resident or non-resident, Petty Canon, Vicar Choral, Choirester, Old Vicars and New, and all other titles and offices of, and belonging to any cathedral, or collegiate church, or chapel, in England and Wales, lower of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and Isles of Guernsey and Jersey, shall be, and are, by the authority aforesaid, wholly abolished and taken away.' As for the estates of the ecclesiastical corporations thus suppressed, the act vested them in trustees who were empowered to sell them. Not content with abolishing the offices, confiscating the property, and reducing the authorities and subordinate place-holders of these ecclesiastical corporations from affluence to comparative penury, the more zealous Reformers wished to pull down the cathedrals and sell their stones and bricks, as material for building. Believing that most of these magnificent churches in no degree furthered the interests of religion, and that the preservation of their structures would tend to keep superstition alive, they recommended that no time should be lost in treating them as many superb minsters, and hundreds of less superb chapels, had been dealt with at or since the dissolution of the monasteries. It was even referred to a Parliamentary Committee to decide, 'What cathedrals are fit to stand, and what to be pulled down; and how such as shall be pulled down may be applied to the payment of the public faith.' In support of this barbarous proposal for the wholesale demolition of the noblest works of Gothic architecture- —a proposal that emanated from men who cared nothing for art, but much for what they considered the vital concerns of religion-it was urged, that unless the nests were destroyed the birds would return to them.' And in the Sufferings of the Clergy,' Dr. Walker, with manifest malevolence and questionable veracity, asserts that the more violent Dissenters of Queen Anne's time used to declare that the great error of the Puritans in their hour of triumph was their neglect to destroy the cathedrals.

But, though the Puritans forbore to destroy utterly the disused churches, no steps were taken during the Commonwealth to repair the injuries which the cathedrals sustained during the Civil War, alike from the Royalist and Parliamentarian troops, or to preserve them from decay; and when the bishops regained possession of them, after the Restoration, the sacred fabrics had

fallen into a miserable condition of dirt and dilapidation. Of nearly every cathedral town, which during the war had been a centre of military operations, the chief church had been used for the purposes of the belligerents, as a fort, a magazine for ammunition, a stable for troopers' horses, or a place of drill in foul weather. Both parties in the conflict seem to have been equally ready to deal with sacred edifices thus profanely; and the neglect of years following on the violences of the war, and on the methodical despoliation effected by the Parliamentarian agents, furnished the Episcopal clergy of the Restoration period with acceptable grounds for inveighing indignantly against the manner in which the rebels had defiled holy places. Bishop Hacket's biographer, Dr. Thomas Plume, speaks with mingled pathos and horror of the way in which horses were stabled beneath the roof, and fed at the high altar of St. Paul's Cathedral.* And the same writer, giving a graphic picture of the state in which Bishop Hacket found Lichfield Cathedral at the opening of Charles the Second's actual reign, remarks, Therein before

the wars had been a most beautiful and comely cathedral church, which the bishop, at his first coming, found most desolate, and ruined almost to the ground; the roof of stone, the timber, lead, iron, glass, stalls, organs, utensils of rich value, all were embezzled; 2000 shot of great ordinance and 1500 granadoes discharged against it, which had quite battered down the spire, and most of the fabrick; so that the old man took not so much comfort in his new promotion as he found sorrow and pity in himself to see his cathedral church thus lying in the dust; so that the very next morning, after his lordship's arrival, he set his own coach-horses on work, together with other teems, to carry away the rubbish; which pile having cleared, he procured artizans of all sorts to begin the new pile, and before his death set up a compleat church again, better than ever it was before: the whole roof from one end to the other, of a vast length repaired with stone . . . This rare building was finished in eight years.'

'In those doleful days that was done in St. Paul's which Selymus threatened to St. Peter's at Rome-to stable his horses in the church and feed them at the high altar; whereupon our Doctor was very confident their reigne grew ripe apace, and not long after hapned the death of Oliver.'-PLUME's Life of Hacket.

Of the manner in which clerical historians of the Restoration period and the following century generally speak of the silence. and desolation of the cathedrals under the Commonwealth, some characteristic illustrations may be found in the Sufferings of the Clergy,' the author of which intemperate falsification of history says, "Thus were the early structures of our ancestors (distinguished among all the nations of the earth for their devotion) and the memorable monuments of their piety defaced and profaned; the patrimony of the Church solemnly set apart, and consecrated to God with such grievous execrations on those who should alienate them; and devoted to the honour of Christ and His holy religion sacrilegiously torn from the Church, and · applied to the vilest purposes of a most execrable rebellion; the daily sacrifice of morning and evening prayers throughout the several dioceses of the kingdom made to cease; the continual fountains, from which such constant supplies flowed to many thousands of the poor, stopped up.'

It is almost needless to observe that so far as this language is applicable to the Puritans who disestablished the cathedrals in the seventeenth century, it may be applied to the Reformers of an earlier time who dissolved the monasteries, and, having pulled down scores of monastic churches, converted some into dwelling-houses, whilst they left others to the piety of subsequent ages to transmute into farm-buildings; and that, far from being injured by ecclesiastical changes which attended or followed from the struggle between Charles the First and the Long Parliament, the poorer classes of the country derived more succour from clerical munificence during the Commonwealth than they had received from the same source at any time since the Reformation.

D

CHAPTER V.

SCANDALOUS AND PLUNDERED CLERGY.

URING the Civil War there was no ecclesiastical government in regular and uniform operation thoughout the country. Until the abolition of Episcopacy had been finally and authoritatively declared, the government by bishops, modified by parliamentary ordinances and controlled by parliamentary committees, was presumed to exist even in those parts of the land where no prelate had any practical power. And whilst the prelatic rule had been actually extinguished, though nominally retained, in localities where the authority of Parliament was paramount, it had also become weak or totally inoperative in quarters which continued to declare allegiance to the crown. Ecclesiastical discipline disappearing before the exigencies and demoralising influences of the war, the incumbents and inferior clergy of the loyal districts were left very much to their own devices, and were at liberty to perform as much or as little of their appointed duties as they thought fit. The majority of the cavalier clergy, so long as they retained their preferments, I doubt not, discharged their official duties as exactly and conscientiously as they had been wont to perform them before the commencement of the civil disturbances; but it is also certain that not a few of them took advantage of the license of the times to neglect their parishes, and to expend their energies on the pleasures of hilarious company and field-sports. On the other hand, in those towns and rural parishes where Parliament was supreme, the Divine service of the churches was distinguished by numerous irregularities and novelties, characteristic of the disorder and temper of the period.

Wherever the Parliament held sway fasts were rigidly observed, and public prayers were frequent. The Irish insur

rection and massacre had moved the Parliament to recommend the king to appoint a monthly fast, which the public should keep with prayerful humiliation so long as the grievous condition of the country should seem to indicate that England was an especial object of Divine displeasure; and to this reasonable and devout suggestion Charles had appointed (January 1641) that the last Wednesday of every month should be strictly observed as a national fast. On the actual commencement of the civil conflict, the Parliament ordered that this fast should be kept with increased rigour; an order which, seeming to reflect on the king's appeal to arms as though it were an additional crime against heaven, resulted in a royal order for the discontinuance of the fast, and a general inclination of the Royalists to convert the monthly fast into a monthly festival. After the Wednesday monthly fast had been for a considerable time neglected by the Royalists, and kept with a suggestive ostentation of severity by the Puritans, the king (October 5th, 1643) published the following proclamation,- When a general fast was first propounded to us in contemplation of the miseries of our kingdom in Ireland, we readily consented to it. But when we observe what ill use has been made of these public meetings, in pulpits, in prayers, and in the sermons of many seditious lecturers, to stir up and continue the rebellion raised against us within this kingdom, we thought fit to command that such a hypocritical fast, to the dishonour of God and slander of true religion, be no longer continued and countenanced by our authority; and yet we being desirous to express our own humiliation and the humiliation of our people for our own sins and the sins of the nation, are resolved to continue a monthly fast, but not on the day formerly appointed by us. But we do expressly charge and command that in all churches and chapels, &c., there be a solemn fast religiously observed on the second Friday in every month, with public prayers and preaching where it may be had, that as one man we may pour out our prayers to God, for the continuance of His gracious presence and blessing upon us, and for establishing a happy peace; for which purpose we have caused devout forms of prayer to be composed and printed, and intend to disperse them, that they may be used in all parts of our kingdom.' Whereupon there were two rival monthly fasts