ordained, and had never been forsaken. THEY VENTURED TO USE THEIR FREEDOM TO WORSHIP GOD. The year of our Lord 1566 was the year of this memorable decision, from which so important consequences have flowed. Few of the Puritans, however, separated themselves at first. The greater part, though, clear as to the right, were yet reluctant to separate, nor did they have recourse to so unwelcome an expedient, till, after many years of suffering, they were compelled to despair of ever finding liberty of conscience in the Church established and controlled by the power of the state. The queen, hearing that some ventured to worship God in private, gave strict orders to the High Commission to keep the people to the parish churches. On the 19th of June, 1567, a congregation of separate worshippers was detected by the sheriff at Plumber's Hall; a large number were taken into custody, and sent to prison, where they were kept in confinement more than a year; when twenty-four men and seven women were discharged with an admonition to conduct better for the future. The strictest watch was kept up by the spies of the High Commission. The cruel persecutions of the Protestants in France, and the massacres perpetrated by the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands, drove multitudes from these countries for refuge to England. The queen granted to these the liberty of their own modes of worship; but not the least toleration was granted to her own subjects. The prisons were soon filled with the persecuted Puritans.

In the year 1568 a league was formed by the Catholic powers of Europe, by which all Protestant princes were to be put down and the Protestant religion exterminated. Many of the Papists in England rose to arms. The Pope, for their encouragement, denounced the queen as a usurper and heretic; absolved all her subjects from their oaths of allegiance, and anathematized all who should defend her. But papal bulls had lost their power in England. The Romish rebellion melted away upon the very rumor of the approach of the queen's army; and the assistance, in men and money, which she with consummate statesmanship furnished, at the right time, to the Protestants of France and Hoiland, defeated all the designs and preparations of the Romish league. These disturbances called forth the enactment of new laws, and the imposition of new oaths, aimed principally against the adherents of the Pope. But though no part of the queen's subjects were so thoroughly imbued with an utter abhorrence of the popish claims and principles; and though in the late disturbances none had been more loyal and faithful than the Puritans, the "edge of the laws that were made against Popish recusants was turned against the Protestant Non-conformists."

*Neale.

This unrighteous severity, instead of bringing these non-conformists into the churches, like all other methods of severity, drove them farther from it. 66 Many of the people were put in prison because they would not provide godfathers and godmothers for baptizing their children. While the Puritan ministers are deprived, the Papists comply and triumph." "In 1569, and before, Papists were frequent in church, in court, in place; Popish priests still enjoyed the great ecclesiastical livings, without recantation or penance; yea, in simoniacal heaps, cathedral churches" were "stuffed with them; the very spies and promoters of Queen Mary's reign were cherished." The Puritans were harassed with increasing vigor. "Many were cited into spiritual courts, and after long attendance and great charges, were suspended or deprived. The pursuivant, or messenger of the court, was paid by the mile; the fees were exorbitant, which the prisoner, innocent or otherwise, must pay before he could have his discharge." The method of proceeding was dilatory and vexatious. "Though witnesses were seldom called to support any charge, the defendant was himself put under oath to answer the interrogations of the court; and compelled to turn his own accuser. If he refused the oath, they examined him without it, and forced him to submit by every species of severity." If the prisoner was, after all, dismissed, he was nevertheless generally ruined with costs, and further bound to appear again whenever the court should require him.

The sufferings and remonstrances of the Puritans had now roused the nation. In several sessions of parliament from 1566 to 1587 efforts were made for some toleration and relief; but the queen frowned upon every such movement, and overawed the parliament. "She pretended," says Hume, "that in quality of supreme head of the Church, she was fully empowered by her prerogatives alone, to decide all questions which might arise with regard to doctrine, discipline, or worship; and she never would allow her parliament so much as to take these points into consideration." "The parliament, in her opinion, were not to canvass any matters of state; still less were they to meddle with the Church. Questions of that kind were far above their reach, and were appropriated to the prince alone, or to those councils and ministers with whom she was pleased to entrust them.” "What then was the office of parliament? They might give directions for the due tanning of leather, or milling of cloth; for the preservation of pheasants and partridges; for the reparation of bridges and highways; for the punishment of vagabonds or common beggars." "But the most acceptable part of parliamentary proceedings, was the granting of subsidies; the attaint† An ancient writer quoted by Prince.

* Prince.

ing and punishing of the obnoxious nobility." "The redress of grievances was sometimes promised to the people; but seldom could have place while it was an established rule that the prerogatives of the crown must not be abridged, or so much as questioned and examined in parliament. Even those monopolies and exclusive companies, which had already reached an enormous height, and were every day increasing to the destruction of all industry;-it was criminal in a member, to propose in the most dutiful manner, a parliamentary application against any of them."+

The Puritans, in their debates concerning the rights of conscience, had been led to investigate the principles on which these monstrous regal prerogatives were founded: and they were not only first and foremost in every effort for a parliamentary redress of abusive monopolies and other grievances, but they alone were the indefatigable and undaunted opponents of royal despotism. Was there a motion made in the House of Commons, touching these abuses and prerogatives which the queen guarded with such a jealous vigilance? That motion was by a Puritan. Was a stirring speech made in parliament exposing the royal and ecclesiastical abuses, and asserting the principles of freedom and of popular rights? That speech was by a Puritan. High Church principles, then as ever afterwards, were uniformly leagued with the power and the assumptions of the sovereign against religious tolerance and civil liberty. Hume saw, and abundantly recorded, in his history of the doings of parliament from A. D. 1571 to 1580, the connection between Puritanic principles and these movements in favor of popular rights. He states how Strickland, in 1571, revived one of the seven bills which "THE PURITANS " had introduced into the former parliament for a further reformation of religion. The parliament even entered upon a debate for a reformation of the Prayer-Book; but the queen, incensed at the presumption of Strickland, summoned him before the council, and prohibited him from thenceforth appearing in the House of Commons. Again, "A motion," says Hume, "was made by Robert Bell, A PURITAN, against an exclusive patent granted to some merchants in Bristol." Bell was summoned before the council, and "returned," says Hume, "with such an amazed countenance, that all the members, well informed of the reason, were struck with terror; and during some time no one durst rise up to speak of any matter of importance, for fear of giving offence to the queen and council;""And yet, that patent which the queen defended with so much violence," was contrived for the profit of the courtiers, and was attended with the utter ruin of seven or eight thousand of her † Ibid.

⚫ Hume.

industrious subjects. Again, in 1576, Peter Wentworth, whom Hume characterizes as "A PURITAN," and who had signalized himself in former parliaments by his free and undaunted spirit, asserted once more in a manly, speech the essential principles of liberty; principles which are now so clear that we wonder how they could ever be doubted; but which were novel and startling in those days of despotic power. Wentworth was sequestered from the house; and taken into custody.

It is in connection with these illustrations of the natural affinity between Puritanism and freedom, that Hume records that sentence which has been so long and so justly celebrated, viz: "So absolute was the authority of the crown, that the precious spark of liberty had been kindled, and was preserved by THE PURITANS ALONE; and it was to this sect that THE ENGLISH OWE THE WHOLE FREEDOM OF THEIR CONSTITUTION." Thus early did the cause of purity in religious worship identify itself with the great cause of civil and religious freedom. Immense were the sacrifices with which these principles were maintained. They are a rich legacy. The time will come when-in this world-none need claim a nobler parentage than to be a son of the Puritans, an inheritor of their principles and their piety.

VIII.

THE PURITANS SUFFERING.

New Canons. Supplication to Parliament. Cartwright and Whitgift. Private Press: New Persecuting Act. Brown and the Brownists. Supplication of the Deprived Ministers. Whitgift's Inquisitorial Articles. Martin Mar-Prelate. Act against separate Worship. Sufferings of the Puritans. Their touching Narrative. Roger Ripon. Barrowe. Greenwood. Penry.

HAVING stated the main grounds on which the Puritans rested their complaints and their defence, and having shown the nature of the efforts to reduce them, we may now pass more rapidly over a long series of events, consisting mainly of a continued recurrence of the same sort of doings. You have only to picture to yourselves a long struggle of thirty-two years, from this period to the death of Elizabeth, in which the power of the queen, the council, and the bishops, with their chancellors and spies, was exerted, with every engine of oppression; Star Chamber, High Commission, oaths ex officio, harassing and expensive prosecutions, ruinous fines imposed without legal limit, imprisonments, excommunications depriving the subject of his civil rights;-imagine these engines plied with relentless severity, against all who should omit a ceremony, or scruple a habit, or say a word against the Prayer-Book, or question the authority of the Bishops; then picture to yourselves Puritanism everywhere spreading and increasing, till the prisons are full; families broken and scattered; thousands of women and children in distress, till a voluntary exile or banishment, or death fills up their miseries; imagine all this, and you have a true outline of a history which might now be filled up with ample and heart-rending details, extending through the life of a whole generation. Nor did these persecutions cease when James I. ascended the throne; but new modes of persecution and still fiercer rigors were devised by that conceited, but heartless and perfidious prince; till our fathers chose a home on the shores of a howling wilderness, rather than endure life under such tyranny in their native land.