substance and the
accidents of a thing. The accidents included the size,
shape, texture, feel, smell, — all, in short, which is apparent
to the senses, while the substance is a supposed something
which forms the basis of these accidents. The word
transubstantiation, and its definition, assert no more than
that the substance of the bread and wine are changed,
while the accidents remain the same. To all the senses
it StUl appears to be bread ; the change which has taken
place is in this substance, which is Only a philosophical
idea. Bishop Harold Browne says : " Now it is almost
questionable whether the accidents do not comprise all
the properties of matter. If so this change may still
[according to the Roman definition] be spiritual rather
than material." And some great writers subsequent to
the famous Lateran Council seem to have held it in
such a sense, e.g. St. Bernard, Peter Lombard, Thomas
Aquinas, Cardinal Cajetan.^
A change of practice speedUy followed upon the estab
lishment of the new doctrine. The cup was gradually
' The Roman doctrine of transubstantiation has never been
adopted by the Greek Church.

158 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
withheld from the laity, on the ground of reverence,
lest the sacred blood might perchance be spilled on the
ground ; the bread was for the like reason put into the
mouth of the communicant, a cloth being held beneath
to catch any crumbs which might fall. Then the sacri
ficial aspect of the Eucharist became exaggerated, and
the sacramental view fell into comparative neglect.
Then came the reservation of the host, not according to
primitive practice, for communicating persons unavoid
ably- absent, but to be placed over the altar in order to
retain there the actual presence of Christ for the purpose
of worship. The idea of the sacrament as a means of
grace, to be received once a day if that were the earliest
practice of the Church, or once a week according to its
more normal practice, was obscured. Pious people were
satisfied to communicate once a year, at Easter. Bishop
Poore, in the 13th century, advises female recluses —
persons of special devotion — not to communicate oftener
than twelve times a year.
Purgatory. — The doctrine of the Bible, as witnessed
by the uniform belief of the Jews and of the early Chris
tians, is that at death the soul goes into the place of
departed spirits, caUed hades or heU, where the souls
that have died in Christ enjoy rest and a foretaste of
their coming happiness, and the souls of the wicked have
a fearful looking forward to the coming woe ; that at the
resurrection all rise again in their bodies and undergo
the judgment ; and that then the redeemed go back with
Jesus to heaven, and the lost depart into the outer dark
ness. The doctrine of purgatory is briefly this, that in
the intermediate state between death and resurrection
there are three conditions, in one of which the soul is ;
the saints go straight to heaven, the lost go straight to

FALSE DOCTRINES AND SUPERSTITIOUS PRACTICES 1 59
hell, but those who have died not saintly enough for
heaven, and not so wicked as to deserve hell, go to a
middle place called purgatory, and there suffer a less
or greater degree of punishment for a shorter or longer
time, according to their deserts. Augustine in the 4th
century mentioned it as an opinion entertained by some,
that after death some further purging by fire awaits those
who were not fully purified here ; and he says, " I shall
not argue against it, for perhaps it is true.'' He is usually
quoted as the principal authority for the early belief of
the Church in purgatory. Gregory the Great in his
' Dialogues ' gave incidentally his views of the condition
of the soul after death, which included a more definite
doctrine of a purgatory of purifying fire than that of any
previous great theologian ; but it was apparently a novel
opinion in his day, and was certainly not generaUy held
in the Church. In Bede we find traces of the influence
of Gregory's doctrine upon the Saxon Church. Otto
Frisingensis, in a.d. 1146, writes: "Some affirm that
there is in the unseen state a place of purgatory, in which
those who are to be saved are either troubled with dark
ness only, or are refined by the fire of expiation." It
was then still in the 12th century only an opinion of
some, and not a doctrine of the Church. But it was
put forth authoritatively by the Council of Florence in
a.d. 1438, in these words : "If any true penitents shaU
depart this life in the love of God before they have made
satisfaction by worthy fruits of penance for faults of
commission and omission, their souls are purified after
death by the pains of purgatory." And this was con
firmed by the CouncU of Trent, 1563, and taught in
the creed of Pope Pius IV., with the addition, that
"the souls there detained are aided by the suffrages
of the faithful."

l6o TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
Connected with this doctrine of purgatory was that of
Indulgences. At first an indulgence was nothing more
than a remission of part of his penance to a penitent
who showed special signs of repentance. But it gradually
grew into a theory that the Church had power, out of the-
superabundance of the merits of Christ and the saints,
to remit part of the punishment of purgatory to those
who deserved it by any meritorious rehgious act. Bishops
would publish so many days' indulgence (i. e. so many
days less of the punishment of purgatory) to those who
were present at the consecration of a new church, or
made a certain pilgrimage, or said a certain prayer. At
last it came to giving indulgences to those who gave a
certain sum in alms — i. e. who bought them. Pope
Urban IL, a.d. 1095, began the system by granting a
plenary indulgence to the Crusaders, " whosoever for
devotion sake, and not for honour or money, shall go to
Jerusalem to liberate the Church of God, that journey
shall be counted instead of all his penance." It reached
its greatest height of corruption in the pontificate of
Leo X., who raised money by the general and public
sale of indulgences ; and it was the scandal created by
the conduct of Tetzel, the agent of this traffic in Ger
many, which was one of the immediate causes of the
Reformation in that country. The practical tendency
of the doctrine, as vulgarly understood, in conjunction
with the belief in the efficacy of prayers and masses for
the dead, tended to undermine the sanctions of morality ;
to make the working out a man's salvation to consist not
in self-restraint and wiUing obedience to the precepts of
the Gospel, but in buying pardons while he lived, or
leaving money to get himself prayed out of purgatory
after he died ; or trusting to the charity of his relations
to do it for him ; or, finaUy, to the hope that the super-

FALSE DOCTRINES AND SUPERSTITIOUS PRACTICES l6l
abundance of the merits of Christ and the saints might
be enough to get him out of pain at last, though he did
not pay the priests for their interest in the matter. Its
tendency was to lead men to live in this world as they
pleased, and postpone the salvation of their souls to the
intermediate state.
Saint Worship. — The eariy Christians held the article
of the Creed, " I believe in the communion of saints,"
with a more vivid faith than is common among us now.
They habituaUy thought of the saints departed as stUl
living, conscious, mindful of their past life, and not for
getful of those who had been dear to them on earth.
They did not doubt that they still offered prayers and
worship to God through our Lord Jesus Christ ; and if
they still remembered those dear to them, and still prayed
to God, they could not doubt that they would pray to
God for those friends. Thus in the later sepulchral
inscriptions in the Roman catacombs there were illus
trations of natural feeling in such phrases as, " Pray for
us," " pray for your wife,'' " for your children," " for
your sister." But there is no necessary connection be
tween this faith and the theory that if we call upon the
saints departed they can hear us. Gregory Nazianzen,
towards the end of the 4th century, is said to be the first
theologian in whose writings we find anything like an
address to the spirits of the dead, and these are in two
instances in which he utters a rhetorical apostrophe to
departed persons, and in both cases the apostrophe is
qualified by an expression of doubt — " if thou hast any
sense or perception of those things ;"" jf pious souls
have such honour of God that they perceive such things."
But this gradually grew into a belief that the saints do
hear us, and will, if asked, pray for us ; that we may
M

l62 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
venture to go to them and ask their intercession with
Christ when we fear directiy to approach Christ. Then
came the attaching oneself to some special saint, and
frequently invoking his mediation. Until at length, in
the popular religion of ignorant times and countries, the
Virgin and the saints were worshipped and prayed to, as
a kind of lesser deities ; particular countries and towns
and families put themselves under the protection of a
favourite saint ; and the shrines of popular saints became
the scenes of local cults as numerous and superstitious as
were furnished by the ancient mythologies.

163

CHAPTER XVIII
THE RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY : SKETCH
OF THE CHURCH IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY
We have traced the Church of England from one
eventful period to another down these centuries of its
long history. Let us now take our stand at this point
of time, and look round and try to gather a general view
of the state of the mediseval Church of England and the
religious condition of the people.
The England of that period was very different from
the England of to-day. It was chiefly a pastoral country-;
its great export was wool, its chief manufacture a little
coarse cloth. The country was in great part unreclaimed ;
there were great forests and wide tracts of moorland and
meres and marshes. The king's highways from town to
town were barely passable by vehicles in winter, and the
bye-roads were little more than bridle-tracks from one
village to another. The country for the most part was
unenclosed pasture, like the Sussex Downs or Salisbury
Plain. The towns were small, many of them enclosed
within walls, with narrow streets of picturesque timber
houses, guild-halls and churches, and plenty of garden
and orchard ground behind the houses, between street
and street. The viUages consisted of a few straggling
cottages round the village green. The castles of the
nobles, the manor-houses of the country knights, and the
farm-houses of the yeomen scattered over the land, com
plete the view of its civil inhabitants. The ecclesiastical

164 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
establishment of the country bore a far larger proportion
to the whole country than it does now. The cathedrals
were in the height of their magnificence. For four
hundred years, ever since the Conquest, most of them
had been in building, and many of them were still un
finished. Their shells remain to us, and astonish us with
the grandeur of their conception, the costliness of their
building, and the beauty of their art. But what remains
to us is only the shell. The interiors were then full of
chapels, shrines, and tombs of great men ; the windows
were fiUed with painted glass; the walls hung with
trophies which had been accumulating for centuries ; the
knightly achievement was suspended on the wall in one
place, the palmer's staff" ahd scrip in another ; rich palls
were cast over tombs. The accessory buildings were
still uninjured :— if it were a monastic foundation, there
was the cloister in the angle between nave and transept ;
round it the chapter-house, the refectory, the dormitory,
and the scriptorium ; if a foundation of secular canons,
the houses of the great officials of the cathedral, and the
college of the vicars choral, and the school of the chor
isters, were placed as convenience dictated. The bishop's
palace stood detached at a littie distance. Cathedral,
palace, cloister, residence houses, vicar's college, and
boys' school, aU were enclosed within walls and guarded
by gate-towers, hke a littie citadel within the city. Over
one of the gateways was the great room in which the
bishop's court was held, and, hard by, the prison for
those who were condemned to it.
The towns had many more churches in proportion to
their inhabitants than our modern towns. Even yet, in
our old towns like Norwich or Colchester, the modern
citizen is surprised at the number of churches, though
the old towns were far less populous, and some of the

THE RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY 1 65
old churches have been destroyed. The various com
panies and guilds had their chapels; sometimes they
were within the churches, often they were separate
buUdings attached to their guUd-halls. The town
churches had their chantry chapels founded by wealthy
citizens, and the tombs of those citizens enriched the
interior. Moreover, there was usuaUy a friary, or several
of them, within the town or just without its walls ; and
in many of the churchyards were chambers built for
recluses ; so that the whole ecclesiastical establishment
of a town — rectors and vicars, chantry priests and guild
priests, private chaplains of wealthy citizens, parish clerks,
and men in minor orders, friars and recluses — was very
much more considerable than the two or three vicars
and half-a-dozen curates of a modern town. Few towns
were without two or three charitable establishments —
schools for education, almshouses for poor people, hos
pitals for the sick ; and all these were organized on a
religious basis. The masters of the schools were clergy
men. The alms-houses had their little chapel, and the
alms-people formed a little religious community, with a
distinguishing dress, and some simple rules, under the
control of the chaplain. The hospital was served by
physicians and surgeons, dressers and nurses, who had
undertaken the work for the love of Christ, and were
organized into a religious community.
The viUages were perhaps religiously worse off then
than now, for in many cases, as we have seen, the rector
was an absentee, or in minor orders, and the actual
cure was in the hands of a priest who served for a poor
stipend. But besides the body of secular clergy, comprising the
bishops and cathedral establishments, the town clergy,
and the scattered country incumbents, there were two

l66 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
other distinct establishments of regular clergy, each as
numerous, wealthy, and important. There was only one
cathedral in each diocese, but every county had three or
four or half-a-dozen monasteries ; and many of these had
churches quite as noble as any of the cathedrals. The
abbot's house was as great as a bishop's palace, and had
an estabhshment as large. The cloister buildings, the
lodgings of the prior and the other officials, the hospitium
for entertaining guests, the schools, hospitals, and alms
houses attached, formed a vast establishment, all sur
rounded by walls with gate-towers like a town. A village
of dependents clustered outside the walls, growing in
some cases into an important town, as at Bury St.
Edmunds or Wenlock. The possessions of the monas
teries were large and scattered ; and every here and
there, where there was an outlying estate, there was also
a cell, i. e. a miniature monastery, with its chapel and
domestic buildings, inhabited by two or three monks and
their dependents, who looked after the estates. It was
probably in these outlying cells, occupied by monks who
were chosen rather for their business-like capability than
for their earnest piety, and who were removed from the
control of their superiors, that breaches of monastic
discipline most frequently occurred.
The abbots were great noblemen, some of them being
regularly summoned to Parliament with the barons and
bishops. The convents ^ were powerful bodies, with
wealth, numerous tenants and retainers, and great social
influence. Then there was a third establishment of itinerant
preachers — the friars. They were divided into four chief
orders — the Dominican, Franciscan, Austin (Augusti-
* The convent is the community of monks as distinguished from
the abbot.

THE RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY 167
nian), and Carmelite ; but we may consider them here
as one great body, numerous and influential, having
their houses chiefly in the great towns, but sending their
members on circuit into every village in the country.
In the Middle Ages the Church was a great popular
institution. Since the Reformation it has retained the
confidence of the upper classes, and has had undisputed
charge of the agricultural poor ; but, for one reason or
other, it has not thoroughly satisfied the needs and won
the affections of the lower half of the middle class,
among whom dissent of various forms has consequently
found its adherents. It remains to be seen whether the
great revival of religion in this century wUl succeed — as
seems at present likely — in popularizing the Church anew
among all classes, and winning over the great mass of
the people to confidence and attachment to her. One
reason, no doubt, of the popularity of the mediseval
Church was that it had always been the champion
of the people and the friend of the poor. In politics
the Church was always on the side of the liberties
of the people against the tyranny of the feudal lords.
In the eye of the nobles the labouring population
were beings of an inferior caste ; in the eye of the law
they were chattels ; in the eye of the Church they were
brethren in Christ, souls to be won and trained and
fitted for heaven. In social life the Church was an
easy landlord and a kind master.
The Church was the great channel by which men
might hope to rise in life. The clergy were quick to
recognize mental abihty, and ready to train it to useful
ness. Any clever lad had an opportunity of being
educated at the school of the monastery, sent thence
to the college which the Order maintained for its own
scholars at the university, and so becoming a clerk And

r68 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
from the ranks of these clerks the civil service of the
State, as well as the offices of the Church, were supplied.
So that every clever lad had open to him through the
Church the possibility of rising to the highest wealth and
dignity. But it was not for the sake of gratifying the
ambition of individuals that the mediseval Church used
to search out and educate talented youths ; it was from
sounder and higher motives. It was from the belief that
these "talents" were what this metaphorical name implies,
gifts of God, to be cultivated not only by the individual
who possessed them, but by those who had control over
him, for the use of society and for the glory of God.
This is well brought out in a discussion among the
commissioners for the regulation (among other things)
of the grammar-school of Canterbury Cathedral at the
time of the Reformation. Some of the commissioners
wished to exclude from the benefits of the school all but
sons of gentlemen. Archbishop Cranmer argued that
"poor men's children are often endowed with many
singular gifts of nature, which are also the gifts of God."
It was replied that "it was meet for the ploughman's son
to go to plough, and the artificer's son to apply the trade
of his parent's vocation, and the gentlemen's children are
meant to have the knowledge of government and rule
in the commonwealth." The archbishop replied, that
" utterly to exclude the ploughman's son and the poor
man's son from the benefits of learning, as though they
were unworthy to have the gifts of the Holy Ghost
bestowed upon them as well as upon others, is as much
as to say that Almighty God should not be at liberty to
bestow His great gifts of grace upon any person but as
we and other men shall appoint them to be employed ; "
and so he stood firm for admitting poor men's sons as
well as gentlemen's sons, as heretofore, to the advantages

THE RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY 1 69
of that education which would fit them for the highest
offices of Church and State. Thousands of men did
actually thus rise from the lowest ranks to the highest.
Such men knew the life of the classes from which they
had sprung, their circumstances and needs, their modes
of thought and feeling, and sympathized with them and
helped them. All this tended to increase the popularity
of the mediseval Church.
All these things together made the Church more
powerful in the Middle Ages than now. The great
landed possessions of the prelates, the large proportion
they bore to the lay lords in the House of Peers, and
the fact that all the great civil officials of Government
and of the courts of law — -secretaries of State, ambassadors,
and judges — were taken from her ranks, gave her a^ast
influence. The great numbers of the clergy (including
the friars) brought them more thoroughly into contact
with the whole people. The fact that learning was almost
confined to their body, and the universal belief in the
sacredness of their office, gave them more influence with
the people.
And on the whole, with many drawbacks, the mediseval
Church did its duty — according to its own lights — to the
people. It had vast political influence, and used it on
the side of the liberties of the people. It was the great
cultivator of learning and art, and it did its best to educate
the people. It is the Popish Church since the Reforma
tion which is open to the charge of designedly withholding
knowledge from the people, for they have found that
knowledge is fatal to Papal pretensions and mediseval
errors. It is in these latter days that Ultramontanism
has allied itself with despotism against the political
liberties of people who ask for religious reform together
with civil freedom.

170 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
If we look to the great ends for which a Christian
Church is incorporated in a nation — viz., to make known
the Gospel to the people, to establish institutions and
form habits which shall restrain vice and immorality, to
train up individual souls in growing holiness of life, to
offer an acceptable worship to Almighty God — we must
in justice declare that even the corrupt mediseval Church
did not altogether fail of its duty. By means of its
painting and sculpture in the churches, its mystery plays,
its religious festivals, its catechizing, and its preaching,^
it is probable that the chief facts of the Gospel history
and the doctrines of the creeds were more universally
known and more vividly realized than among the masses
of our present population. The morals of the people
were lax — those who best know the morals of our town
poor and our peasantry will be slowest to provoke com
parisons ; but at least the ancient Church discipline tried
to control and to stigmatize vices which now rage un
checked and unreproved. The monastic institution set
up a standard of saintliness, of which thousands of monks
and nuns and friars fell far short, but which tens of thou
sands of men and women, both in the cloisters and in
the world, aimed at, and towards which they did daily
grow. It is no new thing that people should be better than ,
their opinions. The spiritual digestion, like that of the
body, seems to have a power of discrimination, and the
spiritual life, like the bodily, often thrives on very inferior
' The constitutions of Archbishop Peckham, i. e. the Church laws
passed by the Synod of Canterbury towards the end of the 13th
century, order the parochial clergy to preach, by themselves or by a
substitute, every quarter ofa year ; to expound in a popular manner
the Creed, the Commandments, the twofold precept of love to God
and our neighbour, the seyen works of charity, the seven deadly sins
the seven principal virtues, and the seven sacraments.

THE RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY 171
food. On the other hand, alas ! it is no new fact that
people may have the soundest theology and not live
according to it, may have abundant means of grace and
not use them. The system of compensation, which we
observe in other departments of life, seems to obtain here
also ; so that no one need think that we are unduly de
preciating our present religious state and exalting that of
the unreformed Church, when we assert as an historical
fact that Englishmen then were not so superstitious and
vicious as we should have expected, and that Englishmen
now are not so well-instructed and godly as they ought
to be.
EspeciaUy the mediaeval Church realized vividly a
great truth which until lately had almost died out among
us, that one great function of the Church of Christ is to
offer to God an acceptable worship through Jesus Christ ;
and in their grand churches and religious communities
set apart for the divine worship, in the solemn grandeur
of the services offered daily, and seven times a day, they
did present a worship which has perhaps only been ex
ceeded in grandeur by that of the Temple of Jerusalem.
It is quite gratuitous to suppose that, because it was
grand and beautiful, it was not spiritual and earnest.
Our modern Prayer Book, all admit, breathes the very
spirit of reasonable and sober but earnest and fervent
devotion ; and our Morning and Evening Prayer are but
a revision and abbreviation of Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext,
None and Compline, which the monks and nuns sang
daily in every religious house in England from the time
of Alfred the Great down to that of Henry VIII. It
is true these Hours were not attended by the people.
The Holy Communion was the service for the people ;
and we have already stated, and we have no desire to
extenuate, the accumulation of errors which offered this

172 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
popular service in a language the people did not under
stand, which exaggerated the sacrificial aspect of it, and
depreciated its sacramental aspect, and which denied the
cup to the laity. It is curious that in course of time the
monastic Hours intended for the clergy should have
become our service for the people ; and that our Holy
Communion, which Christ ordained as the great evan
gelical service, the great commemoration and pleading of
the Atonement, should have faUen into such general
disuse, that perhaps nine out of ten of our church-going
people never even saw it celebrated.
In the Middle Ages there were written a considerable
number of manuals intended to teach the parish priest
his duties. From these books we gather what the parish
priest's practical work and teaching were like. One of
these, written by John Myrk, a canon of Lilleshall Abbey,
Shropshire, has recently been pubhshed,^ and an extract
from the editor's preface will help us to understand the
practical, every-day working of the mediaeval Church
among the people. "To many," says the editor, "it
wUl seem strange that these directions, written without
the least thought of hostile criticism, when there was no
danger in plain speaking, and no inducements to hide or
soften down, should be so free from superstition. We
have scarcely any of the nonsense which some people
StUl think made up the greater part of the rehgion of the
Middle Ages, but instead thereof good sound morality,
such as it would be pleasant to hear preached at the
present day. The instructor tells his pupils of the great
evil it is to have ignorant clergy ; how, instead of in
structing their people, they, by their UI example, lead
them into sin ; how their preaching is worth but very
1 By the Early English Text Society. Edited by Edward
Peacock, Esq., F.S.A.

THE RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY 173
little if they tell lies or get drunk, are slothful, envious, or
full of pride ; how they may not without sin haunt taverns,
or practise violent and cruel sports ; may not dance nor
wear ' cutted clothes and pyked schone,' nor go to fairs
and markets, and strut about girt with swords and
daggers like knights and esquires. On the other hand, he
says, priests must be gentle and modest, given to hospi
tality and the reading of the psalter. They must avoid
as much as may be the service of women, and especially
of evil ones, eschew coarse jokes and ribald talking, and
must be speciaUy careful to shave the crown of their
heads and their beards. The priest must not be content
with simply knowing his own duties ; he must be pre
pared to teach those under his charge all that Christian
men and women should do and believe. We are told
that when one has done a sin he must not continue long
with it on his conscience, but go straight to the priest
and confess it, lest he should forget before the great
shriving time at Eastertide.
" Pregnant women especially are to go to their shrift
and receive the Holy Communion at once. Our in
structor is very strict on the duties of midwives — women
they were really in those days. They are on no account
to permit children to die unbaptized. If there be no
priest at hand, they are to administer that sacrament
themselves if they see danger of death. They must be
especially careful to use the right form of words as our
Lord taught; but it does not matter whether they say
them in Latin or English, or whether the Latin be good
or bad, so that the intention be to use the proper words.
The water and the vessel that contained it are not to be
again employed in domestic use, but to be burned or
carried to the church and cast into the font. If no one
else be at hand the parents themselves may baptize their

174 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
children. All infants are to be christened at Easter and
Whitsuntide in the newly-blessed fonts, if there have riot
been necessity to administer the sacrament before. God
parents are to be careful to teach to their god-children
the Paternoster, Ave Maria, and Credo, and not to sleep
in the same bed with them until they are old enough to
take care of themselves, lest they should be overlain.
Neither are they to be sponsors to their god-children at
confirmation, for they have already contracted a spiritual
relationship. Both the god-parents and those who have
held the child at its confirming are spiritual relatives, and
may not afterwards contract marriage with it.
" Before weddings, [banns are to be asked on three
holidays ; and all persons who contract irregular
marriages, and the priests, clerks, and others that help
thereat, are cursed for the same. The real presence of
the body and blood of our Saviour in the sacrament of
the altar is to be fully held ; but the people are to bear
in mind that the wine and water given to them after they
have received communion is not a part of the sacrament.
It is an important thing to behave reverently in church,
for the church is God's house, not a place for idle prattle.
When people go there they are not to jest, to loll against
the pillars and walls, but kneel down on the floor and
pray to their Lord for mercy and grace. When the
Gospel is read they are to stand up and sign themselves
with the cross ; and when they hear the sanctus bell ring
they are to kneel and worship their Maker in the blessed
sacrament. " AU men are to show reverence when they see the
priest carrying the host to the sick. Whether the ways
be dirty or clean, they are not to think of their clothes,
but reverentiy to kneel down ' to worshype Hym that alia
hath wroghte.'

THE RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY

175

" The author gives some very interesting instructions
about churchyards, which show, what we know from
other circumstances to be the case, that they were some
times treated with shameful irreverence. Of witchcraft
we hear surprisingly little. Myrk's words are such that
one might almost think he had some sceptical doubts
on the subject. Not so with usury or 'okere'; the
taking interest for money, or lending anything to get
profit thereby, is, we are shown, 'a synne full grevus.'
This was the universally received teaching in his day,
and for many centuries after. Perhaps the most remark
able fluctuation of opinion that has taken place in the
modern period is the sUent change that has passed over
men's minds on this important subject.
"After these, and several more general instructions of
a similar character, the author gives a very good Com
mentary on the Creed, the Sacraments, the Command
ments, and the deadly sins. The little tract ends with
a few words of instruction to priests as to the manner
of saying Mass and of giving Holy Communion to the
sick." It would be unpardonable to omit Chaucer's beautiful
description of the " Parson of a Town," as an Ulustration
of a good medieval parish priest : ^ —
" A good man was there of religioun,
That was a poore parson of a town,
But rich he was of holy thought and work ;
He was also a learned man, a clerk.
That Christe's gospel truely would teach.
His parishens devoutly would he teach.
Benign he was and wonder diligent.
And in adversity full patient.
And such he was yproved often siths.'
Full loath were he to cursen for his tithes,
' Thespelling of the words is modernized to make it more readily
intelligible. " Since.

176 TURNING .POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
But rather would he given, out of doubt,
Unto his poore parishens about
Of his offering and eke of his substance,
He could on little thing have suffisance.
Wide was his parish, and houses far asunder,
But he ne left nought for no rain nor thunder
In sickness and in mischief, to visite
The furthest in his parish, much and lite,'
Upon his feet, and in his hand a staff.
This noble example to his sheep he yaff,''
That first he wrought and afterward he taught
Out of the gospel he the wordes caught ;
And this figure he added yet thereto,
That if gold rust what shall iron do ?
For if a priest be foul on whom we trust.
No wonder is a lewed ' man to rust ;
WeU ought a priest example for to give
By his cleanness how his sheep should live.
He set not his benefice to hire,
And left his sheep accumbered in the mire,
And ran unto London unto Saint Panic's
To seeken him a chanterie for souls,
Or with a brotherhood to be withold ;
But dwelt at home and keptfe well his fold,
So that the wolf ne make it not miscarry ;
He was a shepherd and no mercenary.
And though he holy were and virtuous,
He was to sinfiil men not dispiteous,*
Ne of his speeche dangerous nor digne,'
But in his teaching discreet and benign ;
To drawen folk to heaven with faireness,
By good example was his business.
But it were any person obstinate,
What so he were of high or low estate,
Him would he snubben sharply for the nones ; '
A better priest, I trow, that no where none is
He waited after no pomp nor reverence,
Nor maked him no spiced conscience,
But Christe's lore and His apostles twelve
He taught, but first he followed it himselve.
With him there was a ploughman was his brother," &c.

' Great and little. ^ Gave. ' Unlearned.
* Scornful. " Harsh and disdainful, • For the occasion.

177

CHAPTER XIX
THE REACTION
With the reign of Henry III. we reached the lowest
point Of the degradation of the Church of England.
The Pope and King united in the most unscrupulous
disregard of the religious interests of the people, and the
most violent and dishonest plunder of the revenues of
the Church. " The Pope and the King," says Matthew
Paris, "hke the shepherd and the wolf, were aUied
together for the destruction of the sheep."
But even in that reign one man at least was found
bold enough to remonstrate against the Papal abuses,
and to oppose the Papal power. Robert Grostete, a
man of humble birth, had acquired a European repu
tation for learning and piety, and when made Bishop of
Lincoln he soon became equaUy remarkable for his
apostolic zeal and diligence in the government of his
great diocese. He was the typical Church reformer of
his age and country. He obtained authority from the
Pope to visit the monasteries of his diocese and regulate
their abuses. When the friars were first instituted, he
welcomed them as helpers of the clergy in the work of
evangelization, but towards the end of his life he saw
that they in their turn had become powerful and am
bitious orders, the rivals of both monks and parish
priests, and the disturbers of the discipline of the Church ;
and he became their opponent. He refused to institute
N

178 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
foreigners or unfit persons to benefices in his diocese on
the Pope's mandates, and wrote to Innocent IV. a letter
on the subject in language to which the Pope was very
little accustomed. There cannot, he argued, be any
kind of sin so hateful, detestable, and abominable to our
Lord Jesus Christ as to destroy souls by depriving them
of the ministry of their pastors. To appoint foreigners
who cannot speak the language of the people, or others
who cannot or wUl not properly minister among them,
is thus to deprive the people of shepherds. The power
of the apostolic see is given for edification and not for
destruction, and therefore it cannot lawfuUy order that
such men be instituted into benefices. It is the duty of
all faithful subjects of the apostolic see to oppose such
unlawful acts ; and therefore, he says, " by virtue of the
obedience and fidehty due from him to the holy father,
and in all fiUal affection and obedience, he must refuse
to obey, and resist and oppose the orders contained in
his HoUness's letters, because they, most evidently tend
to that which is a most abominable sin against our Lord
Jesus Christ, and to what is most pernicious to the
human race, and are altogether opposed to the sanctity
of the apostolic see, and are contrary to the Cathohc
faith." The Pope was enraged at such a reply, but those
about him pointed out that the bishop was held in such
estimation throughout England and France, that it would
not be wise to take any violent measures against him :
popular sympathy would be with the bishop and against
the Pope.
Bishop Grostete, the reformer of Church abuses, was,
as is natural, the friend of Simon de Montfort, the
reformer of the political abuses under which the kingdom
groaned. When the barons had obtained the power of
government in the latter part of Henry's reign, Matthew

THE REACTION I 79

Paris says that they seriously thought of throwing off" the
Roman yoke. They did order the wardens of the
Cinque Ports to seize all documents coming from
Rome, and made prize of some hundreds of mandates
and provisions.
With the reign of Edward I. commenced a course of
steady opposition to the claims of Rome on the part of
the kings and parliaments, which continuaUy thrust back
its usurpation, until the movement culminated in the
re-assertion of the freedom of the Church of England in
the 1 6th century. Edward I. made a law against pro
visors, which, however, was not consistently observed till
the reign of Edward III. In the time of the former
prince, the people, by their representatives, were en
couraged by him to make the Pope acquainted with the
feeling of the nation on the Papal claims. It was on
the occasion of the defeat of the Scots at the battle of
Falkirk. The Scots in their distress appealed to the
Pope, Boniface VIIL, for protection; who thereupon
claimed the sovereignty of Scotland as belonging to the
holy see, commanded Edward to desist from warlike
acts against it ; and summoned him to appear and plead
his claims before the Pope. The king at once laid the
Pope's letter before his Parliament, then sitting at
Lincoln : who replied in very firm language that the
kingdom of Scotland had never belonged, as to temporals,
to the Church of Rome ; that the kings of England had
never appeared before any ecclesiastical or secular judge
in respect of any territories or temporal jurisdictions be
longing to them ; that the king would not submit to his
Holiness's sentence with respect to his sovereignty over
the kingdom of Scotland, or, indeed, in any other tem
poral matter whatsoever ; that the king would not send
any embassy on the subject, which would be contrary to

I So TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
the dignity of the Crown and the liberties of the kingdom,
which they were resolved to defend to the utmost of
their power.
One of the great practical grievances of which England
had to complain was the taking of vast sums of money
out of the country to enrich the Papal court. Church
property was in theory exempt from taxation; in fact,
from the beginning of the reign of Henry III., the clergy
in convocation taxed themselves in the shape of subsidies
to the Crown, and when, in obedience to a recent Papal
bull, they refused to pay a tax to Edward I., he out
lawed them, and so compelled them to purchase his
protection. But the theory that the Church did not
pay taxes to the State, laid it open to be taxed by the
head of the Church, and bishops and clergy, abbots and
convents, were taxed by the Pope in various ways, regular
and irregular. Every benefice, from the highest to the
lowest, paid a fine (first-fruits) to the Pope on coming
into the hands of a new incumbent, just as a secular fief
paid a relief to the feudal lord. The bishops and abbots
paid large fees also on their confirmation. The Pope
also occasionally demanded irregular subsidies from the
clergy. The appeals which were carried from the eccle
siastical courts to Rome were another source of con
siderable revenue. It has already been stated that the
court of Rome drew from England in the middle of the
13th century sixty or seventy thousand marks a year, a
sum far exceeding the royal revenue.
In the reign of Edward III. the Papacy had fallen into
greater disrepute, and the opposition to it in England
was still more pronounced. In 1350 the Statute of
Provisors put an end to the Pope's infringement of the
rights of patrons. In 1353 appeals to Rome were for
bidden under pain Qf outlawry. In 1367 the king refused

THE REACTION

any longer to pay the tribute with which King John had
disgraced the kingdom. In 1374 an inquiry was again
instituted into the number and value of the benefices
then occupied by Frenchmen and Italians and other
aliens. In the following year an embassy was sent to
the Pope to complain of the abuses, and Wiclif was one
of the commissioners. In 1376, Parliament met and
drew up a remonstrance, which they presented to the
king. They complained, in exaggerated language, that
the usurpations of the Popes were the cause of all the
plagues, injuries, famine, and poverty of the realm ; were
more destructive to it than all the wars ; and were the
reason why it contained not a third of the inhabitants
and commodities it formerly possessed ; that the Pope's
collector had a house in London with a staff" of officials
and clerks, as if it were one of the king's great courts,
transporting yearly to the Pope 20,000 marks or more ;
and that the taxes paid to the Pope exceeded five times
those which were paid to the king. They enumerated
three English deaneries, four archdeaconries, and two
prebends held by cardinals in Rome, besides others of
the best dignities in England held by other Italians.
They complained that everything was venal in that sinful
city of Rome, and that even English patrons had learnt
thence to practise simony without remorse. At another
time Parliament speaks plainly of expelling by force the
Papal authority, and so providing a remedy against
oppressions which they neither could nor would any
longer endure.
It was not only against these external abuses that the
people were greatly set, but there was also at the same
time a great movement of the religious opinion of the
people in the direction of a reformation of the received
doctrines of the Church. Wiclif is the representative of

r82 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
this reforming movement. This "morning star of the
Reformation," as he has been called, was born in York
shire about 1324, was educated at Oxford, where he
became master of BaUiol CoUege, and afterwards doctor
in divinity. From this vantage ground he promulgated
opinions approximating to those of the Reformation,
both against the abuses of the Roman court and the
errors of the mediaeval doctrines. These opinions were
countenanced by some of the highest personages in the
realm, and prevailed very widely among the people.
His opinions, however, contained some points erroneous
in theology, and some of dangerous political consequence.
These errors were taken up and augmented by some of
his followers, and wild heresies and socialistic notions
of government and society were propagated under his
name, till the conservative spirit of the country took
alarm, and Lollardlsm fell into disrepute. The great
work which Wiclif accomplished was his translation of
the whole Bible into English, and its wide circulation
among the people. No doubt the teaching of Wiclif is
to be reckoned among the remote causes which led up
to the Reformation of the 16th century; but modern
historical writers aflfirm that it had not so lasting an
influence as some writers have taken for granted. Some
Bohemian students at Oxford imbibed Wiclif's views
and carried them home, where they took root, and were
influential in producing the Reformation there, and so
had some slight reflex influence on England. But
Lollardlsm did not last in England much beyond the
beginning of the French wars, and had died out long
before the English Reformation began.
The influence of these opinions, while they lasted, may
be traced in two remarkable propositions which the
House of Commons made in the reign of Henry IV.

THE REACTION 183

In the sixth year of that king, 1404 a.d., when he asked
for supplies, they presented an address, in which they
proposed to the king that he should seize all the tempor
alities of the Church and employ them as a perpetual
fund to serve the exigencies of the State. They repre
sented that the clergy possessed a third of the lands of
the kingdom, that they contributed nothing to the public
burdens, and that their wealth only tended to disqualify
them from performing their proper duties with zeal and
efficiency. The king, however, discouraged the revo
lutionary proposal, and the Upper House of Parliament
rejected the bill which the Commons sent up. Five
years afterwards the Commons renewed its attack upon
Church property. They put forth a calculation of all
the ecclesiastical estates, which by their account con
sisted of 18,400 plough lands, bringing in a revenue of
485,000 marks a year. They proposed to divide this
land among 15 new earls, 1500 knights, 6000 esquires,
and 100 hospitals, besides ^^20,000 a year which the
king might take to his own use.^ And they insisted
that the clerical functions would be better performed
than at present by 15,000 parish priests paid at the rate
of seven marks apiece of yearly stipend. The address
was accompanied by an application for a mitigation of
the statutes enacted against the Lollards, which shows
from what source this proposal to deal with the Church
property came. The king gave a severe reply to the
Commons; and, before the end of the Parhament, a
' Such estimates as these, made to serve a purpose, would afford
a very unsafe authority for the actual state of Church property at
the period. It may be convenient to note here two other estimates
of the value of Church property at different periods. The Taxation
of Pope Nicholas is the result of careful and minute ofiicial
inquiry in 1294 A.D., and the Valor Ecclesiasticus oi 2.€\xa\\^x'\Xi.(^\ry
in 1535 A.D.

184 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
Lollard was burnt to prove that the king was in earnest
in his maintenance of the constitution.
The only other legislative act we need mention as a
step in the reaction against the Papal usurpation is the
Statute of Praemunire, passed in the reign of Richard IL,
1383 A.D., which forbade the bringing of any Papal bulls,
processes, or excommunications into the kingdom without
the king's licence, under forfeiture of goods and perpetual
imprisonment. The Church and nation were thus at
length brought again into much the same relation to the
Roman see as that in which William I. and Lanfranc
had placed them at the Conquest.

i85

CHAPTER XX
THE REFORMATION : THE REPUDIATION OF THE PAPAL
SUPREMACY
We have seen in the previous chapters how in course
of ages the primitive constitution of the Church had been
overthrown, and the rights of bishops, clergy, and people
violated, by the usurpations of the court of Rome ; how
false doctrines had been introduced, superstitious prac
tices had crept in, and morality had deteriorated. The
need of a reformation of religion had long been recog
nized by prelates and clergy, no less than by the laity.
The court of Rome being the great upholder of all these
abuses, a general council of the Church was at first
looked to as the only means of effecting a reformation,
and the CouncUs of Constance and of Basle in the 1 5th
century were great endeavours of the Church to effect
the needed reforms. The CouncU of Constance aimed
at objects very similar to those of the old Catholic move
ment in Germany at the present day ; the authority of
the Pope was dealt with in the most summary manner,
and distinctly subordinated to that of the council ; and
yet, with all its good cause and powerful support, the
council utterly failed in its main objects. The concen
trated strength of the Roman court, its tenacity, its
skilful intrigues, triumphed at length over the forces of
its assaUants, divided by national jealousies, afraid to
strike at the root of the Papal usurpations, and unsup
ported by any deep rehgious enthusiasm among the

l86 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
masses of the people, and the authority of the Pope
reasserted itself when the first impulse of reform had
spent its force.
• The Roman court having succeeded in frustrating
these attempts at a general reform, national Churches
at length began to act for themselves. The King of
France summoned a great assembly of the nobility,
clergy, and others, who determined to adopt the reform
ing decrees of the CouncU of Basle. The Emperor of
Germany and the Imperial Diet took a similar course.
Cardinal Ximenes, the Minister of Spain, introduced
many reforms there ; and Cardinal Wolsey began to take
some steps towards a correction of abuses in England.
Wolsey, the great minister of Henry VIIL, has not
had justice done to his character as a statesman, and
to his intentions as a reformer. The fact that he was
a cardinal misleads the popular mind into the idea that
he must have been a creature of the Papal court. This
was not so. We have seen that for many generations
nearly all who entered into the civil service of the State
were nominally clerics, and had been rewarded with
Church preferment in lieu of salaries. The Church was
then, as the law is now, the high-road to preferment in
the civil service of the State. A certain number of
cardinalates were appropriated by precedent to each of
the great kingdoms of Europe. When a cardinalate fell
vacant the king sometimes asked for it as a reward for
the great minister, instead of the great Churchman, of
the time. So Ximenes in Spain, Richelieu in France,
Beaton in Scotland, and Wolsey in England, received
this blue riband of their profession. Wolsey was the
greatest statesman of his time; he exercised a great
power in England, and possessed a vast influence through
out Europe. He certainly saw the necessity of a religious

THE REFORMATION: THE PAPAL SUPREMACY 187

reformation, and worked towards it. He sought power
from the Pope to visit and reform the religious houses
and reduce them in number. Having obtained it he
used it to suppress a number of the smaller ones, and
devoted part of their property to the founding of a new
college at Oxford, with a great public school at Ipswich
as a feeder to it (like Winchester School and New
CoUege at Oxford, and Eton and King's College at
Cambridge), by which he sought to encourage the revival
of classical learning in England. He also founded
professorships at Oxford to teach the new learning, a
further step towards making the universities equal to
the demands of the time. He proposed to devote
another part of the property of the suppressed monas
teries to the founding of some new bishoprics, thus
pruning the exuberance of the monastic system, and
promoting the growth and improvement of the parochial
system. He refused to countenance the persecution of
those who had taken up new opinions in religion, and
dealt so leniently with those who were brought before
him on charges of heresy, that it became one of the
items of accusation subsequently brought against him.
He even contemplated the step of throwing off the Papal
supremacy and the assertion of the independence of
national Churches.^ In short, says a modern writer,
Wolsey was "the most honest, the noblest, and the
' In a letter to the king, Henry VIIL, written in 1527, he sug
gested that a continuance of the Roman policy would end in this,
that the Churches of England and France should decline from the
obedience of the Pope, to his perpetual rebuke and ignominy. And
at a subsequent period, during the progress of the divorce cause,
Wolsey, in a despatch to Gardiner, who was the ambassador at
Rome, bids him state to the Pope that, if he should take some step
which he was supposed to contemplate, he would thereby so irritate
the king and all the nobles of this realm, that undoubtedly they
would decline from th§ obedience of the apostolic see, and conse
quently all. other realms would do the same.

l88 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
wisest of the Church reformers." The king was less
disposed to reform than his minister. He had been
educated (while his elder brother hved) with a view to
the Church, and was fond of theological studies. He
entered into the questions which Luther had raised with
so much zeal as to write a reply to him, and in gratitude
the Pope conferred on him the title of Defender of the
Faith, which the sovereigns of England still bear. But
the question of the divorce led the king to adopt the
Reformation policy.
Henry VII. had married his eldest son Arthur to
Catherine, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, the sove
reigns of Castile and Arragon. The bride was iS, the
bridegroom only 15. Four months afterwards the prince
died, and Catherine asserted publicly and solemnly,
when her divorce was agitated, that her first marriage
was never consummated. The politic king, in order
not to forfeit the advantages of this alliance, proceeded
to arrange a marriage between Catherine and his second
son Henry, now Prince of Wales. The Pope, Julius IL,
gave a dispensation, and Henry, at the age of iS, was
married to Catherine, then 26 years of age. In the
early years of the king's reign the marriage was a happy
one, except that it brought no male heir to the throne.
But after a time the discrepancy of age began to tell.
In 1518 Henry was only 27, and one of the handsomest
men of his time, and had fallen into libertine habits ;
Catherine was already 35, and older than her years,
with health broken, beauty faded, and becoming some
what austere in her religious practices. The idea of a
divorce seems to have arisen in 1526. In the course of-
some negotiations for a marriage of the Princess Mary,
the only surviving child of Henry and Catherine, with
one of the sons of the King of France, the French

THE REFORMATION: THE PAPAL SUPREMACY 189
envoy raised the objection that the Pope had exceeded
his powers in granting a dispensation for the marriage of
Henry to Catherine, for that such a union was contrary
not only to the law of the Church but also to the law
of God, from which the Pope could give no dispensa
tion ; therefore the marriage was null ab initio, and the
Princess Mary illegitimate. The king stated afterwards
that this incident had excited his conscientious scruples ;
that he feared that it was because the marriage was
unlawful that six out of the seven chUdren born of it
had died, and that it had given no heir male to the
Crown. Cardinal Pole (a relative of the king) at a
later date told the king, as if it was a fact known to
them both, that Anne Boleyn, with whom the king was
smitten, suggested the idea of a divorce. In the follow
ing year the king opened negotiations with the Pope on
the subject of a divorce. It is enough here to say that
Wolsey was secretly opposed to the measure, and that
to the king's displeasure on that account, fanned by
Anne Boleyn's influence, the fall of the great statesman
is to be attributed. He was disgraced in 1529, and
died in the following year, 1530.
The principal charge brought against Wolsey, in order
to give legal colour to his ruin and plunder, was that he
had transgressed against the statute of Richard II. by
acting as legate, and so had incurred the penalty of
" praemunire." It was a mere pretext, and became more
absurd when the words of the Act, which imposed for
feiture also on aU " abettors, fautors, and counciUors,"
were construed to include all the clergy, and ultimately
all the laity, of the land. It was a very serious jest to
the Cardinal, who was disgraced and ruined ; and to the
clergy, who were condemned to pay a fine of about
_/"! 20,000, or about ;^i, 500,000 of modern money. We

igo TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
mention it because of the new title of " Supreme Head
of the Church " which the king caused to be attributed
to him in the draft preamble of the Act of Convocation,
by which the money was voted. It serves to show that
the clergy refused to co-operate with the king in any
steps which were theologically unsound. Convocation
submitted to be plundered of its money by the king, but
refused to attribute this title to him, on the ground that
terms of so general a nature might hereafter be wrested
to imply a spiritual as well as a temporal headship. The
king gave way to the arguments used so far as to consent
to the insertion of the words supreme head after God ;
but that also was capable of being interpreted as imply
ing a spiritual headship, and the clergy stood out against
it. FinaUy, it was agreed that the words should run, so
far as the law of Christ will allow — caput supremum
quantum per Christi legem licet. This was stated by the
king in writing, and understood by the Church to mean,
that the clergy were not answerable to their sovereign in
respect to their sacerdotal functions, but were subject to
him in regard to homage and allegiance, their temporal
estates, and their submission to the laws for the punish
ment of crime. The title was dropped after being in use
about twenty-five years, and the phrase which now
expresses the royal supremacy is " supreme governor in
these his realms, over all persons, and in all causes as
well ecclesiastical as temporal." ^
The divorce cause dragged on its weary length for
years, occupying the attention of all Europe, the king
urging the Pope to pronounce sentence in his favour,
the Pope procrastinating, probably in the hope that
Catherine might die and relieve aU parties from a diflfi-
cult situation. At this point of the history Cranmer
' Canon lv.. Bidding Prayer.

THE REFORMATION: THE PAPAL SUPREMACY 19I
comes upon the stage. Thomas Cranmer was born
at Aslackton, in Notts, in 1484. He was of gentle
blood. At 14 his mother, now a widow, sent him to
Cambridge, where in due cour.;e he took the usual
degrees and became a FeUow of Jesus College about
1510. We hear nothing more of him till 1525, when,
having attained his forty-first year, he vacated his
FeUowship by marriage. Erasmus had meantime been
teaching Greek at Cambridge, while at Wittemberg
Luther had startled the world by his denunciations of
the shameful traffic in indulgences, and had publicly
burnt the Papal bull which condemned him as a heretic.
Cranmer, after the death of his wife, within his year of
grace, reclaimed and was aUowed his Fellowship. He
was of sufficient reputation to have a canonry in Wolsey's
new college, Cardinal College, Oxford, offered him ; but
he declined it, and remained at Cambridge, devoted to
academical pursuits. His greatness is said to have
sprung out of the following occurrence. An outbreak
of the plague, called the sweating sickness, at Cambridge
in the year 1528, drove him to take refuge with two of
his pupils at the house of their father, Mr. Cressy, at
Waltham Abbey. This visit was the turning point in his
career. While he was living at Waltham, King Henry
passed the night at Tittenhanger. Two of his train,
Gardiner and Fox, were biUeted on Mr. Cressy, and at
supper the discourse turned on the great topic which
was the subject of interest throughout Europe, the king's
divorce. Cranmer's conversation made an impression
on his new acquaintances. He suggested that aU
canonists were agreed that the Pope could not dispense
from God's law, but only from ecclesiastical law ; and
that marriage with a deceased wife's sister was forbidden
by God's law; if, therefore, the canonists should decide

192 TURNING POINTS OF EhiGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
that marriage with a deceased wife's sister was forbidden
by God's law, and if the English ecclesiastical courts
should decide that Arthur and Catherine were married,
then it foUowed that Henry's marriage was no marriage;
and the proper course was not to ask the. Pope for a
divorce or a dispensation, but to assume that the marriage
was originally null and void, and the king a bachelor, at
liberty to marry without any dispensation. This view of
the matter was soon after reported to Henry ; who, in
his turn, was so struck with it that in his blunt way he
exclaimed, "This fellow has got the right sow by the
ear ; bring him here.'' Cranmer accordingly was brought
to the king, and from that day entered into the king's
service. By the king's order he wrote a work on the
subject of the marriage, and was employed in the negoti
ations at Rome. He had a special mission to Charles
v., and to the Papal Commissioners. He was one of
those sent to obtain the opinions of the foreign universi
ties, and was thus brought into contact with Erasmus,
Melanchthon, and Bucer, and married the niece of
Osiander as his second wife. During his absence the
see of Canterbury fell vacant by the death of Warham,
and the king determined that Cranmer should be his
successor. He was consecrated March 30th, 1533.
Meantime, without waiting for the divorce, Henry, acting
on Cranmer's view that he was a bachelor, was privately
married to Anne Boleyn, it was said in Jan. 1533, and
Elizabeth was born in September of the same year.
In May of that year the new archbishop opened his
court, with the royal licence, for the trial of the divorce
between the king and queen. Catherine, refusing to
acknowledge his jurisdiction, was pronounced contu
macious, and Cranmer proceeded to give sentence to
the effect that, having examined aU the evidence that

THE REFORMATION: THE PAPAL SUPREMACY I93
had been given, the opinions of the universities, the
decision of Convocation, and all other documents throw
ing light on the case, he had found it his duty to pro
nounce a final decree and sentence, to the effect that
the marriage was null and invalid from the beginning.
This was a bold step, since it virtually set aside the
Pope's supremacy, and assumed for the national ecclesi
astical courts the right to decide the cause which had so
long been before the Roman court. The king and the
archbishop, in anticipation of the action of the Pope,
appealed to a general council.
When the news reached Rome the Pope at once issued
a brief, declaring Cranmer's sentence null and void, on
the ground that the cause was pending before the Pope
himself, and therefore was beyond the jurisdiction of any
other court ; and on March 24 of the foUowing year,
1534, he gave final sentence in the long-pending cause,
declaring that the marriage of Henry and Catherine was
valid, and commanding him to restore her to her rights
on pain of excommunication. Thus the breach between
the king and the Pope was complete, and the king was
finally committed to the side of reform. But the work of
reformation in England was the work of the Church
itself It was not the king who reformed an unwilling
Church ; it was not a secession of a party from the
Church, as in Germany ; it was the Church of England
which, favoured by the political circumstances, reformed
herself of her own will, acting in accordance with her
own constitution.
Already, in 1531, the Convocation, consisting of War
ham and all the old bishops and clergy, had petitioned
the king to relieve the clergy of the payment of annates
(first-fruits) to the Pope ; proposing to pay five per cent.
of the annates by way of fee to the Papal court for the
0

194 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
issue of the Papal bulls, &c., on admission to benefices ;
and in case of the Pope's refusal, they prayed that the
obedience of England might be withdrawn from the see
of Rome. To strengthen the king's hand in the negotia
tion with Rome, a provisional Act of Parliament was
passed, to be assented to and published at the king's
discretion, enacting that all such payments should cease,
that five per cent, on the annual value of the see should
be paid to the Pope for the bulls of consecration to a
bishopric, and that if the Pope should refuse to grant his
bulls, bishops should be consecrated by the archbishop
of the province and other bishops; and if the Pope
should proceed to excommunication and interdict, his
sentence to that effect should be disregarded. This
amounted to a declaration, on the part of the Church
and State of England, that the Church of England was
henceforth independent of the Roman see : still willing
to pay a certain customary deference to the see which
had so long been the premier see of the Western Church,
but prepared to disregard its assumptions of greater
power. Two years afterwards, 1534, this provisional Act was
pubhshed, and followed up by another Act (25 Hen.
VIIL, cap. 20), which did away with aU reference to the
Pope, and aU interference on his part in the appointment
of bishops, and established the mode of appointing and
consecrating them which stiU continues in force.
In the same year another Act for " restraining appeals "
was passed to forbid any subjects of the English Crown
from carrying appeals from the English ecclesiastical
courts to the court of Rome : a step which on sound
Church principles the sovereign had the right to take,
and was justified under the circumstances in taking. It
was followed up by the Act 25 Hen. VIIL, cap. 21,

THE REFORMATION : THE PAPAL SUPREMACY I95
enacting that neither the sovereign nor the subjects of
this realm should hereafter apply to Rome for any dis
pensations, grants, faculties, or other writings of any kind
whatever, but that all such applications should be made
to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
In the same year the convocations of the clergy and
the universities formally indorsed as theologically correct
what the sovereign had thus done in denying the Pope's
supremacy. The Convocation of Canterbury declared
on March 31, 1534, and that of York on May 5, 1534,
"that the Bishop of Rome has no greater jurisdiction
conferred on him by God in this kingdom of England
than any other foreign bishop." There seems to have
been no difficulty in obtaining the assent of the clergy
generally, even in the monasteries, to this final repudia
tion of the Papal supremacy, and the bishops were
zealous in preaching it to the people at large. We may
sum up this reformation of the constitutional abuses
which had grown up in the mediseval Church thus : the
Church and nation had determined that no taxes should
be paid to the see of Rome ; that the Pope should have
no judicial authority in England ; that his assumed rights
of patronage to bishoprics and other benefices should be
abolished ; that his licence and authorization should not
be required for any ecclesiastical appointments ; and that
he should have no spiritual power in England. The
spiritual jurisdiction which the Pope had usurped reverted
of right to the episcopate of the Church of England.
England repudiated the Papal supremacy in 1534. The
Pope published his sentence of excommunication against
Henry in 1538.

196

CHAPTER XXI
THE REFORMATION : SUPPRESSION OF THE REGULAR
CLERGY AND DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIES
In the earlier centuries of the mediseval period the
monastic system was, in God's hands, the most powerful
agency for preaching the Gospel and establishing the
Church of Christ among the barbarous nations of
Europe ; and in the later centuries the monasteries, were
the centres of civilization, learning, and art, as well as of
religion. But by the 15th century circumstances had
altered. We need not beheve the stories of the un
scrupulous agents whom Cromwell sent as commissioners
to find a case against the monasteries ; but however
respectable these wealthy, learned, and rehgious com
munities may have been, they were no longer the kind
of agency which the circumstances of the Church and
kingdom needed ; and it was no doubt a proper part of
a well-considered reformation of the Church to revise and
remodel this portion of the ecclesiastical establishment.
Wolsey had begun it when he appropriated several of
the smaller houses to the founding of his new college in
Oxford, and the new grammar school in connection with
it at Ipswich. It would have been well to continue the
policy thus begun; to have restored tithes to their
parishes, or given them to other parishes where they
were needed, and to have converted a considerable pro
portion of the monastic property into such foundations
for religion, learning, and charity as were needed under

SUPPRESSION OF THE REGULAR CLERGY ig'J
the changed circumstances of the Church and nation.
The movement was begun with the profession of such an
intention on the part of the king. Latimer desired to
see some of the monasteries (at least one in each county)
retained as places of holy retirement; Cranmer was
anxious that many of them should be turned into
colleges. The king himself made in his own hand a
memorandum of some which he proposed to convert into
cathedrals of new sees.^ But Cromwell was the king's
chief agent in this part of the Reformation, and very
possibly it is to him that we owe the policy which was
actuaUy adopted. This was nothing less than to suppress
altogether the two great bodies of the regular clergy, that
is, the monks and the friars ; to confiscate their posses
sions ; and to use the lands and money thus gained in
the foundation of a new nobility, and in the relief of the
king's impoverished exchequer.
The first Act of Suppression, in 1535, dealt with the
smaller houses only. It stated in the preamble that
^ These were Waltham for Essex ; St. Albans for Hertford ;
another for Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire out of the monas
teries of Dunstable, Newenham, and Elstow ; another for Oxford
shire and Berkshire out of the rents of Oseney and Thame ; one
for Northampton and Huntingdon out of Peterborough ; one for
Middlesex out of Westminster ; one for Leicester and Rutland out
of Leicester ; one for Gloucestershire out of St. Peter's in Gloucester ;
one for Lancashire out of Fountains and the Archdeaconry of Rich
mond ; one for Suffolk out of Edmundsbury ; one for Stafford and
Salop out of Shrewsbury ; one for Nottingham and Derby out of
Welbeck, Worksop, and Thurgarton ; and one for Cornwall out of
the rents of Launceston, Bodmin, and Tywardreth. Over these he
wrote " Bishoprics to be made ;" and in another part of the same
paper he wrote "Places to be altered into colleges and schools,"
but mentions only Burton-upon-Trient. Neither Chester nor Bristol
are mentioned, though sees were afterwards founded in them. The
king, says Bishop Burnet, had formed a great design of endowing
many sees and making many other noble foundations ; yet the
change that was made in the councils and ministry befqre this took
effect was so great, that only a small part was accomplished of that
which the king now intended.

198 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
there were great irregularities in them, and that it was
desirable that such small houses should be utterly sup
pressed, and the religious persons therein committed to
"the great solemn monasteries of this realm, wherein
(thanks be to God) religion is right well kept and ob
served," and which it was alleged were "destitute of
such full number of religious persons as they ought and
may keep." In fact, all monks under twenty-five years
old were dismissed, others encouraged to go, and many
by hardships driven away. The Act did not pass the
House of Commons without difficulty. "When the
bill," says Sir H. Spelman, " had stuck long in the
Lower House, and could get no passage, the king com
manded the Commons to attend him in the forenoon in
his gallery, where he let them wait tUl late in the after
noon, and then, coming out of his chamber, walking a
tum or two amongst them, and looking angrUy on them,
first on one side and then on the other, at last, ' I hear,'
saith he, ' that my bUl will not pass ; but I wiU have it
pass, or I wUl have some of your heads,' and without
other rhetoric or persuasion returned to his chamber.
Enough was said ; the bill was passed, and all was given
him as he desired."
The king then proceeded to attack the greater monas
teries. He did not in a straightforward way obtain an
Act for their suppression, but he proceeded by bribery
and by threats, by false accusations and by legal crimes,
to obtain the surrender and forfeiture of individual houses.
Many abbots yielded to their fate and surrendered their
houses. In some cases an abbot who was too conscientious
to surrender his abbey was induced to resign his office,
and a more compliant successor was appointed. Some
were accused of crimes and executed, and so got rid of
The case of the Abbot of Glastonbury may be briefly

SUPPRESSION OF THE REGULAR CLERGY 1 99
given as an example of the latter mode of procedure.
The abbey was reckoned the oldest in England, and was
a wealthy and magnificent establishment. The abbot,
a member of the House of Lords, and with considerable
revenues, was a great prelate. He was then about eighty
years of age, and had been long known for his piety and
munificence. Three hundred sons of the gentry lived in
the monastery for education, just as they are now sent to
a public school ; besides other youths of lower rank, who
were gratuitously educated at the monastery, and then
supported at Oxford and Cambridge. As many as 500
of the county gentry sometimes sat down at table in the
abbot's hall ; and twice a week crowds of the poor were
fed at his gate. Cromwell's visitors came suddenly to
Glastonbury at ten o'clock one morning, at the end of
September, 1539, and found that the abbot was at one
of his manors a mUe distant. Thither they hurried, and
finding the old prelate in his study, began to examine
him. They brought him back to the abbey, and, when
he had gone to bed at night, searched his study for matter
of accusation against him. They found, among other
things, a writing containing arguments against the divorce
— it was now eight years since the divorce had taken
place — and they found in a printed book — perhaps the
' Golden Legend ' — a life of Thomas Becket, not obliter
ated, as the king had ordered ; but they found no letters
of any importance. Out of this old paper on the divorce
and this life of Becket in some printed book or other,
they made a charge of treason, and sent the abbot up to
London to the Tower. Then they began to coUect the
plate and valuables of the monastery ; and hunted out
both money, plate, and jewels from the places where they
had been concealed from the rapacity of the visitors ;
they suspected that more was hidden which they could

200 TURNING POINTS OR. ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
not find. A private memorandum of Cromwell's still
remains relating to the matter. " Item, certain persons
to be sent to the Tower for. the further examination of
the Abbot of Glaston. Item, the Abbot of Glaston to
be tried at Glaston, and also to be executed there with
his accomplices." So the aged prelate was taken to
WeUs to be tried, it having been already arranged before
his trial that he was " to be executed with his accomplices."
At WeUs, when brought into court, he went to take his
seat among the noblemen and gentlemen he found as
sembled there, and when told to take his place at the
bar to answer a charge of high treason, he asked his
attendant, "What does it all mean?" He answered that
they were trying to terrify him into submission. He
was condemned, and next day was ta.ken in his horse-
litter to Glastonbury. It was only when a priest came
to offer him the last consolations of religion that he
realized that he was really to be put to death, and asked
to be aUowed a few hours to take leave of his monks
and prepare for his end. The delay was refused. The
old man was taken from his litter and placed on a hurdle,
upon which he was dragged through the town to the top
of the Tor, the hill which overlooks the monastery, and
there executed. Two of his monks, condemned for the
robbery of Glastonbury Church (z. e. probably for assisting
to hide some of its possessions from the royal robber),
were " the accomplices " executed with him. His head
was placed over the gate of his own abbey, and his mem
bers were exposed at the four principal towns of the
county. Besides the Abbot of Glastonbury, the Abbots
of Fountains, Jervaulx, Barlings, Reading, Sawley,
WhaUey, Woburne, and Colchester, and the Prior of
Bridlington, were executed.
In 1540 the second Act of Suppression was passed,

SUPPRESSION OF THE REGULAR CLERGY 201
which recited that sundry abbots, &c., " of their free and
voluntary minds, without constraint or compulsion, had
resigned and granted to the king all their houses, estates,
and privileges ; " and enacted that the king should hold,
possess, and enjoy them, and all which should hereafter
be so resigned.
In the foUowing year an Act of Parliament suppressed
the Order of St. John of Jerusalem ; the prior fell down
and died as he came out of the gateway of their chief
house at Clerkenwell. The king was not content with
this spoliation. Five years after the Act for the disso
lution of the monasteries, another Act was passed which
placed at the mercy of the king the endowments of the
universities, of all coUeges of secular priests, and of all
chantries. Commissioners were appointed to take pos
session ; but this last act of spoliation was arrested by
the king's death.
What became of the plunder? All the money, plate,
jewels, &c., were paid over to the king. Six new
bishoprics^ were created out of six of the suppressed
houses. Many of the estates were sold, and the money
went into the king's coffers. But the bulk of the estates
was given to the nobility, and several new famihes of
nobles were founded out of them. Cromwell appropri
ated seven priories ; his nephew. Sir Richard Cromwell,
also seven abbeys and priories. Lord Chancellor Audley
founded a great family on eight abbeys and priories.
Lord Clinton received thirteen. Lord Russell founded
the Bedford earldom out of three rich abbeys. Lord
Parr founded the marquisate of Northampton out of
^ Viz., Westminster, Oxford, Chester, Gloucester, Bristol, and
Peterborough. Some were allowed to remain as Collegiate churches,
as Beverly, Southwell, Manchester, and Wolverhampton. St.
Bartholomew and St. Thomas's Hospitals were preserved at the
intercession of Sir T. Gresham.

202 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
four priories. The Duke of Norfolk received thirteen
abbeys, nunneries, and coUeges; some of them were
restored to him as descendant or representative of the
original founders. Perhaps on a simUar claim, the Duke
of Somerset received thirteen houses. Brandon, Duke
of Suffolk, the king's brother-in-law, became the pro
prietor of thirty monasteries. The monks were turned
out ; in several cases the dispossessed abbots and priors
became the new bishops and deans. Some who were
priests were provided for in benefices or as parish
chaplains, some with pensions, some were turned adrift
to eam their living as best they could, with a clerk's
gown given them in place of their monk's habit, and
4o.f. for present maintenance. The monastic churches
were rifled of all their contents ; the lead taken off the
roofs, the roofs themselves hurled to the ground, the
windows broken, and the glorious ruins left to decay.
The domestic buUdings were either altered and adapted
for the residence of the new possessor, or they were
pulled down and the materials used to build him a
mansion-house. The libraries were despoiled ; ship
loads of valuable books were sent for sale to the Con
tinent, and a still greater number torn up and used for
every purpose to which vellum and paper could be
applied. The palls, hangings, and vestments were sold
to the public, and in many cases were used for hangings
for halls and chambers, for table-covers and bed-curtains,
or cut up for vests and petticoats. The Reformation
was necessary and beneficial ; but the violence and rapine
by which it was marred were most lamentable and
wicked ; they have done much to discredit the Reform
ation itself in the eyes of all Christendom, and have
entailed miseries upon England from which we are all
suffering bitterly to this hour.

203

CHAPTER XXII
THE DOCTRINAL REFORMATION
The reformation of doctrine was commenced by Con
vocation in 1536. Men's minds were much disturbed;
the doctrines which were afloat on the Continent, from
those of Luther to those of the Anabaptists, were pro
mulgated and discussed here in England; and it was
desirable that some steps should be taken by the re
formers to guide men through the confusion. Accord
ingly, the Convocation drew up Ten Articles of Religion,
which were subscribed by the clergy and issued under
the king's authority, as a formal exposition of the reformed
doctrine. The articles are too voluminous to be quoted at
length. Five of them relate to doctrines and five to
ceremonies. The first lays down the Bible and the
three Creeds as the basis of doctrine, and says that all
contrary opinions, as condemned by the first four holy
councils, are to be refused and condemned. The second
sets forth the doctrine of baptism as we stUl hold it, with
this exception, that it pronounces on the fate of infants
dying unbaptized, and says that they cannot be saved.
The third is on the sacrament of penance, and asserts
that it is necessary to the forgiveness of deadly sin
committed after baptism.. The fourth, on the sacrament
of the altar, teaches the presence of the Body and Blood
of Christ corporally and really under the form and figure
of bread and wine, but does not teach transubstantiation.

204 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
In the fifth, justification by faith is taught, viz., that
"the only mercy and grace of the Father, promised
freely unto us for His Son's sake Jesus Christ, and the
merits of His blood and passion," are "the only sufficient
and worthy causes thereof" In the sixth the use of
images, to remind the worshipper and stir up his mind
to devotion, is allowed, but it is explained that no worship
is intended to them, but only to God. The seventh and
eighth, on the honouring of saints and the praying to
saints, allows them to be had in reverence and even to
be invoked, and contents itself with declaring against
certain popular abuses. The ninth, on certain cere
monies, as the use of holy bread, holy water, candles
at Candlemas, and palms on Palm Sunday, allows them
as significant memorials, and explains them. The tenth,
on purgatory, allows prayers for the dead, but repudiates
the Roman idea of purgatory and practices connected
with it, such as pardons.
These articles were followed up shortly after by a book
called ' The Institution {i. e. Instruction) of a Christian
Man,' commonly called the Bishop's Book. This was
an admirably conceived work, giving with great clearness
and in an uncontroversial and devout tone the belief of
the Church as agreed on, after much discussion, by all
schools of English divines of that period of the Reform
ation. This book, put forth in 1537, marks the extent
to which the reform reached in this reign.
Two years afterwards (1539), under the king's in
fluence. Parliament passed the reactionary Act of the
Six Articles, which maintained (i) transubstantiation;
(2) communion in one kind ; (3) celibacy of the priest
hood ; (4) vows of chastity to be kept ; (5) private masses
agreeable to God's law ; (6) auricular confession expedient
and necessary. But not content with this reactionary

THE DOCTRINAL REFORMATION 205
Statement of doctrine, the Act proceeded to enact cruel
penalties upon offenders against it. Offenders against
the first article were to be adjudged heretics and burnt,
and forfeit their goods as in cases of high treason ;
offenders against the other five to suff'er and forfeit as
in cases of felony. The Act caused a great outcry, and
was popularly called "the whip with six strings." But
it is doubtful whether it really did the mischief it was
capable of doing. There are no cases on record of
prosecutions under it during the few remaining years
of Henry's reign, and it was repealed^ in the first year
of Edward VI., and never revived. A further indication
that the Reformation did not really recede to the
standard of this Act of Parliament is that in 1543 a
revised edition of the ' Institution ' was put forth, under
the title, 'The Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any
Christian Man,' commonly called the King's Book, which
recedes a little from the standard of reform contained
in the Ten Articles, but not so far as to bring it into
conformity with the reactionary Act of the Six Articles.
During the remainder of Henry's reign there were
no further direct dealings with doctrinal standards. But
the reformed doctrines were spreading continuaUy among
the people, and their spread was helped by the con
current reforms in Divine worship, and by the increasing
knowledge of the Holy Scriptures; two subjects which will
be most conveniently dealt with in separate paragraphs.
As early as 1516, in the time of Warham and Wolsey,
a reformed edition of the Breviary (answering to the
Common Prayer Book) had been published ; especially,
the Scripture Lessons were lengthened, and the whole
Bible was arranged to be read in order without omission.
The Convocation of 1542-43 passed a canon ordering
that every Sunday and holy day, in morning and evening

206 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
service, a chapter of the Bible should be read in English.
The Archbishop of York had in 1536 ordered that the
Gospel and Epistle should be read in English, and that
priests who were qualified to do so should give an
exposition of one or both. But the great step taken by
this Convocation, which led to the thorough revision of
the ancient Service Books, and ultimately to the produc
tion of our present Book of Common Prayer, was the
appointment of a committee for the purpose. The
Litany was the service best known to, and best liked
by, the people ; they had had it translated into English
in their Primers for a century and a half; it presented
few doctrinal difficulties ; it only needed to have some
objectionable portions omitted. Accordingly the com
mittee took this in hand at once, and the revised Litany,
much as we possess it, received the sanction of Convoca
tion in March, 1543-44, and was promulgated by the
Crown on June u, 1544. In 1548 was published a form
written by Cranmer "for the alteration of the Mass
into a Communion." It consisted of the addition in
English of that part of the present service which begins
" Ye that do truly," the Confession, Absolution, Comfort
able Words, Prayer of humble access, the first half of the
sentences of Administration, and the concluding "the
peace of God . . . our Lord." The committee continued
its labours, but the results were not ripe for publication,
or the king delayed their promulgation, and they did
not appear tUl the reign of Edward VI.
There is a good deal of popular misapprehension
about the way in which the Bible was regarded in the
Middle Ages. Some people think that it was very httle
read, even by the clergy, whereas the fact is that the
sermons of the mediseval preachers are more full of
Scripture quotations and allusions than any sermons in

THE DOCTRINAL REFORMATION 207
these days; and the writers on other subjects are so
full of scriptural allusion that it is evident their minds
were saturated with scriptural diction, which they used
as commonly, and sometimes with as great an absence of
good taste, as a Puritan of the Commonwealth, Another
common error is that the clergy were unwUling that the
laity should read the Bible for themselves, and carefully
kept it in an unknown tongue, that the people might not
be able to read it. The truth is that most people who
could read at all could read Latin, and would certainly
prefer to read the authorized Vulgate to any vernacular
version. But it is also true that translations into the
vernacular were made. We have seen in a former chapter
that there were Saxon versions of diff'erent books. And
we have the authority of Sir Thomas More for saying that
" the whole Bible was long before Wiclif s days, by vir
tuous and well-learned men, translated into the English
tongue, and by good and godly people with devotion and
soberness well and reverently read." Speaking of the
constitution of Archbishop Arundel, 1408, forbidding the
reading of Wiclif s translation of the Bible, or any other
translations unless approved by the bishop of the diocese,
or if necessary by a provincial council, he says "this
order neither forbad the translations to be read that were
done of old before Wiclif s days, nor condemned his
because it was new, but because it was naught" (bad).
Again, on another occasion he says, " The clergy keep
no Bibles from the laity but such translations as be
either not yet approved for good, or such as be already
reproved for naught, as Wiclif s was. For as for old
ones that were before Wiclif s days, they remain lawful,
and be in some folks' hands." " I myself have seen and
can show you Bibles new and old which have been known
and seen by the bishop of the diocese, and left in laymen's

2o8 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY

hands, and women's to such as he knew for good and
Catholic folk, that used it with soberness and devotion."
Possibly a good deal of the misapprehension arises from
the statement of a popular historian of the German
Reformation, who gives a dramatic account of Luther's
stumbling by accident on a Bible in the library of his
convent. " One day (he had been studying two years at
Erfurth, and was twenty years of age) he opened one after
another several books in the library in order to become
acquainted with their authors. A volume he opens in
its turn arrests his attention. He has seen nothing like
it to this moment. He reads the title — it is a Bible !
a rare book, unknown in those days. His interest is
excited to a high degree ; he is overcome with wonder
at finding more in the volume than those fragments
of the Gospels and Epistles which the Church had
selected to be read in the temples every Sunday through
out the year. Till then he had supposed these consti
tuted the entire Word of God ; and now behold how
many chapters, how many books, of which he had not
before had a notion." (D'Aubignd's 'Reformation.')
Dr. Maitland has conclusively disposed of this story by
showing that, "to say nothing oi parts of the Bible or
of books whose place is uncertain, we know of at least
twenty diff'erent editions of the whole Latin Bible, printed
in Germany only, before Luther was born." Neither is it
true that mediaeval theologians appealed to the Church,
and not to the Scriptures, as the authority for their
doctrines. The appeal was ultimately to Scripture, but
to Scripture rightly interpreted. Certain of the ancient
Fathers, who were universally acknowledged to have been
eminently learned and judicious, were much looked up
to as authorities on the right interpretation of Scripture.
Chrysostom ahd Augustine were quoted then just as

THE DOCTRINAL REFORMATION 209
Luther and Melanchthon, or Cavlin, or Cranmer, in
later times. When a controversy disturbed the peace of
the Church, and it seemed desirable to have it settled,
it is true that the Church claimed the right to decide
what Scripture, rightly interpreted, said on the question.
The principle is laid down clearly in the famous passage
of Vincent of Lerins: "The Bible is perfect and suffi
cient of itself for the truth of the Catholic faith, and
the whole Church cannot make one article of faith,
although it may be taken as a necessary witness of the
same, without these three conditions — that the thing
which we would establish ' thereby hath been believed
in all places, always, and by all the faithful {ubique,
se7nper, ab omnibus)." If the dispute were a local one,
a diocesan or provincial synod might suffice to settle it ;
if it had spread over a wider surface, like the Arian
controversy, it might be necessary to call a general
council. No reformed Church ever laid down a propo
sition so manifestly absurd as that a man's faith was to
be determined by what he thought the meaning of the
Bible to be. The Lutheran Confession of Wurtemberg
says that "we believe and confess that .... the
Church has the right of judging of all doctrines ....
and that the Church has the right of interpreting Scrip
ture." Calvin admits that when a discussion concerning
doctrine arises, no more fit mode of settling it can be
devised than a meeting of bishops to discuss it. Cranmer,
appealing to a general council, protests, "I intend to
speak nothing against the Holy Catholic and Apostolic
Church, or the authority thereof; the which authority I
have in great reverence, and to whom my mind is in all
things to obey;" and again, "I may err, but heretic I
cannot be, forasmuch as I am ready in all things to
follow the judgment of the most sacred Word of God

2IO TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
and of the Holy Catholic Church." And in the revision
of the articles of our Church in the time of Elizabeth,
under the influence of Archbishop Parker, the clause
was inserted, " The Church hath power to decree rites
and ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith."
The Reformers did appeal to the Bible for the truth
of the principles of the Reformation, and were naturally
anxious to bring it to the knowledge of the people, not
for controversial purposes only, but especially for general
religious instruction and devotion ; and the new inven
tion of printing enabled them to multiply copies at a
cost which brought them within the reach of ordinary
people. Accordingly, in 1534 the Convocation pre
sented an address to the king, asking him to cause an
authoritative translation of the Bible to be prepared.
Without waiting for this, the archbishop, Cranmer, of
his own authority undertook to prepare one. His secre
tary tells us how he proceeded : " He began with the
translation of the New Testament, taking an old English
translation thereof, which he divided into nine or ten
parts, causing each part to be written at large on a paper,
and then sent to the best learned bishops and others, to
the intent that they should make a perfect correction
thereof And when they had done he required them to
send back their parts so corrected unto him at Lambeth
by a day limited for that purpose ; and the same course
in question he took with the Old Testament."
At the very time that the bishops were thus engaged,
an English Bible, caUed Coverdale's Bible, was being
printed abroad, which was published October 1535, with
a dedication to the king ; and it is probably this which
is referred to in an injunction issued by Cromwell in
the following year, which ordered that " one book of the
whole Bible, of the largest volume, in English, should

THE DOCTRINAL REFORMATION ZII
be provided in every parish, and set up in some con
venient place within the church, whereas the parishioners
may most commodiously resort to the same and read it."
Two years afterwards another private translation, called
Matthews' Bible, was printed by the king's printers, and
Cranmer himself applied for the king's hcence that it
might be circulated and read till the version on which
the bishops were engaged should appear. In 1539
another translation was made by Richard Taverner, one
of the canons of Wolsey's New College at Oxford.
About twenty-five versions of the New Testament were
in circulation, besides these versions of the whole Bible.
In 1539 the king's printers brought out another version,
called the " Great Bible," " translated after the Hebrew
and Greek texts by diverse excellent learned men,"
which was no doubt the one which Cranmer had had
done; and a reprint of it in the following year, 1540,
contains a preface by him. Other versions followed ih
rapid succession, and in 1551 an order in council author
ized the sale of nine different editions of Great or Folio
Bibles; they were to be sold unbound at loj-., and bound
at \2S., sums equal to £,(> and ^i of our money. But
none of these translations were satisfactory, and the Con
vocation appointed committees to take steps to obtain a
new one. The king, however, interposed, and expressed
his will and pleasure that the work should be committed
to the Universities. No steps were taken by the Univer
sities, and thus the great work was postponed till the
reign of James I. The Great Bible of 1539 (of which
the Psalms in our present Prayer Book is a portion)
continued to be the authorized version of the Church of
England tiU 1568 ; when it was superseded by that made
under the direction of Archbishop Parker; which in
turn gave way to that of James I.

CHAPTER XXIII
THE FOREIGN ELEMENT IN THE ENGLISH REFORMATION
The progress of reformation lagged in the latter years
of Henry's reign. It took a fresh start in the short six
years' reign of the boy who succeeded him on the throne.
We need not, happily, enter into the political events of
the time. The government was in the hands of a councU,
of which Cranmer was a member. He seems- to have
taken no active part in any of its proceedings except, as
in duty bound, in those which bore on the subject of
religion. The leading men took advantage of their
opportunity to strip the Church a little more closely of
her property. The chantries were suppressed and their
endowments confiscated to the king (i. e. to the nobles)
by an Act of 1547. Any abuses involved in them might
have been removed without the confiscation of the en
dowments. The chantries in many cases virtually sup
plied additional clergymen to help the curates of the
parish churches within which they were founded, and in
some cases the chantry chapels were virtuaUy endowed
chapels of ease to the parish churches. In any case
they might have been appropriated to the provision of
additional clergymen-t— sorely needed now the whole
body of regular clergy was swept away — or to the increase
of the endowments of the parishes impoverished by the
alienation of their great tithes. Cranmer and the other
bishops opposed the act, and pleaded that the chantries
should be left till the king came of age, in the hope that

.THE FOREIGN ELEMEN-T 213
he would then make some such appropriation of them ;
but the nobles, suddenly enriched by grants of abbey
lands, had got into habits of expense, and had gained a
taste for property so easUy acquired, and the chantry
lands foUowed the rest. In other ways too the Church
was plundered. Estates were taken away from the en
dowments of the sees ; preferments, such as deaneries
and prebends, were handed over to be held by laymen ;
e.g. when Ridley, Bishop of London, was about to
confer a prebend in his cathedral on Grindal, afterwards
archbishop, the council interposed and appropriated it
to the expenses of the king's stable. Moreover fresh
commissioners were sent out in the last year of Edward's
reign to gather in the gleanings of Church lands and
Church ornaments which might have escaped former
inquisitors. The doctrinal reformation of this reign more especially
claims our attention. The Duke of Somerset, who had
been made Lord Protector, was in favour of further
changes ; Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, the leader of
those who clung to the old theology, and Tunstal, Bishop
of Durham, a man of high character and great moderation,
were for leaving matters as they had been placed by the
late king until Edward should come of age. But Tunstal
was dismissed from his seat at the council of regency, and
Gardiner was committed to the. Fleet prison, and the
Reformation went on. The council ordered the discon
tinuance of some of the ancient ceremonies, such as the
use of candles on Candlemas Day, ashes on Ash Wednes
day, palms on Palm Sunday, &c. It also issued an order
for the removal of images out of churches, which, exe
cuted without discrimination by fanatical commissioners,
led to the mutilation and destruction of many beautiful
works of ancient art ; the statues which ornamented the

214 TURNING J>OINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY

niches of churches were broken, churchyard crosses
broken down, painted windows shattered, the fresco
decorations on the waUs obliterated. But, more impor
tant than these removals of superstitious objects from
before their eyes, were the steps which were taken to
buUd up ampler knowledge and sound doctrine in the
people's minds. It was ordered that Erasmus's para
phrase of the New Testament should be placed beside
the Bible in every parish church. A book of homUies,
twelve in number, was issued, treating of some of the
principal doctrines in dispute between the Roman and
the reforming parties ; and still further in the same
direction was Cranmer's Catechism, an exposition of the
Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Sacraments, taken
chiefly from one of the German catechisms published a
little before.
In the same year came out the New Prayer Book, which
had long been in the hands of the commissioners ap
pointed by Henry VIII. The commissioners had acted
in this most important matter on the same principles
which had guided them in the rest of the work of the
Reformation. They did not sit down to frame a new
mode of Divine worship for the English branch of Christ's
Church, but to revise the existing mode — to prune away
what was objectionable, to retain what was useful, and to
reduce it to the standard of primitive antiquity. Every
existing branch of the Church had a written liturgy, and
all those liturgies in their general outline and main fea
tures corresponded. The liturgiologist tracing them up
to their source finds that they can be classed in four
families, springing from four liturgies, attributed to the
aposties St. James, St. Mark, St. Peter, and St. John ;
the first was the Liturgy of Jerusalem, the second of
Alexandria, the third of Rome, and the fourth of Ephe-

THE FOREIGN ELEMENT 2lS
SUS ; and these four can be traced to a time so very early,
and bear so strong a famUy likeness, that it is reasonable
to suppose that they are all modifications of one original
liturgy used by the Apostolic Church ; transmitted orally
in the earliest times, and so assuming modified forms by
the time they were committed to writing. Every branch
of the Church has exercised the power of adding to the
liturgy and modifying it from time to time, to adapt it
to the use of changing times and circumstances.
Tracing the history of the liturgy in use in the English
Church, we find that missionaries from the Church of
Ephesus planted the Church at Lyons in the middle of
the 2nd century, and thus introduced the Ephesine
liturgy into France ; probably about the same time, and
from the same source, the Church was planted in Spain,
and the same liturgy was introduced there also. We
have already seen (chapter IL, page 14) that it is pro
bable that the Church came to Britain from Gaul in the
middle of the 3rd century, and the same liturgy was then
introduced here. Minor alterations had probably given
slightly varied forms to the liturgies of Gaul, Spain, and
Britain, but in the main they agreed, and were all, be
yond doubt, derived from that called the Liturgy of St.
John. The liturgy used by the Roman Church was
probably of equal antiquity with that used by the Church
of Ephesus, and was traditionally attributed to St. Peter.
¦When St. Augustine came to England he found different
liturgies from the Roman use to which he had been
accustomed. Bishop Liudhard, the chaplain of Queen
Bertha, would no doubt use the GaUican liturgy; the
British Christians with whom Augustine was brought
into communication used the British variety of the
Ephesine liturgy. Augustine referred to Gregory for
directions what course he should take. Gregory's advice

2l6 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
was to choose from every Church those things which
were good and edifying, and to make them up into one
body and use it for the English Church. It is therefore
probable that Augustine did introduce some modifications,
which gave the liturgy of the English Church from his time
to the Conquest a character of its own. We have already
had to note how St. Osmund, Bishop of Sahsbury, imme
diately after the Norman Conquest, again revised the
English liturgy ; and the SaUsbury use formed the basis
of the other slightly varying uses which obtained in other
dioceses in England. The Salisbury use was eventuaUy
adopted throughout the southern province, and it was
this which the Reformers took in hand to revise for the
use of the Reformed Church of England. The super
stitious accretions of the Middle Ages they removed;
many symbohcal ceremonies were omitted ; the service
was simplified generally; but the substance of the
primitive liturgy was retained.
The mediaeval offices of the Breviary for the hours of
prayer — Matins, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and
Compline — were next abbreviated and condensed into
two offices for Matins and Evensong. The occasional
offices were added, the office for baptism being consider
ably simphfied in ceremonial, but made to speak still
more clearly and fully the Christian doctrine of baptism.
When the divines had completed their work, this First
Prayer Book of Edward VI. was submitted first to Con
vocation, that it might go forth with the full authority
of the Church; then it was laid before the king in
council; who sent it to Parliament, that it might be
incorporated into an Act of Parliament. This Act, the
first Act of Uniformity, passed in January, 1548-9,
enacted, that the new Prayer Book should be used in
all churches on the following Whitsun Day, June 9, 1549.

THE FOREIGN ELEMENT 2 I 7
This Prayer Book may be taken as expressing the results
at which our English Reformers arrived before the en
croachment of foreign influences.
About this time several of the noted foreign Reformers
took refuge in England, from actual or apprehended
persecution. Bucer was provided for as Divinity Pro
fessor at Cambridge, and Peter Martyr in the same
capacity at Oxford; John \ Lasco, a Zuinglian, was
allowed to establish a congregation in London. Calvin
himself entered into correspondence with the king and
Cranmer ; and under these influences the opinions and
spirit of the Calvlnist and Zuinglian reformations began
to leaven our own. An endeavour was made to unite all
the reformed bodies in one common confession of faith ;
but this was found impracticable, and our Reformers
proceeded to draw up independent articles of faith on the
principal points in dispute between themselves and Rome.
When Somerset was deposed from his high office in
1549 A.D., Warwick came into power, who favoured the
views of the foreign Reformers. In 1 5 5 1 Gardiner was
tried, deprived, and committed to custody ; other bishops,
also, were deprived on pretence of disobedience — Day,
Bishop of Chichester ; Heath, of Worcester ; Voysey, of
Exeter. Other bishops were attacked, and obliged to
purchase indemnity at the price of the sacrifice of some
of the property of their sees, viz., the Bishops of Llandaff,
Salisbury, and Coventry. It was the young king who
stood between the greedy nobles and the utter ruin of
the Church : " You have had among you," he said, " the
abbeys, which you have consumed in superfluous ap
parel and dice and cards, and now you would have the
bishops' lands and revenues to abuse likewise ! Set
your hearts at rest ; there shall no such alteration be
made while I live ! "

2l8 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
The First Prayer Book had hardly got into use before
a revision of it was commenced, with a view especially to
satisfy the objections made by the foreign Reformers,
and those who agreed with them here ; and the Second
Prayer Book of Edward VI. was published in 1552. It
marks the extent to which the English Reformation was
drawn in the direction of Calvinistic and Zuinglian
doctrine and ritual by these foreign influences. The
alterations most important in point of doctrine were, the
abolition of the ancient vestments of the clergy; the
removal of the celebrant from the front of the altar to
the north side of the table ; the reduction, in the prayer
for the whole state of Christ's Church, of the commend
ation of the saints departed to God's mercy, to a slighter
commemoration of them. The invocation of the Holy
Spirit on the bread and wine, which occurs in many
ancient Uturgies, was omitted ; the mixing of water with
the wine of the Sacrament was struck out, and the
admission of ordinary bread as " sufficient " in place of
unleavened bread was inserted. The words spoken at the
distribution of the elements were altered ; in place of "the
body of our Lord, which was given for thee, &c.," was sub
stituted the sentence, " Take and eat this in remembrance,
&c.," and the like change at the delivery ofthe cup. The
oblative prayer, "O Lord and Heavenly Father," and
the Lord's Prayer, instead of being said before the Com
munion, were removed into the post-Communion. Other
considerable alterations were made not so clearly associ
ated with doctrine. The sentences, exhortation, con
fession, and absolution were prefixed to the Morning and
Evening Prayer ; and the Commandments and suffrages
to the Communion Office; the Litany was ordered to
be said on Sundays, as weU as Wednesdays and Fridays ;
and other changes too numerous to be detaUed h^re.

THE FOREIGN ELEMENT 219
There is no certain proof that this Second Prayer Book
ever received the sanction of Convocation, but it is
highly improbable that Cranmer would have allowed it
to get into Parliament without it. Edward's second Act
of Uniformity, with this Second Prayer Book attached,
was passed on April 6, 1552, the new book to come into
use on the Feast of all Saints (November 1) foUowing.
Three editions of the book were printed, but on September
27 the further issue of those printed was forbidden by
an Order in CouncU ; it was apparently contemplated to
make further alterations in its rubrics at the desire of the
king, if Cranmer's consent should be given. The king
died on the 6th of July in the following year; and it
seems very unlikely that this Second Prayer Book was
ever taken into general use.
In 1553, Forty-two Articles of Religion were put
forth by the king's authority as the standard of reformed
doctrine. The policy of the Reformation has again become the
subject of keen discussion in our days, and it is not
unnecessary to take a summary view of it and try to
estimate for ourselves its real merits and defects. On
the whole we recognize abundant cause to thank God
heartily with our forefathers for the "glorious Reform
ation." On the whole we think that the whole world
has cause to be thankful for the resuUs of the English
Reformation. The tendency of revolutions is to run into extremes in
principles; for men wiU think that the opposite of an
error must be truth, whereas it is another error, and the
truth hes between the two ; they are apt to puU down
the institutions with which they are dissatisfied in order
to have free room to build up new ones, not knowing
that institutions are hke trees, which grow, and thek

220 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
roots and branches are entwined with the whole mind
and character, and social and domestic habits of a
people ; if violently pulled up society is torn to pieces,
and it takes long for other institutions to grow ; they are
not hke houses, which can be puUed down and new ones
built out of the old materials.
This common error of revolutions our English Re
formers did not fall into. They were, no doubt, greatiy
favoured by political circumstances, but they have the
merit of having taken wise advantage of the circum
stances. In reforming doctrine they aimed at retaining
the Christian faith, as fully contained in the Scripture
and ascertained by the witness of the early Church, and
defined in the Catholic creeds; they took their stand
on the four general councils ; they only pruned away
certain developments of doctrine, whose growth in the
Middle Ages was matter of history, and which were
contrary to the standards of the faith. In settling the
worship of the Church they proceeded in the same way.
They took the ancient services as their basis, removed
the superstitious accretions of later centuries, but retained
substantially the same worship which had grown up in
the earher and purer times of the Church. One of the
most important features of the English Reformation, in
which it differed from the course of the Reformation on
the Continent, was that it was not the formation of a new
religious body outside the existing Church, but it was a
reformation of the Church itself It was not so much a
movement of the people, acting apart from or against
the authorities in Church and State, as a movement in
which the authorities in Church and State were the
leaders of the people. This partly accounts for the con
servatism which runs throughout the English Reforma
tion. It had this consequence also, that the Reformed

THE FOREIGN ELEMENT

Church retained its ancient religious organization, the
succession of its clergy, its terrritorial (parochial) system,
its hold upon schools and universities, its endowments ;
especially it retained its connection with the State.
But while we refuse to allow our sense of the blessings
which the Reformation conferred upon England to be
swept away by modern criticism, we need not shut our
eyes to the truth that there were grave defects in the
work of the Reformation ; rather we shall do wisely to
consider them, in order that in the great Church move
ment through which we are now passing we may learn
wisdom from the past — may at least avoid its blunders,
and if possible may remedy its defects.
One of its greatest defects was that the opportunity
was not taken to enlarge and re-arrange the machinery of
the Church and make it adequate to the spiritual wants
of the people. The monastic system may have outlived
its usefulness ; the orders of itinerant preachers may have
declined from their original zeal, and become a hindrance
rather than a help to the parochial clergy ; the chantries
may have had their basis in superstition. But when the
monasteries and the friars and the chantry priests were
swept away, the insufficiency of the secular clergy to deal
with the spiritual wants of the population was evident
enough; and steps ought to have been taken to re
organize, extend, and strengthen the sole remaining
ministerial agency. More of the monasteries ought to
have been turned into episcopal sees. Others might
have been retained as schools and colleges. The great
tithes of the parishes which had been appropriated to the
monasteries ought to have been restored to the parishes
and used for the endowment of more parochial clergy
men. The chantries afforded another opportunity of
maintaining an increased staff of clergy, and many of the

2 22 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY ¦
chantry chapels would have supplied the population for
all these 300 years with the system of school-chapels and
mission-chapels which we are now beginning to create.
We have seen that the Reformers did not overlook the
subject. Wolsey had begun to appropriate the endow
ments of some of the smaller houses to the encourage
ment of learning. Henry proposed to found new sees
and increase poor benefices. In Edward VI.'s reign the
bishops wished to reserve the chantry endowments for
the increase of the clergy. Jewel tried hard to persuade
Elizabeth and her nobles to improve the livings out of
the great tithes which had fallen to them. Laud had a
scheme for gradually buying up the impropriations and
restoring them to the parishes. The covetousness of
the kings and nobles frustrated all these schemes. The
opportunity to adjust the ecclesiastical establishment of
the nation to its spiritual wants was lost, and the nation
has suffered for it ever since. It is only within the
present century that the nation has begun fairly to make
some efforts to supply the knowledge of the Gospel and
the means of grace to the rapidly-increasing population.
But larger views of our wants and a more general effort
to supply them are sorely needed : the Reformation,
with all its spoliation, left twenty bishops and about ten
thousand clergymen to minister to a population of less
than five miUions ; we have now six additional bishops,
and about double the number of clergymen, to cope with
the spiritual needs of thirty millions of souls ; our new
churches are chiefly in the well-to-do suburbs of towns,
largely dependent on pew-rents; and there are five
miUions of the people — equal to the whole population
of England and Wales in the time of WUham and Mary
'¦ — who are not even nominally included within any of
the religious denominations.

THE FOREIGN ELEMENT 2 23
Another great defect of the Reformation was that it
left the Church without any system of discipline, a defect
which has existed now for so many generations that the
ordinary Churchman of the present day hardly knows
what the word means, and has no just idea of the great
ness of the defect in theory, and of its serious practical
results. In theory the existence of discipline is so
important that our Reformers over and over again
include it among the marks of a true Church. The
second part of the Homily for Whitsun Day, set forth
early in Elizabeth's reign, gives these as notes of the
Church : " It hath always these notes or marks whereby
it is known — pure and sound doctrine, the sacraments
administered according to Christ's holy institution, and
the right use of ecclesiastical disciphne." The Catechism
of Edward VL, a.d. 1553, says: "The marks of the
Church are, first, pure preaching of the Gospel; then
brotherly love ; thirdly, upright and uncorrupted use of
the Lord's sacraments, according to the ordinance of ihe
Gospel ; last of all, brotherly correction or excommunica
tion, or banishing those out of the Church that will not
amend themselves; this mark the holy fathers termed
discipline." Bishop Ridley, in one of his works, says :
" The marks whereby this Church is known unto me, in
this dark world, and in the midst of this crooked and
froward generation, are these — the sincere preaching of
God's Word ; the due administration of the sacraments ;
charity ; and faithful observance of ecclesiastical discip
line according to the Word of God.'' In the Commina-
tion Service the Church laments the absence of this
"godly disciphne," and says "it is very much to be
wished that it should be restored again."
Here again the defect is not the fault of the Reformers.
Cranmer drew up a code which he called Reformatio

2 24 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
Legum Ecclesiasticarum, which underwent many revisions
in private during the reigns of Henry VIII. and Edward
VI. The bishops, in the reign of Edward VL, com
plained to the king that the abrogation of the canon law
had left the Church without discipline, and commissioners
were appointed to draw up a body of canons, but their
work did not see the light. Cranmer's Reformatio Legum
was revived by the Puritans in the Lower House of
Parliament, under Elizabeth, with a view to its having
legal force given to it, but the queen thought that it
trenched on her supremacy and would not have it en
acted. It was reprinted under Charles I. ; and brought
again under public notice by Bishop Burnet, in the time
of WiUiam and Mary.i
The substitute for a regular system of discipline was
found in the exercise of the prerogative of the Crown as
supreme governor of the Church. This was vested from
time to time in ecclesiastical commissioners and courts
of high commission; and the abuse of this power by
the unconstitutional bodies to which it was entrusted
was one of the great grievances which brought the
Church into odium from the time of EUzabeth down
to the time of Wilham III. But even with these draw
backs of over exercise of power, we have the authority
of the excellent Sir Matthew Hale for the amount of
good exercised by such a tribunal in restraining moral
offences untouched by the civil law.
1 Bishop Wilson drew up a set of Ecclesiastical Constitutions of
the Church for his little diocese of Man.

225

CHAPTER XXIV
THE MARIAN PERSECUTION
On the death of the boy king, July 6, 1553, the
ambitious scheme of Northumberland to place his own
family on the throne, through Lady Jane Grey, collapsed,
and Mary's title was universally acknowledged by the
nation.. Gardiner, Bonner, Tunstall, Day, Heath, and
Voysey were reinstated in their sees, and the first-named,
who during the previous reign had been the moving
spirit of the Roman party, was made chancellor, and
became the queen's chief minister. Holgate, Archbishop
of York, Coverdale of Exeter, Ridley of London, and
Hooper of Gloucester were sent to prison, and old
Latimer was sent soon after. Cranmer, in reply to
rumours of his tergiversation, having issued a paper in
which he used violent expressions' against the Mass, was
thrown into prison, ostensibly on account of the part he
had taken in putting Lady Jane on the throne. John k
Lasco was ordered to depart with his foreign congrega
tion ; the greater part of the foreign Protestants followed
him. With them went some 800 English, chiefly
students, who had reason to apprehend personal danger
under Mary. These settled in Frankfort and in Switzer
land, and there contracted the sentiments of the foreign
reformers, and a disaffection for the Church of England.
On their return, under Elizabeth, they became the seeds
of the party which, a century later, overthrew the Church
and monarchy. Q

226 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY

Mary's first Parliament assembled, and, by the influ
ence of the court and the reluctance of those who were
opposed to the expected change of religion to put them
selves into a dangerous opposition to the court, it con
sisted chiefly of those who were prepared to comply with
the queen's wishes. This Parliament, by a single Act,
repealed all the laws, nineteen in number, passed since
1528 to the detriment of the Holy See, and things
reverted to nearly the state in which they stood before
the first step of the Reformation was taken.
Eight of the bishops were removed from their sees :
the Archbishop of York and the Bishops of Bristol,
Chester, and St. David's were removed because they
were married ; the Bishops of Gloucester, Hereford, and
Lincoln on the plea that they held their sees only by
letters patent during pleasure, such being really the
tenure on which King Edward's advisers had nominated
them ; the Bishop of Bath and WeUs fled to the 'Conti
nent ; Scorey of Chichester escaped immediate expulsion
by renouncing his wife and doing penance, but he too
was soon after ejected. The clergy were allowed a year
during which to renounce their heresy and put away
their wives if married, and some hundreds of them were
at length ejected on this account or resigned their offices.
The queen had already intimated to the Pope, Julius
III., her desire to reconcile herself and her kingdom to
the Holy See, and begged that Cardinal Pole might be
sent as his legate to effect this end. Next year Pole
arrived in the character of legate. Parliament voted an
address, asking for reconciliation with the Holy See, and
Pole pronounced a solemn absolution. Parliament,
however, took care to stipulate that the Church property
should not be restored. New nobles had been endowed
out of the Church lands, the old nobles had received

THE MARIAN PERSECUTION 227
additions to their ancestral estates, and so many men
aU over the country had shared in the plunder in one
way or another, that it was seen that the restoration of
Romanism could only be effected at the cost of the
abandonment of the property of the Church. The queen
herself, greatly to her honour, restored the abbey lands
which had been attached to the Crown, and founded ten
new religious houses out of them; she also gave up
all the first-fruits and tenths which had been seized by
Henry VIII.i
And now the court adopted the policy which had been
followed in other states of Europe, of endeavouring to
put down the new opinions, and compel obedience to the
estabUshed Church, by severity and terror.
It would occupy too much space to go through the
stories of the martyrs who suffered in this persecution ;
but in order to give an adequate impression of a passage
in the history of the Enghsh Church which has had so
vast an influence on the mind of the Church and people
from that time to this, we shall select the three great
popular heroes of the Reformation — Cranmer, Ridley,
and Latimer — and sketch the story of their sufferings and
death. All three had been concerned in the usurpation of the
Lady Jane, and at the accession of Mary had been com
mitted to the Tower. The charge of treason was, however,
condoned, and they were proceeded against as heretics.
The Tower being full of prisoners, the three bishops,
together with Bradford, were put together into one room,

1 These were all re-annexed to the Crown on the accession of
Elizabeth. The first-fruits and tenths were finally restored to the
Church by Queen Anne, being vested in a board of trustees, under
the name of Queen Anne's Bounty Board, for the augmentation of
poor livings.

228 TURNING POINTS OP ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
where they spent six months, passing their time chiefly in
reading the New Testament and conversing on religious
subjects. At length a commission was appointed to
conduct a disputation with them. The subject chosen
as the test question was the doctrine of the Mass. The
dispute was conducted in the University Church at
Oxford, before the public, and in the regular form of a
disputation in the schools. Three propositions were laid
down : —
I. Whether the natural body of Christ was reaUy in
the Sacrament.
2. Whether any other substance did remain after the
words of consecration than the body of Christ.
3. Whether in the Mass there was a sacrifice and pro
pitiation for the quick and dead.
Each had a separate day assigned for his answer —
Cranmer on the i6th, Ridley on the 17th, and Latimer
on the i8th of April, 1554.
A report of the proceedings was made by notaries,
Cranmer and Ridley committed also to writing all that
they could remember, and the two reports agree in the
main. Ridley sustained his great reputation for learning
and ability. The report of his defence may be read with
great interest and profit, as a statement of the doctrine
for which the Reformers died, and an elaborate argu
ment in its favour. The doctrine is of course the same
which is set forth in the Catechism, the Articles, and the
Communion Service, the doctrine of a presence of Christ
in the Sacrament, not a gross, carnal presence to be
pressed by the teeth, but a spiritual presence communi
cated to the spirit of the faithful recipient. They were
all condemned as heretics. Ridley and Latimer were
put into the custody of private individuals, Cranmer was
remitted to the prison in Oxford.

THE MARIAN PERSECUTION 229
At the end of September in the following year, after a
suspense of eighteen months, commissioners came from
Cardinal Pole, Legate and Archbishop of Canterbury
elect, authorized to accept the recantation of Ridley and
Latimer, or to confirm their sentence as heretics, and go
through the ceremony of degrading them from their
episcopal character, and then to hand them over to the
civil power to undergo punishment according to law.
The case of Cranmer, as a metropolitan, had to be
referred to the Pope, which occasioned five months'
further delay. We extract from Foxe's ' Acts and Monu
ments ' some particulars of their execution: — "Upon
the north side of the town of Oxford, in the ditch over
again Baliol CoUege, the place of execution was appointed.
Dr. Ridley went to the place dressed in a black furred
gown, and velvet tippet, and velvet cap, such as he used
to wear as a bishop, walking between the mayor and one
of the aj^ermen. After him came Mr. Latimer in a poor
Bristol frieze frock, much worn, and under it a new long
shroud down to his feet all ready for the fire ; so thaf
men beheld on one side the honour they sometime had,
and on the other the calamity whereto they were fallen.
When they met at the place of execution, Ridley embraced
Latimer with a very cheerful look, and comforted him
saying, 'Be of good heart, brother, for God will either
assuage the fury of the flame, or else strengthen us to
abide it.' With that he went to the stake, kneeled down
by it and earnestly prayed, and behind him Mr. Latimer
kneeled, as earnestly caUing upon God as he. Then a
sermon was preached, to which the martyrs wished, but
were not permitted, to reply. Then they prepared for
the stake. Ridley gave away a number of little things as
mementos to the friends about him ; some plucked the
points (fastenings) ofi" his hose. Happy was he that

230 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY

might get any rag of him. Mr. Latimer gave nothing,
but suffered his keeper to pull off" his hose and his coat,
and so being stripped to his shroud, he stood bolt
upright, and as comely a father as one might behold.
They were fastened to the stake by a chain round the
waist and faggots were piled about them. Ridley's brother
tied a bag of gunpowder round his neck, and another
round the neck of Latimer. Then they brought a lighted
faggot and laid it at Dr. Ridley's feet. Thereupon Mr.
Latimer said, ' Be of good comfort, Mr. Ridley, and play
the man ; we shall this day hght such a candle, by God's
grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.'
When Dr. Ridley saw the fire flaming up towards him, he
cried with a wonderful loud voice, ' Into Thy hands, O
Lord, I commend my spirit ; Lord, receive my spirit ; '
and, after, repeated this often, 'Lord, Lord, receive my
spirit.' Mr. Latimer cried as vehemently on the other
side, 'O Father of heaven, receive my soul ; ' whojreceived
the flame as if embracing it. After he had stroked his face
with his hands, and, as it were, bathed them a little in the
fire, he soon died (as it appeareth) with very littie or no
pain. But Dr. Ridley, by the ill-making of the fire, the
faggots being green and built up too high, the fire being
kept down by the green wood, burnt fiercely beneath,
which put him to such exquisite pain that he desired
them for God's sake to let the fire come unto him. In
mistaken kindness his brother-in-law heaped faggots upon
him, which only made the fire more vehement beneath,
so that he leaped up and down, crying, ' I cannot burn,'
and his legs were consumed while the upper part of his
body was yet untouched. At length one of the by
standers with his bill pulled off the faggots above, and
the martyr wrested his body over to that side, and the
flame touched the gunpowder and he was seen to stir no

tHE MARIAN PERSECUTION 23 1
more, and his body fell over the chain at Mr. Latimer's
feet, and so the fire consumed them. What reward
remaineth for them in heaven, the day of God's glory,
when He cometh with His saints, shall shortly declare."
Cranmer's sentence was at length pronounced by the
Pope. He was degraded from his episcopal character
with circumstances of unfeeling insult. But then an
attempt was made to induce him to recant. He was
removed from prison and became the guest of the Dean
of Christchurch, where he was treated with courtesy and
kindness. He was told that the king and queen greatly
desired his conversion ; that the council was kindly
disposed towards him; that it was a pity his great
learning, which might profit so many, should be lost
to the Church ; life was made sweet to him ; the recanta
tion was made easy ; the friends whose courage had been
wont to sustain him were absent, and his constitutional
timidity and irresolution betrayed him, and he signed a
recantation. But what was intended was, to injure the
cause of the Reformation by the recantation of its great
representative : it was not intended to spare his Ufe. A
series of recantations were now extracted from him, each
rising above the others in its strength, while at the very
time that they were being wrung from him the prepara
tions were being made for his execution. It would seem
that he was left to indulge the expectation of pardon up
to the very morning of his death.
On the 2 ist of March, 1556, Cranmer was brought
out of prison and taken to St. Mary's Church, and placed
on a low platform in front of the pulpit, to hear his
"condemned sermon." Dr. Cole, who preached the
sermon, took for granted his reconciliation with the
Church, exhorted him to courage in the prospect of
death, and to take comfort from the example of the

232 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY

penitent thief The sermon ended, Cranmer was called
upon to read his recantation before the mayor and alder
men there assembled, and the whole congregation. But
his first words were words of prayer for true repentance,
for mercy through Christ to him the most wretched and
miserable of sinners; he concluded with the Lord's
Prayer, the whole congregation kneeling down and
saying it aloud with him. " Never," says a spectator,
" was there such a number so earnestly praying together.
Cranmer himself an image of sorrow, the dolour of his
heart bursting out at his eyes in plenty of tears ; but in
other respects retaining ' the quiet and grave behaviour
which was natural to him.' Rising from his knees he
turned to address the people, but at first the swaying
of the great congregation drowned his voice ; shortly, in
the increasing silence, his voice was heard repeating the
Apostles' Creed — it was his farewell confession of faith.
But as he proceeded, astonishment and anger began to
rise in the minds of his adversaries ; he was not making
any recantation, but solemnly aflfirming the doctrines of
the Reformation. For his recantation, he declared that
' it troubled his conscience more than anything that ever
he did or said in his whole life ; and forasmuch,' said
he, ' as my hand offended writing contrary to my heart,
my hand shall first be punished therefor, for may I come
to the fire, it shall be first burned; And as for the Pope,
I refuse him, as being Christ's enemy and anti-Christ,
with all his false doctrine.' ' Stop the heretic's mouth
and take him away,' cried Cole ; and he was pulled down
from the platform and carried away to punishment. He
suffered on the same spot as Ridley and Latimer. He
did not tarry long at his prayers, but putting off his gar
ments he stood in his long white shirt reaching to the
ground, his feet bare, his head bald, his beard long and

THE MARIAN PERSECUTION 233
thick, he presented a moving spectacle. Fastened to
the stake, and surrounded by faggots, as soon as the fire
began to burn up about him he thrust his right hand into
it and held it there till it was consumed, repeating, ' This
unworthy right hand,' and ' Lord,' receive my spirit ;' and
took his death with singular courage, seeming to move
no more than the stake to which he was bound."
Cardinal Pole became Archbishop of Canterbury and
Papal Legate. A visitation was held of the Church and
Universities, Enghsh Bibles and heretical books were
burnt, and the full Roman system was restored.
During three years the persecution continued. It is
computed that in that time 277 persons were brought to
the stake, besides those who were punished by imprison
ment, fines, and confiscations. Among those who suffered
by fire were five bishops, twenty-one clergymen, eight
lay gentlemen, eighty-four tradesmen, 100 husbandmen,
servants, and labourers, fifty-five women, and four
children. The majority of the people, terrified by the persecu
tion, outwardly conformed ; but the fires of SmithfieJd
burnt into the heart of the nation an undying hatred of
Romanism. Mary died on the 17th November, 1558, and Cardinal
Pole died on the next day. The field was open for the
re-establishment of the Reformation.

234

CHAPTER XXV
THE FINAL SETTLEMENT OF THE REFORMATION
Elizabeth had conformed to the national Church
during her sister's reign, but it was well known that she
favoured the Reformation. On her accession she pro
ceeded with great caution. Her title to the throne was
open to dispute. The Roman court, if it saw that the
obedience of England was again to be withdrawn, might
raise up factions against her within the kingdom, and
perhaps set on enemies from without. These fears were
by no means ill founded. When the queen notified her
accession to the Pope, Paul IV., he replied that the
kingdom of England was held in fief of the Apostolic
See, that Elizabeth, being illegitimate, could not succeed
to the throne, that her assumption of the government
without his sanction was an impertinence ; yet, if she
would renounce her pretensions, and refer herself wholly
to his free disposition, he would do whatever might be
done without damage to the Holy See. The state of
parties in England made caution necessary. The queen
and her chief advisers were in favour of a moderate
reformation, which, while it asserted the freedom of the
Church from the Roman yoke, and adopted the reforms
of doctrine and ritual which had been effected by the
English Reformers, maintained, the Catholicity of the
Church. In taking this course she had to expect oppo
sition from two quarters. On one side were those who
were heartily opposed to the Reformation, and a still

THE FINAL SETTLEMENT OF THE REFORMATION 23g
larger number of others who had been sincere Reformers
at first, but had been alarmed by the tendencies displayed
by the Reformers of Edward VI. , acting under foreign
influences, and who now clung to the connexion with
the rest of Christendom as the safeguard against extreme
changes. Many of this party probably hoped to com
bine a recognition of the Pope as the centre of the
organization of the Church, with a considerable amount
of reform in this English branch of the Church. And
we shall see presently reason to believe that the Pope
actually offered to accept a large part of the results of
the Reformation of the Church in England, if that
Church would continue its mediseval relations with the
Roman See. On the other side was the party whose
aim was to sweep away the ancient Church of England
altogether, and to establish a new sect in its place, with
a Presbyterian form of organization and Calvinistic doc
trines ; and this party was made powerful by the return
of many who during the late reign had taken refuge on
the Continent from persecution, many of them men of
learning and piety, and whose sufferings for conscience'
sake gave them great influence with the people.
On Cecil's recommendation, Matthew Parker was
summoned to advise the queen on religious questions.
He had been Queen Anne Boleyn's chaplain, and in
her last interview with him she had specially commended
her infant daughter Elizabeth to his care. He had risen
to be master of Benet College, Cambridge, and Dean of
Lincoln, in the time of Edward VI. On the accession
of Mary, he had been compelled to retire from all his
benefices as a married clergyman ; but instead of fieeing
to the Continent he had lived in great retirement in the
house of one of his friends. He was a man well fitted
for the task which lay before him by learning, especially

236 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
a deep knowledge of the writings of the Fathers, by
sound yet moderate churchmanshlp, and by statesmam
like sagacity and breadth of view.
Elizabeth and her advisers, Cecil and Parker, desired
* to adopt the Reformation as the English Reformers had
left it, taking the First Prayer Book of Edward VI. as
their standard. But it was necessary to conciliate the
Puritan party, many of the more moderate of whom might
be won by some concessions. The Second Prayer Book
was ready to hand. It had been originaUy drawn up
with a view to conciliate the Puritans. By adopting it
they would avoid a re-opening of the whole subject for
discussion in an unfriendly Convocation. It was there
fore again accepted as a compromise, with some alter
ations. ^ It was adopted by Parliament, and incorporated
into a new Act of Uniformity passed June 24, 1559;
and out of 9400 clergymen only 189 refused to adopt it.
The Act of Supremacy passed at the same time again
threw off" the Papal supremacy, and re-asserted the
freedom of the English Church. Ehzabeth did not
assume in this Act the title "Head of the Church,"
which had been so hable to misinterpretation, but that
of " Supreme Governor of all persons and in all causes,
ecclesiastical as well as civil;" and the ancient and
legitimate authority of the Crown was carefuUy defined.
* The prayer, "From the tyranny ofthe Bishop of Rome and all
his detestable enormities, good Lord deliver us," was omitted from
the Litany in 1552 ; the rubric which declared that no adoration was
intended in the kneeling posture at the reception of Holy Com
munion, was now omitted. Proper lessons for Sundays were intro
duced ; prayers for the queen, clergy, and people were introduced
from the ancient offices. The rubric retaining the ancient vestments
was inserted. "The accustomed place or Chancel," instead of "in
such place as the people may best hear," was appointed for the
celebration of Divine Service. The words at the administration of
the consecrated elements from the First Book of Edward were pre
fixed to those of the Second Book, as in our present Prayer Book.

THE FINAL SETTLEMENT OF THE REFORMATION 237
A previous Act had repealed the Repealing Act of
Mary, but did not indiscriminately revive the legislation
of Edward or of Henry; it carefuUy selected some of
their Acts for revival and left others unrevived; the
general effect being to relax the rigid grasp of the Crown
upon the Church, and to restore to the Church something
of its former liberties. Soon after the passing of these
Acts the bishops, with some of the leading divines of
their party, were summoned before the queen in council,
and invited to take the oath of supremacy. It happened
that the plague which raged in the last year of Queen
Mary's reign had caused a remarkable mortahty among
the bishops ; four died just before the queen's decease,
and six immediately after, so that ten sees were vacant,
and there were only fifteen diocesans remaining. In reply
to the invitation to conform to the new order of things.
Heath, Archbishop of York, spoke on behalf of his
brethren, requesting the queen to adhere to the engage
ments made by Mary with the Roman See. The queen
answered with spirit : " Our records show that the Papal
jurisdiction over this realm was usurpation .... It is
by following the proceedings which have come down to
me from a long hne of predecessors that I -mean to
rule .... To no power whatever is my crown subject
save to that of Christ the King of kings. I shall there
fore regard as enemies, both to God and myself, all such
of my subjects as shall henceforth own any foreign or
usurped authority within my realm." Fourteen bishops
refused the oath, Kitchin of Llandaff" being the only one
who accepted it. Those who refused were at once de
posed ; only two of them, Winchester and Lincoln, were
at aU harshly treated; three were allowed to retire
abroad ; the rest were committed to the custody of their
own friends or of their episcopal brethren — i- e. a deposed

23S TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
bishop was quartered on one of the actual bishops. In
most cases the deposed bishop lived in the family of his
entertainer; in some cases it was found more pleasant
to both parties that he should have his own apartments.
A great proportion of the deans, archdeacons, and
heads of colleges also declined the oath; but the
parochial clergy, with only about 100 exceptions, accepted'
the oath of supremacy and the new service-book, and
continued in their cures, some retaining more and some
less of the ancient ritual to which they had been ac
customed. With the people at large the return to the
principles of the Reformation was popular.
The fact that so many dignitaries refused the new
order of things is remarkable. In the first great renun
ciation of the Roman obedience in 1534, the Con
vocations took the lead, and the whole body of the
bishops and clergy readily foUowed it. In all the sub
sequent reforms of the reign of Henry VIII. and the
beginning of Edward VL, the bishops concurred. When
Warwick came into power, and designed to carry the
Reformation to extremes, Gardiner of Winchester, Day
of Chichester, Heath of Worcester, and Voysey of Exeter,
were deprived on pretext of disobedience in order to get
rid of their opposition. On the accession of Mary these
were restored, and in turn Cranmer of Canterbury,
Ridley of London, Holgate of York, Coverdale of
Exeter, and Hooper of Gloucester, were sent to prison ;
Bariow, of Bath and Wells, retired abroad. But in these
cases a considerable majority of the bishops was left.
Now, between the ten vacant sees and the fourteen
bishops who were deprived for refusing the oath of
supremacy, only one diocesan bishop was left, and the
Church was placed in a position of considerable anxiety.
For from the beginning down to the i6th century the

THE FINAL SETTLEMENT OF THE REFORMATION 239
Church universally considered the ministerial succession
to be a matter of great importance, and always believed
that that succession was through the episcopal order.
The importance of the ministerial succession depends
on the principle, which has always been held in the
Church of Christ, that our Lord Himself consecrated a
ministry, giving them authority to rule His Church and
power to convey special graces. A party which at this
time began to assume considerable importance in the
Church, and which graduaUy increased in power till it
was able to overthrow the constitution of Church and
State, believed in the Divine appointment of the ministry,
in its authority to rule, and in its power to transmit
supernatural graces ; but it believed that the succession
was in the presbyters ; and that the government of the
Church by bishops, and their assumption of sole power
to ordain, was a usurpation. There was still a third
party, as yet insignificant in numbers, but destined to
triumph both over the Church and monarch, and over
the Parliament and presbytery, who did not believe in
any divinely-appointed ministry at all, or that any men
had authority to rule the Church, except such men as
the people might voluntarily delegate to exercise it for
the sake of order ; who denied that they had power to
transmit any supernatural graces ; these were the Inde
pendents in religion, who were, quite consistently,
Republicans in politics. The Church of England be
lieved then, and believes still, in the divinely-appointed
ministry transmitted through the episcopate, and there
fore was very solicitous for the regular succession of its
bishops. We have said that only one of the old diocesan
bishops remained, and he was not a man of very high
character. It is held by all theologians that the conse-

240 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
cration of a bishop by a single bishop would be valid,
and quite justifiable in case of necessity, but irregular ;
for the canons of the Council of Nice, for greater security,
required that two others should concur with the metro
politan in the consecration of a bishop. But the Church
was not reduced to the necessity of an irregular conse
cration. Several of the bishops who had been deprived
at the accession of Mary were still living. William
Barlow, who had been Bishop of Bath and Wells, and
was now elect of Chichester, John Scory, who had been
Bishop of Chichester, and was now elect of Hereford,
Miles Coverdale, who had been Bishop of Exeter, John
Hodgkin, a suffragan bishop of Bedford, who also had
been deprived, and several other suffragans. Notwith
standing, then, the ten vacancies and the defection of
the fourteen diocesans, the Church had ample means for
continuing her succession.
The first step was to consecrate a metropolitan, who
would then, according to the canons, preside at the con
secration of the other bishops requisite to fill the vacant
sees. Matthew Parker at first declined the onerous
office, and it was offered to two others ; but on their
refusal it was again pressed upon Parker and accepted
by him.
Whether Archbishop Parker was properly consecrated
has been called into question. In 1604, forty-four years
after Parker's consecration, an exiled Romish priest named
Holywood, in a book published at Antwerp, started the
story which has been called the " Nag's Head Fable."
He said that the consecration of Parker was an irregular
ceremony, performed at the "Nag's Head" tavern, a
noted tavern of those days, which one Neale, a chaplain
of Bonner's, witnessed by peeping through a hole in the
door. This fable, which made a good deal of noise when

THE FINAL SETTLEMENT OF THE REFORMATION 24I
first published, and which is still raked up from time to
time by ignorant or malicious opponents, is now com
pletely exploded. There is abundant evidence to prove
that Parker was solemnly consecrated in Lambeth chapel.
The archbishop himself mentions it in one of his printed
works, and there is an entry of it in his private diary.
The official record of it still exists in the register pre
served at Lambeth. The Earl of Nottingham, who was
present, gave testimony to it in his place in the House
of Lords, when it was first questioned. Roman CathoUc
writers of eminence have admitted his formal and valid
consecration, as Courayer, Lingard, Canon Tierney,
Charles Butler. Several modern writers have lately re
investigated the history, and have no doubt on the
subject. Mr. Haddan, in his edition of the works of
Archbishop Bramhall, has gone very fully into the sub
ject ; and all the original documents given in evidence
have been zincographed and pubhshed. The truth is
that the critical nature of the consecration was fully
understood, and great pains were taken to fulfil all the
legal and canonical requirements. The queen issued
her conge d'elire to the Chapter of Canterbury, and
Parker was duly elected and confirmed. A commission
was issued to certain of the bishops, and four of them
were the actual consecrators. The chief part was taken
by Barlow.^ The other three were John Hodgkin, Miles
1 It has been objected that Barlow was not properly consecrated,
on the ground that the record of his consecration is not forthcoming.
It is true that the record is omitted from the Lambeth Register, as
also are several others, for the registry at that time was badly kept ;
and the register of his own cathedral is lost. But he was one of the
statesmen-bishops of Henry VIII., and would take care that his own
consecration was valid ; he was always acknowledged to be a bishop
both by Anglicans and Romanists to the end of his life. The Bishop
of Oxford (Dr. Stubbs), the great authority on such questions, says
that there is no reason whatever to doubt the fact of his consecration. R

242 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
Coverdale, and John Scory, before mentioned. The
consecration took place in tiie chapel of Lambeth Palace,
where many of Parker's predecessors had been conse
crated ; and we have a full account of the arrangement
of the chapel and the order of the ceremony, in which it
is evident that care was taken to observe every proper
formality, and to make the ceremony solemn and stately.
The consecration took place on the morning of December
17, 1559. The official persons whose duty it was to be
present were there, together with a company of private
and official friends of Parker's. With the exception of
Coverdale, who appeared only in a gown, the bishops
wore the episcopal vestments, and Parker his scarlet
convocation robes. The sermon was preached by Scory
from the text i Peter v. i : " The elders which are
among you I exhort, who am also an elder." The
sermon ended. Bishop Barlow, as celebrant, and Arch
deacon Bulhngham and Archdeacon Gheast, the arch
bishop's chaplains, as epistoUer and gospeller, put on
silk copes, and celebrated Holy Communion. The
consecration was conducted in accordance with the
second ordinal of Edward VI. All the bishops laid
their hands, on the head of the elect, and all repeated
the words of consecration : " Take the Holy Ghost, and
remember that thou stir up the grace of God which is in
thee by the imposition of hands, for God hath not given
unto us the spirit of fear; but of power, and love, and
soberness." After the consecration the new archbishop,
in going out of the door of the chapel, inaugurated the
great officers of his household by giving their staves of
office to his treasurer, the steward, and the controUer ;
and then the whole company proceeded in procession
to the hall of the palace.
The Archbishop of Canterbury being thus regularly

1
THE FINAL SETTLEMENT OF THE REFORMATION 243
consecrated, the other sees were gradually filled. To
the fact that so many sees and other dignities were left
vacant, and that it was thought right to promote to them
a large proportion of the most eminent of those who had
suffered for conscience' sake in the previous reign, we
owe the fact that the Puritan party at once became so
powerful in the Church.
We have already noticed that immediately after
Elizabeth's accession she received an insolent letter froin
the Pope, But a new Pope, Pius IV., in 1560 addressed
to her a letter of very diff'erent tenor, making overtures
for a reconciliation. There is sufficient evidence that,
among other concessions, he offered, through his agent
Parpalia, to approve of the Book of Common Prayer,
including the Liturgy or Communion Service, and the
Ordinal. Although his Holiness complained that many
things were omitted from the Prayer Book which ought
to be there, he admitted that the book nevertheless con
tained nothing contrary to the truth, while it compre
hended all that is necessary for salvation. He was
therefore prepared to authorize the book if the queen
would receive it from him and on his authority.
The queen received a notification of the sitting of the
Council of Trent ; it was not, however, in the terms in
which the Catholic sovereigns were invited to take part
in the proceedings, but in the terms in which the Pro
testant sects were invited to be present. Partly on this
account, partly because the councU would not be " free,
pious, and Christian," the queen declared that the
Church of England should not be represented at it.
And from this time friendly . official intercourse has
ceased between England and Rome. StiU there was
no irreparable schism between the two parties here;
the people who did not approve of the present order

244 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY

continued to attend their parish churches. An attempt
was made to obtain toleration both for the Papal and
for the Puritan party. The Emperor and some of the
princes of Germany wrote to the queen on behalf of the
Papal party, asking that the deprived bishops might
officiate as " vacant bishops," and might have assigned
to them certain churches in large towns. The eff'ect of
this would have been to create and perpetuate a Romish
schism. The queen replied, that " to grant them separate
churches, and permit them to keep up a distinct com
munion, were things which neither the public interest
nor her own honour would allow." In the course of
her reply she reiterates the assertion so often and so
forcibly made of the continuity and Catholicity of the
reformed Church of England; she argues that the re
quest for such an indulgence was, unreasonable; "for
there is no new faith propagated in England ; no religion
set up but that which was commanded by our Saviour,
preached by the primitive Church, and unanimously
approved by the fathers of the best antiquity.''
In 1570 A.D., Pope Pius V. published a bull of ex
communication and deposition against the queen. In
very warm language it called the queen an illegitimate
usurper and a heretic, who had endeavoured to destroy
the Catholic faith and practice ; and it declared her
deprived of her throne, her subjects absolved from their
obedience to her, and forbidden to obey her uhder pain
of excommunication. The bull was affixed to the gate
of the English ambassador in Paris ; and ah enthusiast,
John Felton, had the audacity to post a copy on the
gate'of the Bishop of London's palace, and was therefore
seized and executed as a traitor.
_ The Romanist party at once ceased to attend their
parish churches, their gentry began to send their children

THE FINAL SETTLEMENT OF THE REFORMATION 245
abroad for education, foreign priests to come over on
secret missions. France and Spain began a series of
hostUe operations, which at length culminated in the
invasion ofthe Spanish Armada in 15 88.
The Puritan party fought its battle more successfully
than the Romanizing party. We have seen that it had
a remarkable proportion of its friends in high office in
the Church; it had also powerful protectors at court.
It organized an opposition both in Convocation and in
Parliament, and appealed to the passions of the mob in
the towns. Its aims may be briefiy stated to be these :
the substitution of the Presbyterian form of Church
government for Episcopacy, and the substitution of the
doctrines and forms of worship of the foreign Calvinistic
reformers for those of the Church of England. Finding
themselves unable to subvert the Church, some extreme
men began to establish a separate sect, the first Presbytery
being set up at Wandsw^orth in 1573. Soon after, the
Government interfered to silence some of the most
vehement of the agitators.
The present Thirty-nine Articles were drawn up and
received the assent of Convocation in January, 1563.
The Council of Trent did not conclude its sessions and
give authority to the Tridentine doctrines till the end of
the same year. The Second Book of HomUies was put
forth in 1571. A new version of the Bible under
Parker's editing was published in 1568.

246

CHAPTER XXVI
THE PURITANS
The reign of James I. may be lightly passed over. So
far as our Church history is concerned, the early part of
his reign was a continuation of the latter part of that of
Elizabeth. But during his reign those political and
religious forces were developed which came into coUision
during the next reign. In politics, while James and his
courtiers were exalting the royal prerogative, ideas of
parliamentary government were growing into shape among
the people. In the Church, the Calvinistic theology and
Puritanical principles of Church government were pre
dominant among the bishops and in the Universities,
but the Arminian reaction was already gaining ground
among the clergy ; and the doctrine of apostolical suc
cession and the desire for a higher ritual was coming in.
The Synod of Dort may be taken as the turning point.
The Arminian doctrines had made more way in
HoUand, the country of Arminius, than in England, and
were there causing so much acrimonious discussion that
the States-General caused a synod of Protestant divines
to be held at Dort to consider them. James I. at their
invitation sent three or four clergymen, of whom one
was a bishop and another a deacon, to assist at the dis
cussion. We may briefly state the opposing doctrines.
Calvin's teaching on predestination may be summed
up in what are called the Five Points, i. Election :
viz., that God from all eternity not only foresaw but also

THE PURITANS 247

decreed the fall of Adam, and the total corruption of
his posterity ; that He also from all eternity elected
some of this fallen race to be saved, and others to be
eternally lost. 2. Redemption : that Christ died for
the elect only. 3. The bondage of the will : that man
in his unregenerate state is deprived of his free will
towards God. 4. Grace : that the non-elect are left
without effectual grace. 5. Final perseverance : that
the elect have grace given which is irresistible, and which
they can never lose, and so they are certain of final
salvation. The opposing teaching of Arminius is also
set forth in Five Points, the substance of which is as
follows : I. That God decreed to bestow salvation on
those whom He foresaw would believe on Jesus Christ,
and persevere in faith and obedience. 2. That by
Christ's death expiation was made for the sins of all
men, but that none but believers wUl finally reap the
benefit. 3. That as man is by nature born in sin, and
unable to think or to do what is good, it is necessary
for salvation that he must be born again and be renewed
by the Holy Spirit. 4. That Divine grace is not in
vincible or necessarily effectual, but may be resisted by
man's perverse wUl. 5. That a man may finally faU
from a state of grace and salvation.
The divines of the predominant party at the synod
conducted the proceedings with great unfairness towards
the Arminian party. In the end the doctrines of Arminius
were condemned. Barneveldt was executed, Hugo
Grotius, one of the greatest scholars of his time, was
condemned to perpetual imprisonment, and Arminian
preachers were persecuted and exiled. This was a great
triumph for the Calvinistic party in the Church of
England. They claimed that this Church was bound
by the decision of the Synod of Dort. Archbishop

248 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
Abbott, an austere Puritan and Calvlnist, made his palace
the head-quarters of that party, and used his power as
licenser of the press to aUow circulation to their publi
cations, and his power in the High Commission Court
to repress the clergy who did not agree with them. In
the Universities successive professors of theology, and
most of the heads of houses and tutors, were of the
Puritan party. But a reaction had already set in, and
the men were rising into observation who were shortly
to revive the true principles of the Reformation. Laud,
the President of St. John's, Oxford, was the leader of
the increasing number of those who were opposed to
the prevalent opinions.
We have already seen that the course which the
foreign Reformers were driven unwilhngly to take was
the formation of new religious bodies outside the ancient
Church. Our Reformers were able, by God's good
providence, to reform the ancient national Church itself
The foreign bodies were thus driven to seek for a con
tinuity of the Church of Christ, from the time of our
Lord downward to themselves, not through the mediseval
Church, from which they had seceded, and which they
declared to be anti-Christ, but through isolated indi
viduals and occasional groups of men who had held
doctrines more or less opposed to the dominant doctrines
of the Roman communion, and more or less resembling
those of the reformed churches. Berengarius, the
Waldenses, the Albigenses, the Wiclifites, were quoted
as forming an invisible church of true believers which
connected the Lutherans and the Calvinists by a spiritual
descent with the Apostles and the Lord. The English
Reformers had not been driven to any such expedient,
and had steadily maintained that by no act of the reform
did they cut themselves off from the unity of the visible

THE PURITANS 249

Church of Christ. One more quotation here, in addition
to those given in a previous chapter, must suffice. In
a letter which Henry VIII. caused to be addressed to
Cardinal Pole, he says: "Ye suppose the king's grace
to be severed from the unity of Christ's Church. . . .
His full purpose and intent is to see the laws of Almighty
God freely and sincerely preached and taught, and
Christ's faith without blot kept and preserved in this
realm ; and not to separate himself from the unity of
Christ's Catholic Church, but inviolably at all times to
keep and observe the same, and to redeem his Church
of England out of all captivity of foreign powers hereto
fore usurped therein into the Christian state that all
Churches were in at the beginning ; and to abolish and
clearly put away such usurpations as heretofore in this
realm the bishops of Rome have by many undue means
increased to their great advantage."
The English Puritans, however, had abandoned their
own sure and safe standing-ground, and had taken up
the Church theory of the foreign Reformers.
The new school which sprang up in the middle of the
reign of James I. took up again the safe ground of the
great Enghsh Reformers, that the Reformation threw off
the usurpations of Rome, asserting the original and
rightful independence of the Church of England as the
Church of Christ originally settled and continuously
maintained in this country ; and at the same time threw
off the corruptions of doctrine and superstitious practices
which had crept in in the cburse of ages and crusted
over the true faith ; restoring her doctrine and discipline
to that of the primitive Church. Just as Archbishop
Theodore, at the Synod of Hatfield, began by laying
down the five general councils as the basis of the faith
of the Church of England, so at the Reformation the

250 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY

Reformers began by laying down the undisputed general
councUs as the basis of their work. They did not
hesitate to trace their spiritual descent through the pre-
Reformation Church. That Church held the whole
faith and discipline of the primitive Church, overlaid
with human additions, but the essentials of the Church
were all there. The Scriptures were guarded uncor
rupted, the essential doctrines of the faith held their
place undisputed in the creeds, the prevalent errors,
however grievous, did not, as Hooker says, directly
overthrow or deny the foundation ; and the modern
reader must bear in mind that, though many erroneous
opinions were widely held and taught, yet the authori
tative declarations of the faith of the Church of England
before the time of the Reformation, were very different
from the authoritative definitions and novel dogmas
which since the Reformation have been fastened upon
the modern Romish Church.
So Bramhall, one of this new school of Anglo-Catho
lics, says : " I make not the least doubt in the world
that the Church of England before the Reformation
and after the Reformation are as much the same Church
as a garden before it is weeded and after it is weeded ;
or a vine before it is pruned and after it is pruned and
freed from the luxuriant branches is the same vine."
If it were necessary to trace a spiritual descent it
would have been easy enough to show how in every
generation there were thousands of men and women in
the mediaeval Church who had had a vital hold on the
great doctrines of the Christian faith, and had led deeply
spiritual lives. One evidence of it is seen in the de
votional books which were written, and were popular,
throughout the Middle Ages. We find in them traces
of erroneous doctrines, such as invocation of the saints ;

THE PURITANS 25 1

but we find in them also a pure spiritual religion, look
ing for pardon only through the precious blood, seeking
for sanctification only through the Holy Spirit, and
breathing the most fervent self-denying love for Jesus
and for mankind. The ' Imitation of Christ,' one of
the most popular devotional books of the present day,
is the production of a 14th century monk, and was
written specially for monks ; and it is only one repre
sentative of a class of books, and of a type of Christian
piety, which were common in the Middle Ages. The
same ascetic spirit may be found among the Puritans
themselves. In the earlier ascetics it existed together
with some errors in doctrine and some superstitions ; in
the later Puritans it existed together with errors in
doctrine of a diff'erent kind, and of a narrow, harsh,
unloving tone of mind. It is difficult without a con
siderable and intimate knowledge of the people in the
Middle Ages to say what the popular religion really was.
The confusion of thought which attributes to all people
previous to the Reformation a deliberate holding of the
full-blown doctrines of the Council of Trent, is a manifest
error. The truth is that there were wide gradations of
belief and practice in the Middle Ages. Some went
beyond the authoritative teaching of the Church, and
were ignorant and superstitious ; others held even its
authoritative teaching with reservations. Nobody thought
of separating from the Church in those ages ; but there
was a good deal of freedom in religious opinions toler
ated within the Church. In the 13th century Bishop
Grostete is a type of many others who brought the
Roman doctrine to the test of Scripture and the Fathers,
and rejected what was seen to be contrary to them. In
the 14th century the popular tone of thought indicated
in Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' and 'Piers Plough-

252 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
man's Creed' was not ultra-papal. The 15th century
was in some respects more Papal than earlier times ; but
the Councils of Constance and Basle are enough to
remind us how strenuously Christendom sought to throw
ofTthe Papal tyranny and to reform itself

253

CHAPTER XXVII
THE GREAT REBELLION
Charles I. came to the throne at a period which was
one of political transition throughout Europe. The
power of the great nobles was broken ; the feudal
system was obsolete ; the middle class had become
powerful ; the ancient constitution could not continue
as it was ; Parliament now could not be dealt with
as it was by Henry and Elizabeth. Either the king's
prerogative must be extended, and Charles become as
absolute as the kings of France and Spain, or the people
must grow politicaUy powerful and exercise a real control
over the government.
The struggle between the king and the Parliament
did not begin in any design or endeavour on the part
of the king to deprive Parliament of any power, or the
people of any liberty, which they formerly possessed.
No doubt he intended to continue to govern according
to the principles of royal prerogative which had been
acted upon since the reign of Henry VIL, but he
intended to govern justly and well the people whom he
believed that God had placed under his rule. On the
other hand there can be no doubt that there was a party
in the kingdom which understood the political situation,
and which had deliberately resolved to aim at the hmita
tion of the royal prerogative and the exaltation of the
power of Parhament. We can sympathize with both
sides : — with the king, conscious of good intentions ;

254 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
met in a spirit of antagonism by his first Parliament;
his government thwarted and embarrassed ; and his
sense of what was due to his person and office offended,
without his having given any cause for it. We can
sympathize with the English spirit which had resolved
not to sink without a struggle into the condition of
France or Spain ; not to leave liberties at the chance
of the good disposition of the sovereign ; but to secure
constitutional guarantees for personal freedom and good
government. It is not our part to give the civil history
of the great rebellion. Our business is only with its
religious aspect.
The Puritan party, which had been growing in
influence since the time of Elizabeth, had carefully culti
vated an influence in Parliament, and allied itself with
the constitutional party. The Church party in the late
reign had strenuously maintained the royal prerogative ;
and some of its divines had preached doctrine on the
Divine right of kings and the duty of passive obedience,
which we read now with amazement and disapproval.
But though we sympathize with the actors on both
sides in this great tragedy, we must with equal imparti
ality disapprove of many of their acts. In the early part
of the struggle the king and his advisers do not seem to
have quite comprehended the nature of the struggle
they were engaged in; when they did understand it
they did not set themselves to try to find a constitu
tional equUibrium between the royal prerogative and
the popular power, but deliberately endeavoured to
exalt the prerogative, to copy the example of France
and Spain, and make the king absolute. We can under
stand their belief that a monarchy was the form of
government best suited to give England prosperity and
happiness at homcj and security and dignity among

THE GREAT REBELLION 255
the nations, and that the proceedings of its assaUants
would, if successful, destroy the monarchy, and reduce
the kingdom to anarchy and ruin. But, as Englishmen
of the 1 9th century, we cannot wish that the attempt of
Strafford and Laud had been successful. On the other
hand, while we cannot but sympathize with the general
resolve to secure a settled constitution, we must utterly
disapprove ofthe fierce personal bitterness which actuated
some of the leaders of the movement, and the unscru-
pulousness of their strategy. We must recognize the
fact that they were not willing to stop at a constitutional
equilibrium. If the final propositons of the Parhament
had been accepted by the king, they "would," as
Hobbes says, " have made the English government a
commonwealth with a king under them."
At length, after fifteen years' experience, the king
seems to have become convinced of the impossibility of
carrying out his plan of making the monarchy absolute,
and to have summoned the Long Parliament with the
honest^ resolve to submit to give constitutional guarantees.
In the first session of that Parliament he formally aban
doned all the encroachments which had been made on
the ancient rights and liberties of the people ; he granted
further guarantees which made those rights and liberties
more ample, better defined, and more secure than ever
before. "There was not," says Hume, "a public or
private grievance but what was redressed within the first
nine months of this session." The death of Strafford on
the scaffold was looked upon by the nation as the seal
of the king's recantation and reconciliation with his
people. But a party in the nation had now resolved
^ Hume shows that the modern charges against Charles, of
insincerity and untrustworthiness, were not brought against him in
his lifetime, and are not borne out by the facts.

256 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
on more than securing a constitutional monarchy. When
the second session of this Long Parliament opened it
was at once clear that Parliament itself, hitherto so
unanimous, was now divided into two parties : one party
which was satisfied with the balanced constitution in
Church and State which had been wrung from the king,
and another party which was resolved to make the House
of Commons supreme over king and peers. With the
latter was the whole Puritan party, which desired to
make a corresponding change in the constitution of the
Church, to estabhsh the Presbyterian form of Church
government, and the Calvinistic scheme of doctrine.
Henceforth the struggle is not between the king and the
people, but between limited monarchy and the Church
on one side, and the Parliamentary and Presbyterian
party on the other— between Cavalier and Roundhead.
The latter were resolved to go the length of civil war
to obtain their aims ; the former were equally resolved
to defend in arms the monarchy and the Church. At
last the House voted that an army should be raised for
the defence of the Parliament. The king set up his
standard at Nottingham. The first battle was fought at
Edgehill, Oct. 23, 1642. The civil war lasted nine years.
During the first year the king's cause prospered, but
at the battle of Naseby (in 1645) the regiment of
"Ironsides," commanded by Col. Cromwell, by its valour
and disciphne turned the fortune of the fight, and
Cromwell at once acquired a great influence. The
Parliamentary army was remodelled on the pattern of
the Ironsides ; and, though Fairfax was nominaUy made
its general, CromweU became its virtual chief
At length the king's cause being everywhere ruined, he
escaped from Oxford and surrendered to the Scots army
near Newark, May, 1646. They sold him to Pariiament

THE GREAT REBELLION 257
for ;^4o,ooo, raised by the sale of the bishops' lands.
Parliament proceeded to negotiate a peace, and talked
of disbanding the army, which they had learnt to fear.
But it was too late, the army had become the master.
Cromwell seized the king's person, and marched to
London. On December 5, 1648, the House declared in
favour of a reconciliation with the king. On the follow
ing day it was beset by a guard, forty-seven members were
sent to prison, ninety-six who could not be depended
upon were expelled ; and the remainder, about fifty in
number, contemptuously called "the Rump," voted
(December, 1648) for the trial of the king. The king
was executed January 30, 1649. Cromwell became for
nearly ten years ruler of England.
In 1653 CromweU forcibly dismissed the remnant
("Rump") of the Long Parhament, and summoned
another (the " Barebones Parhament ") of his own nomi
nees, who voted him Governor for life, with the titie of
Lord Protector. CromweU then dissolved the Parliament,
divided the country into districts, over each of which
he placed a major-general, and ruled England by the
strong hand.
The religious history of the period as a whole divides
itself into three cleariy-riiarked periods. The king and
the Church stood and fell together; the rule of the
Parhament in the State carried with it the predominance
of Presbyterianlsm in religion ; and the triumph of Crom
weU over the Parhament was the triumph of the Inde
pendents over the Presbyterians.
At the beginning of the Long Parhament a Committee
of Rehgion was appointed, and the assault on the Church
went on pari passu with that on the monarchy. The
first attack was upon the bishops. At the very beginning s

258 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY

oi the session Archbishop Laud was impeached, together
with Strafford, and committed to the Tower, and the
Church was thus deprived of the head round which it
would have raUied, and of the ablest statesman for the
organization and conduct of its defence. After petitions
to Parliament, and violent speeches against the bishops,
the House of Commons in March passed a biU to take
away the bishops' votes in the House of Lords, but it
was rejected by the Lords.
In 1640, thirteen of the bishops were impeached by
the Commons for making canons in Convocation, and
granting a benevolence to the king. But the action of
the Convocation was so incontestably legal that the im
peachment was allowed to drop. Following up their attack
a little later, the Commons addressed a remonstrance to
the king against the bishops and the " corrupt part " of
the clergy. The passions of the people were stirred up
against them ; their dress made them easily recognized,
and they were mobbed and threatened on going down to
the House ; in the House itself they were treated with
discourtesy by some of the peers. At length, on December
29, 1 64 1, the bishops sent in a formal paper, stating that
they were prevented by the violence of the mob from
attending in their places in the House, and protesting
against all that was done in their absence. The bishops
were again impeached for this protest and committed to
the Tower. They were, however, bailed out and never
brought to trial. But Parliament passed a bill to take
away their votes, and the king, hoping to remove a cause
of popular feeling against the Church, assented to the
bill. The Commons at length openly avowed their de
termination never to accede to any terms of reconciliation
with the king until the bill for the total eradication of epis
copacy should have passed the Upper House. The bUl,

THE GREAT REBELLION 259
therefore, was passed. But the king refused his assent.
Parliament tried in vain to bribe him by offering to invest
all episcopal lands in his person. The Church, by Arch
bishop WiUiams, proposed a bill for the reformation of
the episcopate, but that was not what was desired, and it
came to nothing.
In February, 1643, Parhament passed an ordinance
for the sequestration of the revenues of bishops, deans,
and chapters, and of other deUnquents, to be employed
in the defence of the Commonwealth. In June in the
same year (1643), an assembly of divines was convened
at Westminster — a kind of irregular synod — to advise
Parliament on the settlement of the religious question. A
few Churchmen were placed upon it, but seldom attended
its sittings ; the majority were Presbyterians, and five were
Independents who had returned from exile in Holland.
In the first year of the war the arms of the king were
so successful that the rebels became alarmed, and the
leaders were meditating a fiight to the Continent, when
an agreement was effected with the Scots, which engaged
them to send an army into England to the aid of their
brethren. One of the conditions of the agreement was
that the English Parliament should adopt the Solemn
League and Covenant, which bound by oath those who
subscribed it to extirpate popery and prelacy, that is, to
establish the Presbj^erian form of Church government.
This Covenant was pressed upon the clergy, and all who
refused it had their livings and their private property se
questrated. Ever since the commencement of the Parha
ment the Committee of Religion had been engaged in
ejecting " scandalous and malignant " ministers. Thou
sands were thus driven from their benefices, of whom we
shaU speak more fully presently.
In October, 1 644, an ordinance was passed authorising

26o TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISti CHURCH HISTORY
presbyters to ordain ministers, and all so ordained were
to be held as legal ministers of the Church of England.
Archbishop Laud having been three years in the Tower,
was at length brought to trial for high treason. As the
leader of the reaction against the prevalent Puritanism of
the reign of James I., and head of the Anglo-Cathohc
school in the reign of Charles, the popular prejudice was
greatly excited against him. As a minister he no doubt
shared the political views of the king, and cordiaUy acted
with Strafford. His part as archbishop was to stem the
tide of Puritanism, which was rising to drown the Church,
and which, as we have seen, was mixed up with the
political party opposed to the monarchy. We are no more
concerned to defend all the archbishop's acts than we are
those of the king. But we can do justice to his character.
He was a man of. learning and piety; a man of ability,
too, but deficient in tact and temper. He trusted too
much in his honest intentions and straightforward vigour,
and neglected policy and prudence. The two great
charges against him were Romanizing and cruelty towards
the Nonconformists. He was undoubtedly a High
Churchman, and the popular prejudice against such men
ran far higher in that day even than it has done in this ;
he had a hearty dislike of Puritanism, and with his blunt
honesty took no pains to conceal it ; but he was not a
Romanizer. He himself appealed to the published
account of his able controversy with the Jesuit Fisher as
an honest statement of his views and a sufficient evidence
of his orthodoxy. He was, no doubt, one of the judges
in the tyrannical courts of Star Chamber and High Com
mission, but there is evidence that his vote was oflien
given for a mitigation of the penalties which the courts
inflicted. When brought to trial, although seventy-two
years of age, and broken by his long imprisonment, he

THE GREAT REBELLION 26 1
defended himself with great spirit and ability. The
judges declared that the charges against him did not
amount to high treason ; whereupon the Commons, as in
the case of Strafford, proceeded by the tyrannical method
of a bill of attainder. It was passed in the Lords at a
sitting of twelve, or, as another authority says, of seven
members; and the aged archbishop was beheaded on
January lo, 1645.
On the same day that the Lords agreed to th6 attainder
of Laud they passed the ordinance which forbade the
use of the Prayer Book in Divine worship, and ordered
the use of the Presbyterian Directory. A few months
after, it was found necessary to enforce this by penalties.
The date on which the ordinance came into force is
worthy of note; it was on St. Bartholomew's Day, 1645,
that Churchmen ceased to be at liberty to worship God
according to their own conscience, even in the bosom
of their famihes. For the ordinance enacted a penalty
upon any one using the Book of Common Prayer either
in public or private ; it was £,'^ for the first offence,
;^io for the second, and a year's imprisonment without
bail for the third, and all copies of the Prayer Book
were to be given up. At the same time it required all
ministers to use the Directory, under a penalty of 40J.
for each omission ; and whoever ventured to speak
against the Directory was to be fined not less than _;,^5,
or more than ;^5o.
In 1646 an ordinance was passed for setthng the
Presbyterian form of government for three years, to be
prolonged if Parliament should think fit» The Assembly
of Divines published a Confession of Faith, and a Larger
and Lesser Catechism founded upon it ; and this was
followed shortly after by an ordinance for abohshing the
office of bishops and selling their lands.

2,62 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
On the estabhshment of Presbyterianlsm the Inde
pendents, who were rapidly growing more numerous and
influential, petitioned for toleration, and an elaborate
interchange of arguments took place between the two
parties. The Presbyterian reasons for refusing tolera
tion are worth noting, e.g. that " the gathering of separate
churches out of true churches is repugnant to the will
of God," and that " in countenance of this liberty there
is not the least example in all the Holy Scripture " : that
" if a Church requires that which is evil of any member
he must forbear compliance, but yet without separation.''
In reply to the offer of occasional communion with the
established religion, they say that if the objectors " can
exercise these acts of .communion with them once or
twice or thrice without sinning, they cannot see any
reason why they cannot always communicate with them
without sin : and if so, separation and church gathering
would be unnecessary. To separate from those churches
ordinarily and openly with whom we may occasionally
join without sin seems a most unjust separation."
When the king surrendered to the Scots, and the
Scots sold him to Parliament, the Parliamentary and
Presbyterian party seemed to have triumphed. The
Parliament had crushed all opposition, and held the
king its. prisoner. Episcopacy had been abolished, the
Church clergy turned out, the Prayer Book sUenced;
the Presbyterian system had been established, and the
Universities and benefices and schools were filled by
ministers of that persuasion.
A contemporary historian (Dugdale) sums up the
political situation in these words : " Thus the Presby
terians having embroiled the kingdom, kindled and
carried on a calamitous war, during which more seats
were plundered and burnt, more churches robbed and

THE GREAT REBELLION 263
profaned, more blood spilt within the compass of four
years; and in short more frightful scenes opened of
savage slaughter and confusion, than had been acted
in the long contest between the Houses of York and
Lancaster ; the Presbyterians, I say, after having thrown
their country into all this misery and convulsion, met
with nothing but infamy and disappointment. For after
having wrested the sword out of the king's hands, and
brought the rebellion to their wishes, when they thought
of nothing less than dividing the prey and raising vast
fortunes out. of Crown and Church lands, their hopes
were suddenly scattered ; they were turned out of their
scandalous acquisitions, and publicly exposed to con
tempt and scorn. For now the Independents forced
them to retire from Westminster, seized their posts, and
made themselves masters upon the matter both in Church
.and State."
The contemporary Puritan writer, Edwards, gives a
summary of the religious situation in a book entitled
' Gangrena,' which he dedicated to the two Houses of
Parliament, and in which he recites the evils which had
broken out in the last four years (viz., from 1642 to
1646) : "Things every day," he says, "grow worse and
worse ; you can hardly imagine them so bad as they are.
No kind of blaspheming, heresie, disorder, and confusion,
but 'tis found among us, or coming in upon us. For
we, instead of reformation, are grown from one extreme
to another, fallen from Scylla to Charybdis ; from popish
innovations, superstitions, and prelatical tyranny, to
damnable heresies, horrid blasphemies, libertinism, and
fearful anarchy . . . . ; the worst of the prelates, in the
midst of many popish Arminian tenets and popish in
novations, held many sound doctrines and had many
commendable practices ; yea, the very papists hold and

264 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
keep to many articles of faith and truths of God, have
some order among them, encourage learning, have certain
fixed principles of truth, with practices of devotion and
good works ; but many of the sects and sectaries of our
days deny all principle of religion, are enemies to all
holy duties, order, learning, overthrowing all 
What swarms are there of all sorts of illiterate mechanic
preachers, yea, of women and boy-preachers ! . . . .
These sectaries have been growing upon us ever since
the first year of our sitting, and have every year increased
more and more."
When Cromwell attained power the Independents
attained ecclesiastical supremacy also. They did not
proscribe the Presbyterians, but the Presbyterian scheme
of Church government was tacitly suspended. The
statutes against Dissenters were repealed, not that the
Independents believed in universal toleration more than.
anybody else did in those days, but the Presbyterians
were still too powerful to be proscribed. Anabaptists
were tolerated, and the Jews were permitted to settle in
the kingdom ; but Churchmen and Quakers, Roman
Catholics and Unitarians, were treated more rigorously
than ever.
In 1654, a committee of five Tryers was appointed to
examine all candidates for the ministry, and their cer
tificate served for ordination and letters of orders. At
the same time commissioners were appointed, a consider
able number iri every county, to search out scandalous
and insufficient ministers and schoolmasters, and the
benefices and schools were swept of the last few men
who might have contrived to linger on under the protec
tion of a friendly squire, or through the affection of their
old parishioners.

26s

CHAPTER XXVIII
THE SUFFERINGS OF THE CLERGY
The Church of England has never taken any pains
to keep alive the memory of its sufferings during the
great rebellion, but we should leave our subject incom
plete, and omit one of the great lessons which past
history has to teach the present age, if we did not give,
with such prominence and in such detail as to produce
an adequate impression on the reader's mind, some
account of the persecution of the clergy by the Puritans
during the twenty years whose general history has been
sketched in the last chapter.
Soon after the Long Parliament assembled it appointed
a Committee of Rehgion, which was commonly called
the Committee of Scandalous Ministers. This com
mittee appointed other committees in every county of
England for the purpose of receiving accusations against
the loyal clergy. A paper was issued inviting " all in
genuous persons in every county of the kingdom to be
very active to improve the present opportunity." After
wards other papers were published setting forth that "it
is found by sad experience that parishioners are not
forward to complain of their ministers," and appointing
therefore paid agents — common informers — to go about
and get up accusations against them ; a trade which was
vulgarly called parson-hunting. Presently accusations
poured in fast enough. The charges may be divided
into three classes. First, charges which amount to

266 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
nothing more than that the clergy observed the rites and
ceremonies and preached the doctrines of the Church
of England, which, in the language of the Committee
of Religion, was superstition and false doctrine. The
second class of charges was to the effect that the accused
was in favour of the Royal cause and unfavourable to
that of the Parliament, which they called mahgnity.
And with these were very commonly found a third class
of charges of immorality of various kinds. We are not
prepared to deny that there may have been some im
moral men in so large a body ; but in the case of the
great majority of the ejected clergy there is no doubt
that the former causes, orthodoxy and loyalty, .were the
real causes of their persecution ; the last-named was a
device to make them odious in the sight of men; as
Dugdale says, " Their enemies put this charge upon
them, as the ancient pagans put skins of wild beasts
upon the holy martyrs, to make the dogs worry them."
The accusation of two or three of the most disreputable
characters in a parish, or even of one person, was enough
to put a clergyman on his trial before one of the com
mittees. The accusation was not required to be proved
on oath, the committees not administering an oath in
any instance. The accused had nothing like a fair trial,
but something much more like a drum-head court-martial.
And every orthodox and loyal clergyman who was
brought before them, however high his character for
learning, piety, diUgence in his duties, or acceptableness
to his people, was certain to be condemned. The fate
of the condemned was various. Some, to avoid ill-
treatment and imprisonment, left their hvings and fled
to places which were in the possession of the king's
friends — so long as any places still held out for the king
— and afterwards escaped abroad or to Virginia. Others,

THE SUFFERINGS OF THE CLERGY 267
less fortunate, were arrested and imprisoned. The jails
were filled, and hulks were used as places of imprison
ment. There was talk at one time of relieving the over
crowded prisons by seUing the prisoners as slaves to the
American plantations or to the Algerines. Rigby, one
of the members of Parliament, actuaUy entered into a
contract for their sale with two merchants, and twice
brought before the House of Commons a motion that
they should be sold ; and it was commonly believed that
some of the many who were imprisoned on ship-board
in the various ports were thus got rid of Many
escaped more easily; they were merely plundered in
house and barn and turned out. It was a standing
order, indeed, that the ejected clergyman should have
a fifth of his benefice for the maintenance of himself and
his family, and house-room in the parsonage. And in
a few cases we find the parson's family living in the barn
or the kitchen, while the intruder occupied the rest of
the house ; but in most cases the parson and his family
were turned out altogether, and had to seek refuge where
they could. We hear of one or two taking refuge in
the church-tower or porch. The fifth of a benefice, then
as now, however regularly paid, would hardly keep a
family from starving ; and it would seem to have been
very rarely the case that the ejected clergy could recover
their fifths. In two cases which Walker i gives, the poor
parson was told to go and thresh for a living. In an
other the intruder put two spinning-wheels out of the
window, and told the parson to let his daughters spin.
In another, when the wife apphed, the intruder would
not pay, because for anything he knew her husband was
dead ; and when the husband applied in person he was
refused with grave irony on the ground that he was
» Walker's 'Sufferings ofthe Clergy.'

268 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
indeed dead — in trespasses and sins. When one poor
woman pleaded that she and her children were starving,
she was told that " starving was as near a way to heaven
as any other.''
But besides these sufferings which the clergy endured
by process of law — or what passed for law — very many
of them had also to endure plunder and ill-treatment at
the hands of the mob and the Parliament soldiery, before
the legal end came. In the towns venerable clergymen
of unpopular opinions were frequently mobbed and mal
treated. It was quite a common incident for the mob
of a neighbouring town, or a troop of horse, to amuse
themselves on a Sunday by going to pull some loyal
clergyman out of his pulpit and make a riot in his church ;
or suddenly to invade a country clergyman's house,
plunder and destroy his goods, empty the feathers out
of the beds in order to fill the bed-ticks with corn out
of his tithe barn, to steal his horses to carry off the
booty, and to finish by ill-treating the parson and his
family, wounding, and in some instances inflicting death.
And for all this robbery and violence they seem to have
been unable to obtain redress. Walker gives cases in
which the magistrates refused to listen to their com
plaints. Thus were the bishops and dignitaries, masters
and fellows and scholars of colleges, clergy and school
masters of the Church of England, plundered, harassed,
dragooned, ejected, imprisoned, and persecuted to the
number of 8000 men. Perhaps the most striking and
suggestive fact Ulustrative of the extent of their subse
quent suffering in poverty and privation, is this, that
when Charles II. was restored to the throne, and the
loyal gentry to their estates, and the ejected clergy to
their livings, out of the Sooo who had been turned out,
there were only 800 to claim their own again.

THE SUFFERINGS OF THE CLERGY 269
A few examples will illustrate this general description.
The Rev. Mr. Sefton was rector of Burton-cum-Coates
in Sussex. " The chief occasion of his sufferings was by
continuing to preach up loyalty and obedience to the
king after the rebellion broke out, for which he was
threatened with imprisonment ; notwithstanding which
he boldly persisted in the discharge of his duty until
Sir John Fagg, a colonel in the rebel army, came with
a troop of horse to apprehend him ; but Mr. Sefton,
having timely notice of it, fled and absconded for al
most half a year, in a poor lodge belonging to a warren,
whither a poor boy, under pretence of carrying victuals
to the servants which worked upon a neighbouring farm,
brought him his meals. After he had lain concealed
there about five or six months, he fled to the East
Indies, from whence he lived to return before the usurp
ation ; and repairing again to his living, was, upon the
news of his being come back, sought after a second
time by a great man of those parts, who, missing of him
(notwithstanding the care and pains he had taken to
come over the hedges to his house by a back way), went
into his study and rifled it, &c. He was a very learned
and pious man, and was succeeded in the times of
confusion by an illiterate mechanical fellow." ^
"The Rev. John Phare was curate of Whimple in
Devonshire. He was turned out, together with his
patron, by a troop of horse which came to give insti
tution to the intruding successor. He was also forced
to fly for his safety. He had afterwards the impropriate
curacy of Bradninch, in that neighbourhood, where he
had likewise got a considerable school, both which he
was deprived of for refusing the Covenant, although he
had at that time seven children, no temporal estate, or
^ Walker's ' Sufferings of the Clergy,' p. 372.

270 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
any other means of subsistence ; and was forced to fly
a second time and abscond for fear of imprisonment.
After some time he retumed and lived at Bradninch, and
preached now and then where he could get a pulpit
and ten shiUings towards the support of his necessitous
family ; but his chief subsistence was in the charity of
the neighbouring gentry. His eldest son (from whom
I have this account) is now living in Exeter, and
hath assured me that himself, being the best able of all
the children, used to go with a bag at his back and beg
for the family — receiving from one a loaf, from another
a cheese, &c., which he saith he continued to do until
he and his brother were bound apprentices to the em
ploy of a taylor, in which he is now very poor. He
adds that he and his brothers were always very glad
when their father could carry them to any gentleman's
house, that they might fill their bellies. His immediate
successor at Bradninch was one Lee, an Independent,
who treated him with all imaginable spight and malice,"
of which some examples are given. " Mr. Phare was a
good scholar and a man of good life. I had almost
forgot to mention that his house was once plundered,
and that he outlived the usurpation." ^
The Rev. John Tarleton was vicar of Ilminster in
Somersetshire. " He was turned out of doors with his
wife and four children, one of which was at that time
sick ; and [the sick child] was by the charity of an inn
keeper, together with another of them, taken in and
lodged that night, but the rest of the family lay in the
shambles. ... At the same time Mr. Tarleton's books
and all his goods were plundered, most of which were
possest by Mr. Timothy Batt, the intruder, who had not
the conscience to pay for them, although he forgot not
^ Walker's 'Sufferings ofthe Clergy,' p. 420.

THE SUFFERINGS OF THE CLERGY 27 1
to carry them away with him when he removed from
Ilminster. Mr. Tarleton and his family being thus
turned out of doors and forced to be on the streets, as
is before said, because most of the neighbours were not
only afraid to take them into their houses, but would
not venture so much as to relieve them, lest their own
famihes should be used in the same manner." ^
The Rev. Thomas Tyllot, rector of Deepden, Suffolk,
"was shut up in a close dungeon with several other
clergymen, where they were most barbarously treated,
having nothing to lie on in the midst of winter, and
just enough allowed them to preserve them alive. He
was detained in prison nine months. Who they were
or how many that succeeded to his livings, I know not ;
but this is certain, that two of them who had Deepden
(if I mistake not) successively could not write either
sense or English, as the parish register at this day
testifieth." 2
The allowance which was made to them for their sub
sistence in prison was a penny a day, as we learn from
the story of the Rev. James Buck, B.D., vicar of Strad
brook, Suffolk. " About the beginning of the rebeUion,
when he had been vicar here upwards of twenty years,
he was seized and carry'd to Ipswich jayl, in which
durance "he was for a time allowed part of the proceeds
of his vicaridge ; but in a while he had news brought him
that he was no longer to expect anything from Strad
brook, whereupon he acquainted the master of the prison
that he must live upon the allowance of the country, for
he had nothing wherewith to subsist. This the jailor
told him could never be, for the utmost allowance was
but a penny per diem for bread, and water to drink. As
this was the condition God's providence had reduced
> Walker's 'Sufferings ofthe Clergy,' p. 381. " Ibid., p. 383.

2,7'2 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
him to, he resolved to submit to it ; and did for two
months together live on bread and water." i
The Rev. Richard Sterne, then rector of Yeovilton in
Somersetshire, and afterwards Archbishop of York, gives
an account of his own imprisonment, in a letter to a
friend who had offered to lend him money for his need.
" This is now the fourth (? fifteenth) month of my im
prisonment : nineteen weeks in the Tower, thirty weeks
in the Lord Petre's house, ten days in the ships, and
seven weeks here in Ely House. The very dry fees and
rents of these several prisons have amounted to ;^ioo,
besides diet and all other charges, which have been
various and expensive, as in prisons is usual. . . . They
have seized upon all my means which they can lay their
hands on .... so that if my friend's love had not made
my credit better than it deserves to be and supplied my
occasions, I should have kept me a hungry and cold
house both here and at home. And all this whUe I
have never been so much as spoken withal, or called
either to prove or to receive an account why I am here.
Nor is anything laid to my charge (not so much as the
general crime of being a malignant) ; no, not in the
warrant of my commitment. What hath been wanting
in human justice hath been (I praise God !) supplied by
Divine mercy. Health of body, and patience, and cheer
fulness of mind I have not wanted ; no, not on shipboard,
where we lay (the first night) without anything under or
over us but the bare decks and the clothes on our backs ;
and after we had some of us got beds were not able (when
it rain'd) to be dry on them, and when it was fair weather
were sweltered with heat and stifled with our own breaths,
there being of us in that one small Ipswich coal-ship
(so low buUt, too, that we could not stand upright in it)
'Walker's 'Sufferings ofthe Clergy,' p. 210.

THE SUFFERINGS OF THE CLERGY 273

within one or two of threescore, whereof six were knights
and eight doctors in divinity, and divers gentlemen of
very good worth, that would have been sorry to have
seen their servants (nay, their dogs) no better accom
modated. Yet among all that company I do not re
member that I saw one sad or dejected countenance all
the while; so strong is God when we are weakest." ^
In the account of the Rev. Richard PoweU, of Spaxton
Rectory, Somersetshire, we are told that "at the same
time the Parliament army possessed Taunton, and when
this clergyman repaired to his own house, he was forced
to place people to watch whether any of the Parliament
army was coming, who had often searched his house,
and thrust their swords through his beds, to find him.
When Bridgwater was delivered up to the Parliament, all
those clergymen that would not take the Covenant were
driven away on foot to Portsmouth, and amongst them
was this Mr. Powell ; and there they were put on board
a ship to be carried to London."
Here is one example out of many of the violence
which the clergy had to suffer at the hands of the mob,
whose passions had been roused by those in higher
places. The Rev. Gabriel Honifield, B.D., vicar of
Ardley, near Colchester, " was forced to resign his living
in 1642 by the barbarous usage and treatment which he
met with. He lived at that time in Colchester, the mob
of which place in one of their grand rounds rifled his
house of all its furniture, took away his bonds, biUs, and
evidences, and left not a shelf behind them, or a peg to
hang a hat on. Upon this the old gentleman goes to the
mayor and makes his complaint ; but instead of finding
any redress, one of the aldermen then present told him
that he wondered he would offer to come abroad, being
1 Walker's ' Sufferings of the Clergy,' p. 370. T

2 74 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
a man so much hated ; and so rated him away. In his
return he was followed through the streets with shouts
and hootings, and, what is much worse, with dirt and
stones ; so little did either the hoary head and venerable
age of this grave person, then seventy years old, or the
privilege of his sacred function, afford him protection
from the enraged multitude. In this manner he passed
on some part of the way, tUl at length a kinsman of his
ventured to open his doors and give him shelter ; upon
which the rabble threatened to pull down the house, and
would no question have been as good as their word, had
not the good old gentleman, to save his kinsman's family,
exposed himself a second time to their fury, and suffered
them to pursue him again with their clamour through
the streets, which they did with such outrages and insults
that he was at length forced to take the common jayl for
his sanctuary." ^
Assaults upon the clergy while ministering in church
were quite common. Here are two or three taken
from only one page ^ of the authority we have followed
throughout this chapter. The Rev. Mr. Wild "was
curate of St. Michael's, Cornhill, in London; assaulted
and beaten in the church, and turned out." The Rev.
Mr. Weyborough " was minister of Stoke in Worcester
shire, and had hke to have been murdered by one of
the Parliament officers, who beset the church with a
body of horse, came himself into it, and fired his pistol
at Mr. Weyborough as he was reading the service."
"The Rev. Oliver Whitby was curate to Dr. King, the
suffering Bishop of Chichester, at the rich living of
Petworth, and being a loyalist was often in danger of
his life by the fanaticks, one of which shot at him with
a pistol while he was preaching in Petworth pulpit,
' Walker's 'Sufferings ofthe Clergy,' p. 264. " Ibid., p. 424.

THE SUFFERINGS OF THE CLERGY 275
but missed him; upon which, to avoid further danger,
he escaped to a poor house nigh Petworth, and lived
there six months privately ; but being discovered by the
rebels, he was forced to take his lodging for several days
in a hollow tree, which the old woman had showed
him, and there fed by her a long time on a pretence
of her going to gather wood. He lived in great want
till the Restoration, and was then preferred in Chichester
Church." In the above extracts out of a folio book of 436 pages
we have not taken the worst examples of persecution we
could find, but such as would give a fair impression of
what the loyal and orthodox clergy generally had, with
their families, to suffer at the hands of their Presbyterian
and Independent persecutors. It would have been easy
to make a selection of examples which would have shown
that this volume of the Book of Martyrs is not without
its horrid streaks and traces of fire and blood. For
example : The Rev. Alexander Randall, " coming home
in the night, in the winter time, a little before the king's
murther, the house was beset by the rebel soldiers, as
soon almost as he was enter'd ; and the maid-servant
opened the back-door while he was escaping out of the
fore-door, and the soldiers entering shot him in the dark-
light, and he fell dead over the threshold of the fore-
door ; and then they drew him in and threw him before
his wife, saying to her, ' There is the old rogue, and thou
shalt be served the same if thou dost not give us the
keys; ' and so carried away all hnen and plate and all that
was valuable ; and the wench that opened the door fled,
and was never seen there more, and was suspected there
fore to have betrayed her master. These are the words
of his own niece." ^
1 Walker's 'Sufferings ofthe Clergy,' p. 422.

276 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
Again, in the account of the Rev. Roger Clark, rector
of Todoer in Dorsetshire, we read that a troop of horse
surrounded the house at midnight to take his son, who,
however, escaped out of the window and got away.
"Then the doors being opened, they took the said
Roger Clark the father, and bound him neck and heels,
at the age of seventy, tUl the blood came forth of
his eyes, and carried him immediately afterwards to
Sturminster-Newton Castle in Dorset; and not confessing
anything of his son's design, they burnt his fingers with
matches, of which torture he was about half a year of
recovering." *
It wUl be seen in the next chapter in what manner
the Church revenged herself on her persecutors when
ut length she was restored to power.
1 Walker's 'Sufferings ofthe Clergy,' p. 414,

277

CHAPTER XXIX
THE RESTORATION
The political liberty for the sake of which some had
sternly shed the blood of kings, had utterly fled. The
Parliamentarians had succumbed to the Republicans,
and the Republicans had succumbed to the Man of the
Sword — it is the well-known order of pohtical change —
and Cromwell for ten years had ruled England despotic
ally, supported by the army. In these days the mists
of personal passion have dispersed and cleared away,
and we can see clearly and judge calmly of the men
and the times. CromweU was a man of great genius ;
he ruled England firmly, and made her respected abroad."
But, though the people dared not resist, they groaned
under his iron despotism. The majority of the nobles
and gentry, who were cavaliers and Churchmen, had
been despoiled by sequestration and fine, and were
forbidden the exercise of their religion, and cursed in
their hearts the tyranny against which they dared not
raise their voices. The few nobles and gentry who were
Parhamentarians and Presbyterians, hated and feared
only a few degrees less this successful soldier, who in the
hour of their triumph had robbed them of its fruits,
had literally turned their Parliament out of doors with
contempt, and filled the pulpits of their parishes with
fanatical soldiers, mechanics, Muggletonians, Anabaptists,
and Fifth Monarchy men. The majority of the people
were humiliated by enforced submission to a govern

278 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
ment towards which they felt no loyalty ; shocked at the
religious confusion and wild fanaticism; and disgusted
with the artificial severity of manners which prevailed.
In short, the people had been made the subject of various
interesting experiments in government and religion, and
the proof of the failure of them all was that the whole
people were longing for a return to the ancient monarchy
and the ancient Church. Neither of these had been
perfect, but they were better a thousand times over
than the Parliament and Presbytery, or than Cromwell
and the Independents.
When Cromwell died, the land held its breath in
suspense. His son Richard Cromwell was allowed to
succeed quietly. But some of the ambitious comrades
of the Usurper began to agitate. The country seemed
on the eve of a series of revolutions in which the armies
would dispose of the prize of absolute power, for which
ambitious generals would intrigue and bribe and fight.
Monk's patriotism saved the nation. The favourite
general of the army of the north, he was himself one
of the likeliest candidates for power. He marched
southward and entered London without giving any clue
to his intentions. He studied the disposition of the
people, who were almost as cautious and silent as
himself He invited the surviving members of the
old Long Parliament, which had never been legaUy
dissolved, to reassemble. He waited until a few sittings
enabled him to conclude that the Parliament shared
the feelings of the nation. Then on May i, 1660, he
caused the President of the Council to inform them
that one Sir John Granville, a servant of the king's, had
been sent over by his Majesty and waited at the door
with a letter to the Commons. The news was received
with loud acclamations. Sir John Granville was called

THE RESTORATION 279
in. The letter, accompanied by a declaration, was
greedily read. Without a moment's delay, without a
contradictory vote, a committee was appointed to prepare
an answer ; and to spread the same satisfaction through
out the kingdom, it was ordered that the letter and
declaration should immediately be pubhshed. The
people, long kept in a state of intense anxiety, burst
out into the wildest manifestations of joy at the prospect
of the Restoration. Traditions remain of some who
died of emotion when informed of the happy tidings.
Not a voice was raised against it.
Richard Cromwell, a quiet, unambitious man, retired
cheerfully into private life ; the discontented soldiery and
fanatics in London were overawed by Monk's troops.
The navy did not wait for the decision of Parhament to
declare in favour of the king. The more prudent, who
would have taken the opportunity to make conditions
with the monarchy, were not listened to. On the Sth
of May, the two Houses attended while Charles II. was
proclaimed in Palace Yard, at WhitehaU, and at Temple
Bar. The king disembarked at Dover on the 29th of
May, and made his progress to London, through a lane
of rejoicing people, and re-entered Whitehall ; while all
over the country the church bells rang, fountains ran
wine, bonfires blazed, and the people shouted, with
the pent-up loyalty of a dozen years, "God save the
King ! "
The Presbyterians had sent a deputation of divines to
Breda, to try to obtain from the king his support of
their views. The king received them kindly, said that
he had no intention to impose hard conditions and to
embarrass consciences ; but that the Parliament was the
best judge what indulgence and toleration was necessary
to the repose of the kingdom. When they pressed him

2 So TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY

to set the example of not having the surplice or the
Common Prayer used in his own chapel, he replied with
some spirit that he had all along retained the service
and ritual of the Church of England in his exUe ; that
though he was wilhng for the present to connive at
disorder and tolerate a failure of solemnity and decorum
in rehgious worship, yet he would never abet any such
irregularity in his own practice, nor discountenance the
ancient and laudable customs of the Church in which
he was bred.
When the king came to his own again, the dis
possessed nobles resumed their estates as a matter of
course, and the survivors of the clergy returned to their
livings. Nine bishops had survived to be restored ; but
out of about 9500 parishes there were only about 800
claimants for their old benefices. The rest of the
occupants of the livings were left unmolested until some
settlement of ecclesiastical affairs should be arrived at.
In very many places the Common Prayer was at once
resumed, in some the Directory still continued to be
used. In pursuance of the king's promises a conference was
held at the Savoy in 1661 between some of the bishops
on one side and some of the leading Nonconformists
on the other, in the hope of making such modifications
in the government and ritual of the Church as might
lead to the comprehension of the great body of the
Nonconformists. The result was not satisfactory. No
concessions which the Church party were prepared to
make would really have satisfied the extreme Noncon
formists, and it was not desirable to make alterations
which would have been offensive to Churchmen with
out any hope of conciliating opponents. Some of the
suggestions made by the Nonconformist divines were

THE RESTORATION

adopted, and the opportunity was taken to introduce
some other improvements; they were numerous, but
not of sufficient importance to be detailed in such a
sketch as this. It is enough to say here that the Epistles
and Gospels were ordered to be read out of the Author
ized Version, but the Psalms were left in Coverdale's
version. The Sentences, Exhortation, and Confession
were prefixed to the Evening Prayer; and the Prayer
for Parliament, for all sorts and conditions of men, the
General Thanksgiving, and other occasional prayers and
special collects, were added. A few alterations must be
noticed as indicating a distinct reaction in the mind of
the Church from the standard of the Second Prayer
Book of Edward VI. towards that of the first book ; e. g.
in the Office for Baptism, the words " Sanctify this water
to the mystical washing away of sin," were inserted ; in
the Prayer for the Church Militant mention was intro
duced of the departed (" We also bless Thy holy Name
for all Thy servants departed this life in Thy faith and
fear "). The Office for Adult Baptism was inserted in
view of the multitudes of people who had grown up
unbaptized. These alterations, framed by a royal com
mission, were amended and adopted by Convocation,
and the Book of Common Prayer, so modified, was
included in an Act of Uniformity, which was to come
into force on St. Bartholomew's Day, 1662. The
portions of the statute which pressed hard upon the
nonconforming holders of livings were those which
required episcopal ordination, subscription to the Thirty-
nine Articles, and the use of the Prayer Book.
It has been the fashion in modern times to accuse
the Church of persecution in the ejectment of the non
conforming ministers who dechned to accept this settle
ment, and to speak of them as martyrs for conscience'

282 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
sake. We desire to speak with all respect of men who
abandoned an honourable station and a certain livelihood
in obedience to conscientious scruples, however mis
taken. But we cannot admit that on the part of the
Church there was any harshness in the measure, or in
the way in which it was carried out. When the Church
was restored to power, she did not revenge herself on
those from whom she had suffered the persecution we
have sketched in the previous chapter, by at once
turning out the Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists,
and sectarians of all kinds, who had been intruded into
her parishes, colleges, and schools. She left them un
disturbed in the enjoyment of her benefices, except in
the few cases where the old and rightful incumbent
came back to claim his own again. She had patience
with them for more than two years, in the hope of
winning them. As a matter of fact, the reaction which
had come over the mind of the nation had affected this
section of the nation also, and the great majority gladly
accepted the olive branch which the Church held out
to them, conformed to the doctrine and discipline and
liturgy of the ancient Reformed Church of England,
and retained their benefices. It would have been
strange indeed if the whole body of Presbyterian, Inde
pendent, and Anabaptist preachers had been converted
to Churchmanshlp. It was impossible for the Church
to give them authority to minister at her altars and
teach her people, while they refused to accept her
Prayer Book, and would certainly teach what the Church
of all ages had held to be false doctrine. Calamy, the
historian of these Nonconformist ministers, says there
were 2000 who refused to conform, and who, conse
quently, had to retire from the benefices they had so
long usurped. He only, however, gives a list of Soo

THE RESTORATION 283

names. And we may hope that none of them, whether
800 or 2000, suffered as did the Sooo ejected clergy
of the Church of England, for they were not forbidden,
as these had been, to act as private chaplains and
tutors, and, in fact, many of them were so provided
for. The hardships of which the ejected ministers might
more justiy complain began after their ejection, when
they were forbidden to form congregations of Noncon
formists and to act as their ministers. These prohibitions
were not the work of the king or of the clergy. The
Parhament consisted entirely of Royalists, who, in the
rebound from their long oppression, were more royalist
than the king, and more orthodox than the clergy. The
king honestly tried to fulfil the hopes he had led the
Nonconformists to entertain of toleration. It was Parlia
ment which passed the Five Mile Act in 1665, and the
Conventicle Act in 1670, and the Test Act in 1673,
By the first, any nonconforming minister was forbidden
to come within five miles of any borough town, or any
place where he had recently exercised his ministry ; this
was intended to prevent his keeping up a rival interest
in the parish in which he had served, or getting together
a schismatical flock among the disaffected in the towns.
The second Act forbade' schismatical meetings for
Divine worship; a family might meet and worship as
they pleased, but if there were four strangers present
besides the family, it was held to be a conventicle, and
was an illegal meeting. The third Act directed that no
one could hold any public office, civU or mUitary, unless
he took the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and
were a member of the Established Church, which was
to be evidenced by his receiving the sacrament accord
ing to the usage of the Church of England at some

284 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
parish church on some Lord's day, and further signing
a declaration against transubstantiation.
The king, with his easy indifference to all these
ecclesiastical questions, and his shrewd good sense,
recognized the policy of tolerating all peaceful citizens ;
a secret leaning towards Rome perhaps quickened his
desire to afford, by a general toleration, some relaxation
of the persecution to which the Romanists were sub
jected from all sides. At the end of 1662, soon after
the ejection of the nonconforming ministers, he had
thrown out a suggestion that if the Dissenters would
demean themselves peaceably and modestly, he could
heartily wish he had a power of indulgence to use upon
occasion ; but the House of Commons petitioned the
king that no indulgence be granted to Dissenters from
the Act of Uniformity. Ten years later, however, on
the breaking out of the war with Holland, he took upon
himself to suspend all penal laws against all kinds of
nonconformists and recusants. But at the beginning of
the next session Parliament again firmly remonstrated,
and the king gave way and recalled the indulgence.

28s

CHAPTER XXX
THE REVOLUTION
James II. was sincerely and strongly attached to the
Popish persuasion, to which he had perverted, and made
no secret of his resolve to do something for it. He
asserted that he never aimed at doing more than ob
taining toleration and equality of civU privileges for his
co-religionists, but the country very generally believed
that his design was to bring his kingdoms back to the
Roman obedience.
The king could not in those days do as Mary had
done. Then, the Reformation was still unsettled ; the
distinction between the two religious parties was not so
great ; Parliament then was obsequious to the royal wUl.
Circumstances were very different in James' time. The
civil war had made Parliament conscious of its power,
and, however loyally disposed, still it shared the popular
feelings. The fires of Smithfield, the Spanish Armada,
the Gunpowder Plot, the persecutions of the Protestants
in Germany, Italy, France, and Spain, had produced in
the minds of Englishmen an intense hatred and fear
of Romanism. James therefore had to proceed in a
diff'erent way in his design to restore his own religion to
supremacy in England ; to proceed gradually and in form
of law; to secure toleration first, and then proceed to
ascendancy. This he proposed to accomplish by means
of the dispensing power.
It was an undoubted part of the ancient royal pre-

286 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
rogative that the king might suspend the action of a law
in exceptional cases. But this dispensing power had
quite recently been defined and limited. Charles II. , as
we have seen in the last chapter, had issued a Declaration
of Indulgence in favour of Nonconformists, but had
withdrawn it on the remonstrance of Parliament. Again,
in March, 1672, he had issued a second Declaration of
Indulgence, in which he suspended all the penal laws
against the Romish recusants arid Protestant Noncon
formists, granting to the Protestant Dissenters the public
exercise of their religion, to the Romanists the exercise
of it in private houses. But as soon as Parliament met
in the spring of 1673 it attacked the Indulgence, and the
king was induced to yield. Sitting on his throne in the
presence of Parliament, he sent for the Declaration, and
with his own hands broke the seals and declared that it
should never be drawn into a precedent.
James, however, resolved to make use of this dis
pensing power, and to support it by a standing army.
Monmouth's rebellion had necessitated the raising of a
considerable number of troops; the king had, notwith
standing the Test Act, given commissions to a consider
able number of Roman Cathohcs. When Parliament
assembled in November, 16S5, the king plainly announced
that he proposed to maintain the army at its full strength,
on the ground that the mihtia had proved that they
could not be trusted to protect the country from rebellion;
and he declared that, having availed himself of the good
service of the Roman Catholic officers, he could not
consent now to dismiss them. The House of Commons,
in reply to the address, remonstrated against the dispens
ing power ; and in the House of Lords, Compton, Bishop
of London, in the name of his brethren, moved that a
day should be appointed for taking the address into

THE REVOLUTION 287

consideration, with a view to a similar remonstrance;
whereupon the king prorogued Parhament. Seeing the
temper of Parliament, the king resolved to make the
law-courts the engine of his design. Though, after the
recent retractation of his Indulgence by Charles IL,
the king might not suspend a law altogether, it was not
clear whether he might not on special grounds grant
exemptions to individuals by name. Before trying this
question in the courts, he took care to pack the judges.
Four judges who were opposed to the legality of the
dispensing power, and the Attorney-General, who refused
to defend it, were dismissed, and others put in their
places. Then a collusive suit was brought before the
King's Bench against one of the Roman Cathohc officers
to whom James had given a commission, and the judges
declared in favour of the king.
He could thus legally officer his army— the largest
standing army which any King of England had ever
maintained — with officers of his own religion. Within a
month he appointed four Roman Catholic Peers of the
CouncU. But the extreme exercise of the power was
reached when he gave Roman Catholics dispensations
for holding ecclesiastical benefices. A clergyman who
held two livings seceded to Rome, and the king gave
him a dispensation to permit him to retain the emolu
ments of his benefices notwithstanding. The Master
of University College, Oxford, seceded, together with
some of the fellows and undergraduates, and turned
two sets of college rooms into an oratory, in which they
heard Mass daily; the king gave them a dispensation
StiU to hold their positions in the coUege. So far, men
who obtained emoluments in the Church while Church
men, had been enabled to keep them when they became
Romanists. In a short time the king went a step farther.

288 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
and gave Church preferment to a Roman Catholic, and
it was one of the highest preferments in his gift. The
deanery of Christ Church, Oxford, fell vacant. The
dean was at once head of the most famous college in
England, and head of the cathedral chapter of the
diocese. The king appointed a Roman Catholic to this
important position, and in a short time Mass was cele
brated within the walls of Christ Church also. Three
sees had lately become vacant — York, Oxford, and
Chester. The king thought the time was hardly come
for nominating Romanists to the episcopate, but he put
into Oxford and Chester men of whom it was believed
that when the time did come they would make little
difficulty of embracing the king's faith. York was kept
vacant, and it was believed that the king intended shortly
to nominate Father Petre, his own Jesuit confessor, to
this important position.
But besides this design of putting Roman Cathohcs
into ecclesiastical offices, to which the king could nomi
nate as patron, James also designed to use the royal
supremacy over the Church for the purpose of subverting
the reformed doctrines. The Long Parhament, indeed,
among its first reforms, had abolished the High Court
of Commission, and the first Parliament after the Re
storation, while reviving all the other ecclesiastical courts,
had declared this obnoxious court to be completely ab
rogated ; but James determined to have it reconstituted.
Meantime he assumed the power which his predecessor
had exercised in times when public passions ran high,
of directing the clergy to abstain from preaching on
points of doctrine under controversy. This was to stop
the clergy from preaching against the errors of Romanism,
and the clergy generally disregarded the order. The
king created an Ecclesiastical Commission, of which the

THE REVOLUTION 289

infamous Jeffries, the Chancellor, was appointed chief;
and its first act was to suspend Compton, Bishop of
London, for having declined to suspend Sharpe, Dean
of Norwich, and Vicar of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, for
having preached a controversial sermon. The clergy
saw themselves, from highest to lowest, at the king's
mercy. Meantime the popular discontent had been
rapidly increasing. Roman Catholic chapels had sprung
up all over the country. In London convents were
established, and the people saw once more the frock
and cowl of the friar in the streets. Riots occurred.
The king formed a camp of 13,000 troops at Hounslow
to overawe London. There was great discontent through
out the country ; but the people shrank from anything
like an approach to another civil war.
The king continued his course. He ordered the
Senate of Cambridge University to admit a Benedictine
monk as an M.A. They refused, were summoned before
the High Commission, and the Vice-Chancellor was de
prived of his mastership. He required the Fellows of
Magdalen College, Oxford, to elect a president contrary
to their statutes. They refused to violate their oaths ;
were expelled, and declared incapable of holding any
benefice. In a few months the intruded president died,
and the king appointed a Roman Vicar Apostolic as
president, and a set of Roman Catholic fellows, and the
Roman service was performed in chapel, and the college
turned into a Romish seminary.
The king, however, found that he could not effect
all his purpose without a parliament devoted to his wiU,
and the most violent measures were taken to pack such
a parhament. Lords-Lieutenant were dismissed by the
score, and men who would influence the electors put in
their places. Returning oflficers who would take advan-

290 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
tage of any excuse for returning the court candidates
were appointed. The charters of boroughs were with
drawn, and the corporations of many of the boroughs
were changed, in order to secure constituencies favour
able to the court.
Government employes, from the highest to the lowest
were questioned, and all who would not promise to sup
port the king's measures dismissed. The whole country
was put into a state of extreme agitation. While these
preparations for a general election were proceeding, the
king issued (April, 1688) a second Declaration of In
dulgence, and on the 4th of May he made an order in
Council that the Declaration should be read on two
successive Sundays at the time of Divine service by the
officiating ministers of all the churches and chapels in
the kingdom. In London the reading was to take place
on the 20th and 27th of May, in other parts of England
a fortnight later. This was a cruel affront to the whole
body of the clergy ; to comply was to make themselves
the agents of the overthrow of the Reformation, to refuse
compliance was to put themselves at the mercy of the
Court of High Commission. The bishops who happened
to be in London met to consider their conduct, and
resolved to refuse. They presented a petition to the
king, respectfully stating that Parhament had, both in
the late and present reigns, declared that the sovereign
was not constitutionally competent to dispense with
statutes in matters ecclesiastical, that the Declaration
was therefore illegal, and that they could not in
prudence, honour, or conscience be parties to the
solemn publication of an illegal declaration in the
house of God, and during the time of Divine service.
Sunday came, and in only four of the parish churches
of London was the Declaration read, and in those the

THE REVOLUTION 29 1

congregations left the church as soon as the reading
began. The seven bishops who had signed the petition were
summoned before the Council, and committed to the
Tower, to be tried before the King's Bench for publishing
a seditious libel. They were carried there amidst the
acclamations of thousands, who had assembled all along
their line of route to express their admiration of their
conduct. The famous trial took place on the 29th of
June, 1688. Westminster Hall and the open places
round it, and the neighbouring streets for a long distance,
were crowded with people. The trial lasted all day;
the jury were shut up for the night ; and next morning
the crowds assembled again to hear the verdict. It was
Not Guilty. Not one of the four judges had ventured
to assert the legality of the dispensing power ; the verdict
dealt a fatal blow to it. The news was conveyed over
London by the rejoicing shouts of the people. The
troops at Hounslow joined in the general acclamation.
Mounted messengers were sent off to all the great towns
of the kingdom, and there were great rejoicings at the
victory of the Church and nation against the arbitrary
power of the king.
On that very day was despatched an invitation, signed
by seven influential men, representatives of various parties
in the State, including one of the bishops, inviting the
Prince of Orange to come over and deliver the liberties
of Enghshmen and the Protestant religion from the
tyranny of the king.
James was not deterred from pursuing his course by
the strong proofs of its unpopularity. Within a fort
night after the trial of the seven bishops, the officials
of the dioceses were ordered to report to the High
Commission the names of the clergy who had omitted

292 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
to read the Declaration. The High Commission met
to receive the returns. Scarcely an official had obeyed
the order. Instead, Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, sent
in his resignation of his seat on the Commission. The
Commission began to be alarmed, and contented itself
with an order that the returns be sent in within four
months. Other symptoms of opposition appeared. The
Chancellor of the University of Oxford died, the graduates
assembled at once, and elected a successor. They were
just in time. Two hours later came the king's mandate
to them to choose the infamous Jeffries. A few weeks
later, one of the four London clergy who had read
the Declaration was rewarded with the see of Oxford.
The canons refused to attend his installation; the
university refused to give him the usual complimentary
degree of D.D. ; not a single candidate came to him
for holy orders. Soon after, a hving in the gift of
Magdalert College fell vacant; the dispossessed presi
dent and fellows met and made an appointment, and the
Bishop of Gloucester instituted their presentee without
hesitation. In October, when it was known that William of
Orange was about to enter England, the king made
concessions. The Court of High Commission was
abolished; the Bishop of London's suspension was can
celled ; steps were taken to reinstate the Fellows of
Magdalen. But it was all too late. On the 5th of
November William landed in Torbay. The nobles and
leading men in the kingdom flocked to his camp ; the
troops deserted to him by whole regiments; and the
Princess Anne abandoned her father's cause. On the
23rd of December James fled from the kingdom. On
the 6th of February the Convention declared that James's
flight was an abdication, that the throne was vacant.

THE REVOLUTION 293

and that William and Mary should be king and queen
of England.
The Bill of Rights provided that in future the sovereign
should not be a Papist, and as a test required that at
the coronation he should repeat and subscribe the
Declaration against Transubstantiation ; and also that
no person who should marry a Papist should be capable
of reigning.

294

CHAPTER XXXI
RELIGIOUS TOLERATION
It is a very common idea that the Church in those
days was specially intolerant, and that the opponents
of the Church were the champions of religious liberty.
The truth is, that at that time the principle of religious
toleration had not entered into the minds of men;
whatever religious principles a man held to be the truth,
these he beheved it to be his duty to maintain, and to
propagate by every means in his power. The reasoning
was clear, and seemed to them unanswerable. A right
faith is necessary to salvation. To permit a man to pro
pagate false doctrine was to permit him to do his best
to slay souls. It was the duty of those to whom the
guardianship of the faith was committed — the authorities
of Church and State — to restrain these spiritual criminals.
To tolerate them was to give evidence of the most
culpable religious indifference. It was held with equal
universality, as a maxim of good government, that differ
ences on religious questions ought to be restrained by
the civil power. Religious differences more than any
thing else divide the people into parties ; enter into all
other questions, political and social ; create disaffection
to the Government ; and distract and weaken the body
politic. The experience of all Europe for a century
seemed to have given such terrible proofs of this that
he would have been thought mad who doubted. AU
parties acted on these principles when in power. When

RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 295
Elizabeth came to the throne every endeavour was made
to win the Romish party to accept the Reformation.
When the Pope at length excommunicated the queen,
and they seceded, they became at once the objects of
persecution. They were liable to fine and imprison
ment for not conforming to the worship of the Church
of England. Priests, who were looked upon as the
organizers and ringleaders of disaffection and disloyalty,
were banished under pain of death. Those for whom
the moderate and conservative English Reformation
had not gone far enough were just as little permitted
to form separate congregations; nor indeed did their
action he in this direction; the majority of them did
not seek leave to secede from the Church and worship
God according to their own consciences, but they aimed
at spreading their own opinions and procuring their own
practices to be permitted within the Church.
When at length the Puritan principles did prevail in
the Church the old doctrines of the Reformation were
in turn disallowed. When Abbot was Archbishop of
Canterbury, and wielded the power of the High Com
mission Court, he was bitterly severe to all except the
Puritans ; to question the Calvinistic doctrine of absolute
decrees was looked upon as deadly heresy. Arminianism
and Popery were classed together, and were alike the
objects of popular hatred and authoritative persecution.
When the Anglo-Catholic school came into power
with Charles and Laud, it in turn used the means which
existed to its hand, and which had lately been used
against itself, for the purpose of compelling conformity.
Laud hated Puritanism as bitterly as Abbot had hated
Arminianism; he saw that a great reaction had set in
towards the true principles of the English Reformation ;
he saw that Puritanism was leagued with the new

296 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY

political spirit and threatened the constitution in Church
and State. The authorities in Church and State — ^the
King, Strafford, Laud — had come to the conclusion that
concUiation was useless, and compromise inipossible;
that they must resolutely oppose and conquer the
assailants of Church and monarchy, or Church and
monarchy would be conquered and overthrown. The
result proved that the fears of king and archbishop
were not chimerical; the opposition triumphed; the
king and both his ministers lost their heads; the
monarchy and the Church were overthrown and pro
scribed. Other religionists showed no more comprehension of
the duty of toleration than Churchmen did. The
Scottish Puritans made it a condition of their alliance
with the Enghsh rebels against King Charles that
England should adopt the Solemn League and Covenant ;
and subscription to that engagement was forthwith en
forced upon all Englishmen. The League and Covenant
pledged all its subscribers to extirpate Popery and
Prelacy, and Prelacy meant the episcopal form of Church
government, so that the League was an act of intoler
ance aimed especiaUy at the Church of England.
And when the Presbyterians obtained power through '
the success of the Parliamentary rebellion they showed
no reluctance to fulfil their engagement. They abolished
the order of bishops, and ejected all the clergy who
refused the Covenant, and made it penal to use the
Prayer Book in public, or even to use it in private
devotions,! or to speak against the Directory. They
tolerated Independents and Baptists as little as they
! As Macaulay puts it, "It was a crime for a child to read by
the bedside of a sick parent one of those beautiful collects which
had soothed the griefs of forty generations of Christians."

RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 297
did Papists and Prelatists, and the inoffensive Quakers
had a hard time under their rule. The Puritan divines
expressly disclaimed the principle of toleration, and
declared it to be a wicked dereliction of duty. Baxter,
one of their greatest writers, says : " My judgment I
have always made known ; I abhor unlimited toleration,
or any toleration at all." He also wrote a little treatise
called 'The Fair Warning; or, Twenty-five Reasons
against Toleration and Indulgence of Popery.' Edwards,
another of the chief Puritan writers, says : " Toleration !
why, it is the grand design of the devil. It is the
master-piece and the chief engine by which he keeps
up his tottering kingdom. Other evils are against some
one or two places of Holy Scripture, but this is against
them all. This is the Abaddon, the ApoUyon, the
abomination of desolation, the destroyer of all religion,
the liberty of perdition." That these opinions were not
those of one or two men, but were generally held by
their party, is confirmed by a declaration put forth at
that period by eighty-four Nonconformist ministers, in
which they say : " Toleration ! it is like putting a sword
into the hand of a madman, a cup of poison into the
hands of children ; a letting loose of madmen with fire
brands in their hands ; an appointing of a city of refuge
in men's consciences for the devil to fly to ; laying of a
stumbling-block before the blind; proclaiming liberty
to wolves to come into Christ's fold to prey upon the
lambs ; a toleration of soul-murder (the" greatest of all
murder), and for the establishing whereof damned souls
in hell would accuse men on earth."
Cromwell made a nearer approach to toleration, inas
much as he tolerated Presbyterians and Baptists, as well
as his own sect. But Churchmen were as rigorously
treated as ever under the Commonwealth ; and the last

298 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
act of persecution of the clergy of the Church of
England, which drove them out of the schools and
tutorships- in which some of them had sought a liveli
hood, was due to Cromwell. The best evidence, how
ever, of the view which the Independents took of the
principles of toleration is to be found in their declarations
and their deeds when they had established a common
wealth of their own in New England, and were able to
act without check.
In May, 1631, at the first court of election at Massa
chusetts, it was ordered that no person should be admitted
to the rights of a citizen who was not previously admitted
as a member of one of the (Independent) churches. In
1635 the celebrated Sir Harry Vane came out and was
elected governor ; but even his influence was not sufficient
to prevent Mrs. Hutchinson and an ultra-Calvinist party
from being banished from the state. Towards the end of
the same year Mr. Roger Williams, a Baptist minister,
and afterwards founder of the state of Rhode Island,
having broached and divulged divers new and dangerous
opinions, was expelled from the colony. In 1650 a code
of laws was drawn up for Connecticut. It began thus :
"Whosoever shall worship any other God but the Lord
shall be put to death." Blasphemy, adultery, sorcery,
theft, disobedience to parents, were punished with death.
Non-attendance on Divine service was punished by fine.
In July, 1 65 1, a Mr. Obadiah Holmes, a Baptist, was
"well whipt " for being a Baptist. In 1656 attention
was turned to the Quakers. It was the Congregationahst
ministers by whom the magistrates were moved against
them, and by a law of the state of Massachusetts, passed
October 14th in that year, it was enacted that any
Quaker landing on the coast should be seized and
whipped, then imprisoned with hard labour, and finally

RELIGIOUS TOLERATION

299

expelled from the colony. On one occasion three
Quaker women were stripped to the waist, amid frost and
snow, and flogged through eleven towns. By a subsequent
law every male Quaker, besides former penalties, was to
lose one ear on the first conviction, and on a second the
other ; and both males and females on the third conviction
were to have their tongues bored through with a red-hot
iron. Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, on the
recommendation of the Commissioners for the United
Colonies, adopted similar laws.^- In spite of whippings,
brandings, and cropping of ears, the banished Quakers
persisted in returning. In hope of stopping them, a law
for the capital punishment of returned Quakers was at
length enacted in Massachusetts ; and Marmaduke
Stephenson of Yorkshire, WiUiam Robinson of London,
and Mary Dyer of Newport were condemned under it.
The two men were actually executed ; the woman, after
witnessing the execution of her companions, was reprieved
on the scaffold, on condition of leaving the colony in
forty-eight hours. Impelled by "the spirit," however,
she presently returned to "the bloody town 'of Boston,"
and was taken and hanged. Four Quakers were hanged
together, a drummer preventing any of their dying words
from being heard. Captains of vessels were flogged for
bringing Quakers into port. Every Roman Catholic
priest who returned after one expulsion was put to death. ^
> Mr. Holdreth's History.
^ A modem Nonconformist historian (Vaughan, 'English
Nonconformists,' pp. 141, 146) defends this conduct on precisely the
same grounds on which the statesmen and ecclesiastics of Henry,
or Elizabeth, or Charles, would have defended similar action : " It
was natural that such onslaughts as were made upon its order by the
Quakers should be met with a determined resistance . . . Mrs.
Hutchinson's antinomian virulence and activity were such as no
Church, having any pretension to discipline, would tolerate . . .
It belongs to the magistrate to coerce such people, and to make the
coercion strong."

300 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
Even the fires of Smithfield were rekindled by Puritan
hands in the New World. Indians who had submitted
to baptism, and afterwards returned to their old belief,
were burnt as relapsed heretics.
It has been the fashion in modem times to look upon
William III. as the first sovereign who advocated prin
ciples of religious toleration, but this is unjust to the
memory of former kings. In the reign of James I.
Puritanism was encouraged, and the king endeavoured to
obtain toleration for the Romanists. Charles I. en
deavoured to obtain toleration for the Romanists. Charles
II. used his royal prerogative in two declarations of in
dulgence, giving toleration to both Nonconformists and
Romanists, allowing the former to meet in pubhc worship
and the latter to exercise their worship in private houses.
Parliament demanded the recall of these indulgences, and
prevented the permanent establishment then of rehgious
toleration. James II. desired to give toleration to all in
order to secure it for his own co-reUgionists. William,
himself inclined to Puritanism and Presbyterianlsm,
succeeded in obtaining toleration for the Dissenters,
but left the Roman Catholics under all their disabilities.
The truth is, that toleration is a political rather than
a rehgious question, and therefore it is that kings and
statesmen advocated toleration long before the religionists
of any denomination were willing to adopt it. They who
had in their foreign relations to treat with Roman
Catholic kings and Protestant states learnt that it was
possible to find a basis for conducting the affairs of life
with both one and the other. They who had to ask
toleration for Protestants abroad of their Roman Catholic
sovereigns, saw the inconsistency and inconvenience of
persecuting Roman Catholics in England. When they
had failed to exterminate dissent among their own

RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 30 1
subjects, as a cause of civU disturbance and weakness,
they sought next to secure toleration for Dissenters, in
order to minimize the civil evils of dissent, and finally
felt bound to protect them in their civil rights as loyal
and peaceable subjects.
William's first step was to secure the passing of a
Toleration Act, which for the first time gave leave to
Dissenters from the National Church openly to hold
separated religious assemblies. Next, he endeavoured to
include the Nonconformists within the Church, by induc
ing the Church to lay aside some of its peculiarities, and
the Nonconformists to re-enter it.
The Comprehension Bill, introduced with this object,
proposed to abolish subscription to the Thirty-nine
Articles, to admit men with Presbyterian ordination by
some episcopal form which should satisfy both parties, to
make the use of the surplice and the cross in baptism
and the posture at reception of the Holy Communion
optional. Many Churchmen objected to it on the ground
that while it might satisfy some Nonconformists, and
enable them to enter into the Church, it would dissatisfy
many Churchmen, and drive them out. Some of the more
extreme Nonconformists were opposed to a comprehen
sion, because, by admitting many of the most influential
of their brethren into the Church, it would leave them
selves in a small minority ; while many of the more
moderate and respectable of the Nonconformist divines
are said to have been satisfied with the Toleration Act,
which gave them full freedom, and were not very anxious
to exchange their lucrative and influential positions, as
ministers of wealthy middle-class congregations in London
and the great towns, for the chance of promotion to the
vicarages and recteries on which the clergy of the Church
were notoriously half-starved.

3<I2 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
WUliam was also desirous of a repeal of the Test Act
in order to open for Dissenters the way to public offices
and employments, and endeavoured to effect his object
by making it understood that if the legislature would
consent to repeal the Test Act, he would be wUling to
allow the clergy to retain their benefices without taking
the oath of allegiance to him. But the feeling of Church
men generally was strongly in favour of the Test Act
as necessary to the security of the National Church.
The result was that the Nonconformists remained ex
cluded from office in the State, and the Non-Jurors were
turned out of their benefices in the Church.
In the early part of the present century, however,
partly through the willingness of Churchmen to make
concessions for the sake of peace, partly through the
desire of politicians to obtain the support of a powerful
and able party, the Dissenters were relieved from all
political disabihties. The Test Act was repealed in
1S29; the Roman Catholics were "emancipated" in
1S30; the Jewish disabilities were removed in 1858;
and all civil offices were thus thrown open to all. Then
the Dissenting movement assumed the form of an assault
upon the privileges of the Church, and the same causes
led to continued concessions. In 1838 an Education
Act gave State subsidies to Elementary Schools of all
denominations ; in 1870 another Act established a system
of Board Schools from which denominational teaching
was excluded. In 1869 Dissenters were admitted to
equal rights in the Church Grammar Schools ; and Acts
of 1870 and 1892 deprived the Church of its exclusive
right to its own colleges in the Universities, and threw
their emoluments and government open to all comers.
In 1868 the compulsory payment of Church Rates
was abohshed, and in i8So a Burials Act admitted

RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 303
Dissenting ministers to perform service in the church
yards. The next forward step of Dissent is an endeavour to
plunder and disable the Church. The Irish Church was
disestablished in 1S69 ; and in 1894 Government brought
in a Bill for the disestablishment and disendowment of
the Church in Wales. If ever the Church should be
disestablished and disendowed, there are at least two
bodies of religionists whose fundamental principles must
urge them on to seek supremacy and to refuse toleration,
the Romanists and the Independents. The Church has
learnt to conform to the principles of toleration frankly,
and with a good grace. Should either the Romanists
or the political Dissenters gain the upper hand, we have
no confidence that we should experience toleration at
their hands. Rome is semper eadem ; she is as ambitious
now as in the days of Hildebrand, and as resolved to
extirpate heresy as in the days of Philip and Mary. The
Independents, again, are stUl as republican as in the
days of the Commonwealth, and as bitterly hostUe to the
Church. Mr. Miall, the leader and spokesman of the
organized movement against the Church, frankly avowed
that the mission of the Nonconformist is " to root up
the upas-tree of the Established Church, and scatter it to
the four winds of heaven " ; and the Welsh Church Bill of
1894 was conceived in the same spirit of bitter hostility.

304

CHAPTER XXXII
THE MODERN PERIOD
In the latter part of the i8th century the Church of
England had sunk into a condition of inactivity. There
were still no doubt many sincerely good people, but
the general tone was dry and foririal, without zeal or
unction. Macaulay's summary of it is — " It was an age
of spiritual indifference and lethargy. . . . The clergy
were generally charitable, kindly, moral, and well edu
cated — according to the standard of the^ age — in all but
theology. . . . The Nonconformist ministers, comfortably
established among their flocks and enjoying their modest
temporalities, shared the spiritual ease of Churchmen."
Over this general deadness there suddenly came a breath
of new life, which is known as the Evangelical Revival.
In the Church it led to the formation of the Evangelical
party, and of the Wesleyan Societies, the Connexions of
Whitfield and of Lady Huntingdon, which, beginning
within the Church, sooner or later passed over its pale.
The enthusiasm of the new movement naturally
alarmed and irritated the ignorant conservatism of the
mass of the people, and its leaders were opposed, revUed,
and ridiculed; but the movement spread, and in time
leavened the mass, and produced a sincere and earnest
revival of personal religion.
The special features of the School were the inculcation
of a very earnest faith in the Atonement, and a profound
veneration for the very letter of Holy Scripture. Warm.

THE MODERN PERIOD 305
and sometimes exciting preaching took the place of dry
theology and morahty ; and the wide and tolerant charity
of the adherents of the School led to a free religious in
tercourse with Protestant Dissenters, which had the effect
of tinging the teaching of the Evangelical School with
Calvinism ; not, however, of the harsh school of Scotland
and HoUand, but rather a gentle form of that Augustin-
ianism which, while it adores the Divine foreknowledge,
forgets human free-will.
The dangers or defects of the School lay in its tend
ency to narrowness of mind ; to the obscuration of other
parts of the Christian scheme by the special prominence
given to one (the Atonement) ; to the undue exaltation
of preaching above other Church ordinances, and the
consequent undervaluing of Creeds, Sacraments, Worship,
and indeed of the whole idea and system of the Church.
These latter tendencies caused the Evangehcals to be
nicknamed " Low " Churchmen.
The beginning of the decline of the Evangelical School
as a party marks the revival of the " High " Church
School. In the eariier half of the 19th century there
were still a few isolated clergymen who had inherited
the learning and the principles of the old High Church
School; but the revival of this party, as one of the modern
schools of thought in the Church, began in Oxford about
the year 1825. Newman, Pusey, Keble, Froude, Isaac
WUliams, Palmer, R. WUberforce were among the principal
leaders, and the common room of Oriel College the chief
scene of their consultations. The movement arose out
of a natural reaction against the defects of the Evangeli
cal system, and was a revival of the views of the eariy
1 6th century Reformers, and the Reformers of the Jaco
bean period of our history ; but its leaders did not go
back to either one period or the other for their opinions ;

3o6 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
they derived their theology from an original and pro
found study of the Holy Scriptures, and of the Fathers,
Doctors, and Historians of the Early Ages ofthe Church ;
and incidentally created a school of theologians and
Church historians of which the Church of this century
has reason to be proud.
The doctrinal revival was popularized by the famous
' Tracts for the Times,' and by Keble's ' Christian Year.'
It soon led to improvement in outward worship ; more
frequent celebrations of Holy Communion, improved
psalmody. Meanwhile, a co-ordinate movement originated
in the sister University in the favour of the study of Eccle
siology, /. e. of Church architecture, art, and antiquities
generally, which proved a valuable aid to the revival.
The repair and ornamentation of dilapidated and neg
lected churches took place in every direction.
The teaching and practices of the new school excited
great and general alarm, It was thought that they were
calculated to lead the people back to Rome. As the
" Evangehcals " in their early days had been the victims
of persecution from those whom they painfully awaked
from their slumbers, so now the "Tractarians" had to
suffer in their turn. The clergy of that school were
reviled as traitors, and treated with personal insult and
violence. Riots were systematically organized in their
churches, and the services interrupted. But the more
thoughtful began to listen and reason, and to understand
that the new school really adopted the chief truths of the
personal relation of the soul to God, which it had been
the glory of the Evangelical teaching to revive, and
supplemented that system of thought in some of the
points in which it had been defective ; and that to this
more complete system of religious teaching it added aU
that apparatus of Creeds and Sacraments, of order and

THE MODERN PERIOD 307
organization which Christ had founded in His Church,
to consolidate and preserve and propagate the faith.
One very marked result of the acceptance of this sup
plementary teaching has been the change which it has
wrought in the views and practices of the great body
of the clergy and people, even of those who clung to old
party denominations. It is probable that between the
great body of those who would be classed as belonging
to the moderate High Church School, and those who
would still claim to belong to the Evangelical School,
there is not much difference in doctrines or in the usages
of divine worship ; and there is between them a mutual
understanding and sympathy which increases day by
day, and is full of promise for the future of the Church
of England.
The dangers of the High Church School are, in the
main, the correlatives of those of the Evangelical. There
is a tendency to exaggerate the value of externals, and to
press upon reluctant people an amount of ritual which,
though helpful to those who understand it, is unedifying
to those who do not, and are consequently prejudiced
against it; to add to, or to alter, without adequate
authority that which is prescribed in the written rules of
the Church; to confuse the teaching of a school of
thought with that of the whole Church, and so to give to
opinions the force of Articles of the Creed. And the re
action from the ultra-Protestant notion that everything
belonging to the Church of Rome is detestable and
abominable, and the consequent discovery that part of
the Roman teaching and practice is Catholic and good,
has led to the error of mistaking some things purely
Roman, or rather Papal, for Catholic and primitive.^
1 Adapted, with permission, from the Dictionary of the Church
of England.

3o8 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
The rapid increase of Dissent began about the begin
ning of the present century. Its chief causes were the
rapid increase of the population, and its accumulation in
the manufacturing and mining centres ; and the hind
rances to the prompt and vigorous action of the Church
in the facts that the Convocations of the Church had
not been allowed to meet for business for a century ;
that a parish could not be subdivided and new parishes
created without the costly process of a special Act of
Parliament ; that the Church had had no experience for
300 years in the creation of new ecclesiastical organiz
ations; that, on the other hand, it was comparatively
easy to organize Dissent ; and perhaps, it must be added,
that the spirit of the new manufacturing class was ener
getic, selPreliant, ignorant of theology or of Church
history or principles, and impatient of the slowness of
the Church to sympathize with its feelings and to pro
vide for its wants.
The Church, however, soon roused itself to deal
with the task before it, and one of the most remarkable
features of the religious revival of this century is the
way in which the machinery of the Church has been.
repaired, re-adjusted, and extended, to meet the religious
needs of the people.
As early as 1 836 the Tithe Commutation Act settled
the revenues of the parochial benefices at some sacrifice
of income, but with the avoidance of a cause of friction
in the collection. At the same time a Permanent Eccle
siastical Commission was appointed to take in hand the
estates of the bishops and deans and chapters, to
modernize the management, and to make the best of the
properties; to give fixed incomes to the bishops and
other dignitaries, greatiy reducing the number of canons,
and to apply the surplus to the endowment of benefices.

THE MODERN PERIOD

3°9

A series of Church BuUding Acts from 1825 onward
facilitated the subdivision of the great towns and the
creation of new parishes, for which the surplus funds
in the hands of the Ecclesiastical Commission happily
supplied modest endowments, About 4000 new parishes
have been created in the last three-quarters of the cen
tury, fully equipped with parsonages, schools, and all
usual parochial machinery. At the same time, every
cathedral and nearly every parish church has been not
merely substantially repaired, but restored, in the majority
of cases with adequate knowledge and good taste, to
something of its original architectural beauty. For this
work parliamentary returns have revealed the fact that
from 1840 to 1894 more than fifty mUhons of pounds
were voluntarily contributed by Church people.
In the building work of the last half century, besides
the restoration of the ancient churches and the building
of over 4000 new ones, and the providing of parson
age houses on every benefice, must be noticed the
introduction of several new features : hamlet chapels
for bringing the means, of grace within easy reach of
groups of population at a distance from the parish
church ; mission chapels, with services specially adapted
to the wants of the poorer inhabitants of the crowded
towns ; parish-rooms and club-rooms to meet the social
wants of the people both in town and country parishes ;
probably about 5000 such supplementary buildings have
been added to the Church's material plant, chiefly of
late years, and their number is rapidly increasing.
By the abolition of pluralities and of non-residence,
made possible by the building of parsonage houses
wherever they were lacking, by the addition of new
incumbents, and by the employment of assistant curates
in large and populous parishes, the number of the clergy

310 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
has been probably more than doubled during the
century ; the number of clergymen, exclusive of those
describing themselves as " clergymen and school
masters," by the census of 1891 was over 23,000.
An equaUy remarkable addition to the staff" of the
Church has taken place in its highest ranks. Eight new
bishoprics (Ripon, Manchester, St. Albans, Truro, Liver
pool, Newcastle, Southwell, Wakefield), have been created
and endowed by voluntary contributions. The mediseval
expedient of suffragan bishops has been revived for supply
ing the bishops of the larger dioceses with assistance.
A very important addition to the working power of
the Church has been obtained by the organization of
women's work in the shape of Sisterhoods of Mercy.
The movement met at first with great suspicion and
opposition. It was perhaps the work of Miss Nightin
gale's nurses in the Crimean War and of the London
Sisterhoods during the cholera of 1866 which disarmed
prejudice, and led people generally to recognize the
value of highly-educated, carefully-trained, and self
sacrificing women in many departments of work. They
have revolutionized the whole idea and practice of sick-
nursing throughout the country ; they have proved that
there is no eyangelizing agency so powerful among the
lowest classes of the town populations as their gentle,
self-devoted ministries. The new agency was definitely
recognized, and regulations laid down for its guidance
by the bishops ofthe Convocation of Canterbury in 1S90.
The Church has always laboured to promote the
educatiori of the people; the education of Englishmen
from the conversion of their forefathers to the Christian
faith down to the present day has been almost exclusively
the work of the Church. In modern times the Society
for Promoting Christian Knowledge, in the reign of

THE MODERN PERIOD 3 II
William and Mary (1698), founded the Parochial Charity
Schools which stUl exist. In 1841 the S.P.C.K. organized
a branch society — the National Society — to take up its
educational work. By the time that the State set up its
Board School system in 1S70, the Church had already
expended over fifteen millions of pounds in providing
a National School in nearly every parish in the kingdom,
with accommodation for 1,365,080 scholars, with training
colleges for the supply of competent teachers.
When the School Board system was founded, with its
unsatisfactory provision of " undenominational" religious
teaching, the Church made great exertions to increase
its own schools, with such success that by 1892 it had
exactly doubled the number of its school places, at an
additional expenditure of over twenty-one miUions ;
making the total voluntary expenditure of the Church
on elementary education, from 1S40 to 1892, amount
to over thirty-six millions.
To these authentic statistics of the expenditure of
the Church on Church Building and Education may be
added the following : —
The Year Book of the Church of England gives the
voluntary contributions of the Church for twenty-five
years, i860 to 18S4, under the foUowing heads : —
£
Theological Schools  528,653
Church Building and Restorations  35,i75iO°o
Home Missions  7,426,478
Foreign Missions  10,100,000
Elementary Education  21,362,041
Literature  987,841
Church Institutes  71,660
Charitable Work in Hospitals, Reform
atories, &c  3,818,200
Clergy Charities  2,103,364
Total  81,573,237

312 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
The total income of the Church from other than
voluntary sources is returned by the Ecclesiastical
Commission as follows : —
AGGREGATE SUMMARY OF REVENUES. £
Archiepiscopal and Episcopal Sees  98,908
Cathedral and Collegiate Churches  192,460
Ecclesiastical Benefices  ,  4,213,662
Ecclesiastical Commissioners  1,247,827
Queen Anne's Bounty  '.   700
Total  5.753,557
The volumes of the Church Year Book are a store
house of information. The Handy Book of the Church
of England is a summary of it ; both are published by
the Christian Knowledge Society.

313

CHAPTER XXXIII
DISSENT
The Registrar-General's return of places licensed for
divine worship in the year 1S94 enumerates 273 diff'erent
denominations in England and Wales. It is not our
purpose even to transcribe their names ; but it is neces
sary, in a view of the turning points of the history of the
Church of England, to point out the origin of the chief
schisms which have thus gradually subdivided themselves,
and which form so conspicuous a feature in the religious
condition of the country at the present day.
We have seen that in all the revolutions through
which the Church passed, from the time of Henry VIII.
to that of Elizabeth, it was the Church as a whole which
swayed, now to this side, now to that. The Church in
cluded within it men of very different opinions. Some of
these opinions amounted to the most grievous heresies ;
and truth was sometimes accounted heresy, and men and
women and children suffered at different periods for
opposite opinions ; but so far there had been no schism,
no body of men had joined together and cut themselves
off from the Church, and set up altar against altar.
The first body of men who took this step were the
Independents, whose schism took place in the reign of
Elizabeth, about the year 1568. The cause of their
secession was rather the question of Church government
than of doctrine. At bottom it was the assertion of
the principle that the people were the legitimate source

314 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
of authority in religious matters : in opposition to the
principle held by the Church of Christ in all previous
ages all over Christendom, that the divinely established
episcopate was the source of authority.
The theory of the Church was and is, that our Lord
Jesus Christ founded a society, which in Scripture is
called the Church ; that on the day of Pentecost the
Holy Ghost came into this Church, according to Christ's
promise ; that thereafter there were added to the Church
daily by the rite of baptism such as were made disciples,
and were brought into the way of salvation ; that Christ
appointed twelve Apostles through whom He would
rule the Church, and who should minister His Word
and the sacraments of His grace.
It was held by the whole body of Christian people
through fifteen centuries that all who desired to be
saved ought to enter into this visible society by baptism,
and ought to continue in the unity and obedience of
this one universal Church. It was held that the
Apostles, acting under the inspiration of the Holy
Ghost, had ordained three orders of ministers — bishops,
priests, and deacons — in whom were continued the
authority and the powers which Christ had given to
themselves.! It was always and everywhere held that
the government of the Church, and the continuance of
the ministry of the Church by ordination, were com
mitted to the chief of these three orders, the episcopate.
The Presbyterians held the theory of the Divine
authority of the ministry. In the time of the Long
Parliament, the Assembly of Divines recognized it by a
formal vote, and nearly induced the Parliament to pass.
a vote to the same effect. But the Presbyterians held
1 Excepting the miraculous powers, which died out when the
occasion of them had passed.

DISSENT 315
that the authority resided in the presbyters, and only
acknowledged bishops as being of the same order as
'presbyters, though appointed, for the sake of discipline,
to the exclusive performance of certain functions, and to
preside over the rest.
The Independents started the diametrically opposite
principle that any number of Christian men might form
themselves into a Church, and that such Church had
the power to govern itself, to elect its own ministers,
there being no difference of order between the ministry
and the laity, and to regulate all questions of disciphne
or of doctrine without interference from without. The
first rule of the present Congregational Union of England
and Wales lays down "as the distinctive principle of
Congregational Churches, the scriptural right of every
separate Church \i. e. congregation] to maintain perfect
independence in the government and administration of
its own affairs." Or, as another exponent of its principles
says : " The distinctive principle of Congregationalism
is that a Church \i. e. a congregation] is complete in
itself, and that all questions of faith, discipline, and
membership are to be settled by its members." The
sarne principle when carried into civU politics was
republicanism, and naturally put those who held it
into an attitude of antagonism to the authorities of a
monarchical state ; and we find the sect all through its
history acting as a pohtical as weU as a religious
party. Brown, a clergyman of the Church of England, was
the founder of the sect, and he established the first
separated congregation in London about 156S. In 157 1
he began to attract pubhc attention. He was summoned
before the Ecclesiastical Commission, and bidden to
hold his peace, whereupon he left the kingdom and

3l6 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
took refuge in Holland.^ His followers continued to
meet and to agitate. This was a time of great trouble
and anxiety in England. The public mind was full of
fear of conspiracies of the Romanizing party, and of
plots against the queen's life. The Spanish Armada
was gathering its overwhelming forces together for the
conquest of the kingdom and, the subversion of its
religion and liberties. The Independents added to the
anxieties and difficulties of the queen and her ministry
by promulgating these new doctrines, which undermined
all authority in the State as well as the Church, and by
associating themselves in illegal societies, and gathering
numbers together in illegal meetings. " In the ten
years between 1583 and 1593 five Independents were
hanged, not by the Church, not for doctrinal errors,
but for what the judges determined to be seditious and
inflammatory language, dangerous to the peace of the
kingdom. The advisers of the queen after a time
became aware that these severe punishments tended to
incite commiseration with the criminals, and in the
latter part of her reign these dangerous persons were
merely banished out of the kingdom." They took
refuge in Holland, establishing congregations at Amster
dam, Rotterdam, and especially at Leyden, and published
the first Independent ' Confession of Faith ' at Amsterdam
in 1596.
It is curious to see • how soon their principles ran to
their absurdest extremes. It would sound to many
people like an unfair comment on their principles to say
that, if carried to their extreme, they would lead to
indefinite self will and. subdivision, until at length every
man became a Church by himself But this is the
* Eventually he returned to England, abandoned his errors, was
reconciled to the Church, and died as one of her ministers.

DISSENT 317
extreme at which, in a very short time, they practically
arrived. Johnson, one of their leaders in HoUand,
excommunicated his own father-in-law. Ainsworth,
another minister, excommunicated Johnson. Johnson
in return excommunicated Ainsworth. At length, one
of them, not finding any one with whom he could agree,
baptized himself, and formed a Church in himself with
a distinct name, for they gave him the name of the Se-
Baptist. In another respect, too, their principles were
speedily carried to an equally absurd extreme. From
objecting to forms of prayer, they quite logically went
on to object to forms of praise also, and resolved that
" every man may in the congregation conceive his own
matter in the act of praising, deliver it in prose or metre,
as he hsts himself, and in the same instant chant out
in what tune soever that which comes first into his own
head." 1
We have seen in previous chapters the subsequent
history of the Independents. In 1620 the "PUgrim
Fathers " sailed for the New World, and estabhshed in
New England that form of civil and religious polity
which we have had occasion to glance at.^ They who
remained behind joined in the rebellion in 1643 against
Charles I., gradually obtained power in the army, over
mastered the Presbyterian Pariiamentarians, murdered
the king, expelled the Pariiament, and enabled Ohver
Cromwell to seize the reins of power, and hold them for
ten years. In 1654 the Committee of "Tryers," con
sisting of Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists,
was appointed to examine and appoint men to hold the
benefices of the Church of England. In 1658 an Inde
pendent " Estabhshment " was attempted, but failed, as
1 Perry's f History of Church of England,' I., p. 314-
2 Page 298, &c.

3l8 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
the Presbyterian Establishment had previously done.
In 1662 the intruders into the benefices were required
either to accept the doctrines of the Church of England
and be regularly ordained, or to yield their usurped
places. During the ten years of the preponderance of
the Independents in Church and State, they had time
to show to future generations of Enghshmen how they
would carry out their principles amidst the limiting
conditions of an old country like England, as well as on
the free stage of a new world.
In the reigns of Charles II. and James II. they were
not aUowed to hold assemblies for public worship. The
" Toleration Act " of William III. gave them this liberty.
The repeal of the "Test Act" in 1828 opened to them
all civil offices.
The Roman Catholics. It is common to separate
the Roman Cathohcs from the other sects, but, from
our present point of view at least, we must include them
among the sects which separated from the Church of
Christ in this country in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
We have already in our history of the period had occa
sion to state the circumstances under which the schism
originated, and need here only note a few of the principal
dates of their subsequent history as a sect.
In the early part of Elizabeth's reign the party which
leaned towards Rome conformed to the Church of
England ; and since the Pope offered to authorize the
existing state of things in the English Church, if only
the Church would recognize his supremacy, it is clear
that there was nothing in the doctrine and disciphne
of the Church of England, beyond the question of the
supremacy, which necessitated, and therefore which
justified, the secession.
It was not untU the year 1570, the twelfth year of

DISSENT

319

Elizabeth's reign, that the Pope lost all hope of recover
ing England to his obedience, and thereupon excom
municated the queen, absolved her subjects from their
allegiance, and authorized the King of Spain to invade
the country and execute his sentence of deposition, and
restore the Papal supremacy over the Church.
It was this political view of the subject which gave its
bitterness to the quarrel. Those who recognized the
Papal authority were looked upon as disaffected and
dangerous subjects. Popish priests were looked upon
as emissaries of a foreign potentate engaged in organ
izing treasonable enterprises. There is no doubt that
such treasonable enterprises were for many years con
tinually in agitation. Therefore the Popish recusants
were persecuted, and Popish priests who defied the law
which forbade them the kingdom were executed when
caught. The Spanish Armada and Babbington's Con
spiracy in Elizabeth's reign, and the Gunpowder Plot in
James's, Charles II.'s Roman Catholic queen and her
Popish chaplains, and James II.'s attack on the Church,
kept alive the popular fear and hatred of Romanism,
which the fires of Smithfield had first burnt into the
hearts of the people — a fear and hatred which to this
day are so strong that it is easy to excite an outburst
of popular fury against anything of which the popular
ignorance can be led to believe that it tends ever so
remotely in the direction of Rome.
This feeling prevented the Roman schism from being
included in the earher acts of toleration. The Act of
WUliam excluded the Papists, and the repeal of the Test
Act still left them under their disabihties. But in 1S29
the " Catholic Emancipation Act " gave the members of
this sect the same liberty which had been conceded to
the- other sects.

320 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
The internal history of the schism is indicated by a
few dates of the principal steps in it. In 1598 the Pope
first commissioned an arch-priest to govern the English
Papists. In 1623, by an intrigue of the Jesuits, who
thus escaped from local supervision, a titular bishop of
Chalcedon was appointed, instead of the arch-priest, as
Vicar Apostolic. He had only one episcopal successor.
Under James II. the kingdom was divided into four
districts, each under an arch-priest ; and this arrange
ment continued to the middle of the present century. In
1850 what is called the " Papal Aggression" took place,
when the Pope parcelled out England into bishoprics,
and appointed a number of bishops with local titles.
These bishops, however, are not allowed to exercise the
canonical rights of diocesan bishops, and are nothing
more than Papal officials. English Romanism, isolated
from Rome and still influenced by English character
and contact with the Church of England, long retained
much of the freedom of English mediaeval religion, and
much of the mediseval English feehng of resistance to
the extreme claims of the Roman see ; but it is to be
feared that it is now much more ultramontane than at
any previous period. The acceptance of the dogma of
the Immaculate Conception in 1854, and of the decree
of the Papal Infallibility in 1S70, has immeasurably
widened the gulf between us.
The Papal sect in England does not in any respect
represent the old unreformed Church of England.
(a) Its bishops and clergy do not derive their succession
from the old lines of English bishops, but are intruders
appointed by the Bishop of Rome ; and these> bishops
do not possess the authority of the old English bishops,
but are arbitrarily limited in their functions by the power
which creates them.

DISSENT 321

{b) This body is not governed by the old Canon
Law of the English Church, but by that of the Roman
Church. {c) It does not use the old Enghsh Liturgy, but the
modern Roman Service Books.
{d) The doctrine which the Papal sect teaches is not
the doctrine of the ancient unreformed Church of Eng
land, but that doctrine plus the Creed of Pope Pius,
and the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, and the
Papal Infallibility, and other modern accretions.
(e) The raison d'Hre of the Papal sect in England is
the assertion of the Papal supremacy ; but the supremacy
which it asserts is the modern theory that the Pope is
by Divine right the absolute ruler of the Church, and
the infallible teacher of Divine truth ; which is a totally
different thing from the patriarchal authority, carefully
defined and limited, which the Church of England ad
mitted at the Conquest, and, finding it burdensome and
mischievous, threw off at the Reformation.
The Church and nation of the time of our Edwards
and Henries would have had as littie sympathy as we
ourselves have with the arrogant endeavour to subvert
the Church of England, and plant the Papal tyranny
upon its ruins.
The Anabaptists. Still taking the various schisms
in the order of time, we come next to that of the Bap
tists, as they call themselves, or, as they ought rather to
be called, the Anabaptists (because they baptize over
again), or the Antipsedobaptists (because they deny the
validity of infant baptism). The sect of this name is
first heard of in Holland, where it mixed up its religious
belief with political designs, and ran into excesses sub
versive of aU religion and aU society. Their seizure
of the city of Munster, and their conspiracy for seizing

322 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
Other cities, made them special objects of repression by
the governments of the period ; and this will account
for the severity of their treatment. Fourteen Anabaptist
refugees from Holland were put to death in the reign
of Henry VIII. ; others in the reigns of Edward VI. and
Elizabeth ; and the very last person who suffered death
in England on religious grounds was an Anabaptist named
Whiteman, in the reign of James I.
The modern sect of Baptists, however, may fairly
disclaim connexion or sympathy with these fanatics.
It began in 1633, and arose out ofa secession from the
Independents. A few members of this sect, who held
a stricter form of Calvinistic doctrine, and desired to
maintain a stricter discipline among Church members,
formed themselves into a separate body. They retained
the Independent polity, and adopted the distinctive
practice of admitting into their society, by baptizing
them, only adult members, who gave what were con
sidered to be satisfactory proofs of earnest piety. Their
reasons for re-baptizing were not only that they disap
proved of the baptism of infants, but also that they
denied the validity of baptism by affusion or aspersion.
It is not our business here to combat all the errors which
we chronicle, so that we shall abstain from reciting the
abundant evidence in favour of baptizing infants, or
the argument in favour of the sufficiency of baptism by
aspersion. The distinctive idea which lay at the root of the
Baptist sect was the desire to have a select Church,
which should consist only of truly holy men. We know
that this is a dream. Our Lord warned the Church
that there should be good and bad fish in the net, to be
separated only when the net should have been brought
to the shore of eternity, tares and wheat in the field.

DISSENT

323

which were to be let alone till the harvest. We know
that the Baptists have no- more succeeded in keeping
false brethren out of their society than earlier sects who
fell into the same unscriptural delusion. But let us take
it to heart that the absence of discipline in the Church,
and the toleration of manifold offences in it, are a great
scandal to many simple, pious minds, and perhaps one
of the most fruitful causes of religious, as distinguished
from political, dissent.
The Baptists shared the political history of their
kindred sect of Independents during the period from
their origin down to their liberation from civil disabilities
by the Test Act. Their body has shared the fate of all
other sects in continual subdivision. First it divided
into two in 1660, when some who repudiated the Calvin
istic doctrines seceded and formed themselves into a
"Connexion of General Baptists," the original body
being thenceforward distinguished as " Particular Bap
tists." In 1770 there was a further subdivision ofthe
General Baptists, the seceders styling themselves the
New Connexion of General Baptists. In 181 2 these
various divisions associated themselves into a Baptist
LTnion. The Wesleyans. The greatest and most lamentable
schism was of later date and of very different character
from the three which we have thus sketched.
In the year 1726, John Wesley, a Fellow of Lincoln
CoUege, Oxford, his brother Charles, who was of Christ
Church, Oxford, George Whitfield, of Pembroke, Hervey,
the author of the ' Meditations,' and about twelve other
earnest young men, formed among themselves one of the
little societies which were then in vogue for mutual edifi
cation in religious learning and holy living. Wesley says
of it: "In November, 1727, at which time I came to

324 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
reside at Oxford, my brother and I, and two or three
young gentlemen more, agreed to spend three, or four
evenings a week together. On Sunday evening we read
something in divinity, on other nights the Greek and
Latin classics. In the following summer we were desired
to visit the prisoners in the castle, and we agreed to visit
them twice a week. Soon after we were desired to call
upon a poor woman in the town who was sick, and in
this employment too we believed it would be worth while
to spend an hour or two in every week. Soon after we
all agreed to communicate as often as we could (which
was then once a week at Christ Church). In April,
1732, Mr. Clayton, of Brazenose CoUege, began to meet
with us. It was by his advice we began to observe the
fasts of the ancient Church every Wednesday and Friday.
This was the beginning ofthe Methodist Society."
Whitfield lived at Oxford a most austere and self-
denying hfe, spending whole days in lying prostrate on
the ground in prayer, choosing the worst food, and
wearing the meanest apparel ; keeping the fasts of the
Church, and especially Lent, with the most rigid abstin
ence, so that at the end of the forty days he had scarcely
strength to creep up-stairs. His general character for
devotion, his demeanour at church, and his visiting the
poor, had attracted the notice of Dr. Benson, Bishop of
Gloucester. He sent for him one day after the evening
service, and asked his age. He was only twenty-one.
The bishop said that although twenty-three was the
proper age, he should think it his duty to ordain him at
once, if he wished to present himself for Holy Orders.
After days of abstinence and prayer he was ordained.
He preached his first sermon in St. Mary-le-Crypt, and
with so much fervour and effect that the bishop was told
that fifteen persons had been driven mad by the sermon.

DISSENT 325

The bishop replied " that he hoped the madness would
not be forgotten before next Sunday."
Bishop Potter advised J. Wesley not to bury himself
in a rural parish, but, maintained by his fellowship, to
devote himself to the special kind of work for which he
seemed so especiaUy fitted. The same wise prelate,
when Archbishop of Canterbury, marked out for him his
line of usefulness : " Do not spend your time in contro
versy, but in attacking the strongholds of vice, and in
promoting personal holiness.'' The nature and import
ance of their work gradually developed itself: it was a
revival of spiritual earnestness in the Church of England.
There was a curious likeness between their early course
and that of the High Church revival of the present gener
ation. They took literally the doctrine and discipline
of the Church of England, rescued them from half-belief
and formalism, and put life and enthusiasm into them.
In all this early part of their work, the Wesleys and
their companions had the sympathy and encouragement
of right-minded Churchmen.
In October, 1735, John Wesley sailed as a missionary
to Georgia, where he laboured two years and hved a
very ascetic life. But he was at last driven out of the
colony, the charges against him arising chiefly out of
his endeavour to enforce Church disciphne ; he refused
to baptize except by immersion, unless the parents would
certify him, according to the rubric, that the child was
weak and could not bear it; he refused to bury a person
not baptized by a minister episcopally ordained; he
refused to admit persons who were not communicants
as sponsors; he refused communion to those whose
conduct seemed to him inconsistent. He divided the
Church services, performing Morning Prayer at 5 in the
morning, and celebrating the Holy Communion, with

326 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
sermon, as a separate service at 11. The popular
opinion of his conduct was expressed by one who said :
" The people say they are Protestants, but as for you,
they cannot tell what religion you are of They never
heard of such a religion before, and they do not know
what to make of it."
On his outward voyage to Georgia, and during his
residence there, Wesley had come into communication
with a company of Moravians, and had imbibed from
them some new doctrines and methods of conversion
which were not in accordance with the doctrines and
methods of the Church of England. Two new doctrines
which he thus took up are stiU distinctive of Wesleyan
teaching : (i) Thedoctrine that instantaneous and sensible
conversion is the general mode of the Holy Spirit's
dealing with the soul. To this conversion was given
the name of the " New Birth," the name which the New
Testament and the Church for seventeen centuries had
given to the grace of baptism. (2) The doctrine of
perfection, i. e. the doctrine that he that is " born of
God," in this sensible conversion, is at once translated
from sin to hohness.
Preaching these doctrines vehemently, and declaiming
against the more sober and scriptural teachipg of the
Church of England, Wesley began to find the pulpits
of the Church closed against him. Gibson, Bishop of
London, a mild and concihatory man, reasoned and
remonstrated with him in vain.
George Whitfield, who was at work in the west, finding
himself excluded from the pulpits, took to preaching in
the open air with great effect, and was foUowed by very
large congregations of the most ignorant classes, untU
he was inhibited from so preaching by the Chancellor
of Bristol. The question of building places to preach

DISSENT 327

in pressed upon them, and the first Wesleyan meeting
house was built in the Horse Fair at Bristol in 1739,
a.nd the Foundry House in London opened in the same
year. In 1 741, Wesley separated himself from Whitfield on
account of the Calvinism of the latter. The Arminian
Methodists continued under Wesley's guidance to account
themselves members of the Church. They frequented
the Church services and sacraments, and only met for
mutual edification at hours at which the church was
closed. The Calvinistic Methodists formed themselves
into a kind of Independent sect, known as Lady
Huntingdon's Connexion.
In 1744, a meeting was held in London by John
Wesley and six clergymen of his Connexion and four
lay preachers to consider their future course. This is
reckoned the first Conference, and from this time a
Conference was held annually.
About the year 1750, Wesley's Connexion had as
sumed much of the organization of a separate sect. The
breach between it and the Church was widening, and
the question of secession from the Church was openly
broached. In 1755, it was debated for three days in
Conference, the decision being that "whether it was
lawful or not it was not expedient to separate from the
Church," and the lay preachers " consented, for the sake
of peace, to cease to administer the sacraments."
In 1784, Wesley drew up a Deed of Declaration,
which was formally enroUed in Chancery, for the per
petuation of his Connexion. He appointed 100 preachers
as trustees of aU the property belonging to the body,
and gave to this "legal hundred" almost unlimited
power to settle by a majority aU questions which might
arise.

3 28 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
Wesley maintained to the end of his life his attitude
of loyalty to the Church of England : he opposed the
formation of his followers into a sect, and refused to
recognize the lay preachers as anything more than lay
preachers. But in this year, 1784, moved to it by the
anomalous condition of the Church in the North
American colonies, he consented to appoint two clergy
men as superintendents («. e. bishops) and two laym.en
as elders (/. e. presbyters) for the societies of his fol
lowers in America. There is no denying that the con
dition of the Church in America was unsatisfactory, with
no bishops to organize and rule, ordain and confirm.
But the sequel is a warning against applying iUegitimate
remedies to the most palpable evils ; had Wesley waited
only ten weeks longer he would have found the desired
episcopate for America supplied by the ordination of
Bishop Seabury, and would have been saved the re
sponsibility of thus usurping the power of ordination.
But in England, to the end of his life, he succeeded
in resisting the desire of his lay preachers to assume
sacerdotal functions, and of his followers to form them
selves into a Church. In the Code of Directions whi<?h
he gave to his preachers on " the rules by which they
were to walk," and which are described by the Wesleyan
Conference in 1797 as "the rules to which they con
sented when they were admitted," are the following
instructions : — " How should an Assistant be qualified
for his charge ? By loving the Church of England, and
by resolving not to separate from it. Let this be well
observed. I fear that when the Methodists leave the
Church God will leave them. Oh, use every means to
prevent this ! (i) Exhort all our people to keep close
to the Word and Sacrament. (2) Warn them all against
niceness of hearing — a prevailing evil. (3) Warn them

DISSENT

329

against despising the prayers of the Church. (4) Against
calling our society ' a church.' (5) Against calling our
preachers 'ministers,' our houses meeting-houses, call
them plain 'preaching-houses.'"
It is abundantly clear that John Wesley was in heart
loyal to the Church of England to the last. He desired
to supplement it, not to supplant it ; to form a Society
within it, not to organize a rival Church outside it. In
17S8, at the Conference he writes: "One of the most
important points considered at this Conference was that
of leaving the Church. The sum of a long conversation
was : (i) That in a course of fifty years we had neither
premeditatedly nor willingly varied from it in one article
either of doctrine or discipline.. (2) That we were not
yet conscious of varying from it in any point of doctrine.
(3) That we have in a course of years, out of neces
sity, not choice, slowly and warily varied from it in
some points of discipline, by preaching in the fields,
by extemporary prayer, by employing lay preachers, by
forming and regulating societies, and by holding yearly
conferences. But we did none of these things till we were
convinced we could no longer omit them at the peril of
our souls." In 1790, only nine months before his death,
he published in his own Arminian Magazine the foUow
ing words: — "In 1744, aU the Methodist preachers had
their first Conference. But none of them dreamed that
the being called to preach gave them any right to ad
minister sacraments. . . . Did we ever appoint you to
administer sacraments, to exercise the priestly ofiice?
Such a design never entered into our mind; it was
the farthest from our thoughts. ... So long as the
Methodists keep to this plan, they cannot separate from
the Church. And this is our peculiar glory. It is new
upon the earth. Revolve all the histories of the Church,

330 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
from the earliest ages, and you will find, whenever there
was a great work of God in any city or nation, the
subjects of that work soon said to their neighbours,
' Stand by yourselves, for we are holier than you ! ' As
soon as ever they separated themselves they retired into
the deserts, or they built religious houses ; or, at least,
formed parties into which none were admitted but such
as subscribed both to their judgment and practice. But
with the Methodists it is quite otherwise. They are not
a sect or party — they do not separate from the religious
community to which they at first belonged. They are
still members of the Church ; such they desire to live
and die. And I believe one reason why God is pleased
to continue my life so long is to confirm them in their
present purpose, not to separate from the Church.
" I wish all of you who are vulgarly called Methodists
would seriously consider what has been said. And
particularly you whom God has commissioned to call
sinners to repentance. It does by no means follow
from hence that ye are commissioned to baptize or to
administer the Lord's Supper. Ye never dreamed of
this for ten or twenty years after ye began to preach.
Ye did not then, Uke Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, seek
the priesthood also (Num. xvi. lo). Ye know that no
man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called
of God, as was Aaron (Heb. v. 4). Oh, contain your
selves within your own bounds ! Be content with
preaching the Gospel. Do the work of evangelists. Pro
claim to all the world the loving-kindness of God our
Saviour ; declare to all the kingdom of heaven is at hand:
repent ye and believe the Gospel. I earnestly advise you
abide in your place : keep your own station. ... Ye
yourselves were first called in the Church of England ;
and though you have and will have a thousand tempt-

DISSENT 331
ations to leave it and set up for yourselves, regard them
not. Be Church of England men still. Do not cast
away the peculiar glory which God hath put upon you,
and frustrate the design of Providence, the very end for
which He raised you up.''
John Wesley died in 1791. In 1793, the Conference
put forth some minutes, in which it still maintained
its principles; it said that the Wesleyan teachers are
only preachers and expounders of God's Word, and that
" the attempts that have been lately made to introduce
the ordination scheme have produced many and great evUs
in various places, and if persisted in must divide the
people, and in the end destroy the cause. We therefore
stand forward to declare our intention of abiding by and
supporting the original Methodist plan."
In 1795, however, the secession was accomplished,
and the preachers were authorized by Conference to
administer the sacraments.
The " division of the people " of which Wesley had
spoken soon began. Only two years after, in 1797, on
a question of admitting lay representatives to Conference,
a split took place, and the Methodist New Connexion
was formed. Again, in iSio, the question of open-air
preaching and revivals caused another schism, and the
Primitive Methodists broke off. In 1815 the Bible
Christians seceded. In 1S35 Dr. Warren disagreed
with Conference on a question about the theological
college, and was expelled; and he and those who
sympathized with him formed the Wesleyan Methodist
Association. And yet once more, in 1S49, another
party, dissatisfied with the action of Conference, seceded
and formed the Wesleyan Methodist Reformers. 1 _
1 For information on the doctrines and history of other Dissent
ing bodies, see Curteis's 'Bampton Lectures."

332 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
The melancholy truth forced upon us by the facts
dealt with in this chapter is the division and consequent
enfeeblement of English Christianity by Dissent. Some
try to make us believe that this very division is an
advantage, through the rivalry which it creates between
the different rehgious bodies. But the mind of Christ
is not for rivalry but for unity : " Neither pray I for
these alone (viz., the Apostles), but for them also which
shall believe on Me through their word ; that they all
may be one ; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in
Thee, that they may be one in us " (John xvu. 20, 21).
We are one in spirit, plead some, notwithstanding these
external divisions. But the Apostles, whose task it
was, under special Divine guidance, to embody the
mind of Christ in the practical organization and working
of His Church, earnestly deprecated these divisions,
and condemned t"liose who promoted them. "Be ye
all of one mind " (i Peter in. 8 ; Acts i. 14, ii. r, 46, iv.
44, V. 12 ; I Cor. i. 10, xiu. 11 ; PhU. i. 27, ii. 2, iv. 2).
" Mark them which cause divisions .... and
avoid them" (Rom. xvi. 17; i Cor. i. 10, in. 3, xi. 18;
I Tim. vi. 3).
An eloquent Nonconformist leader argues that the
different denominations are like the different corps of
an army, wearing different uniforms, and using different
weapons, but all fighting in the common cause against
the common enemy. An admirable iUustration ! The
enemy could desire nothing better than that the army
opposed to him should be divided into independent
corps, jealous of one another, under different commands,
without any attempt at unity of plan and concurrent
action. When we study the actual results of division, we see
that God's awful rebuke of sin loses its force on the

DISSENT 333
sinner's conscience when the authority of the prophet
who utters the rebuke is disputed by rival prophets.
The sceptic is inevitably encouraged in his doubts by
the fact that when he asks what to believe, English
religion rephes in i8o discordant voices. They who
have to deal with the practical details of religious work
know how they are vexed and thwarted and weakened
in every parish by our religious divisions. The citizen
who conceives some comprehensive plan for the evan
gelizing of the town in which he lives, soon finds that
the religious divisions of the town make common interest
and iinited action absolutely impossible. The states
man knows how not only the religious, but the civil,
social, educational, and moral life of the nation are
cramped and dwarfed and embittered by these religious
rivalries and animosities. Let us at least open our eyes
to facts, and recognize that these divisions are an evil.
And it is not aniong ourselves only that the evil
works. These divisions of our English Christianity
have unhappily been propagated to every country to
which our English Christianity has been carried — to
the United States, to every one of our colonies, to every
heathen country to which our missionary labours have
extended, and everywhere it hinders the cause of Christ.
It is this spectacle of the endless divisions and disorders
of our English Christianity which makes the other
ancient Churches of Christendom afraid to follow the
example of our Reformation.
Nothing probably would so greatly tend to the purifi
cation and revival of the spiritual life of Christendom,
to the reunion of the divided and distracted Churches,
to the spread of Christianity among the heathen nations
of the world, as the reunion of English Christianity.
This reunion can only take place, so far as human

334 TURNING POINTS OF ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
wisdom can foresee, by the gradual re-absorption of the
masses of the population into the body of the Church.
The Church has reformed most of the abuses which
alienated many from her in the past, and is proceeding
in the path of reform. She cannot give up the points
of doctrine and of essential organization on which the
sects formally base their separation. But, on the other
hand, there are among the Dissenting communities
thousands of individuals who are what they are not
from any well-considered conscientious objections, but
from early training or accidental preferences, or ignor
ance of what the Church really is and believes. These
might — they would if they saw all the evils Created by
division — reunite themselves to the mother Church, the
historic Church of England. Separations as numerous,
as long-standing, and far more embittered, have again
and again in the long history of the Church of Christ
thus died out.
This reunion of English Christianity is the key of the
ecclesiastical position of Christendom. The example of
England would be followed in the colonies, and countries
which are influenced by England. This would give
such strength and prestige to the Anglican communion
as would affect the whole Church of Christ. And a
revived and reunited Christendom would surely be the
precursor of the fulfilment of our Lord's declaration
that the unity of His disciples was the condition on
which the world would believe that God had sent Him :
" That they may be one in us : that the world may
believe that Thou hast sent Me" (John xvii. 21); "I
in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made
perfect in one ; and that the world may know that Thou
hast sent Me" (John xvii. 23). \R. Cay & Sons, Lid . London and Bungay.

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