plundered ministers," and was called by the Royalists and Episcopalians" the Committee for plundering ministers.5 Large numbers of the clergy who were favourable to Parliament were driven from their homes by the King's troops, and came to London with their wives and children in great destitution. Parliament concluded that those who were loyal to itself should hold the livings of those who were loyal to the King.

In July, 1643, this Committee was empowered to deal with ministers who were charged with immorality, or false doctrine, and other scandalous offences, as well as with malignant ministers-ministers charged with hostility to Parliament. this time the two Committees were united.

From

On September 6, 1643, the House ordered that county committees, formed of the deputy-lieutenants and of country gentlemen who were loyal to Parliament, should have power to examine petitions against the clergy in their several counties; and that when they found a clergyman guilty of grave charges, they should report their decision to the Committee for plundered ministers, with the evidence on which it rested. The accused clergyman had the right of appeal to the two Houses of Parliament.

It was not till these county committees were appointed that the work of ejectment became very vigorous. It appears to have gone on throughout the whole time of the Long Parliament, and large numbers of the Episcopalian clergy lost their livings. It was ordered that they should retain a fifth of their former income; but in the case of small livings this would be miserably inadequate, and was probably rarely claimed; in the case of large livings the confusion of many parts of the country was so great that it is probable that the claim, if

"

5 C. J. (Dec. 31, 1642), ii. 909. "Plunder," so Fuller tells us (vi. 241), was a word newly brought into use about this time. He is uncertain whether it comes of a "Latin original," from planum dare, “to level " or plane all to nothing; or whether it is of Dutch extraction, as it were to plume or pluck the feathers of a bird to the bare skin." "Sure I am," he adds, "we first heard thereof in the Swedish Wars, and if the name and thing be sent back from whence it came, few English eyes would weep thereat." Skeat, Etymological Dictionary, s.v., connects it with Low German plunnen, “rags,” and says that the verb meant to strip a household even of its least valuable contents." Cf. Walker, Sufferings of the Clergy, i. 73.

C. J. (July 27, 1643), iii. 183. Walker, Sufferings of the Clergy, i. 74.

resisted, could not be enforced. Those of the clergy who were dismissed from their livings because they were found guilty of gross immorality suffered no wrong; it would have been only just to provide for the rest from some more secure source than the income of their successors.7

But the most fatal weapon against the Episcopalian clergy was the order of Parliament issued in February, 1643-4, requiring all persons above the age of eighteen to take the Solemn League and Covenant. As this included a promise to "endeavour the extirpation of . . . Prelacy (that is, Church Government by archbishops, bishops, their chancellors and commissaries, deans, deans and chapters, archdeacons, and all other ecclesiastical officers depending on that hierarchy)," every clergyman that regarded Episcopacy as the divinely appointed polity of the Church, or even as the polity which experience had shown to be most favourable to the peace of the Church and the maintenance of the true faith, was obliged to refuse it. According to Walker, "more suffered by the Covenant, than by any one invention of the times besides." 8

Under Cromwell scandalous, ignorant, and incompetent ministers were ejected by county commissioners." 9

II

About the manner in which these various Committees and Commissioners discharged their office, and the offences for which the Episcopalian clergy were ejected, there have been bitter controversies.

This Ordinance of 1644 was made more precise on November 11, 1647, when it was resolved that the wives and children of all such persons as are, or have been, or may be sequestered, . . . shall be comprehended within the ordinance that alloweth a fifth part for wives and children, and shall have their fifth part allowed unto them." All the Committees concerned were required to take notice of the ordinance and to carry its provisions into effect. Walker, in his Sufferings of the Clergy (i. 103), says that hardly one in ten ever had their allowance in full or without trouble; and Fuller (vi. 330-333) gives a long list of the pleas used to evade and frustrate the order, and to abuse "the pitiful and pious intentions of the Parliament."

For the Ordinances see Scobell (1644, cap. 45), 344 (1646, cap. 29), 511; and C. J. (Nov. 11, 1647), v. 356.

8 Walker, Sufferings of the Clergy, i. 107. For the Ordinance (2 Feb. 1643-4) see Husband, Collection, 420-421.

• See ante, p. 321.

It is certain that under the Order for enforcing the Solemn League and Covenant large numbers were ejected for no other reason than their loyalty to the Episcopal form of church. government they could not swear" to endeavour the extirpation" of the church polity which they earnestly desired to restore. They were expelled from their livings for believing in bishops, just as the Romish clergy under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth were expelled for believing in the Pope. The Solemn League and Covenant was an instrument of precisely the same kind as the Oath of Supremacy. Parliament, in the seventeenth century, claimed and exercised the same authority to regulate the national Church that had been claimed and exercised in the sixteenth century by Parliament and the Crownthe Crown commanding the greater measure of authority.

It is also certain that before the Covenant was enforced, and after the Order enforcing it had become effective, the Committee and Commissioners ejected many of the clergy from their livings because they took the side of the King. The clergy that left their livings and went to Charles while he was at Oxford were ejected.10 The clergy that denounced the Parliament from their pulpits, menaced the Parliamentary leaders and all their adherents with the divine wrath, or encouraged and aided their parishioners in resisting the Parliamentary armies, were ejected. While the war lasted and Parliament had to struggle hard to maintain its hold on many parts of the country, it was impossible to leave its open enemies in possession of their churches and their pulpits. It was as necessary to eject the Royalist clergy 11 from their parishes as to eject the King's garrisons from Colchester and the other strong places in the kingdom. During the war the ejection of “malignants was a military as much as an ecclesiastical measure; and after the war had ceased it was an almost equal source of peril to public order to leave the open enemies of the Commonwealth among the clergy undisturbed. The authority, first of Parliament, then of the Protector, was precarious it was constantly menaced by conspiracy and insurrection. The clergy, as the ministers of the national Church, were the Some were merely outed for their affections to the King's cause, and what was malignity at London was loyalty at Oxford." Fuller, vi. 269.

10 ""

11

The strongest militia, as they were truly called, of the King." J. S. Brewer in his edition of Fuller, ibid., vi. 269, note.

natural guardians and supporters of the supreme authority in the State; if they were its declared and active foes, their influence was a perpetual source of danger. When the war was over, the ejectment of the "malignants was a measure of police.

Many, probably, were ejected because they were unable to preach; many because they were ignorant; and many because they insisted on practising the "ceremonies" which Parliament had condemned. But many were ejected for gross immorality. In November, 1643, White published a quarto pamphlet by authority of Parliament, vindicating the Committee of which he was a chairman, under the title of The first century of scandalous malignant Priests made and admitted into benefices by the Prelates, etc. It contains a record of the offences for which a hundred of the clergy had been removed from their livings, or deprived of their clerical office. “So much ignorance, insufficiency, drunkenness, filthiness, etc., was charged on them," says Baxter, "that many moderate men could have wished that their Nakedness had been rather hid, and not exposed to the World's derision, and that they had remembered that the Papists did stand by, and would make sport of it." 12 What happened at Kidderminster is an illustration of what happened in large numbers of parishes all over England. Baxter says:—

"Among all these Complainers, the Town of Kidderminster, in Worcestershire, drew up a Petition against their Ministers : the Vicar of the place they Articled against as one that was utterly insufficient for the Ministry, presented by a Papist, unlearned, preached but once a quarter, which was so weakly, as exposed him to laughter, and persuaded them that he understood not the very Substantial Articles of Christianity; that he frequented Alehouses, and had sometimes been drunk; that he turned the Table Altarwise, etc., with more such as this. The Vicar had a Curate under him in the Town whom they also accused; and a Curate at a Chapel in the Parish, a common Tippler and a Drunkard, a railing Quarreller, an ignorant insufficient Man, who (as I found by Examining him) understood not the common Points of the Children's Catechism, but said some good words to them sometimes out of Musculus's 'Common Places' in English, which was almost the only Book he had; and his Trade in the Week-days was unlawful Marriages. . . . The Vicar knowing his insufficiency, and hearing how two others in his Case had sped, desired to compound the 12 Baxter, Life, i. (1), 29 [i. p. 19].

Business with them; and . . . it was brought to this, That he should instead of his present Curate in the Town allow £60 per annum to a Preacher whom fourteen of them nominated should choose; and that he should not hinder this Preacher from preaching whenever he pleased, and that he himself should read Common Prayer, and do all else that was to be done." 13

The Vicar kept his living, and Baxter became Lecturer, receiving £60 a year out of the Vicar's £200.

With regard to the general action of the Committees of Parliament Baxter bears this testimony:

"I must needs say, that in all the Counteys where I was acquainted (the Midland Counties of England), six to one at least (if not many more) that were Sequestered by the Committee, were by the Oaths of Witnesses proved insufficient, or scandalous, or both; especially guilty of Drunkenness or Swearing: and those that being able, godly Preachers, were cast out for the War alone, as for their Opinions' sake, were comparatively very few." 14

What he says of Cromwell's" Triers " is equally favourable.

"Because this Assembly of Triers is most heavily accused and reproached by some Men, I shall speak the truth of them, and suppose my word will be the rather taken, because most of them took me for one of their boldest Adversaries, as to their Opinions, and because I was known to disown their Power, insomuch that I refused to try any under them upon their reference, except a very few, whose importunity and necessity moved me (they being such as for their Episcopal Judgment, or some such Cause, the Triers were likely to have rejected). The truth is, that though their Authority was null, and though some few over-busy and over-rigid Independents among them were too severe against all that were Arminians, and too particular in enquiring after Evidences of Sanctification in those whom they Examined, and somewhat too lax in their admission of Unlearned and Erroneous Men, that favoured Antinomianism or Anabaptism; yet to give them their due, they did abundance of good to the Church: They saved many a Congregation from ignorant, ungodly, drunken Teachers: that sort of Men that intended no more in the Ministry, than to say a Sermon, as Readers say their Common Prayers, and so patch up a few good words together to talk the People asleep with on Sunday; and all the rest of the Week go with them to the Alehouse, and harden them in their Sin: and that sort of Ministers that either preacht against a holy Life, or preacht as Men that never 14 Ibid., i. (1), 117 [i. p. 74].

13 Baxter, Life, i. (1), 29 [i, pp. 19-20].