Page images
PDF
EPUB

no doubt, quite true that, as we have already mentioned, he rarely attended the meetings of the Savoy Conference, or of the Convocation that followed it; but it cannot be denied that he directed all the proceedings of these assemblies, and exerted all the great power which his position gave him, and all the influence he possessed over the minds of Charles and Clarendon, in opposition to those milder and more conciliatory measures which they were evidently inclined to support, and would probably have sanctioned if they had not been goaded forward in the path of severity by the impetuous will and determination of Sheldon and his cavalier followers, who used all the influence they could exert over the king, his chancellor, the Convocation, and the legislature, in order to force them to adopt the Act of Uniformity and other persecuting measures.

To them, therefore, more than to any other persons, attaches the responsibility of having driven forth, in a manner so harsh and unfeeling, some two thousand ministers and other office-bearers-of having deprived the Church of the services of men such as Baxter, Calamy, Howe, and Owen-men who would have done honour to any communion-men whose honest scruples were at least deserving of fair consideration, and whom a little kindlier treatment, and a few slight concessions, which need not have involved any violation of principle, might have induced to conform and to retain the positions they relinquished on the 24th of August, 1662.

Many, no doubt, went out because they felt that by remaining at the posts they occupied they would subject

themselves to the imputation of being actuated by dishonourable and interested motives-imputations from which they might easily have been saved by the leaders of the Anglican party, had they desired to respect the scruples of honest and earnest men. But it was otherwise decided, and I repeat that for this decision and the consequences it entailed, Sheldon was more blameworthy than any other person. When the Bill of Uniformity was under the consideration of the Parliament, the Duke of Manchester, in a manner that did him much credit, expressed to the king a fear that the provisions of the Bill were so rigorous that many ministers would not be able to comply with them. Sheldon, who stood by and heard the remark, at once replied, "I fear they will," and the whole of his conduct was in unison with this declaration. When regret was expressed in his presence at the prospect of the loss of so large a number of able ministers, he at once stated that he was quite prepared to supply the places of those who retired with others who would be more acceptable than they had been to the congregations to which they ministered. Nor did he stand alone in his treatment of Nonconformists: there were many others who were willing and ready to countenance and support him in both Houses of Parliament. Calamy having attended, as one of the congregation, a church at which the regular minister, through some accident or mistake, did not appear, many of those who were present solicited Calamy to take the place of the absent preacher, which he, wishing the congregation not to be sent away without any service, good-humouredly consented to do,

and, mounting the pulpit, preached to the people with his usual power and earnestness. For this very venial transgression of the law he was sent to Newgate, but while under confinement in that prison he was visited by so great a number of distinguished persons and was the object of so much attention, that the news of his imprisonment at length came to the ears of the king, who, either from good nature or policy, or perhaps from a mixture of both, showed himself on this occasion, as indeed he did on many others, more tolerant and more sensible than the greater part of his advisers, and gave orders that Calamy should be at once released. The precedent was, no doubt, a dangerous one, and one that perhaps could not, with a sovereign of Charles' character, be allowed to pass without some remark. But the course the House of Commons took was probably dictated rather by insolent bigotry than by a desire to protect the Constitution of the country from royal inroads. They presented to the king an address on the subject of Calamy's release, in which they prayed him in future to allow the law to have free course. There can be no doubt that this request was prompted not so much by a feeling of jealousy of this exercise of the royal prerogative, which, under a sovereign such as Charles, would have been a very legitimate and proper feeling, but by the spirit of haughty intolerance that pervaded the cavalier Parliament, and, indeed, the nation in general, which was carried then to such an excess, that had the king and his advisers been more anxious than they really were to fulfil the expectations they had held out

at Breda to the Presbyterian delegates, it is more than doubtful whether he would have been permitted to carry out the policy of toleration to which they were then pledged.

The measures of severity which had been adopted had conspicuously failed to produce the uniformity which their authors had expected from them; but their advocates and framers, instead of having their eyes opened by their failure to the folly of the course they had hitherto pursued, and being led to endeavour to retrace their steps, were only induced to adopt measures of still greater stringency and severity. They contended that persecution had hitherto failed because it had not been carried far enough. We will not weary our readers by carrying them through the dreary annals of persecution which form the history of this period-the Conventicle Act of 1664, the Five Mile Act of 1665, or the Test and Corporation Acts of 1673-measures which, though intended for the defence and support of the Church, really belong rather to the general history of the country than to our special department of it. These and other persecuting statutes, which exhibited the triumph of the cavalier party and hastened its downfall, were intended to deprive Nonconformists through all ages of all political power, and, as far as was possible, also of all religious influence; and in virtue of these measures, good men, whose only crime consisted in their steadfast and conscientious adherence to what they believed to be the truth as it is in Jesus, were imprisoned, banished, or even put to death, solely on account of their steadfast

adherence to doctrines and practices which a short time before had been sanctioned and promoted by the law of the land, and which they still continued to believe to be true and right; while others had--some, no doubt from conviction, and some from motives of interestrenounced, and had even, in many cases, joined in persecuting those who still held fast the doctrines and practices which they themselves had repudiated.

In the extremity of their sufferings, the Presbyterians not unnaturally turned to the king. He was not by dis-. position a persecutor. He hated Presbyterianism; but he was not unkindly disposed towards the Presbyterians. His natural good sense, and the scenes he had witnessed during the period of his exile, had taught him the impolicy of alienating from the crown so huge a proportion of his subjects as they represented, as well as some of the most intelligent and industrious persons in his kingdom. Besides this, he had all along secretly cherished the design of ultimately substituting Romanism for Anglicanism through the assistance of the Presbyterians, who, he hoped, would combine with Protestant and Popish Nonconformists in demanding a general toleration for all sects and denominations of Christians.

But he was surrounded by counsellors, whose hatred of Presbyterianism was much stronger than his own, and the more so because they had once been Presbyterians themselves, and whose detestation of Romanism was far fiercer than their hatred of Presbyterianism. When the Duke of Manchester, who represented the little religious liberalism which was to be found among the courtiers,

« PreviousContinue »