England (as he had observed) was never known to be in a more flourishing condition than at this time, all things duly weighed: it became much more powerful (he saw) by the opposition made against it, and grew by the favours indulged to its adversaries; the number of converts made in the reign of this king to his religion was most inconsiderable, if it could be said to be any at all. On the other side, for every one that was lost to the established religion, it was thought there were ten at least added to it another way; for certain great numbers of Dissenters were brought into the communion of the Church by the learned writings of the orthodox Clergy at that time; yea, they who had before conceived a prejudice against them, as making too near approaches to Popery, now on the contrary, when they saw them such champions for the Protestant cause, convinced hereby of the mistake, could not but as much commend them, as heretofore they had condemned them: and no wonder if some thought themselves also bound in conscience to return to the Church which they had separated from, the very foundation of their separation from it appearing to be now taken away. Yet these were but few in comparison of the rest. Now the use Mr. Kettlewell made thereof was this, to call both upon his brethren of the Clergy on the one hand, and upon the dissenting brethren on the other, that, without regard to building up themselves, or their party, they should all unite their endeavours to build together upon the foundation of Christ and his Apostles, maintaining the bond of Catholic charity; and should study every one to excel herein for the edifying of the whole body of the faithful. For which he thought there was means remaining sufficient in the Church of England, whether supported or not from without by the civil power. Nay, it was observed, both by him and by others who were in the number of his friends, that as soon as the outward supports began to be withdrawn from it but never so little, upon which it had before but too much leaned; this Church was then beginning to flourish more than it had done ever since the Reformation."-Life of Kettlewell, pp. 141-144, Lond. 1718.

Looking back upon the Deists and the Clergy, Hughes (early in the following century) a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, cannot even conceive what consideration has

led the former to despise the latter:

"EGO, ITA ME DEUS AMET, NE CONJECTANDO QUIDEM ASSEQUI POSSUM, QUID SIT IN CLERO ANGLICANO, QUOD ULLO MODO DESPICERE POSSIT IMPROBA HÆC DEISTARUM COLLUVIES. SIVE ENIM INGENIUM, SIVE DOCTRINAM, SIVE MORUM PROBITATEM INTEGRITATEMQUE CONSIDEREMUS, VEL INIMICISSIMI CONCEDANT NECESSE EST, NIHIL ECCLESIÆ ANGLICANÆ THEOLOGIS SUPERIUS UNQUAM EXTITISSE.”—Prefatory Essays to St. Chrysostom's Treatise on the Priesthood, p. x. Camb. 1710.

SECTION II.

OF THE EXTRACTION OF THE ENGLISH CLERGY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

Mr. Macaulay opens the subject of the present section in the following words:

"The place of the clergyman in society had been completely changed by the Reformation. Before that event, ecclesiastics had formed the majority of the House of Lords, had, in wealth and splendour, equalled, and sometimes outshone, the greatest of the temporal barons, and had generally held the highest civil offices. .........Among them were sons of all the most illustrious families, and near kinsmen of the throne, Scroops and Nevilles, Bourchiers, Staffords, and Poles.........Down to the middle of the reign of Henry the Eighth, therefore, no line of life bore so inviting an aspect to ambitious and covetous natures as the priesthood. Then came a violent revolution. The abolition of the monasteries deprived the Church at once of the greater part of her wealth, and of her predominance in the upper house of parliament...... The spiritual character not only ceased to be a qualification for high civil office, but began to be regarded as a disqualification. Those worldly motives, therefore, which had formerly induced so many able, aspiring, and high born youths to assume the ecclesiastical habit, ceased to exist. Not one parish in two hundred then afforded what a man of family considered as a maintenance. There were still indeed prizes in the Church: but they were few; and even the highest were mean, when compared with the glory which had once surrounded the princes of the hierarchy. The state kept by Parker and Grindal seemed beggarly to those who remembered the imperial pomp of Wolsey, his palaces, &c.......... Thus the sacerdotal office lost its attraction for the higher classes." -Macaulay's History of England, pp. 325, 326.

It is beside the present purpose to take much notice of the state of the Clergy before Charles II.'s time: yet as it is Mr. Macaulay's object to draw as vivid a picture as possible by contrast, it may be worth while to observe that however rich and noble the great ecclesiastics may have been before the Reformation, yet with regard to the ordinary sort of them, it may reasonably be doubted whether their place in society has been much altered for the worse. The following picture is drawn by a master hand, and one too which is by no means disposed to paint in the blackest colours the character of the English Church before the Reformation.

"Meanwhile, the people were disgusted with this gross and cruel invasion of the rights of their pastors; and the representatives of the monasteries read themselves in amidst reproaches loud and deep, of the by-standers. But they were not thin-skinned. They prepared, however, a sop for Cerberus, by exacting with little rigour the small tithes, or, in some cases, by accepting an easy composition instead of them; hoping, by such modus (decimandi) to purchase the more cheerful and prompt payment of the great tithes, which was their affair; and not at all uneasy because the propitiation happened to be made at the vicar's expense. Their only remaining concern was to find some "Sir Johns" (as the poor clergy were called before the Reformation), sometimes with an honourable adjunct of "lack-Latin," or "mumble-matins," or "babbling Sir Johns," or "blind Sir Johns," as it might be, who were just qualified, according to the letter of the law, to stand in the gap; masspriests, who could read their breviaries, and no more, for in those days men seem to have received ordination without any adequate examination either as to learning or character-persons of the lowest of the people, with all the gross habits of the class from which they sprung; loiterers on the ale-house bench; dicers; scarce able to say by rote their Paternoster, often actually unable to repeat the commandments; divines every way fitted to provoke the 75th canon, which was, no doubt, in the first instance, levelled against them. Such were the ministers to whom was consigned a very large proportion of the parishes

of England before the Reformation."-Blunt's Reformation in England, pp. 65, 66.

Have we never heard of the Constitutions of Clarendon in Henry II.'s time, which enact that the sons of villeins shall not be ordained without the consent of the lord on whose land they were born, because that it would be to deprive him of his property? Or is it a secret that manumissions of slaves preparatory to their entering orders are to be found as late as the middle of the fifteenth century? Whatever the social condition of the mass of the clergy may have been under the Stuarts, it will be difficult to persuade most people that it was much better before the Reformation.

"During the century which followed the accession of Elizabeth, scarce a single person of noble descent took orders."

Here again appears the colourist: several persons of noble descent who took orders in that period are mentioned in Oley's preface to Herbert's Country Parson; and there is no great probability that he has recounted all.

"At the close of the reign of Charles the Second, two sons of peers were bishops; four or five sons of peers were priests and held valuable preferment: but these rare exceptions did not take away the reproach which lay on the body. The clergy were regarded as on the whole a plebeian class; and indeed for one who made the figure of a gentleman, ten were mere menial servants."

It shall be my object to examine this statement, so far as the extraction of the Clergy is concerned. Yet let it be remarked at the outset that in the cases of those clergy who came from the middle classes (who both then were and always have been numerous)* or even from a lower grade,

* The clergymen of the latter part of the seventeenth century whose parentage I have chanced to discover, were descended with few exceptions from the gentry, clergy, and merchants. No doubt those about whom we gain personal information in any period are on the whole of a