Grindal had no desire to bear hardly upon them, and, though he was obliged to deal with flagrant offences against uniformity, he tried to give those who had scruples about the ceremonies as much liberty as he dared. But his power to protect them soon ceased. He refused to suppress the " prophesyings," and was confined to his house for six months and suspended from the exercise of his jurisdiction. It was not Convocation that suspended him, nor the bishops, but the Queen in Council. At the close of the six months the suspension was continued, and it was not removed till at the end of five years he humbled himself and confessed that he was most heartily sorry that her Majesty was offended with him, a matter more grievous to him than any other earthly calamity. He did not acknowledge that he had done wrong; he was sorry that he had offended the Queen-this was all that he could say. Soon after his suspension was removed he died.17 But even during his suspension he appears to have discharged some of his duties as archbishop, and his sympathy with the Puritans lessened the rigour with which their irregularities were suppressed, although in some counties the ecclesiastical laws were not only firmly but fiercely enforced. In a pamphlet published towards the close of Elizabeth's reign the writer recalls the archbishopric of Grindal with grateful delight : "In all the south parts of England there was great concord among the ministers, and they joined in great love and joy one with another, in the Lord's work. So that in the space of four or five years, as I remember, there were infinite souls brought to the knowledge of Christ . . . It was a golden time, full of godly fruit, great honour to the Gospel, great love and kind fellowship among all the ministers, preaching the faith; and the people united in the true fear of God, and cheerful reverence to her Majesty." 18 VII The extract given in the preceding paragraph directs attention to one aspect of the Puritan struggle which is too often forgotten. We judge the Puritans falsely if we imagine 17 Strype, Grindal, 343, 350-352, 403-404. 18 Josias Nichols, The Plea for the Innocent, etc. Quoted by Hanbury in Historical Memorials, i. 4. that they were contending for nothing more than the abolition of ceremonies which they regarded as superstitious, and of ecclesiastical regulations for which they could find no authority in the letter of the New Testament. They were not mere ecclesiastical antiquarians, troubled about a ritual which offended them and a polity which was destitute of the sanction of the primitive Church. They were contending for a great moral and spiritual reform. The Puritan struggle was a struggle for righteousness. In their days the English Church failed grossly-failed notoriously to discharge the functions of a Church. The evidence is only too abundant. A petition addressed to Parliament in 1578 or 1579 alleges that— "There are in this city [London] a great number of churches, but the one half of them at the least are utterly unfurnished of preaching ministers, and are pestered with candlesticks not of gold but of clay, unworthy to have the Lord's lights set in them, with watchmen that have no eyes and clouds that have no water; in the other half . . . there is scarcely the tenth man that makes conscience to wait upon his charge, whereby the Lord's sabbath is oft-times wholly neglected, and for the most part miserably mangled." 19 In a "Supplication" from the people of Cornwall still heavier charges are brought against the clergy. "We have," they say, "about one hundred and sixty churches, the greatest part of which are supplied by men who are guilty of the grossest sins; some fornicators, some adulterers, some felons, bearing the marks in their hands for the said offence, some drunkards, gamesters on the Sabbath day, etc." 20 In 1584 seven members of the Privy Council, including Lord Burleigh, the Earl of Warwick, and Sir Francis Walsingham, remonstrated with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London for suspending "a great number of zealous and learned preachers" in the county of Essex for Puritanism, while they left many men undisturbed in their livings who were charged or chargeable with great and enormous faults, as drunkenness, filthiness of life, gaming 19 Neal, i. 294. From The Second Part of a Register, 137–138, a manuscript in Dr. Williams's Library (Morrice MSS., B). 20 Idem, i. 294–295. From ibid., 135-137. Neal suppresses the worst charges. at cards, haunting of ale-houses, and such like." They say that they have "sought to be informed of some particulars concerning the religious condition of that county; and having received the information which they asked for, think it their duty," without intermeddling ourselves with your jurisdiction ecclesiastical, to make report unto your lordships as persons that ought most specially to have regard thereto." 21 They sent with their letter a list of the clergy "reported to be learned, zealous, and good preachers,” deprived and suspended ; also a list of the clergy who were reported to be unfit for their office. А These lists have been preserved. They are headed: “A Survey of sixteen Hundreds in the County of Essex containing Benefices 335; wherein there are of ignorant and unpreaching ministers 173; of such as have two benefices apiece 61; of non-residents that are single-beneficed 10; preachers of scandalous life 12; summa totalis 255." In the long and melancholy list of " unpreaching ministers" appear entries Mr. Whiting, parson of Topesfield, sometime a serving-man. drunkard. Mr. Philipps, parson of Sturmer, sometime a Popish priest. Mr. Pinnock, vicar of Much Maplestead, sometime a tailor. Mr. Levit, parson of Leden Roding, a notorious swearer, a dicer, a carder, a hawker, and hunter, . . . a quarreller and fighter, for he quarrelled with the parson of Stoke in a common inn in Chelmsford. [Names of witnesses in the case given.] Mr. Hall, of West Ham, a drunkard. Mr. Newton, of Little Ilford, a great drunkard. Mr. Andrews, vicar of Wormingford, a notorious drunkard. These are but illustrations of the charges brought against a large number of the Essex clergy. Many of them were 21 For the substance of the letter, and the Archbishop's reply, see Strype, Whitgift, i. 328-330, 331-333. Davids, Annals of Evangelical Nonconformity in the County of Essex, 79-80, gives portions of it. 22 For the lists, see Second Part of a Register, B (original), 52, 112-121; C (transcript), 735-742; and Davids, ibid., 88-126. The summa totalis should be 256, not 255; but the figures in the manuscript are clear. The lists of "unpreaching ministers," double-beneficed men, non-residents, and "the sufficient painful and carefull preachers," appear separately. without education; many of them were vicious; and there is no reason to suppose that the clergy of Essex or of Cornwall were worse than the clergy in the other counties of England. In the English Church there were great scholars, upright men, saintly men; but the clergy as a whole were disgracefully inefficient, and many of them grossly immoral. It was not the controversial vigour of the Puritans that constituted their strength. They were learned men; and large numbers of the clergy were extremely ignorant. They were earnest and eloquent preachers; and the enormous majority of the clergy were unable to preach. They were moral men; and too many of the clergy were living in notorious vice. Their religion was fervent, devout, intense; and the religion of most of the clergy was either sluggish or superstitious. Their quarrel with the bishops was not merely about the cross in baptism and the ring in marriage, or the Scriptural authority of ruling elders, but about the drunkards and profane men who held church livings, about the gross ignorance and incompetence of the men who were permitted to occupy pulpits, about the general irreligion of the people which resulted from the general inefficiency of the clergy. They tried to get the Church better organised that they might get better ministers. They believed that if they could recover the primitive polity, they might recover something of primitive fervour. They wanted a clergy with more learning, more intellectual vigour, purer morals, and deeper religious earnestness. These were the chief demands of the Puritans, whether of the more moderate or of the more extreme type; and it was because they were incomparably superior to the great mass of the clergy on these points that they were able to maintain for so long their difficult struggle with the Crown. NOTE A The Admonition to the Parliament The Admonition to the Parliament was first printed in 1571. In one passage, Strype (Parker, ii. 110), says that " Thomas Cartwright... was the chief author, though there was (as it was thought) a club concerned in the composing thereof." Elsewhere he speaks less positively: "Several persons had assembled privately in London (as Dr. Bancroft was informed), namely, Gilby, Sampson, Lever, Field, Wilcox, and some other, Cartwright very likely among the rest; and then it was agreed upon, that an Admonition should be compiled, and offered unto the Parliament approaching " (Whitgift, i. 55). The tract had a large circulation; for it had "been printed and reprinted no less than four times . . . notwithstanding the diligence of the bishops to suppress it. The last time, which was this year (1572), it came forth with additions" (Parker, ibid.). He adds, the second part of the Admonition was upon the subscription to the articles required by the Commissioners, to give a view of such causes as withheld many Ministers from subscribing; which was called Popish abuses yet remaining in the English Church" (Whitgift, i. 56). The copy of the first Admonition in the Archbishop's Library at Lambeth, which gives neither date nor publisher, shows the two parts distinctly: the first part including pages 1-14; the second, page 15 to the end (with the address to the Christian reader and the letters of Gualter and Beza). This second part is headed, An admonition to the Parliament-A view of Popishe abuses yet remaining in the-Englishe Church, for the which Godly-Ministers have refused to subscribe; with two texts of Scripture below. The first part of the tract lays down a complete scheme of reformation: "It hath been thought good to proferre to your godly considerations, a true platforme of a church reformed" (3). It then deals with the ordination and appointment of ministers, and the discharge of their functions; with the sacraments; and with discipline, which is to be exercised, not by a priestly order, but by the whole body of the Church. There is to be no ecclesiastical hierarchy" instead of an Archbishop or Lord Bishop, you must make equalitie of ministers" (II). If reform is needed elsewhere, it is needed in England: "Is a reformation good for France ? and can it be evill for England? Is discipline meete for Scotland? And is it unprofitable for this realme?" (13). And reformation, to be effectual, must be thorough: "You may not do as heretofore you have done, patch and peece.. . . But altogether remove whole Antichriste, bothe head and tayle, and perfectly plant that puritie of the word, that simplicitie of the sacraments, and severitie of discipline, which Christe hath commanded and commended to His Churche" (13, 14). It is possible that the second part of the First Admonition was an addition to the original treatise-it may, indeed, in the first instance have been printed separately, and then incorporated with it. For in the Second Admonition the author says, There were two little Treatises lately sette forthe, both tending to one ende, namely to admonishe the parliament what it had to do touching religion, and tending to one ende they beare one name, that is an admonition to the parliament." And, he adds, "the persons that are thought to have made them are laide in no worsse prison than Newgate" (3). Strype tells us who these "persons were-Field |