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THE PILGRIMS AND THE
ANGLICAN CHURCH

WILLIAM DEVERELL

LONDON
REMINGTON & CO PUBLISHERS
HENRIETTA STREET COVENT GARDEN

1887
[All Rights Reserved]

PREFACE.

I HAVE been led to compile this short history of the
Pilgrim Fathers by a strong desire to popularize
amongst Englishmen the words and deeds of those
illustrious plebeian countrymen of ours, which, al
though strange to most of uSj are yet familiar to every
schoolboy in Americaj and moreover form the brightest
page in the brilliant annals of our imperial race.
My primary authorities are Mr. Bancroft's " His
tory of the United States/' Mr. Bacon's " Genesis
of the New England Churches," and Dr. Robertson's
" Colonization of America." The numerous quota
tions I have given are the touching words of the
Pilgrims themselves, who have left the minutest re
cords of their glorious enterprise, but they reach me
mainly through the channels of Bacon and Bancroft.
I may say in reference to my original brochure on
this subject that I have been honoured by more or less
flattering communications from forty of our public
men, including some of the most distinguished
leaders, belonging to both political parties in the
state. One other letter — which is, perhaps, the most
laudatory — I have also received from the greatest
living poet and man of letters of America. And I
am at liberty to publish eight of those communica
tions in application to the present work.

CONTENTS.

I. Romanism... ... ... ... ••• i
II. Anglicanism  38
III. Puritanism, or the Emancipation of Eng
land from Norman Domination ... 64
IV. Restoration of the Norman Monarchy,
Aristocracy, and Church ... ... 124
V. Betrayal of England and the Norman Line
into the hands of the Dutch Invaders, by
the Nobility, Clergy, and Gentry ... 219
VI. Despotism of the Nobility, Clergy, and
Gentry under the Presidency of Dutch
and German Puppet Kings  306

I.
ROMANISM.

We dwell with a pardonable natural vanity
on the military and naval achievements of
our race ; our heroes' names and their fields
of glory are as familiar in our mouths as
household words ; we are never weary of hear
ing how in the olden times our invincible
archers swept every field and deck with their
unerring cloth-yard shafts ; how in these
modern times nothing human could success
fully withstand the bayonet-thrust of our
terrible infantry ; how every sea has re
sounded with the triumphant thunder of our
gallant ships ; how every nation has struck
its flag to the irresistible logic of their broad-
B

2 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
sides ; and, dazzled with the tinsel and gHtter
of these exploits, we are apt to forget that
peace hath victories more glorious and
enduring than war ; that our race, by centuries
of noble toil, has built up for us a monument
of glory in the Western World, compared
with which the renown of a thousand Cressys
and Agincourts sink into absolute nothing
ness. It is less than three centuries ago since
the first British colonists set foot on American
soil. A vast and unknown continent, peopled
by the ferocious and treacherous Indian, lay
before them, and behind them rolled the
stormy Atlantic. With hearts as heroic as
ever beat within human breasts, these un
known heroes turn their faces towards the
setting sun, and commence that glorious
march of civilization westward, which is the
proudest achievement of our race — nay, I
might say with truth, of the human race.
The savage is forced back, the forest is
cleared, the log-hut is reared, the c^op is
sown, the first settlement is planted, and
from that moment England has been drained
of her choicest spirits to recruit that noble
army of toilers. Every tide has borne her
best blood to the Western shores, and, wave

Romanism. 3
on wave, her hosts of emigrants have surged
ever onward, ever westward. And these hosts
are ever marching with the measured British
tread and the manly British speech, and they
leave clear and unmistakable tracks behind
them, broad as a continent ; but not the
ruined and devastated tracks of the warrior.
No desolated country, no burning city, no
blood-stained fortress, no battle-field piled
with heaps of putrid dead mark their foot
steps. The primeval forest and the rolling
prairie, dotted with the wigwam of the savage,
are transformed by these heroes of toll Into
smiling corn-fields, studded with cosy hamlets
and superb cities. The war-whoop of the
Indian and the shriek of his victim give place
to the shrill scream of the locomotive and
the busy' hum of commerce. Nature's laws
are changed by them. These hosts of brave
men, stout of heart and strong of arm, are
marching not to the destruction, but to the
creation of an empire. Myriads have fallen
in that peaceful yet glorious strife, obscurely,
but not in vain. The blood of these over
borne sons of toil has been the seed of a
mighty nation — their triumph has been com
plete ; for from the Atlantic to the Pacific
they have marched victoriously, converting a

4 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
vast continent from savagery to civilization,
from heathenism to Christianity.
It is my intention, in my present work, to
give as concise and as clear a description as
possible of the settlement of our race on the
continent of North America — an episode In
the annals of the Anghcan Church not un
profitable to contemplate at a time when that
Institution is to be called upon not simply to
explain and justify its raison d' etre, but to
render a rigid account of its stewardship.
And I think It advisable to preface my
subject with a brief geographical sketch of
that portion of the continent (nearly the
whole of it, by-the-bye) which is actually
peopled by us, as I shall be then more clearly
able to indicate, to locaHze as it were, the
events I am about to narrate.
The United States, as we all know, con
sist at present of the whole central and most
of the southern portion of North America.
They He between the 22nd and 49th parallels
of north latitude and the 67th and 125th of
west longitude. The surface of this vast
country is estimated at 3,306,000- square
miles. It is divided by nature into three
sharply-defined sections. The Alleghany
Mountains and the Atlantic bound in the

Romanism. 5
eastern of these sections, and the Rocky
Mountains and the Pacific the western. The
Gulf of Mexico basin, including the vaUey
of the Mississippi, forms the central section
between these mountain ranges. British
America, or the Dominion of Canada, as it
is now called, lies to the north of the United
States, and comprises an area of about
3,600,000 square miles. It embraces the
whole breadth of the Continent, from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, and stretches north
to the Arctic Ocean. Its geographical
features are simple. The eastern section
consists of the valley of the St. Lawrence
and its lakes, together with the northern end
of the Atlantic slope ; and the extreme
western section, between the Pacific Ocean
and the Rocky Mountains, forms a portion of
what is called the Pacific slope. The east
central section, If I may so term It, com-
prises the Hudson Bay basin, and the west
central the valley of the Mackenzie and Its
lakes. The north-western peninsula of
North America, hitherto known as Russian
America, has become United States territory
by purchase. It is a bleak and an Inhospit
able region of 500,000 square miles in extent,
sparsely peopled by Esquimaux and Indians.

6 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
We thus find that the English-speaking
race occupies on the North American con
tinent upwards of 7,400,000 square miles of
territory, equal to eighty-eight times the area
of Great Britain ; and my task will be to
show how persecuted Puritans founded the
Northern States of the Great Republic which
forms the major portion of this vast territory,
and which as a colony enabled us to conquer
from the French the most important section
of the region we now hold in the New World.
And this subject naturally leads us, In the
first Instance, to a brief consideration of our
various attempts at colonization prior to the
landing of the Pilgrims.
The American continent was first dis
covered by the EngHsh. The expedition,
fitted out under the auspices of Henry VIL,
and commanded by Sabastian Cabot, a native
of Bristol, reached the mainland In 1497,
some fourteen months before Columbus set
foot on continental America. In the follow
ing year Cabot explored the greater porrion
of the eastern coast, and, on a subsequent
voyage, Hudson's Bay and Strait. After
these expedirions, however, the spirit of
EngHsh maritime discovery languished.
The Newfoundland fisheries had indeed at

Romanism. 7
once assumed gigantic proportions ; and our
mariners, though bent on trade, naturaHy ex
tended our geographical knowledge of the
Western World ; but from pohtical and other
causes, too numerous to particularize here,
no expedition for American discovery sailed
from our shores from Cabot's time tlH the
reign of Elizabeth.
The death of Mary, the wife of Philip II.
of Spain, snapped the ties which bound us to a
country claiming exclusive possession of the
New World, which ties had stifled the aspira
tions of hosts of adventurous English spirits,
who thirsted for the fame and wealth which
were to be acquired beyond the Atlantic.
But the accession of Elizabeth (a.d. 1558),
the representative, the embodiment, In fact,
of the aspirations of her subjects, held out
hopes of employment to those gallant men
who were pining In forced Inactivity. From
her reign we date the commencement of a
new and more glorious epoch of our history ;
and the nature of our subject wIU not permit
us to pass by altogether unnoticed the queen
who, in some sort, laid the foundations of
our colonial empire, and whose name is still
borne by the oldest and one of the noblest of
our settlements. No true Englishman can

8 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
mention with other feelings than those of
pride and complacency the name of Anne
BuUen's daughter, the great Queen Elizabeth.
There is a sort of magic in the sound, which
recalls to our memory the greatest and noblest
men of our race — poets, warriors, statesmen,
philosophers — who adorned that golden age
of English genius, and who shed an imperish
able lustre on the English name. And the
"bright particular star" round which they
moved was not, take her for all In aH, un
worthy of their homage. In spite of her faults,
not to say her vices, there are few names In
history of illustrious men that can compare
with hers, and none of womankind. The
noblest trait of her character was her un
shaken patriotism, a virtue almost unknown
among sovereigns. She was thoroughly
national In blood, in heart, and in sentiment.
She prided herself In her English descent ;
and though queen and head, she was at the
same time part and parcel of the great
English race, and gloried in the name of
EngHshwoman. She teHs her people, when
menaced with destruction by powerful enemies,
" I know I have but the body of a weak and
feeble woman, but I have the heart of a
king, and of a King of England, too." And

Romanism. 9
when standing on the threshold of eternity,
broken in spirit and hearf, she could address
her people for the last time In these memor
able words : " No queen will ever sit In my
seat with more zeal for my country, or care
for my subjects, nor any who will sooner with
¦willingness venture her life for your good and
safety than myself. For it Is not my desire
to live or reign longer- than my life and reign
shall be for your good ; and though you have
had, and may have, many princes more mighty
and wise sitting In this State, yet you never
had, nor shall have, any that will be more
•careful and loving." And It was this love of
country, this pride of race which Elizabeth
ever manifested, which won for her the hearts
of her subjects in her own time, and which
has embalmed her memory in the hearts of
€very succeeding generation of Englishmen.
Her subjects felt, and the people of England
still feel, that she was not simply queen of
the English, but that she was In body, mind,
and spirit, one of themselves.
Such was the character of this truly English
queen, the patron, I had almost said the
•originator, of EngHsh maritime adventure and
discovery. At her word of encouragement
our dauntless mariners brave the countless

lo The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
dangers of Arcric-American exploration, and
thread the Intricate channels of the Atlandc
and Pacific coasts, laying bare their hidden
mysteries ; at her command our Invincible
fleets sweep the enemy from every ocean ;
under her fostering care our hardy fishermen
ply their peaceful calling on the banks of
Newfoundland ; and our gallant merchantmen
already begin to whiten with their sails the
remotest seas of the Old World. During her
glorious reign Frobisher thrice explored the
shores of Labrador and Greenland, In vain
attempts to discover the north-west passage ;
and Drake, with Hke Intent, coasted the
western seaboard of North America. Sir
Humphrey Gilbert lost his life on his home
ward voyage from exploring the eastern coast,
and his half-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh,
wasted his fortune in the fruitless planting of
our first and second colonies ; the last of
which perished miserably by famine or mas
sacre. Yet, in spite of these disasters, or
rather In consequence of them, the mind of
England was being prepared for successful
colonizarion. The returned settlers scattered
broadcast through the land the most glowing
descriptions of the chmate, scenery, and soil
of those enchanting regions which they had

Romanism. 1 1
partially explored and planted, and which the
Virgin Queen, in her enthusiasm, had named
Virginia. Thus was instilled Into the minds
of sections of all classes of the community
an ardent desire for American planting, which
could not fail under favourable pohtical cir
cumstances to bear fruit.
A.D. 1606. — The set time was now fully
come for laying on a sure basis, broad and
deep, the foundations of our colonial empire.
The accession of the Stuart dynasty to the
throne of Great Britain, and the consequent
cessation of hostihties with Spain, not only
removed every obstacle from the path of
those whose minds were predisposed to
peaceful colonization, but threw out of em
ployment hosts of warlike adventurers, who
sought in the New World the fame and
wealth which the Spanish war had so abun
dantly afforded them. This enthusiasm and
greed of adventurers of all ranks of society,
under the guidance and control of powerful
corporations, led the way to the planting of
Virginia, the nucleus round which were
formed the various States of the late Southern
Confederacy. But New England, whose spirit and blood
permeate and vivify the whole Northern popu-

12 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
lation, had a far different origin. During the
first half of the seventeenth century the
relentless and cruel persecutions of the
Anglican Church had forced from their
homes a large section of the population of
England, God-fearing men of whom this
country was not worthy. These exiles — the
first band of whom, with love and reverence
Americans fondly call the Pilgrim Fathers —
sought In the wilds of America that religious
freedom which the Estabhshed Church denied
them in their own country; and as this perse
cution gave birth virtually to the United
States, It win be necessary to trace to its
source that divergence of opinion In religious
matters which led to such stupendous con
sequences. And our first step to this invesrigatlon wIU
be a rapid survey of the origin and develop
ment of Christianity.
The triumph of the powers of darkness
culminated and seemed complete in that
memorable scene on Calvary. The priests of
Paganism remained the InfalHble teachers
of mankind. The worshippers of Jupiter
were still triumphant on earth. The Sun of
Righteousness had set in blood, and darkness
thick and palpable had supervened. Spiritual

Romanism. 13.
death would have again usurped the sceptre
of the universe, but for a few fishermen of
Galilee, who stood undaunted against a
world In arms.
With hearts purged from every vice and
inflamed with holy enthusiasm, the Apostles
of Christ upHft the standard of the Cross, and,
beneath Its glorious folds, brave death under
every hideous aspect. They fall martyrs of
truth ; but myriads of their disciples tread
eagerly in their footsteps, emulous of the
crown of martyrdom. Their combats and
final victory are the most thrlHIng episodes In
the annals of the human race. For three
centuries these obscure and proscribed sec
taries of Christ confront the pitiless storms of
persecution ; invincible in the might of weak
ness ; victorious by right of suffering. In
vain does the heathen world strive to drown
Christianity in the blood of its votaries. Ten
several times it plots the subversion of that
faith against which the powers of man are of
no avail ; ten several times it bares its puny
arm against the everlasting Church. It
strikes, and at each blow the demon of
persecution rears his ghastly head and stalks
unfettered upon earth. His ravages are
either partial or universal. Sometimes they

14 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
embrace certain kingdoms and provinces only,
at others they extend from Rome to the ex
tremities of the world-wide empire ; but all
are marked with the same horrid character
istics. A brutal and pagan soldiery, united
with brutal and pagan mobs, are let loose on
the defenceless and outlawed Christians, and
entire provinces are desolated by barbarities
surpassing In atrocity those perpetrated by the
Turks In the Bulgaria of to-day. Myriads
are crucified, or burnt, or broken on the wheel,
other myriads are devoured by wild beasts, or
engulfed In raging seas. Every mode of
death or torture, which cruelty could devise,
was practised ; no human or infernal agency
was lacking to ensure the destruction of that
which has been declared Indestructible — the
Church founded on a rock. So cruel and
persistent was the Tenth and last Persecution,
that In a single month eighteen thousand
martyrs suffered death for Christ. The very
enormity of the slaughter is its antidote ; the
blood of the saints quenches the fires of
persecution, and ushers in the triumph of the
Cross. Vanquished by its crimes, Paganism
with its oracles, its sacrifices, and pageantry,
disappears at the presence of its holocaust
of victims. Henceforth the Church of Christ
is supreme on earth.

Romanism. 1 5
And what was the character of those
ecclesiastical organizations which thus sub
verted and supplanted the venerable super
stitions of antiquity ? Christ's own definition
of a Church is the all-sufficient and conclu
sive answer: "Where two or three are
gathered together in My name, there am I
in the midst of them." And such was the
origin and composition, subject to unlimited
development, of all the primitive Churches.
Determined, like the Apostle, to know
nothing on earth save Jesus Christ, and Him
crucified, and constrained by His love, the
early converts. In asserhbling themselves
together, and In constituting themselves Into
permanent associations for His worship,
thought Httle, apparently, of that self-organi
zation and self-administration of which they
did not feel the pressing requirement ; and
their ecclesiastical poHty, If so It may be
called, was consequently the simple and
natural outcome of their growth — the living
expression of the wIU of a pure democracy,
where all were brethren, acknowledging but
" one Master, even Christ."
The government of these primitive organi
zations had, however, gradually developed,
without Scriptural warrant it is true, into a
non-political, and, therefore, an innoxious

1 6 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church,
episcopacy. But the constitution of the
Church had remained essentially democratic
in character and principle, in spite of inno
vations arising from time and circumstance ;
for while the bishops and presbyters were
the acknowledged leaders, their office and
authority were derived directly or indirectly
from the laity.
A.D. 324. — And such was the condition of
ecclesiastical affairs when Constantine, from
motives of policy, proclaimed the Christian
religion the religion of the empire. That
sagacious statesman, who had been an eye
witness of, and an actor In, the horrors of the
Tenth Persecution, had become a partisan of
the Christians after having been their perse
cutor. Although he was still a pagan, and to-
the last addicted to pagan practices, he re
garded religion from a purely secular stand
point. And recognizing in the astounding
growth of Christianity, in spite of the perpe
tration of every atrocity for its suppression,,
an earnest of Its final triumph, he resolves ta
extend to It his protection, to perfect its
organization, to consolidate and subsidize its
hierarchy, and to enlist them In his service.
He, therefore, established the Church, and
endowed It with all the tities, honours, wealth

Romanism. 1 7
and prestige of the pagan priesthood. The
empire was divided into thirteen enormous
dioceses, comprising one hundred and thir
teen provinces, and each diocese was placed
under the direction of a vicar. The general
administration of the Church was entrusted
to three, and subsequently to five, metro
politans, of co-equal power ; their gradations
of rank, however, being dependent on the
political importance of their sees. The arch
bishops and bishops within the respective
jurisdictions of these primates, who, from the
commencement of the fifth century, were
designated patriarchs, received from them
their consecration, and were subject to their
general supervision. But the absolute master
of the Church was the Emperor. The highest
dignitaries were his nominees, and received
from him the pallium. Councils were con
voked by his authority, and deliberated under
his guidance and control. In becoming a
Christian he had abdicated none of his
imperial powers or dignities. He had but
resigned the doomed title of Pontifex Maxi
mus of an old and dying superstition, to
become the supreme head and arbiter of a
new and living faith. The Church from its
inception was the instrument of its creator ;
C

i8 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
its servitude was the logical consequence of
its political existence.
The hierarchy thus established was exalted
as a sacred order above the laity, and invested,
for political purposes, with vast ecclesiastical
power. It perfected for the illiterate and
wondering multitude a gorgeous and imposing
ritual ; it promulgated a creed binding on all
Christians ; it Instituted a system of ortho
doxy ; and finally, pretending to be the sole
depository of certain traditions of the apostles,
it became, with the imperial sanction, In affairs
purely ecclesiastical, the absolute master of
the Church. And as the Eternal City was the
political centre of the universe, Its patriarch,
in the natural course of things, was regarded
as the supreme head. The Bishops of Rome
had acquired, with universal assent, the pri
macy over ah ecclesiastical dignitaries, and
their title had been undisputed, until the trans
ference of the seat of empire to Constanti
nople. Then, the new metropolis of the
world, not satisfied with political pre-eminence,
contended with ancient Rome for spiritual
precedence. And this rivalry gave birth to
the pious fraud on which the popes have
founded their claim to ecclesiastical supre
macy. It was now pretended that there had

Romanism.

19

been a primacy among the apostles, of whom
Peter was the prince ; that he was the Vicar
of Christ, the Rock on which the Church was
to be built ; and that to him had been en
trusted the keys of the kingdom of heaven ;
and the power to bind and loose. St. Peter
was now declared to have been the first bishop
of Rome, and the popes were his legitimate
successors. Yet It was In vain that the Apos
tolic See thus boldly asserted its divine right
to supremacy, for its pretensions were never
but temporarily recognized by its great rival.
It is true that, from motives of policy, certain
of the Eastern emperors had severaHy acknow
ledged the primacy of the Holy See, and that
the Church of Constantinople had at their
express command abandoned the claim it had
persistently advanced to superiority over that
of Rome; but these concessions and renun
ciations were not final. The eternal struggle
was as often renewed and, surviving the dis
ruption and destruction ofthe Roman empire,
both Eastern and Western, it has been main
tained under one form or another In every
succeeding age, and subsists even to-day, as
if practically to demonstrate the fallacy and
monstrosity of the pa:pal claim to universal
supremacy.

20 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church:
Meanwhile the Church naturally shared the
political vicissitudes of the State. And on
the extinction of the Roman empire of the
West (a.d. 476), the Gothic kings of course
usurped the ecclesiastical as well as political
rights of sovereignty which Constantine had
transmitted to his successors. Nor did the
destruction of the Gothic kingdom in Italy
(a.d. 553) and the estabhshment of the
Exarchate (a.d. 554) materially affect the
political status of the Papacy. It is true, that
Bellsarius and Narses rescued Church and
State alike from the barbarians' grasp and
revived the might and prestige of the Imperial
name, but the Church remained in fetters.
The deputies of the Eastern emperors were
invested with ecclesiastical as well as civil and
mihtary powers. The exarchs or patricians
of Ravenna, as they were Indifferently styled,
were the sovereigns of Rome, and as long as
the power of the Eastern empire was unim
paired they exercised a complete control over
the persons and government of the Sovereign
Pontiffs. For example. Pope Vigilius having
violated the conditions upon which he had
been raised to the Papal chair, on the deposi
tion and banishment of his predecessor, was
arrested in the church of St. CecIHa, by com-

Romanism. 21
mand of the Empress Theodora, and con
ducted to Constantinople. In the imperial
presence he was subjected to the grossest
indignities and even to personal violence.
Escaping from his persecutors, he fled to the
church of St. Euphemia, but his pursuers
having forced him from the pIHars of the altar
to which he was clinging, fastened a rope
round his neck and dragged him ignomini
ously through the streets of the city until
nightfall. He died at Syracuse on his release
from a long and cruel imprisonment (a.d.
555). In a word, during a period of two
hundred years, eighteen successive exarchs
ruled with a rod of Iron the Eternal City,
when their power and authority were subverted
by Astolphus, King of the Lomb..rds, who
<;aptured Ravenna and claimed the sovereignty
of Rome as its dependency (a.d. 752).
The Roman Church now turns for succour
and protection to the most warlike and power
ful of those barbarous races, which, while
conquering and reorganizing the Roman
empire of the West, had themselves sub
mitted to the yoke of Christ. Again, the
Christian priest "had conquered the conquerors
of the world ; and his second triumph, more
glorious than the first, was a double victory,

22 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
achieved at once over barbarians and pagans
in the fuU tide of their- mihtary successes.
The first and most illustrious of those spiritual
victors — St. Remigius, Bishop of Rheims —
confronts the terrible Clovis in his mad
career of devastation and slaughter In Gaul,
subdues his savage heart by the simple story
of Christ's sufferings, and captivates his
senses by the higher civilization he brings
before his view. " Would that I had been
there with my brave Franks ! " bursts from
the lips of the royal barbarian, as the eloquent
prelate depicts the agony of the Crucifixion.
With three thousand of his warriors the
murderer of Solssons Is received into the
bosom of the Church amidst the pomp and
splendour of a ceremonial which — even in the
decay and dissolution of the empire — dazed
and dazzled the rude conqueror. The sacred
edifice was adorned with the richest tapestries,
and redolent with the smoke of the choicest
perfumes profusely burning in vases of gold
and silver. " Father ! Is not this the kingdom
of heaven where thou hast promised to lead
me ? " asked the wondering and tamed bar
barian as St. Remigius, in full pontificals,
led him by the hand towards the baptistery.
" Bow thy head, Sicambrian ! " said the

Romanism. 23
bishop, "adore what thou hast hitherto burned
— burn what thou hast hitherto adored ! "
Couriers soon carry the glad tidings of this
triumph of the Catholic faith to Rome, and
the delighted pontiff Anastatius hastens to
felicitate the royal convert and proclaim him
his glorious and illustrious son. At once the
GalHc bishops and nation hail the papal
champion and soldier as their dehverer from
heretical domination, and with their powerful
aid King Clovis makes an easy conquest of
the Arian, and on the ruins of Latin Gaul
founds the brilliant monarchy of France. To
her old ahles the Franks, then, the Church
naturally appeals In the hour of danger for
deliverance. And as a suppHant the pontiff
Stephen visits Paris, crowns the usurper
Pepin and his queen, and confers on him
and on his sons the honours of the patriciate.
Again the Franks become the champions of
the Church, and twice (754-5) the redoubted
Pepin scales the Alps, shatters the power of
Astolphus, wrests from him the Exarchate,
and bestows it In supreme and absolute
sovereignty on the Papacy. But his son
Charlemagne, as the ally of the Church, after
annihilating the Lombard kingdom (a.d. 774)
annexes Rome to his vast empire. The

24 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
dignities and prerogatives of Constantine are
revived in his person and family, and the
Roman empire of the West Is reconstructed
in his honour. Hitherto Rome had acknow
ledged afleglance to the Eastern emperors,
but on Christmas Day, in the year eight
hundred, the Prankish conqueror, wearing
the dress of a patrician, appears In the
Cathedral of St. Peter, and after assisting
at the celebration of mass, is kneeling at the
high altar, when suddenly, amidst the accla
mations of the multitude, Pope Leo III.
throws over his shoulders a rich mantle of
purple, crowns him Augustus and Emperor of
the Romans, and pays him the homage which
had been exacted by the ancient Caesars.
Yet the hour of the complete pohtical
subjugation of the Church was also that of
her greatest spiritual triumph. In Chris
tianizing and civilizing the Franks, and in
becoming their close ally, she had trans
formed those sturdy conquerors of the West
into its invincible defenders against the
countless hordes of their own barbarous and
pagan countrymen ; and thus, not only saved
the Latin race and language, as well as
the Latin civilization, from absolute anni
hilation, but enabled the conquered races,

Romanism. 25
under the banner of Charlemagne, and in
conjunction with their conquerors, to subju
gate and evangelize the whole Germanic
race. Moreover, she served as a bond of
union and reconciliation between the Franks
and Latins, and paved the way for the speedy
and complete absorption — and utter extinc
tion as a distinctive element — of the former
into the bosom of the latter. And the modern
Latin 'democracies, In their just Irritation at
the reactionary policy of the Church of Rome
of to-day, should never be guilty of the base
ingratitude of Ignoring or repudiating the
incalculable magnitude of the eternal obliga
tions of their race to the early successors of
St. Peter.
But the final dissolution of the empire of
Charlemagne on the deposition of Charles
the Fat (a.D. 888) inaugurates the most dis
graceful and humiliating servitude of the
Papacy. The oligarchy of Rome usurps the
prerogatives of the emperors and robs the
Church of the patrimonies which imperial
munificence had bestowed. Abandoned
women and Hcentlous men contend for the
sovereignty of the Holy See. The sword
decides the pretensions of the rival factions,
-who desecrate with blood the holy places.

26 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
The tiara Is worn by the vilest, weakest, or
unhappiest of mankind. For twenty years
the son of a prostitute governs the Eternal
City. And so generally complete was the
usurpation of the oligarchy, that the whole
period of its triumph, extending over more
than seventy years, may be regarded as a
vacancy of the empire.
Weary at length of the tyranny of her
domestic oppressors, the Church solicits the
foreigner to come to her deliverance, and
promises the Imperial crown In exchange for
St. Peter's patrimony. Descending the Alps
with his German hordes, Otho the Great
speedily conquers Italy (a.d. 962), subverts
the power of the Roman oligarchy, frees the
Pope, and grasps the diadem of the Western
Caesars. The Senate and people of Rome
give to him and his successors for ever,
the power of nominating popes, and of con
ferring investiture on bishops, and bind them
selves, by solemn treaty, to prefer to the
pontifical chair the Imperial candidates. On
the demise of the Pope, the envoys of Rome
repair to the imperial court to receive from.
the Emperor the nomination of a successor.
The monarchs of Germany bestow the Apos
tolic See, like that of an ordinary diocese of

Romanism. 27
the empire, on their relatives, dependents, or
creatures. The Church had but undergone
a change of masters, domestic tyrants had
given place to foreign conquerors, and
Italian, in the majority of cases, to German
Pontiffs. As we have already seen, from the moment
Constantine had estabhshed the Church, the
popes had been the nominees and vassals
successively of the Roman, Greek, Frank,
and German emperors, and temporarily of
the Gothic and Lombardic kings — nay, even
of the aristocracy of Rome itself ; and they
had ordinarily made their spiritual Influence
over the masses subservient to the political
aims and ambitions of their secular rulers.
Yet the submission of the Church had always
been conditional. The maintenance and
exercise of the paramount authority of the
imperial, royal, and oligarchical masters of the
Papacy, had been at ah times dependent on
their ability to enforce their recognized rights
with the sword.
A.D. 1072. — But the hour had now struck
for the emancipation of the Church from
secular control. Hildebrand (Pope Gregory
VIL), the contemporary and admirer of our
William the Conqueror, and in many salient

28 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
features his ecclesiastical prototype, de
termined not simply to deprive the German
emperors of the prerogative of nominating
and confirming popes, but also to de
stroy every vestige of lay Investiture,
and to exalt the Papacy above aU temporal
powers. He would reduce into the domain
of fact the pretensions which had been
hitherto rather theoretically advanced than
practically enforced by his predecessors.
That the Church had been founded by God
alone, and had ever been enlightened by His
spirit ; that the priesthood were His divinely-
ordained ministers, and the popes were His
Vicars on earth, were no new doctrines to the
Church or Christendom ; but Hildebrand,
pushing them to their logical conseqences,
boldly maintained that an authority thus
emanating from the Supreme Being acquired
a dignity surpassing all temporal grandeur,
and possessed an inherent right to supremacy
on earth. He compared the spiritual power
to the glorious sun, the source of light and
life ; and the imperial power, the highest
embodiment of the temporal, to the waning
moon, his reflex. He determined to direct,
control, and command in affairs secular, as
completely and absolutely as In affairs eccle-

Romanism. 29
siastical. He therefore emancipated the
Church from the authority of princes by the
abolition of lay Investiture. He centralized
the executive power of the Church by the
transference of the electoral rights of the
populace and priesthood of Rome to the
College of Cardinals. He severed the last
tie which bound the priest to the world by
the rigid enforcement of celibacy; and from
the Vatican he alone directed and controlled
that vast army of priests of various race and
tongue, who singly, or in masses, in their
parishes or- garrisoning those spiritual for
tresses the monasteries, dominated with
absolute sway the universal conscience of
Latin Christendom. Thus did the carpenter's
son of Soana, warring against, imperial,
royal, and aristocratic despotism, set his foot,
as acknowledged conqueror, on the neck of
crowned and brutal feudalism.
And this triumph of the Church was in a
restricted sense a democratic triumph. In
the secular world the masses groaned hope
lessly beneath the Iron yoke of an IlHterate and
turbulent chivalry, and were the perpetual
and helpless victims of its foreign or domestic
feuds. When knight met knight the courtesies
of combat knew no limits ; and the shock of

30 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
arms, even in such battles as Tenchebray
and Brenville, were almost innocent of blood
shed. But when the mail-clad bravo, mounted,
and armed with brand or battle-axe of finest
temper, hewed his facile way through reeling
ranks of cowering serfs on foot, destitute
alike of defensive armour and knightly
weapons, he held not his hand till glutted
and weary with human massacre. Of a truth
the serfs had no will but their lords', no hope
but in death. " Let us commend our souls
to God," in sober earnestness they might
have said, " for our bodies are the foe's."
But within the pale of Holy Mother Church
— the Republic of God — -the omnipotence of
blood ceased ; the Vicars of Christ were in
differently patrician or plebeian. The demo
cratic principle extinct elsewhere found here
vitality and force. The swineherd of St.
Albans, transformed into a priest, receives
the homage of Germany's greatest emperor,
and France's greatest king ; and Frederic
Barbarossa and Philip Augustus perform for
Nicholas Breakspear the menial offices of
grooms. Sprung from the people to a great
extent, the priests were the natural champions
and protectors of the poor, and the churches
and monasteries were their places of refuge,

Romanism. 3 1
and their store-houses amidst the turbulence
and bloodshed which characterized those evil
times. Moreover, the Church was an Intel
lectual and cultured counterpoise to that
incarnation of illiterate brute force, the
feudal monarchies of the Dark Ages. The
" Hercules without his club," as our first
Plantagenet king cynically designated the
Papacy, was the only earthly power that
could restrain the unbridled Hcence and
ferocity of feudal kings and peers, or materi
ally alleviate the social miseries of the
wretched populations subject to their yoke.
Finally, as the sole depository of learning
and official piety, the Church had been, since
the overthrow of the Roman empire by the
pagan hordes of the North, the intellectual
and spiritual light of Western Europe without
which mankind might have relapsed into
barbarism, and the Latin race and language
might have been smothered in blood.
Nevertheless, the general policy of the
Papacy was animated by an ambition and a
lust of power, in affairs temporal as weH as
spiritual, which aimed at universal empire.
And the strange religious enthusiasm, which
inflamed and hurled embattled Europe against
the countless hordes of Asia, facilitated and

32 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
hastened the triumph of this policy. The
Crusades placed kings and peoples alike at
the disposal of the Church. All were eager
to enhst under her banners and obey her
behests. The Fifth Crusade (a.d. 1204), in
deed — which led to the conquest of Constanti
nople and the temporary subjugation of the
Greek empire by the Latins — placed the whole
Christian world at her feet. Yet the policy of
the Papacy remained unchanged. Under her
fostering care, Ignorance and superstition
everywhere reigned supreme. Her eternal
watchward was stlH her material Interests, and
she hesitated at no atrocity In the suppression
of whatever menaced them.
And how was this spiritual despotism main
tained ? What was the invariable Hne of
conduct pursued by the Roman Catholic
Church towards — shall I say for want of
a better term — Dissenters, everywhere in
Europe ? We shah see.
The Papal hierarchy inaugurated their reign
over the temporal powers by the burning of
Arnold of Brescia and by a general persecution
of the Waldenses. The immediate followers
of Waldo in France were slain or dispersed,
and the reformer himself died in exile, amid
the mountains of Bohemia.

Romanism. 33
In France, in the thirteenth century, the
Albigenses were exterminated. I have ever
regarded this annihilation of the Albigenses as
the blackest page In the black annals of
Roman Catholic persecutions. A crusade is
preached against these primitive saints of the
Lord— the sons of the Holy Roman Church
bear the cross of Christ stamped on their
breasts, but the brand of murder Is in their
hands. Simon de Montfort, the father of
our Earl of Leicester, and after him the
Dauphin, afterwards Louis IX. of France, lead
these crusaders on. The town of Beziferes Is
about to be stormed, in which there are many
Romanists, and Montfort demands of the
Legate of the Pope, who accompanies his
army, if these last shah be spared. The
Legate answers : " Kill all, God will know
His own ! " Ofa truth they did slay aU, else
where as well as here ; they ceased not until
every true son of Languedoc lay weltering in
his blood, and the fairest province ofthe sunny
south of France became a waste and howHng
wilderness. Two centuries later John Huss and Jerome
of Prague suffered martyrdom at Constance,
and the Reformation In Bohemia was merci
lessly suppressed by the crusading armies of
D

34 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
the Church. In the words of our Henry VIIL,
" They hunted It down like a wild beast, and
driving it Into a pit, they shut it up and kept
it fast." In the sixteenth century the Papal Church
was stained with the culminating crime of
Romanism, and In France this terrible scene
was enacted. The Huguenots, goaded to
madness by persecution, at length rise In arms,
and, Hke brave Christian gentlemen as they
are, hold their own against the hosts of the
French King. Finding force of no avail,
he resolves, by foul and midnight murder, to
rid himself of God's freemen. A treaty of
peace is concluded, which Is to be cemented
by the marriage of the King of Navarre, the
leader of the Huguenots, and the King's sister,
Margaret of Valois. The chiefs of the un
suspecting nobility and gentry are assembled
in Paris to celebrate their prince's marriage ;
but at midnight after this marriage festival
the beU of St. Germain I'Auxerrois tolls the
death-knell of Protestantism ; its peal is the
preconcerted signal for a general massacre of
the Huguenots of France, many the unsus
pecting guests of their king. This king,
Charles IX., and his mother, Catherine de
Medicis, by his side, witness the massacre

Romanism. 35
from the windows of the Louvre. The King
has a fowling-piece in his hand, and ever and
anon he fires into the crowd of fugitives that
pass before his palace, fleeing from the knives
of his assassins. The Duke of Guise — the
cousin of Mary Queen of Scots — undertakes
the assassination of the celebrated Admiral de
Cohgny, at the very house of his victim, and
the good man dies in his bed-chamber beneath
the swords of his assassins. Guise, from the
court-yard beneath, " to make assurance
doubly sure," calls to his bravoes to fling the
body of Cohgny to him. He kneels beside
the corpse, and with his handkerchief wipes
the stains of blood from that murdered face ;
he recognizes his enemy, and, spurning him
with his foot, Is satisfied. Thirty thousand
Protestants are butchered on this and the fol
lowing days in France. At the news there are
rejoicings in Rome and Madrid, and by com
mand of the Pope, Gregory XIII., a medal Is
struck to commemorate this glorious day of
St. Bartholomew. But the living God neither
slumbers nor sleeps ; His avenging hand
speedily reaches these persecutors. The
King is on his death-bed. To his frenzied
imagination, the spectres of his murdered sub
jects seize him and drag him to the tomb ; he

36 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
dies with shrieks of despair on his lips, and
Guise, with many of his house, falls beneath
the assassin's knife at Blois.
In the same century the Holy Inquisition
had burnt out Protestantism in Spain ; and
the Protestants of Holland had been
saved from extermination at the hands of the
Spaniards, by their own strong arms and
stout hearts, and by the aid of England.
Austria in the seventeenth century had
again trodden out Protestantism in Bohemia,.
and the massacre of Magdeburg will enable
us to form a passably accurate opinion as to
her intentions in regard to Northern Germany
had success favoured her arms.
In Piedmont, in the same century, a general
massacre of the Vaudois took place. The
mighty hand and stretched-out arm of God,
through England, saved the remnant of this
people. The threat of Cromwell to the Pope,
" that the booming of English cannon should
be heard at St. Angelo's," stayed these
massacres. Finally, and stih in the same century, French
Protestantism was practically exterminated by
the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In
1685, the Huguenots of France, after under
going a century of persecution — one day of

Romanism. 37
which century I have already briefly alluded
to — were expelled from their native soil, to
the number of five hundred thousand souls,
amidst the acclamations of their Roman
Catholic fellow-countrymen, and that by the
very monarch who has been pre-eminently
designated "the Great."
Such were the antecedents of Romanism
in all countries and in all ages. And by such
atrocities as I have just described, she ever
strove to extirpate Dissent, and so maintain
intact her boundless powers and pretensions.

II.
ANGLICANISM.

A.D. 1071-1604. — In the meantime, England,
which at the Norman Conquest had been the
victim of papal poHcy, inflicted the first, and,
in a political sense, the deadliest of a series
of blows which have shattered the papal
power in fragments, and laid the tiara in the
dust. The simple and primitive truths of Chris
tianity, which Wickliffe had disseminated
amongst the masses, could not have failed to
impress deeply the minds of all sincerely
devout and independent thinkers ; and in the
light of his teaching the mystifications and
falsehoods which Romish priestcraft had
interwoven with the plain Word of God must

Anglicanism,. 39
have become visible In all their naked defor
mity. People must have perceived at once
that that Christianity which the Bible
describes as so simple, that " they that run
can read," and that " wayfaring men though
fools shall not err therein," had been poHuted,
perverted, and corrupted, as soon as its
teachers had assumed the proportions of an
organized profession — as soon, In a word, as
the Roman Church was established, and as
an Inevitable and natural consequence was
swayed by the conflicting passions, ambi
tions, and interests which are inherent to
every large association of men, for whatso
ever purpose Incorporated. This institution,
as we have already seen, had commenced its
pohtical career with being the pliant tool of
governments, and had ended In being the
master, protector, and abettor of that trades-
union of monarchs, who have ever conspired
against the liberties of mankind, of whom, In
those dark ages, they were the tyrants and
scourges, and whom they mercilessly ruled
with the iron hand of the soldier and the
superstitious He of the Romish priest. But
great as had been the moral blow dealt by
Wickliffe to Romanism, and numerous as had
been the converts to his views, we unfor-

40 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
tunately owe our emancipation from its yoke
to other causes. The changes in the consti
tution and government of the Church In
England, which we caU the Reformation,
originated in the vilest passions of the worst
of kings, in the Hcentiousness and greed of
that monster who boasted "he had never
spared man in his anger or woman in his
lust." Henry VIII. had been the great champion
of Romanism. He had written with his
own hand to the German princes, recom
mending them to deliver " Luther and his
audacious treatises to the flames," unless he
recanted, offering them at the same time his
co-operation, and, if necessary, his Hfe, for
the accompHshment of so pious an object.
Faihng in this, he had combated with his pen
that " Cerberus sprung from the depths of
hell;" and the Pope, Clement VIL, had re
warded his zeal by flattering the dehghted
monarch with the title of " Defender of the
Faith." But in the course of time this fiery
dialectitian had become weary of his wife,
and had transferred his passions to a younger
and more beautiful object. He now demanded
of the Pope a dissolution of his marriage on
religious grounds ; his scruples of conscience,

Anglicanism. 41
he pretended, would no longer allow him to
cohabit with his brother's widow. The Holy
Father was placed on the horns of a dilemma,
or, to use his own homely phrase, "was
betwixt the hammer and the anvil." He
would have willingly obliged the King, even
at the risk of destroying the Church's InfaUi-
bllity — a dispensation for the first marriage
having been granted by Julius II. — but he
was over-awed and overshadowed by the
colossal power of Charles V., who vowed to
defend his aunt, and who had the year pre
viously given an earnest of the deadly quality
of his vengeance by the storming and sacking
of Rome, and the imprisonment of this very
Pope for a less grave offence. The Holy
Father therefore temporized, watching with
eager eyes the progress of hostilities in Italy
between Charles V. and Francis I., the ally
of Henry ; his mind ever inclining to this
side or to that, with the various fluctuations
of the contest. Threatened alike by both
parties, he regulates his conduct by the irre
sistible logic of events. The star of Francis
is In the ascendant, and everything Is con
ceded to Henry; Charles is victorious, and
every concession is revoked. Disgusted at
length with this temporization, Henry lends a

42 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
wIHIng ear to Cromwell, who advises him to
throw off the yoke of Rome, and declare
himself supreme head of the Church in his
own dominions. "Then," said CromweU,
" the clergy — sensible that their lives and
fortunes are In the hands of their own
monarch, hands which could be no longer
paralyzed by alien interference from haughty
antagonists — would instantly become the
obsequious ministers of his wiU." This
advice pleased the King, and was imme
diately acted upon, for Henry had at length
resolved to reduce the Church — which WiUiam
the Conqueror had established as a means of
tightening his hold on England — to Its original
condition of absolute dependence on the
Crown. And here it wIU be necessary to consider
for a moment the political circumstances
under which the Norman Conqueror had
created this Norman Church, with the avowed
object of making it his servile Instrument for
enslaving the minds and souls of the Anglo-
Saxon, Danish, and Celtic populations of this
country, as he had already enslaved their
bodies. King Harold and his brothers, with
the flower of their race, had fallen on Senlac
HIU, and a series of isolated and spasmodic

Anglicanism. 43
revolts of the mixed races of Devonshire and
the Welsh borders, the Celts of Cornwall, and
the Anglo-Danes and Saxons of the Northern
and Eastern counties, which had followed
each other in rapid succession, had been
repressed with the greatest barbarity. And
by a winter campaign, attended with frightful
sufferings to his troops, but culminating in the
capture of Chester, he had crushed aU armed
resistance, and completed the conquest of the
whole land. In his determination to render
the Norman Conquest permanent — for he
beheved the clemency of Canute the Great
had lost England to that conqueror's descen
dants — the Norman King was callous of
human suffering, and deaf to the cries of
mercy. He had literally converted into a
desert — whitened with the bones of one hun
dred thousand of Its inhabitants — the country
lying between York and Durham, and had
made of Hampshire a hunting-ground. Mur
der, conflagration, and famine had marked the
track of his army everywhere ; neither age
nor sex was spared; aU who crossed his path
perished beneath the sword of this ruthless
oppressor. Gradually the soil of England had
been confiscated, and her princes and nobles,
with one historic exception, had been either

44 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
slain or disinherited, imprisoned or banished.
Finally, Norman fortresses had sprung up, as
if by magic, at every vital point, and — packed
with Norman soldiers — dominated and over
awed the ruined cities and ravaged country.
And now the Conqueror has time to turn his
whole attention to things spiritual. He had
made, up his mind to destroy the Anglo-
Saxon Church of England, and create a new
institution entirely devoted to his views. But
with his habitual sagacity he effects this
vast ecclesiastical revolution with the con
currence and support of the Apostolic See
itself. At its outset — influenced no doubt by
the Norman Conquerors of Southern Italy,
who, after vanquishing, became the ardent
champions of the Papacy, as well as by the
general interest of the Roman Church — Pope
Alexander II. had both encouraged and
blessed his enterprise against England, send
ing him the banner of St. Peter, whose virtues
would protect him against aU dangers ; there
fore, the Norman Conqueror appealed with
confidence to the old ally, who had displayed
such zeal In favour of the invasion, to crown
his holy work by undertaking the regulation
of its spiritual concerns. And in response to
his appeal— backed by their common friend

Anglicanism. 45
the illustrious Lanfranc — his staunch allies
Pope Alexander and great Hildebrand sent
three legates into England on this important
mission. These dignitaries — Cardinals John
and Peter, and Hermenfrol, Bishop of Sion —
the King retains about his person for the
space of a whole year, treating them, in con
sideration of the mighty services he required
of them, as if they were, says Orderlcus
VitaHs, angels of God. The famine-stricken
land is mocked with the gorgeous ceremony
and attendant festivities of a second corona
tion of the foreign king. Then, two Great
Councils of all the Norman priests, and
laymen, who had found rank and wealth In
England, were in succession held, under the
presidency of the Norman Conqueror, and
Roman Cardinals, respectively at Winchester
and Windsor. The Anglo-Saxon bishops
and abbots, in a word the primate and aU the
higher clergy of the Church of England, were
summoned, in the name, and by the authority
of the Roman Church, to appear as criminals
before this tribunal, and were, under various
pretexts, degraded in a body, deprived of
their sacred offices — which were conferred
on Normans — and condemned to perpetual
imprisonment in. some particular fortress or

46 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
monastery. The national clergy had every
where to give place to the Norman, and the
Saxon language to the French. FinaUy the
celebrated Lanfranc, the beloved friend of
both the Pope and King, was chosen primate
of all England, and to him was intrusted the
organization In all its details — subject to the
general supervision of the Conqueror — of the
new Norman Church of England, whose real
and avowed mission it was to consolidate
and perpetuate the Norman Conquest by
making the Christian rehgion itself the
means of enslaving the minds and souls of
the conquered races of this land. And in
every succeeding age, this Norman Church,
in spite of Its connection with the Papacy,
was true to the traditions and interests of the
conquering Norman caste, of which It was
the offspring and spiritual representative ;
but by resisting the wUl of a monarch whose
disposition was as despotic as the Conqueror's,
she lost that partial independence which
sprang from her union with the Roman
Church, and was speedily reduced by Henry
Tudor to that state of absolute dependence
on the crown in which it had pleased the
Norman Conqueror originally to place her.
A.D. 1531. — The Parhament without hesi-

Anglicanism. 47
tation passed the necessary Acts required by
Henry, conferring on him at the same time
legislative power, which gave to his procla
mations the force and authority of laws. The
convocations, with one dissentient voice,
readily acknowledged him as protector and
supreme head of the Anglican Church ; the
prelates, clergy, and schoolmasters were com
manded to preach and teach this new
doctrine, and the sheriffs were to see that
this duty was effectually performed. Finally,
in order to give stability and perpetuity to
this great and violent revolution, the vast
lands and revenues of the ancient Church —
including the fund which had been set apart
for the maintenance of the poor, and which
amounted to a third of the entire eccle
siastical wealth of the country — were con
fiscated, and handed over as a spoil to the
aristocracy, whose support of these great
changes was purchased and assured by the
gratification of their insatiable cupidity.
Thus was the Pope dethroned In England,
and the King usurped his functions ; an
English pontiff with unrestricted powers
succeeded a foreign one ; the capricious wIU
of a tyrant became the only standard of re
hgious faith ; he could correct its errors, and

48 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
enforce conformity to his views ; henceforth
the Anglican Church became, and has ever
since remained, the absolute slave and
emissary of the State, the natural enemy of
the Hberties of the people, of universal pro
gress and enlightenment. It is true that
Henry had emancipated himself from papal
domination ; but he rigidly and ruthlessly
enforced every doctrine and right of the
ancient Church. Protestants and Romanists
were indiscriminately persecuted with un
exampled barbarity. The former were burnt
for refusing to subscribe to his confession of
faith as enunciated in his "Bloody Statute; "
the latter were hanged for rejecting his
supremacy. He Inaugurated a reign of terror
unparalleled in its atrocity ; a whole people
were his victims, England was a vast acel-
dama. A.D. 1547. — The death of this second
founder of the Anglican Church emancipated
England from a cruel bondage, and paved
the way for the temporary completion of the
Reformation. The Church had been split
into two great factions ever since Henry had
thrown off the papal yoke. The members
of the one party, at the head of which was
Cranmer, had been denominated the men of

Anglicanism. 49
the new, and their opponents the men of the
old learning. The former desired a complete
severance from Rome, the latter hoped to
effect a reunion with It. Both parties had
been obliged to dissemble their own opinions,
and accommodate themselves to the capri
cious will of their royal master ; but at his
death the reforming faction had gained the
ascendency. The boy-king had been edu
cated in the new faith ; his uncle, the Pro
tector, had been gorged with Church lands ;
the J3rogress of this purely political Reforma
tion, so far as it affected religion as an in
stitution, was therefore inevitable. The first
act of these soi-disant Reformers — many of
whom were concealed Romanists, and all
pledged to further innovation by the pos
session of Church property — was to com
plete the spoliation of that ancient institution
by the seizure of the remainder of the abbey
lands. They then swept away some of the
most offensive of the old rites and cere
monies ; and crowned their new edifice by
the compilation of the Book of Common
Prayer, which was substantiaUy the same as
the one now in use, and was but a garbled
translation of the Roman mass-book. Finally,
they denounced as heretics all who refused
E

50 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
to acknowledge their pretensions, and en
forced with arrogance and cruelty conformity
to their views. Those bishops of the Romish
faction who were too honest to dissemble,
were at once dispossessed of their sees, and
committed to prison; the revenue of their
bishoprics becoming the plunder of the ra
pacious Reformers. The Princess Mary,
tormented by her persecutors, made a vain
attempt to escape to the Continent, and only
secured liberty of conscience by the threat
of her cousin, the Emperor Charles V., to
declare hostilities. The masses were coerced
to conformity to the new doctrines and Hturgy
by the martyrdom of the celebrated Joan
Bocher and of George Van Parre, a Dutch
physician resident in London.
Thus did the moiety of the members of a
new institution, whose foundation had been
laid in the lust, sacrUege, and atrocity of the
prince of tyrants, suppress the rival faction,
and arrogate for their Church a divine origin.
With a far-seeing policy, they had preserved
whatever of the old system was calculated to
insure, to strengthen, and perpetuate their
own ascendency ; for they felt conscious that
that perfect organization which had given to
the popes for a thousand years an absolute

Anglicanism. 5 1
dominion over the souls of mankind, could
not fail, with able manipulation, to be equally
serviceable to themselves. Therefore, under
the new order of things, the King represented
the Pope, and possessed aU his awful attri
butes; the hierarchy remained Intact, honours
and wealth still giving weight and prestige
to the bishops. The masses, systematically
retained In ignorance, and, as a natural con
sequence, inclined to superstition, were stiU
to a great extent dazzled and amazed by
the splendours of a ritual that was incom
prehensible to them. Not a single preten
sion of the ancient estabhshment did they
waive or forego. They declared theirs to be
the true and ApostoHc Church, and by Act
of Parliament asserted that their garbled
liturgy had been framed by the direct in
spiration of the Holy Spirit. Finally, for
getful that they owed their very existence to
the sacrifice of their last vestiges of inde
pendence, and that they had ever proclaimed
subserviency to their supreme temporal head
as a divine obligation ; forgetful that a mon
arch's breath had called them into exis
tence, and that a monarch's breath could
annihilate them — they conspired against their
legitimate sovereign, and forfeited their heads

52 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
as traitors before they were tried as here
tics. A.D. 1553. — On the accession of Mary a
reaction was Inevitable, for the Reformers
had been her mother's and her own most
bitter persecutors, and had even taken up
arms to exclude her from the throne, brand-
incr her as IUegitimate. The Romish faction
of the Church at once obtained the ascen
dency. The ejected bishops were released
from prison and restored to their sees. Once
reassured as to the retention of their ecclesi
astical plunder, the Parhament, who would,
says the Venetian ambassador, " turn Turks
or Jews at the command of their sovereign,
but who would never restore the abbey lands,"
without hesitation repealed all the statutes
which they had enacted against the old
system during the two preceding reigns.
The Roman Catholic Church was restored,
papal supremacy was again acknowledged,
and the legislature, bribed by the Emperor,
unanimously decreed the enforcement of the
ancient penalties against heretics. A large
part of the clergy conformed ; but those who
were pledged to Protestantism by marriage,
and who refused to abandon their wives,
together with others who adhered to the new
faith, from conviction, fled to the Continent,

Anglicanism. 53
where, however, many of them met with scant
sympathy ; for the foreign Reformers justly
regarded them as political rather than re
ligious exiles, and deemed their doctrines
and system of Church government heretical.
A moiety of the bishops likewise conformed,
and there is no reason to doubt that others
would have followed their example had they
not been conscious that all concessions on
their part would have availed them nothing,
as they had rendered themselves personally
obnoxious to the rival faction.
In spite of the isolated insurrections which
stained with blood the reigns of the four last
Tudor monarchs, and sprang directly or in
directly from religious causes, these repeated
transitions in the religion of the State were
effected with little opposition from the nation
at large, who, if we are to judge by their
generally passive and quiescent attitude, were
more puzzled than enlightened at each trans
formation their Church underwent, as the
Romish or the Reformed faction, in its turn,
triumphed ; or, to speak with correctness and
precision, as the monarch, the absolute and
acknowledged master of the national con
science and faith, chanced to be either
Romanist or Protestant.
The extreme section of the Romish faction,

54 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
which had undergone a rigorous persecu
tion during the preceding reign, now prepared
to wreak on their adversaries a terrible revenge.
They had, even as victims, regarded with
scorn and derision the arrogant pretensions
of their somewhat plebeian colleagues ; it was,
therefore, hardly to be expected that In the
hour of triumph they would be merciful.
Indeed, in their blindness and fury they re
sorted to the most atrocious measures of
coercion, resolving with fire and faggot to
extirpate heresy. But the calmness and forti
tude with which the martyrs met death, under
its most horrid aspect, shed an imperishable
lustre on the Reformed faith, whUst it branded
ahke with eternal infamy those bishops and
clergy of the Anglican Church who either
actively compassed or passively consented to
the destruction of their brethren.
A.D. 1558. — These barbarities ceased on
the accession of Ehzabeth, who at once
rejected papal supremacy ; not that she loved
Rome less, but absolute power more. The
new system — If system it might be caUed,
which was but a travesty of the ceremonies,
and a plagiarism of the ritual, of the ancient
Church — was revived with still further con
cessions In favour of Romanists, by which

Anglicanism. 55
the doctrine of transubstantiation and the
practice of auricular confession were left to the
Independent judgment of the communicants,
the acceptance or rejection of these articles
of faith being conveniently regarded as Im
material. Acts of supremacy and uniformity
were passed, and rigidly enforced. The
bishops, who had by their cruelties in the
preceding reign Irretrievably committed
themselves to Romanism, refused compliance
with the new order of things, and were ejected
from their sees ; but the army of priests, with
one hundred and seventy-five exceptions, con
formed. The Queen, who did not abate one
jot of the pretensions of her father, soon re
duced the hierarchy to absolute submission to
her wUl. The pretensions to infaUIblHty of the
old Church were, indeed, revived In favour of
her institution, on purely pohtical grounds ;
but its dignitaries, from the primate down
wards, were treated with the Indignity of
menials whenever they dared in the slightest
degree to question her omnipotence In the
State ecclesiastical, or failed In Immediate
and unconditional compliance with her wishes
in things temporal. But her thoroughly
patriotic and dauntless spirit, the dazzling
splendours of her reign, and the generally

56 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
popular character of her government, recon
cUed the masses to the despotic authority of
a Queen who had said, and in the main said
truly, " I have always so behaved myself that
under God I have placed my chiefest strength
and safeguard In the loyal hearts and good-
wiU of my subjects."
A.D. 1603. — At her death " this royal throne
of kings " was inherited by a pedant and
buffoon, who was in character, in manners,
and in person alike vUe and contemptible.
James had been bred In the Presbyterian
faith, and had solemnly declared in the
General Assembly at Edinburgh, with his
" bonnet off, and his hands upHfted to heaven,
that he praised God that he was born in the
time of the light of the Gospel, and In such a
place, as to be King of such a Church, the
sincerest kirk in the world," and had, more
over, sworn as long as life should last to
maintain the same In aU its purity ; adding,
somewhat unnecessarily, " As for our neigh
bour Kirk of England, their service is an evil-
said mass in EngHsh ; they want nothing of
the mass but the liftings."
But on his arrival in England, the fawning
sycophancy and self-abasement of the bishops,
the body as well as soul-enslaving tendency

Anglicanism. 57
of their doctrines, and, above all, an Identity
of interests, had speedily effected his conver
sion to Anglicanism. He did not fail to per
ceive and appreciate the exquisite mechanism
of an organization which, while servilely
moulded upon the Roman pattern, retained
aU the political usefulness of Its original
without its sincerity and Independence. He
at once gave It his patronage and confidence,
and secured Its hierarchy In the possession of
their honours and wealth, whilst they con
tinued assiduously to preach and teach an
absolute and a blind obedience to Royal
authority In Church and State as a divine obh
gation Incumbent on every subject ; and not
content with this, they desecrated the very
Word of God itself with the most fulsome
and Impious flatteries of their royal master.
These unholy leaguers then prepared to re
assert and maintain the InfaUibUity of their
Church, and to mercUessly enforce uni
formity. But this was a task beyond their power,
for it was absurd to suppose that honest and
independent men, who had shaken off the
venerable superstition of Rome, would for ever
surrender their consciences and faith to the
guidance of a new institution, which had

58, The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
been founded in the worst vices of our nature,
and cemented with the blood of the saints.
Indeed, from the earhest times when reform
was preached, the mass of the thinking popu
lation, although prevented by the temporal
power from holding aloof from that body, had
not faUed to condemn the purely political
nature of Its organization, to denounce as
unscriptural and papistical the tities and
dignities of Its hierarchy, and to reject as
idolatrous many of its doctrines and rites ;
and their numbers had now so greatiy in
creased, that the persecuting and baffled
Primate Whitgift, who had hanged Barrow,
Greenwood, Penry, and other honourable
and loyal men for refusing to conform,
had said, " I have not been greatly quiet
in my mind, the vipers are so many."
These " vipers," or Puritans, as they were
generally called, from their desire to restore
Christianity to the purity and simplicity of
apostolic times, had been the most eloquent,
zealous, and Indefatigable preachers of the
Gospel among the masses ; and we have it on
the highest contemporary authority that the
conversion of the nation at large to the new
opinions was, under God, mainly, if not
entirely, due to their herculean labours.

Anglicanism. 59
And when we reflect that in a material sense
the confiscation of the vast domains of the
ancient Church had been a calamity to aU
classes of the community save the highest,
that the poor for whom the Church had ever
amply provided — one-third of its revenues
having been from time immemorial set apart
exclusively for that sacred purpose — had
been thereby thrown as a burden on the
country, and that the spoHators of the
Church and poor had been, in striking con
trast with their clerical predecessors, harsh
and rapacious landlords, ever sacrificing the
rights and lives of their new tenants to their
own insatiable avarice, it must be evident
that Puritanic sincerity and enthusiasm, com
bined with Puritanic heroism and effort, could
have alone triumphed over so many and such
varied obstacles.
A.D. 1604. — The King, who had pubhcly
declared with an oath that as he made the
judges and the bishops, he made what he
liked, law and Gospel, inaugurated his cam
paign against Puritanism at the mock con
ference at Hampton Court. Perceiving that
his hierarchy were worsted in argument by
their Puritanic opponents, he stood up the
avowed champion of civil and religious

6o The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
despotism. Addressing the bishops, he
solemnly declared that prelacy was the best,
the Indispensable support of his sovereignty.
Turning towards the Puritans, he. said, " You
are aiming at a Scots' presbytery, which
agrees with monarchy" — that is despotism
in his acceptation of the word— " as weU as
God and the devU;" told them "that they
wanted to strip Christ again, and bade them
away with their snivelling." He concluded
his harangue by declaring "he would make
them conform, or harry them out of the land,
or else worse," " only hang them, that's all."
Then was witnessed one of the most humiliat
ing spectacles of ecclesiastical depravity re
corded in the black annals of Anglicanism.
The King had scarcely ceased to speak
when Bishop Bancroft, faUing on his knees,
exclaimed " that his heart melted for joy, and
made haste to acknowledge to Almighty God
His singular mercy In giving them such a
king as since Christ's time had not been."
And the aged but blood-stained Whitgift
said, " Your Majesty speaks by the special
assistance of God's Spirit." But Har
rington, an eye-witness of this degrading
scene, though a courtier and a partisan
of the Church, writes, " I wist not what

Anglicanism. 61
they mean, but the spirit was rather foul-
mouthed.'" And these were not mere Idle words of
King and prelates, but the dehberate expres
sion of their fixed resolve to extirpate Dis
sent, and with it to extinguish " that precious
spark of Hberty which had been kindled, and
was preserved by the* Puritans alone." The
Court of High Commission immediately re
sumed its horrid functions. This tribunal,
which had been estabhshed for the discovery
and suppression of Dissent, consisted of a
body of forty-four clerical and lay commis
sioners presided over by the primate, and
possessed an authority over the ecclesiastical
affairs of the nation as absolute as it was
iniquitous. Its victims were bound on oath
to answer all interrogations incriminating
others as well as themselves, and the highest
contemporary authority assures us that " the
inquisitors of Spain used not so many ques
tions to trap their preys." The penalties
inflicted were of the most atrocious char
acter. Absence from church for a month
was punished with fine and Imprisonment ;
perpetual exile awaited all who did not
recant and conform within three months
after conviction ; and a felon's death, without

62 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
benefit of clergy, was the awful doom of
those Puritans who either rejected these
barbarous conditions or returned from banish
ment. The Anglican Church now appeared trium
phant everywhere. Episcopacy had been
established in aU parts of the British Isles ;
but for political rather than for religious pur
poses. In Ireland the revenues of the ancient
and National Church had been transferred
to the Anglican priesthood, but no attempt
had been made to evangelize the population ;
the Irish benefices being in reality but poh
tical sinecures. The episcopal establishment
in Wales, and the temporary one In Scotland,
possessed the same characteristics. The
Puritans alone resisted the absolute preten
sions of Anglicanism, and maintained against
it an unequal struggle for the civil and reli
gious Hberties of England.
Conscious of political power, and em
boldened in their atrocities by impunity,
the King and bishops dared to rekindle the
baleful fires of Smithfield, and two victims
perished in the flames ere the indignation of
an outraged people could arrest the hands of
the royal and prelatic assassins and save the
martyrs at least from this most horrid form of

Anglicanism. ^2)
death. But though denied the supreme grati
fication of burning its opponents, this Church
— whose faith was ever conventional rather
than real, and whose persecutions had ever a
political rather than a religious tendency, and
were therefore always cold-blooded — still con
tinued Its cruel work of repression, marking
out as the especial object of Its vengeance
one of the most uncompromising and power
ful of the nonconforming sects.

III.
PURITANISM,
OR THE EMANCIPATION OF ENGLAND FROM NORMAN DOMINATION,

A.D. 1604 — 1660. — Regarding the Scriptures
as their only guide and authority in religious
matters, the Independents claimed a complete
emancipation of the mind and conscience from
all ecclesiastical and secular control ; and, as
a natural consequence, rejected as anti- Chris
tian the pretensions and titled hierarchy of
the Anghcan Church, which they, prodigal of
their lives In the cause of truth, denounced as
idolatrous in its doctrines, iUegal in its ordina
tion, and therefore invahd In its rites. They
desired a complete severance of spiritual from
temporal affairs, and maintained that each
congregation constituted a complete and self-

Puritanism. 65
governing Church. They denied that the
priesthood was a distinct order, conferring an
indelible character ; but, on the contrary, they
affirmed that the voice . of the brotherhood
which ordained the priest could also unfrock
him. FinaUy, with them originated the
glorious doctrine of rehgious toleration,
against which Anglicanism — subsidized by
and necessarily a servant of the State —
was bound In the nature of things to wage
openly or secretly an eternal warfare.
The annihilation of the Independents was
naturally the especial object of this Church's
aim, to effect which it hesitated at no atrocity.
The national voice had Indeed constrained the
reluctant prelates to quench the flames of per
secution, but the halter, the glowing iron, the
rack, and the shears were stiU busy at their
horrid work. The courtier prelates, with
their artificial faith and political aspirations,
had stUl full Hcence to hang, brand, torture,
and mutilate men "whose hearts the Lord
had touched with heavenly zeal for His truth."
Weary at length, and reeling in the terrible
tempest, a remnant of " the poor persecuted
flock of Christ," scattered over the rural and
urban districts on the adjoining borders of
Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire, F

66 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
turned their despairing eyes towards HoUand,
" wherej they heard, was freedom of religion
for aU men ; as also how sundry, from London
and other parts of the land, had been exiled
and persecuted for the same cause and were
gone thither." And these fugitives were but
one smaU section of that glorious army of
martyrs, who, " in the north parts," as in
other places of the land, " had resolved,"
whatever it should cost them, " to shake off
the yoke of anti- Christian bondage " which
Anglicanism had imposed upon them. They
were then caUed Separatists, from their deter
mination to separate themselves, not simply
from AngHcanism, and aU other estabhshed
politico-ecclesiastical organizations, which
they denounced as alike corrupt, idolatrous,
and anti-scriptural, but from the world at
large, lying in wickedness. And their
churches were so many voluntary and In
dependent associations of Christians, who
had " entered into covenant to walk with
God, and one with another, in the enjoyment
of the ordinances of God, according to the
primitive pattern in the Word of God." But
numerous as were these churches, and pitUess
as was the persecution they all alike under
went, our attention must be limited, for sad

Puritanism. 6"]
and obvious reasons, to that heroic band of
of martyrs for whom so high a destiny was
reserved ; whg had formed themselves, " as
the Lord's free people," Into a holy brother
hood (a.D. 1606), under the guidance of
their pastor John Robinson, a man of fear
less Independence, at once tolerant and
zealous in the cause of truth, and " worthily
reverenced ... for the grace of God in
him." The founder, host, and Ruling Elder
of this famous Church was the venerated
William Brewster. The son of a village
postmaster of Nottinghamshire, he became
the private secretary of Sir Wilham Davison,
whom he accompanied on an important and
successful mission to the Netherlands ; but
on the unmerited disgrace of his distinguished
patron he returned to his native place, and
succeeded his fafher in his somewhat humble
pubhc office there. Deeply imbued with the
rehgious fervour of Puritanism, he laboured
for the extension of Its glorious principles,
" doing the best good he could, and walk
ing according to the light he saw, till the
Lord revealed further unto him." The Church
at aU convenient seasons assembled at his
house, and long remembered in far distant
lands with what " great love he entertained

68 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
them when they came, making provision for
them to his great charge." Among these
humble worshippers was ever found a youthful
yeoman from a neighbouring Yorkshire hamlet,
who — left an orphan in his Infancy, and reared
by his paternal uncle — had joined the out
lawed Church in opposition to the wishes of
his friends. " To keep a good conscience,
and walk In such a way as God has prescribed
in His Word, Is a thing which I shaU prefer
above you all, and above life Itself," was his
constant answer to all remonstrances. This
was Wilham Bradford, the future governor
and chronicler of the first New England
colony, and, with Brewster, the chief support
and guide of that infant commonwealth. By
self-Instruction^ — like so many modern rulers
of America — he became In after years a man
of learning, capable of speaking French and
Dutch, and reading Greek and Latin, while
he studied Hebrew, " that he might see with
his own eyes the ancient oracles of God In all
their native beauty." Braving persecution
for conscience' sake, this holy Church of simple
husbandmen assembled on the Sabbath-Day,
for upwards of a year, in the manor-house of
Scrooby, the welcome guests of WiUiam
Brewster, the Queen's " master of the posts."

Puritanism. 6g
And to Scrooby, then, that " mean townlet "
on the river Idle, a few miles distant from Its
junction with the Trent, belongs the immor
tality of being the cradle of the " proper
democracy," who, landing In America, founded
New England, and moulded the civil and re
ligious institutions of the Great Republic.
Time has wrought changes in that classic
spot sacred to the memory of the Pilgrim
Fathers, where, all unconsciously, they were
inscribing, In bright and shining characters,
their lowly names upon the loftiest pinnacle
of fame. The parish church of Scrooby still
points its grey spire to the sky. The little
river Idle slowly winds its way — through
smUing cornfields, and green pastures stocked
with grazing herds and bleating flocks — for
ever onward to the Trent. But of the ancient
manor-house, surrounded by its moat — now
dry and partially filled up — nothing remains
save that portion of the venerable pile incor
porated with the farm-house standing on its
site. The memorials of the imperishable
glory of the Pilgrim Fathers are found else
where. The New Worid is their fitting
monument. Their meetings in the manor-house of
Scrooby soon drew down upon them the iron

7o The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
hand of persecution, which effectually stifled
their common religious life, and closed for
ever their conventicles In WiUiam Brewster's
house. " Hunted and persecuted on every
side," there was no resting-place in England
for their feet. " Some were taken and clapped
up in prison, others had their houses beset
and watched night and day by apparitors and
pursuivants, and hardly escaped their hands ;
and the most were fain to flee, and leave their
houses and habitations and the means of their
livelihood." In their dire extremity they
sought In exile that personal security and
freedom of conscience which AngHcanism
denied them in the land of their fathers, and,
" by a joint consent, they resolved to go into
the Low Countries." No rash or incon
siderate step took they throughout the weary
stages of their pilgrimage, for they ever fol
lowed a steadfast and infaUIble guide. " To
go into a country they knew not but by hear
say, where they must learn a new language
and get their livings they knew not how,"
seemed, they confessed, " an adventure almost
desperate." " But these things did not
dismay them, though they did sometimes
trouble them, for their desires were set on the
ways of God, and to enjoy His ordinances.

Puritanism. 71
They rested on His providence, and knew
whom they had believed." But our English
Pharaohs, who, since the Norman Conquest,
and under a religious mask, have in every
succeeding age, and by virtue of hereditary
descent, ruled, oppressed, and plundered the
conquered populations of the British Isles —
save when the proudly Celtic Henry Tudor
checked, and Cromwell crushed them — re
fused to let God's people go that they might
worship Him. Prelacy, their Instrument and
creature, was now no longer content simply to
harry Its victims out of the land. The ports
were closed against the martyrs. " Though
they could not stay, yet were they not suffered
to go."
A.D. 1607. Their first attempt to escape
from the persecuting fury of their adver
saries was baffled by the treachery of the
ship-master who had undertaken to convey
them beyond the seas. Shrouded in darkness
— for at dead of night alone could they hope
to leave their native land, unhindered — they
had, according to agreement, gone on board
his vessel riding at anchor in the Wash, at no
great distance from the port of Boston. They
thought that they were free, when, suddenly,
the myrmidons of the law — who had paid the

72 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
captain to betray them — appearing upon the
dismal and shameful scene, arrested them, and
having rudely and indiscriminately searched
and plundered the persons of their hapless
victims, forced them into open boats, and
took them .again ashore. The next day the
brutal captors led their Innocent captives back
into the town of Boston, "a spectacle and
wonder to the multitude who came flocking on
aU sides to behold them ; " and brought them
before the magistrates. A dreary imprison
ment as criminals awaited this first attempt
of the Pilgrims to escape from England ; but
a second effort, six months later, although
attended with heart-rending incidents, was
more successful.
This time they told their strange, sad story
to the Dutch captain and owner of a ship then
lying at HuU, who agreed to take them over to
his country. An unfrequented heath on the
banks of the Humber, somewhere between
Hull and Grimsby, was the appointed place of
embarkation. The Scrooby Church reached
that isolated rendezvous, " a good way distant
from any town," a day too soon, the men
going by land, and the women and children,
with the household stuff, in a bark, which, as
they were suffering from sea-sickness, was

Puritanism. 73
run into a neighbouring creek. The ship
arrived next day to find that the ebb tide had
left the little craft, with her passengers and
freight, aground ; and the skipper, to save
time, sent In a boat for the men, who were
sauntering about on shore. Brewster, Robin
son, and Bradford, with the majority of their
companions, had just reached the deck of the
ship, and the boat was on the point of return
ing for the remainder of the men, when, to
their dismay, they saw " a great company,
both horse and foot, with bills and guns and
other weapons " — it was the posse comitatus
—rapidly approach the bark, and capture it.
At once the captain, fearing for the safety of
his ship, with a great Dutch oath, weighed
anchor, and set saU, regardless of the suffer
ings of the departing and destitute exiles,
¦who — thus suddenly separated from their
companions and material resources — saw, on
the slowly receding shores of their native
land, their wives and chUdren seized like the
vUest criminals, and carried off to undergo
the well-known horrors of common prison
life. The few men left on shore dispersed
and fled, save one or two, who undertook to
render what chance countenance and com
fort they were able to the unhappy captives.

74 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
" But pitiful it was to see the heavy case of
these poor women — what weeping and crying
on every side ; some for their husbands who
were carried away in the ship ; others not
knowlnsf what should become of them and
their Httle ones ; others, again, melted in
tears at seeing their poor little ones hanging
about them, crying for fear and quaking with
cold." But the captors were soon embar
rassed by the magnitude of their success.
" To imprison so many women and innocent
chUdren for no other cause (many of them)
but that they must go with their husbands
and fathers, seemed to be unreasonable, and
all would cry out at them ; and to send them
home again was as difficult," for they " had
no homes to go to." In the end, the magis
trates contemptuously connived at their
escape from England, being "glad to be rid
of them at any price."
Meanwhile Brewster, Robinson, and Brad
ford, with their companions, were driven by a
tempest to the coast of Norway, and narrowly
escaped shipwreck. But in the moment of their
greatest peril, " when man's hope and help
faUed, the Lord's power and mercy appeared,"
as they believed, in answer to their prayers,
" and He fiUed their afflicted minds with such

Puritanism. 75
comforts as everyone cannot understand."
This two days' voyage took them a stormy
fortnight, and left, at least on Wilham Brad
ford's mind, vivid and life-long recollections.
A.D. 1608. — They landed at Amsterdam,
where the whole Scrooby Church soon fol
lowed them, and they "met together again
with no small rejoicing." But they felt
conscious It was not their abiding dweUIng-
place. " They knew they were Pilgrims, and
looked not much on those things, but Hfted
up their eyes to heaven, their dearest country,
and quieted their spirits." The following
year they removed to Leyden, which was the
last stage of their wanderings In Europe, and
their resting-place for nearly twelve years.
The story of their lives In this hive of Industry
is soon told. These hardy English husband
men, transformed, with rare exceptions, into
handicraftsmen, soon " saw," says Bradford,
" the grim and grisly face of poverty coming
upon them like an armed man, with whom
they must buckle and encounter, and from
whom they could not fly. But they were
armed with faith and patience against him ;
and though they were sometimes foUed, yet,
by God's assistance, they prevailed and got
the victory." And in spite of " hard and

76 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
continual labour," they enjoyed " much sweet
and delightful society and spiritual comfort
together in the ways of God. ... so that
they grew in knowledge and other gifts and
graces of the spirit of God, and Hved to
gether in peace and love and hohness."
Meanwhile, by reason of the persecutions
they had endured, their consequent flight
with Its strange and pathetic Incidents, and
their Christian walk and conversation under
aU circumstances, " their cause became
famous," and " many came to them from
different parts of England, so that they grew
a great congregation." Their pastor, the
"learned, pohshed, and modest" Robinson,
a man " not easily to be paraUeled," defended
in able and elaborate works their discipline
and polity against antagonists not less known
than Bishop Hall, of Norwich ; and at the
University of Leyden he even enhanced that
reputation for scholarship which had won for
him the highest honours Cambridge had to
bestow. The controversy which Arminius
and Gomarus, the late professors of theology
at Leyden, had bequeathed to the schools,
was naturally maintained with exceptional
vigour at their own university ; and, about
this time, the learned Episcopius, the

Puritanism. 77
Arminian professor of theology there, pro
mulgated a series of theses, chaUengIng to
public disputation all opponents. The
Calvinistic professor of theology and the
clergy of the city feared to encounter a man
whose renown for erudition has descended to
our own times. But, at their pressing instance,
Robinson stood forth the champion of
orthodoxy, and on three several occasions,
" before great and public audiences," the
Pilgrims assert that " the truth had a famous
victory," and that Robinson silenced, or to
use their own words, " put to an apparent
nonplus," his formidable antagonist.
But notwithstanding the liberty of con
science which Holland afforded them, the
Pilgrims were " restless " untU they could
realize their desire to again " Hve under the
protection of England, and that their children
after them should retain the language and
the name of Englishmen." Thus biassed, in
the course of time, circumstances, with
"sundry weighty and sohd reasons" which
they have left on record, inclined them to
remove to some other place. At home they
" had only been used to a plain country life,
and the innocent trade of husbandry," but in
Holland, where they had resolved to continue

78 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
to live together as an organized social and
religious community, they were constrained
to learn and ' practise, as they best could,
mechanical occupations. Many who came
to them from England left them weeping,
" unable to endure the great labour and hard
fare, with other inconveniences, which they
underwent, and were contented with. . . .
Yea, some preferred and chose the prisons In
England rather than liberty in Holland with
these afflictions." Their numbers were being
thinned by death, and they, Imbued with all
an Enghshman's pride of race and love of
country, deemed themselves but exiles In a
strange land, and dreaded abruption by an
ahen race. " Many of their children, sharing
their parents' burdens, bowed under the
weight, and became decrepit, the vigour of
manhood being consumed, as it were, in the
bud. But that which was more lamentable,
and of all sorrows most heavy to be borne,
was that many others, by these occasions,
and the great Hcentiousness of youth in that
country, and the manifold temptations of the
place, were drawn away by evil examples into
extravagant and dangerous courses. . . .
Some became soldiers, others took upon
them far voyages by sea, and some others

Puritanism. 79
worse courses, tending to dissoluteness and
the danger of their souls." But, perhaps,
the strongest reason for the resumption
of their pilgrimage was "a great hope
and Inward zeal they had of laying some
good foundation (or, at least, to make some
way thereunto) of propagating and advancing
the Gospel of the kingdom of Christ In these
remote parts of the world ; yea, though
they should be but the stepping stones unto
others for the performance of so great a
work." Moreover, persuaded that they con
stituted a community, .founded and regulated
after the pattern, and animated with the spirit
of the Churches of the apostolic times, they
were naturally anxious to perpetuate a system
of ecclesiastical government which embodied
the germ of all liberty, civil as well as religious.
To men thus circumstanced, the whole earth
afforded but one sure place of refuge, and the
Pilgrims' thoughts persistently and naturally
wandered westward. Not thoughtlessly or
recklessly did they enter on this great and
perilous enterprise. " We verily believe and
trust," said they, "the Lord is with us, to
whom and to whose service we have given
ourselves in many trials : and that He wiU
graciously prosper our endeavours according

8o The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
to the simplicity of our hearts therein. We
are well weaned from the delicate milk of our
mother-country, and Inured to the difficulties
of a strange land ; the people are, for the
body of them, industrious and frugal, we
think we may safely say, as any company of
people in the world. We are knit together
as a body In a most strict and sacred bond
and covenant of the Lord, of the violation of
which we make great conscience, and by
virtue whereof we hold ourselves straitly tied
to all care of each other's good and of the
whole. It is not with us as with men whom
smaU things can discourage. . . . Yea, though
we should lose our lives In this action, yet
may we have comfort in the same, and our
endeavours will be honourable."
After protracted negotiations with the King,
and a certain corporate body, the Pilgrims,
without a royal charter, or ainy valid grant of
land, prepared to depart. A minority of the
more youthful and resolute had elected to be
the pioneers of the rest, and they were to be
conducted by the governing elder, WiUiam
Brewster (the host of the Church when it
had worshipped in secret in the manor-house
of Scrooby), a man of wide and varied ex
perience in affairs, an able though modest

Puritanism. 81
teacher, and their most distinguished con
frere. AU things being now ready, a solemn
fast was proclaimed, and the Pilgrims
assembled together at the house of their
pastor, which was also their church. " Let
us humble ourselves before our God, and seek
of Him a right way for us, and for our chil
dren, and for our substance," was the subject
of his valedictory address. And his words of
loving and sagacious counsel never faded
from their memory. Then, " the brethren
that stayed at Leyden," writes one of the
Pilgrims, " having again solemnly sought the
Lord, with us, and for us, feasted us that
were to go, at our pastor's house, being large,
where we refreshed ourselves, after our tears,
with singing of Psalms, making joyful melody
in our hearts, as well as with the voice, there
being many of the congregation very expert
in music, and, Indeed, it was the sweetest
melody that ever mine ears heard."
The " wholesome counsel " of Robinson
to the Church was temperate, evangehcal,
and catholic, to a degree almost unknown
in that age, and possessed a pathos and
solemnity inseparable from the occasion.
" We are ere long to part asunder ; and
whether ever I shaU live to see your faces
G

82 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
again is known to the Lord. But whether
the Lord hath appointed It or not, I charge
you, before God and His blessed angels, that
you follow me no further than you have seen
me follow the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord
has more truth and Hght yet to break forth
out of His holy Word. I cannot sufficiently
bewaU the condition of the Reformed
Churches, who are come to a period In
religion, and will go no further than the
instruments of their reformation. Luther and
Calvin were great and shining lights in their
times, yet God did not reveal His whole wIU
to them, and were they now living they would
be as ready and willing to embrace further
light as that they had received. I beseech
you to remember it — It is an article of your
Church covenant, that you be ready to receive
whatever light or truth shaU be made known
to you from the written Word. But I exhort
you to take heed what you receive for truth,
and well to examine and compare it, and
weigh it with other Scripture of truth before
you receive it. For It is not possible the
Christian world should come so lately out of
such thick anti-Christian darkness, and fuU
perfection of knowledge break forth at once."
A.D. 1620. — The day of embarkation having

Puritanism. 83
now arrived, Brewster and his companions,
accompanied by the whole congregation, re
paired to Delft-Haven, where the Speed-well
awaited them. The departure was a memor
able and pathetic spectacle. " After prayers,"
writes Edward WInslow, " after prayers per
formed by our pastor, when a flood of tears
was poured out, the brethren that stayed at
Leyden accompanied us to the ship, but were
not able to speak one to another for the
abundance of sorrow to part." And for the
last time the united Scrooby Church — the
exiles who had gone on shipboard, and their
friends who thronged the shore — with heads
uncovered, knelt around their spiritual and
cIvU guide and teacher, who hitherto had led
them in their wanderings, and had brought
them, Inseparably one in aim and sentiment,
to the threshold of the mighty enterprise for
which he trained them. In tones which
thrilled with and inspired emotion, John
Robinson, with confidence, commended the
departing Pilgrims to the holy keeping of Him
who holds the seas in the hollow of His hand.
He ceases, and rough sailor hands and voices
perform their part in this world-moving drama,
of which alone our English common people,
hitherto unknown as an independent and con-

84 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
trolling force in history, were the Immortal
actors. Unlashed from her moorings, the
Speed-well spreads her white sails to the
breeze, and firing a farewell salute to Robin
son — whose face they never more beheld —
and to the remnant of the Scrooby Church
left on Dutch soU, the Pilgrim Fathers com
mence their famous voyage, amidst the sym
pathetic tears of even Dutch spectators.
" We gave them," says WInslow, " a voUey
of small shot and three pieces of ordnance ;
and so, lifting up our hands to each other,
and our hearts for each other to the Lord our
God, we departed and found His presence
with us."
The first place of their destination was
Southampton, where they were joined by the
Mayjio-wer and a few friends recruited from
various parts of England. There they received
an official letter from their pastor, who had
been unwIUIngly detained at Leyden by the
entreaties of the majority of the congregation,
who remained there, and by urgent private
affairs. A public meeting of the PUgrims was
probably convened on board the MayJlo-wer to
hear their ruling elder, William Brewster, read
this most Interesting and important docu
ment, which demands attention not simply on

Puritanism. 85
account of Its own Intrinsic merits and Its in
fluence on the minds and actions of the
future founders of New England — for we are
expressly told it " had good acceptation with
aU, and after-fruit with many " — but as the
first historic and official utterance of the
Scrooby Church preparing to transform Itself
into a " body politic." In language eloquent
from Its simplicity and transparent sincerity,
Robinson assures his departing flock: " I do
heartily, and in the Lord, salute you, as being
those with whom I am present in my best
affections and most earnest longings after you,
though I be constrained for a while to be
bodily absent from you. I say ' constrained,'
God knowing how willingly, and much rather
than otherwise, I would have borne my
part with you In this first brunt, were I not by
strong necessity held back for the present.
Make account of me, in the meanwhile, as of
a man divided in myself with great pain, and
as (natural bonds set aside) having my better
part with you. And though I doubt not but
in your godly wisdom you both foresee and
resolve upon that which concerneth your pre
sent state and condition both severally and
jointly, yet I have thought It but my duty to
add some further spur of provocation to them

86 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
that run well already — if not because you need
it, yet because I owe it in love and duty."
He next, with deepest love and sympathy,
admonishes them to cultivate — as vital to the
stability of "the house of God, which you
are, and are to be" — (a) heavenly peace with
God and their own consciences ; (i^) peace
among themselves, and (c) individual and
coUectlve unity of purpose for the general
good. He then proceeds : " Lastly, whereas
you are to become a body politic, using among
yourselves civil government, and are not fur
nished with any persons of special eminency
above the rest to be chosen by you into office
of government, let your wisdom and godli
ness appear not only in choosing such per
sons as do entirely love and will diligently
promote the common good, but also In yield
ing unto them all due honour and obedience
in their lawful administrations ; not beholding
in them the ordinariness of their persons, but
God's ordinance for your good ; nor being
like the foolish multitude, who honour more
the gay coat than either the virtuous mind of
the man or the glorious ordinance of the
Lord. But you know better things, and that
the Image of the Lord's power and authority,
which the magistrate beareth, is honourable

Puritanism. 87
in how mean persons soever. And this duty
you may both the more wiUIngly and ought
the more conscionably to perform, because you
are, at least for the present, to have only them
for your ordinary governors, which you your
selves shall make choice of for that work.
Sundry other things of importance I could
put you In mind of, and of those before men
tioned in more words. But I will not so far
wrong your godly minds as to think you heed
less of these things, there being also divers
among you so weU able to admonish both
themselves and others of what concerneth
them." And prayerfully and confidently John
Robinson commits his flock to the guidance
and protection of " Him in whom you trust,
and In whom I rest . . . whose providence is
over all His works, and especially over all His
dear children for good." Under such holy
auspices did the Pilgrims turn their faces
towards the west, having, Hke our first
parents, a new world
" all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide."
In a fortnight the Mayjio-wer and the
Speed-well drop down Southhampton Water
— with less fanfaronnade but greater import
than the armaments of our Edwards and our

88 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
Henries, bound for the shores of France —
and soon reach the high seas ; but they put
back for repairs Into the port of Dartmouth,
where they are detained for another fortnight.
Again they sail, but when a hundred leagues
from Land's End, the leaklness of the Speed-
-well, and the timidity of the captain and his
companions, force them to return, this time,
to Plymouth. Here the smaUer vessel Is
discharged, and Robert Cushman,wlth a few
others, left behind, and the Mayflower alone,
taking on board the whole of the Pilgrims,
numbering one hundred men, women, and
chUdren, finally sets sail from Plymouth on
the 6th of September, 1620. They were
bound for the banks of the Hudson, where
they intended planting their colony, but, after
a long and stormy voyage, were conducted,
by stress of weather, to Cape Cod, one of
the bleakest and most sterile points on the
coast. It was Impossible, however, to prose
cute any researches for a more desirable
haven ; for the winter was at hand, the
Pilgrims were wasted by sickness, their
supplies were almost exhausted, and the ship
had been hired simply for the voyage across
the Atlantic.
But before landing they regulated by

Puritanism. 89
solemn compact their system of civil govern
ment, which was purely democratlcal. The
whole body of men formed a supreme legis
lative assembly, which was the depository of
all power, and by whom the executive, con
sisting of a governor and assistants, were to
be elected annually. In affixing their signa
tures to that famous instrument which con
stituted them "a civil body politic," and
which solemnly bound them " to enact,
constitute, and frame such just and equal
laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and
offices, from time to time, as shall be
thought most convenient for the general
good of the colony," the Pilgrims happily
revindicated for all time the Inalienable right
of mankind to primitive freedom and self-
government. " This," says Bancroft, " was
the birth of popular constitutional liberty.
In the cabin of the Mayflo-wer humanity
recovered its rights, and Instituted govern
ment on the basis of ' equal laws ' for
the ' general good.' " Their first act of
sovereignty was the immediate and unani
mous election of John Carver, " a man godly
and well approved among them," as governor
for the year.
Winter was at hand, and the greatest haste

90 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
was demanded In the selection of a place of
settlement ; but the shallop, on which de
pended the sole hope of successful explora
tion, was found to be so fraU that seventeen
days were required to make it fit for service.
Meanwhile, the more energetic of the Pil
grims, restless at enforced inactivity, made a
painful exploration by land. Except a heap
of maize, they found nothing but Indian
graves. They returned alike unsuccessful
from their first expedition in the shaUop
wearied with plodding over steep hills and
deep valleys covered with snow.
Affairs looked almost desperate, but the
PUgrims never faltered, and at length (Dec.
6) the shallop was ready to depart on her
final voyage of discovery. The crew con
sisted of ten Pilgrims and a like number of
seamen. The pUot was the mate of the
Mayflo-wer. He assured the Pilgrims of the
existence of a good harbour, which he had
visited In a previous voyage, on the opposite
shores of the bay. They set sail in weather
so foul that they could not stretch directly
across the bay, and so cold that their clothes,
steeped In the dashing and freezing spray,
were Hke coats of iron. On their third day
of unsuccessful exploration, they coast the

Puritanism. 91
western shores of the bay, the pUot assuring
them that they wiU reach a good harbour before
nightfaU. But towards evening, a north-east
wind, which gradually freshens to a gale, and
is accompanied with snow and rain, assaUs
the frail bark. In the fierce shock the rudder
breaks, the mast is shivered into fragments,
the sail falls overboard, and darkness is set
tling down on the wild waste of waters.
" Yet, by God's mercy, they recovered them
selves," and the flood-tide carries them to
wards the shore. Doubling a headland, they
are borne Into a cove full of breakers. " The
Lord be merciful to us ! " cries the affrighted
pilot, " my eyes never saw this place before,"
and in his Infatuation he would have run the
boat ashore. "About with her," shouts a
seaman, who is painfully steering the boat
with an oar, " or we are cast away." The
order Is promptly obeyed ; they row for their
lives out of the jaws of death ; and cheered
by the voice of the sturdy seaman, they pull
lustily ahead, untU they reach a fair sound,
and find shelter under the lee of a rising
ground. They land In darkness and a deluge
of rain ; but after midnight the wind shifted
to the north-west, and it froze hard. And
kindling a fire, they wished for the day.

92 The Pilgrims a-hd the Anglican Church.
When morning dawned, they found they
were on a smaU island, at the entrance of a
good harbour. And in a few days the May
flo-wer cast anchor in the bay. With a
patriotism which neither persecution nor exUe
could abate, they named both harbour and
settlement after the last English ground their
feet had pressed. The Pilgrims landed on
Plymouth Rock, that was
" to their feet as a doorstep
Into a world unknown — the corner-stone ofa nation ! "
Their famous voyage ended, as it had
begun, in prayer. " Being thus arrived in a
good harbour, and brought safe to land, they
fell upon their knees and blessed the God of
heaven who had brought them over the vast
and furious ocean, and delivered them from
aU the perils and miseries thereof, again to
set their feet on the firm and stable earth,
their proper element."
" As they landed," says Bancroft, " their
institutions were already perfected. Demo
cratic liberty and independent Christian
worship at once existed in America. The
consequences of that day are constantly
unfolding themselves as time advances. It
was the origin of New England ; It was the

Puritanism. 93
planting of New England institutions. In
quisitive historians have loved to mark every
vestige of the PUgrims ; poets of the purest
minds have commemorated their virtues ; the
noblest genius has been called into existence
to display their merits worthily, and to trace
the consequence of their daring enterprise."
But glorious as is the retrospect of the land
ing of the PUgrims, viewed In the light of Its
stupendous consequences, the reality was
cheerless, dark, and tragical. It was mid
winter in a climate far more rigorous than the
one to which they had been accustomed. As
their boats neared the shore the shallowness
of the water compeUed them to leap into the
waves and wade to land. The barren soil
was wrapped in a covering of snow to the
depth of several inches. Infected with mortal
diseases, and destitute of adequate supplies
of provisions, the Pilgrims, amidst frost and
snow, toUed wearily to construct places of
shelter in that waste wUderness. One by
one, overborne by sickness and toU, they
sank peacefully to rest. The survivors, wasted
with disease, were Incapable of taking care of
the dying. Before the return of spring the
governor and one-half ofthe colony had ceased
to exist. But never, in the hour of direst

94 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
extremity, did the forefathers repine, or abate
one jot of hope or confidence. Enjoying a
free worship of God and His Christ, which
was the object of their exile and their all in
aU, they with cheerful and quiet minds con
fronted all eventualities ; death for them had
lost its sting, and life its intense bitterness.
¦" God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this
planting.
Then had sifted the wheat, as the living seed of a nation ;
So say the chronicles old, and such is the faith of the
people."
But the news of this great mortality pierced
the heart of Robinson their pastor, who wrote :
" The death of so many, our dear friends and
brethren, oh ! how grievous hath It been to
you to bear, and to us to take knowledge of ;
Avhich if It could be mended with lamenting,
could not sufficiently be bewaUed. But we
must go unto them, and they shall not return
unto us." Yet he manfully reminds them :
" In a battle it Is not looked for but that
divers should die ; it is thought well for a side
if It get the victory, though with the loss of
divers, if not too many or too great."
On the approach of genial weather this
excessive mortahty ceased ; but famine, with
its attendant horrors, and the savage, with his

Puritanism. 95
barbarities, remained to be vanquished. The
latter danger appearing the more urgent, the
Pilgrims were constrained at once to assume
a mihtary organization, and to nominate a
commander. Their choice fell on MUes
Standish, in many respects the most eminent
man of the community. He was a Low
Country veteran, of great courage and ex
perience, and the reputed descendant of that
Standish who gave Wat Tyler his coup-de-
grdce. Although no member of the Church
he revered, he " had chosen with the people
of God to suffer affliction," and he proved
the sword and shield of the infant Common
wealth. The natives were easUy conciliated
or repressed, for their numbers had been
thinned by a fearful pestilence which three
or four years previously had swept over the
north-eastern sea-board with such deadly
effect that the tribes in the immediate vicinity
of the colony had been almost entirely an
nihilated. A.D. 1 62 1. — A somewhat dramatic Incident
signalized the commencement of the inter
course of the rival races. One day in early
spring (March i6th) — the weather was
" warm and fair," and " the birds sang in the
woods most pleasantly " — as the surviving

g6 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
Pilgrims were assembled in the " common
house " to mature their plans of defence, they
were startled by the appearance of a savage,
who, boldly entering the village, marched
" straight to the rendezvous." As he ap
proached he exclaimed, " Welcome, English
men ! " and would have entered their rude
council-chamber had not the Pilgrim chiefs
prudently forbidden the unknown savage to
thus inspect their scanty numbers and weak
condition. He bade them possess the soil of
Patuxet, on which they had founded their new
settlement, to which, he said, there was no
Indian claim, the aborigines having, with a
solitary exception, perished in the late epi
demic. This was Samoset, a Wampanoag,
who had learned a little EngHsh of the fisher
men frequenting what is now the coast of
Maire. As the first Indian with whom thev
had been able to communicate, Samoset was
naturally to the Pilgrims an object of great
Interest and close scrutiny. They have
minutely described him as a tall, straight,
beardless man, with long black hair, cut
short in front, whose only covering was a
leathern girdle, fringed to a span's breadth
or thereabouts, and only arms a bow and two
arrows, one of which was headless. He

Puritanism. 97
possessed the native dignity of his race, and
was free of speech so far as he could find
utterance In EngHsh. The Pilgrims " ques
tioned him of many things " and " he dis
coursed of the whole country, and of every
province, and of the Sagamores, and of their
number of men and strength," saying that he
was himself a Sagamore from the eastern
coast. He further told them that the Nau-
sltes, who attacked their exploring party, had
kUled three Englishmen some months before,
and that they were incited to those hostile
acts by the kidnapping raids upon their coast
of a seafaring ruffian of our race. To screen
him from the bleak March wind which had
begun to rise, they " cast a horseman's coat
about him," and having feasted him, longed
for his departure. But, as he persisted in
remaining with them until morning, they
lodged him for that night, and watched him.
Two days later Samoset brought with him
five messengers from Massasoit, the great
Sachem of the tribe on their southern border,
and within a week four others. With these
last came S quanto, the sole surviving native
of Patuxet, who — kidnapped with nineteen
others of his tribe seven years before— had
been sold to slavery in Spain, and thence
H

98 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
had found his way to London, where he had
"dwelt In Cornhill with Master John Slalnie,"
a merchant Interested In the New England
fisheries. Sent back by Slalnie as an Inter
preter, the Indian at this juncture had re
turned to his native viUage, to find Its site
and corn-fields occupied by strangers.
By means of Samoset and Squanto the
Pilgrims entered into immediate negotiations
with Massasoit, who occupied with all his
men the summit of a neighbouring hill.
And WInslow having placed himself in the
hands of the Indians as a hostage, King
Massasoit and twenty of his warriors repaired
to Plymouth. There, Governor Carver and
Elder Brewster, with Bradford, AUerton, and
Captain Standish — the freely-chosen leaders
of the Pilgrims — met in solemn conference
their tall, Hthe Indian guests, painted accord
ing to their fancy In gay or sombre colours,
clad in the skins of wild beasts, and dis
tinguished by the long black hair, the weird,
yet elegant features, and majestic bearing of
their race. Our democratic English exiles
anticipated, by more than sixty years, Penn's
justly vaunted treaty with the Indians. And
that universal sentiment of honour, which
prompted and pervaded the minutest actions

Puritanism. 99
of the wonderful and stainless lives of the
Pilgrims, was but the natural and spontaneous
outcome of the deathless religious principles
they had professed in good report and evil,
" whatever it should cost them," and " that
it cost them something " this history hath
declared. In simple verity, these lowly hus
bandmen and artisans — despised and exUed
by our Ruling Caste — were the embodiment,
in human flesh and blood, of the Ideal knights,
whom poets of all nations, and all ages, have
fondly feigned and sung. The painted savage
of the wilderness, with whom they came in
personal contact, felt and owned, as If by in
stinct, the potent influence of their command
ing virtues. At once, an offensive and defen
sive alliance was concluded between the high
contracting powers; which remained Inviolate
for more than fifty years ; and a treaty of com
merce cemented the amicable relations of the
confederate races. Moreover, Massasoit un
dertook to communicate to the neighbouring
tribes and nations the details of this sacred
compact, and to offer to Include them also in
the conditions of the peace. This was the
first imperial act of democratic England, In
the mighty drama which made the New
World ours.

IGG The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
A.D. 1622. — But Canonicus, the Sachem of
the powerful Narragansets, whose numbers
were estimated at thirty thousand, and whose
territory embraced the dimensions of a
modern state, was hostile to the Pilgrims.
A messenger of his brought into Plymouth a
bundle of new arrows, wrapped In the skin of
a rattlesnake, as his gage of battle. A councU
of war was held, and, after a brief consulta
tion, Governor Bradford — the successor of
John Carver — " stuffed the skin with powder
and shot, and sent it back, returning no
less defiance to Canonicus, assuring him that
if he had shipping now present thereby to
send his men to Narraganset, they would not
need to come so far by land to us ; yet withal
showing that they should never come un-
welcomed or unlocked for." It was a blood
less victory. The terrified barbarian at once
sought relations of amity with a people
possessing such strange and deadly weapons
of war.
But, notwithstanding their proud defiance
of the Narraganset King, his threats revealed
to the Pilgrim chiefs, not simply the weak
ness of the mUItary defences of the colony,
but the necessity of converting that weakness
into strength. The site of Plymouth was a

Puritanism. loi
stretch of rising ground, embracing a hUl of
considerable elevation, whose summit com
manded a view of land and sea perhaps
unrivalled for extent and beauty on the whole
Atlantic coast. The vlUage was, roughly
speaking, cruciform, and in its centre stood
the Governor's house. In front of which —
probably before the arrival of the hostUe
messenger of Canonicus — a battery of four
guns was planted in a square enclosure, so
as to sweep the crossing streets in all four
directions. But within six weeks of the de
parture of the Indian envoy, the incessant
and united labour of its inhabitants had sur
rounded Plymouth with a formidable stock
ade, strengthened at convenient points with
flankers, and pierced with three gates, which
were locked at night and guarded, a watch
being also set when needed In the daytime.
And one or two months later they completed
their fortifications, by constructing upon the
hill a large square fort of solid timber, with a
flat roof and battlements, on which they
mounted a battery of six guns, and kept a
sentinel on constant watch and ward. This
structure was at once the meeting-house and
citadel of the exUed Scrooby Church.
The Pilgrims had, at the same time, to

IG2 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
grapple with their more formidable adversary,
famine. The struggle was long and arduous.
The arrival In autumn of brethren destitute
of provisions reduced them to the brink of
starvation. For months they had absolutely
no corn, fish and water being their only
nourishment. In their hour of greatest need
they were rescued from death by generous suc
cour from fishermen In the offing. Not until
after the third harvest was the old colony ex
empt from general scarcity of food. This happy
change in their condition was facilitated by
the abandonment of the system of community
of goods, which had hitherto prevaUed, and
had depressed the energies of the Industrious,
whUst it had encouraged the indolence of
the listless and improvident. Land was now
allotted to families in proportion to their
numbers, and the incentive of personal
interest soon produced the most satisfactory
results. Prosperity flowed in upon the colony.
The growth of corn soon exceeded the con
sumption, and became one of the chief staples
of trade. A friendly intercourse sprang up
with the surrounding natives, many of whose
chiefs voluntarily acknowledged the supre
macy of the colonists, or were overawed by
them ; and a lucrative commerce in skins and

Puritanism. 103
furs seemed to offer a tardy but material com
pensation for the sufferings and labours of the
past. But the brightening prospects of the colony
only served to arouse the cupidity of London
merchants, who sought to monopoHze the
gains of a trade which the energy of the
Pilgrims had created. With this object In
view, sixty needy adventurers arrived out,
who, after forcing themselves on the hospi
tality of the Pilgrims for several months,
settled at Weymouth, in Boston harbour.
Devoid of Industry and foresight, they were
soon reduced to a famishing condition ; and
relied chiefly for subsistence on the supphes
they could wring from the natives. Harassed
by exactions, and infuriated by oppression,
the Indians silently formed an atrocious
scheme for a sudden and universal massacre
of the whites. The allied tribes delayed to
strike only until their plans were so perfected
that their blow should faU with fatal effect.
But Massasoit, the benevolent chief, with
whom the Pilgrims had entered Into an
aUiance for mutual defence, touched by the
arrival of an embassy of condolence from the
colonists during a dangerous malady, and
grateful for the care and "confection" of

IG4 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
WInslow, which had restored him to health,
revealed to his allies the details of this
horrid plot, and thus saved them from im
pending ruin.
Promptitude and vigour characterized the
conduct of the Pilgrims in this supreme
crisis of their career. " Though It much
grieved us," writes WInslow, " to shed the
blood of those whose good we ever intended
and aimed at as a principal object in all our pro
ceedings," yet "we knew no means to deliver
our countrymen and preserve ourselves save
by returning the mischievous and cruel pur
poses " of the savages " upon their own
heads, and causing them to faU Into the same
pit they had digged for others." To ensure
secrecy and dispatch the town meeting or
legislative assembly of Plymouth — which was
then in session — authorized Governor Brad
ford, Assistant AUerton, and Captain Standish
to undertake the general management of the
war. And this committee of public safety
entrusted the direction of military operations
to Standish, with unHmited powers. But his
instructions were precise touching the arch-
conspirator In the atrocious plot — the Sachem
Wattawamat of the Massachusetts — who had
already wantonly imbrued his hands in the

Pur it a n ism . 105
blood of the whites. The captain was directed
to forbear to strike, " if It were possible, till
he could make sure of that bloody and bold
villain, whose head he had order to bring
with him, that he might be a warning and
terror to all of that disposition."
A.D. 1623. — The chivalry of Plymouth,
under the undaunted Standish, hastened to
the rescue of their erring countrymen. The
victory they achieved was decisive. Peck-
suot, an Indian chief of gigantic stature, fell
in single combat, stabbed to the heart by the
Puritan captain. His death was the signal
of battle. In emulation of their chief the
Pilgrim warriors spring forward, seize and
slay with their own weapons, which they
wrench from them, the ringleaders of the
¦diabolical plot whom Massasoit had named.
As their champion feU, the war-whoop of
the savages rang through the forest, whence
were poured flights of feathery arrows Into
the slowly advancing Puritan Hne. But
a few deadly voUeys of musketry scattered
the affrighted savages, who fled, hotly pur
sued, Into the depths of the wilderness, reck
less of the fate of the brave Wattawamat,
who had fallen pierced through the brain by
a musket ball. Thus did Standish rid the

io6 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
PUgrims of their would-be assassins, and
inscribe the first battie and victory on the
records of the Great Republic. Some of
the Intruders, who owed their Hves to the
gallantry of the Pilgrims, remained with
them, the others returned home.
" Bravely the stalwart Miles Standish was scouring the land
with his forces.
Waxing valiant in fight, and defeating the alien armies,
Till his name had become a sound of fear to the nations."
From the crest of the great hiU she
crowned as with a glorious diadem, Plymouth
could now look down in peace and safety
upon the broad ocean and broader continent
which lay on either hand at her feet.
But the inteUigence of this necessary
bloodshed grieved the gentle heart of Robin
son, who was pining in enforced exUe at
Leyden. " Concerning the kiUing," he writes,
" of those poor Indians, of which we heard
at first by report, and since by more certain
relation. Oh ! how happy a thing had it been
if you had converted some before you had
killed any ! Besides, where blood is once
begun to be shed, It is seldom stanched for a
long time after. You will say they deserved
it. I grant it ; but upon what provocations
and invitements by those heathenish Chris-

Puritanism. lo'j
tians ? Besides, you being no magistrates
over them, were to consider not what they
deserved, but what you were by necessity
constrained to Inflict. Necessity of this,
especiaUy of klUing so many (and many
more, it seems, they would if they could), I
see not. Methinks one or two principals
should have been full enough, according to
that approved rule, ' the punishment of the
few, and the fear to the many.' Upon this
occasion let me be bold to exhort you
seriously to consider the disposition of your
captain, whom I love, and am persuaded the
Lord in great mercy and for much good hath
sent you him, if you use him aright. He Is a
man humble and meek among you, and
toward all, In ordinary course. But now, if
this be merely from a human " (he means un
regenerate) " spirit, there is cause to fear that,
by occasion especially of provocation, there
may be wanting that tenderness of the Hfe of
man, made after God's image, which Is meet.
It is also a thing more glorious In men's eyes
than pleasing in God's or convenient for
Christians, to be a terror to poor barbarous
people, and, indeed, I am afraid, lest by these
occasions, others should be drawn to affect a
kind of ruffling course In the world."

io8 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
Yet, the Church which landed from the
Mayflo-wer, and stood alone amid a continent
of savage nations, must be the Church Mlh-
tant par excellence on earth, or cease to exist.
And the large square fort of the Pilgrims,
which served the double purpose of church
and fortress, was a fit emblem of their condi
tion. But the victories of Standish soon
gave stability to the infant Commonwealth.
Slowly, but surely, it now commenced its
onward, ever-progressive march to greatness,
dotting its settlements to the very banks of
the Connecticut. The remainder of the
Church at Leyden, with the wife and children
of Robinson, removed to America, but the
patriarch himself died ere he could see the
promised land. " But," says Bancroft, " his
heart was In America, where his memory will
never die."
Thus did the Pilgrims, the victims of per
secution but never persecutors, plant the first
democratic Commonwealth on American soil,
and present to posterity the unique and glo
rious spectacle of a state cradled In freedom,
untainted from its inception by that spiritual
and temporal servitude which had been
hitherto the hereditary curse of the masses
of mankind in every recorded age. Not blindly

Puritan ism . 1 09
did they accomplish their high destiny.
Conscious of great achievement in having
placed present freedom and prospective
empire within the grasp of their persecuted
compatriots, they could proudly exclaim :
" As one small candle may light a thousand,
so the light here kindled hath shone to many,
yea, in some sort to our whole nation." And
loving friends in England could cheer them,
in the midst of their greatest sufferings, with
the prospect — nay, the certainty — of a coming
immortality of glory in this world and the
next. " Go on, good friends," write they,
" comfortably ; pluck up your hearts cheer
fully, and quit yourselves like men In all your
difficulties, that — notwithstanding aU displea
sure and threats of men—the work may go
on which you are about, and which is so
much for the glory of God and the further
ance of our countrymen, as that a man may,
with more comfort, expend his life in it, than
live the Hfe of a Methuselah in wasting
the plenty of a tilled land, or eating the
fruit of a grown tree. . . . Let it not be
grievous to you that you have been instru
ments to break the ice for others who come
after with less difficulty. The honour will be
yours to the world's end." And we — who

I IG The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
share their blood — recognizing aU the mar
vellous consequences which have flowed from
their heroic enterprise, as the natural and
inevitable outcome of the triumph of the
immortal principles of Puritanism, regard the
beacon of Hberty they kindled " on the wUd
New England shore " as
" - . . . le phare immense
D'un nouveau monde et d'un monde trop vieux ; "
the dazzling source of the hope and confi
dence of aU who long and wait for the politi
cal and religious emancipation of the human
race. Thus did those sturdy husbandmen of Lin
coln, Nottingham, and York — emerging from
the black obscurity which had hitherto so dis
mally enshrouded their fellows of all countries
and all ages — proudly take their places in the
pages of universal history as emphatically the
noblest, most Illustrious, and important band
of personages who have ever Influenced for
good the destinies of mankind. And thus
did they enshrine therein their marvellous
adventure, as incomparably the greatest and
best event of which this world has ever been
the theatre. And whUe the princes, peers,
and priests who have enslaved the wretched

Puritanism. 1 1 1
populations of the Old World, behold with
sUent fear and wonder their puny states
ecHpsed by the Pilgrims' Great Republic of
the new, the toUing millions of the earth
acclaim its EngHsh democratic founders as
par excellence the true, the heaven-born kings
of men. Uncrowned kings sprung from the
ranks of the people, who dwarfed and set in
their right light the ghastly and bloody
achievements of the crowned despots of aU
time, when landing on Plymouth Rock they
took possession — in the name of the God of
peace and liberty — of the New World, which
He had predestined and prepared as the glo
rious and unparaUeled heritage of the demo
cracy of England freeing themselves by
expatriation from Norman domination In their
native land.
After the expulsion of the Pilgrims from
their native land, the Anglican Church con
tinued Its war of extermination against all the
Puritanic sects with unabated violence and
ferocity. " Nothing," says Milton, "nothing
but the wide ocean and the savage deserts of
America could hide and shelter them from
the fury of the bishops." A glorious army of
martyrs, numbering twenty-one thousand two
hundred souls — the best and purest in England

112 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
— were thus driven into exile. An embryo
nation migrated to the western wUds. There
they founded the Northern States of the Great
RepubHc, and moulded its cIvU and religious
Institutions on the broad and indestructible
basis of free Christian worship, universal edu
cation, and popular sovereignty. Their de
scendants number to-day one-third of the
entire white population of the United States ;
and, since the conquest of the south, have
formed the governing element of the whole
country. Such has been the grand role, in
the history of mankind, of the descendants
of the victims of the Anglican Church ; their
power, magnificence, and all-reaching influ
ence in the Immediate future, are Inconceiv
able In their Immensity.
We have given the testimony of America to
the unblemished and peerless renown of the
Pilgrims ; but England, in spite of Carlyle's
eulogy, has been false to their memory.
Our history is replete with descriptions of
butcheries by sea and land, which, beyond a
wasteful and wanton shedding of human blood,
were in the vast majority of cases attended
with results of the most ephemeral nature, or
with absolutely no results at all ; but it passes
silently by, or at the utmost notices with a

Puritanism. 113
few brief sentences the peaceful yet glorious
triumphs of the Pilgrims ; triumphs teeming
with consequences as Indestructible as the
universe Itself. The man, du gentilhommerie,
be he genius or fool, whose good fortune it
has been for a single day to lead our army or
fleet to battle, Is embalmed In our history, and
his memory is honoured by us aU. Nay, to
descend stiU lower. Let us approach that
epoch which lacked the proud and exultant
patriotism of the Commonwealth, and which
ignored the dictum of the Puritan Sea-KIng,
that the paramount duty of Englishmen is to
prevent the foreigner from fooling us. Since
1688, when, by an act of sublime treachery,
the aristocracy, with the assistance of a Dutch
army, dethroned the last of the Stuart kings
and usurped his power, we have bent the knee
to a succession of alien princes, whose con
nection with this country has alone redeemed
them from merited oblivion. Conscious that
it would be impossible to govern England
under an avowedly oligarchical regime, and
too mutually jealous to elect a monarch from
their own ranks, the governing families trans
ferred the crown to obscure strangers, who,
having no legitimate right to any " golden
round," were naturally content to play a
I

1 14 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
subordinate, an ignoble role. And rearing
aloft these mockery kings as symbols of
royalty only, they, with affected empresse-
ment, have paid homage to the work of their
own hands, and by their example have made
a conventional kind of loyalty to the foreigner
fashionable. Content with the substance, they
have left the shadow of power to their German
proteges, and have governed England abso
lutely in their name, until the late parlia
mentary changes shook to Its foundation. If
it did not annlhUate, the pohtical edifice they
had so elaborately constructed. The system
subverted, there remains only the keystone of
that system, the German princeling element,
which, being no longer of use to its whUom
masters, must ultimately sink into the obscurity
whence a caste has raised It. In a word, for
the past century and a half, the Wettins
of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha — whose sahent char
acteristic is an elasticity of conscience in
religious matters, which transforms those
Lutherans into Romanists in Belgium and
Portugal, Greek Catholics In Russia, and
Anglicans In this country — the Wettins of
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, together with others of
the same genus, have been the princes and
monarchs of

Puritanism. 115
"This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise."
And not content with this unparalleled exalta
tion, the aspiring blood of the Wettins,
insatiate of honours, mounts still higher,
and with the powerful patronage of Benjamin
Disraeli attains Its wildest aspirations. That
blind worshipper of our German Court, Im
bued with oriental notions of royalty natural
to his race, but repugnant to our own, laboured
to surround with a sham splendour the Ger
man offspring of our Act of Settlement, and
to transform those ghosts of monarchs Into
the solid substance of English kings. And
in pursuance of his inflated and fantastic
policy, the highest pinnacle of earthly
grandeur must be theirs. This mediatized
ducal family from the depths of Germany,
the representative of one of the pettiest of
its llUiputian principalities, must forsooth In
England don the purple and fill the primal
seat of Orient. Therefore', in spite of Eng
land's protest, and in violation of her historic
conscience, India, the fairest, mightiest and
most famous realm of Asia — to conquer and
reorganize which a hundred years of British
genius, valour, and blood were required — was

1 1 6 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
transformed into an empire ; the gorgeous
and imperial throne of Tamerlane and Akbar
was reconstructed ; and the glittering but
gory diadem of the Grand Moguls was,
with surpassing meanness, snatched from the
bayonets of our soldiers who sustained It
with their life-blood, for the glorification
of our new family of the Wettins of Saxe-
Coburg-Gotha. In a word we have, hon gre
mal gre, bestowed both royal and Imperial
rank upon these German princelings ; we
have waged long and bloody wars in defence
of their Interests and the interests of their
country ; and sacrificing one Continent to
their latent despotic Instincts, we have re
placed it with another, and have called its
nascent EngHsh empires by their names.
Nay more, England has been their stalking-
horse to power in other lands, and has planted
or upheld them on the thrones of foreign
states. But Robinson and Carver, Brewster
and Bradford, WInslow and Standish, Cush-
man and AUerton, those truly illustrious men
sans peur et sans reproche, the founders of
the freest and mightiest state on earth —
compared with which, within a century, the
entire German empire will be as nothing — are
forgotten in the land of their fathers. Their

Puritanism. 1 1 7
very memory is dead In England, on which
they have shed an imperishable lustre whose
glory and tongue they have perpetuated for
ever. And the prelates, who thus decimated the
Puritans by death and by proscription, were
the nominees and parasites of the infamous
Buckingham and his hcentlous mother ; by
whom simony had been reduced to a system,
and presentations to all holy offices had been
regulated on a purely commercial ratio where
lust did not intervene. These prelates were
the slaves and emissaries of a corrupt Court,
whose tentatlves at a rapprochement with
Rome had been rejected by the Papacy with
scorn and derision. Devoid ahke of faith, of
principle, of patriotism, they were the most
powerful because the most insidious cham
pions of secular despotism. Spurned by
Rome, they assumed the garb and role of
Rome in England, and on behalf of their
royal master they sedulously preached the
doctrine of passive obedience to, and non-
resistance of, the powers that be, as a Divine
ordination, and strove to keep the weak-
minded and ignorant classes in subjection by
the dread of the eternal punishments they
boldly and unblushingly denounced against

1 18 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
aU who dared resist their tyrant, whom they
styled the Lord's anointed. These men,
infuriated at the escape of the Puritans,
procured the suspension of emigration, and
the appointment of a commission for the
government of the American plantations.
The primate and his associates were invested
with absolute ecclesiastical and secular
powers ; but ere they could stretch out their
hand against the Puritans their Church was
Involved in ruin. Striving for universal
domination over the national conscience of
the British Isles, they attempted to Impose
on the Scots the garbled translation of the
Popish missal which they caU their glorious
Hturgy ; and by so doing evoked a tempest of
popular indignation which was not allayed till
Anglicanism and kingly tyranny — those twin
monsters which have ever gone hand-In-hand
together, save on one memorable occasion —
perished in the blood of Laud and Charles,
their incarnation and essence.
The destruction of the ancient system of
government was consummated by the faU of
the House of Peers and the landed gentry, and
was signalized by the pubhc execution of the
Duke of Hamilton and Lords Holland, Derby,

Puritanism. 119
and Capel, of Sir George Lisle and Sir Charles
Lucas. The fire and smoke of Marston Moor
and Naseby had consumed the Norman Mon
archy, Church, and Baronage, which, at the
Conquest, had deprived the people of their
liberties, and stripped them of their lands ;
and which had governed them In every suc
ceeding age as conquerors and masters : and
on the ruins of the unexampled slavery
founded by WiUiam the Bastard and his
followers, and perpetuated by their descend
ants, at length arose the stately structure of
national sovereignty. Yet the overthrow of
the conquering Norman Caste had been
hastened and facilitated by their own Internal
dissensions and divisions. From their own
ranks had sprung the early leaders of the
Revolution ; but as the struggle progressed
and widened in its scope, the armed and dis
ciplined multitude threw aside the Essexes,
the Manchesters, and the Fairfaxes, and,
marching from victory to victory, finally sub
dued the proud descendants of our Norman
conquerors, and broke from the neck of Eng
land the servUe yoke which had been Imposed
upon her on the battle-field of Hastings.
And the famous Long Parhament, purged

1 20 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
of its anti-national elements, had legalized
what the military prowess of Cromwell and
his Ironsides had accomplished, by the formal
abolition of the old and the institution of the
new order of things. " Be it declared," ran
the memorable decree which founded the Re
pubHc, " be It declared and enacted by this
present Parliament, and by the authority of
the same, that the people of England, and of
all the dominions thereunto belonging, are,
and shall be, and are hereby constituted,
made, established, and confirmed to be a
Commonwealth or Free State .- and shall be
henceforth governed as a Commonwealth and
Free State, by the supreme authority of this
nation, the representatives of the people in
Parliament, and by such as they shall appoint
and constitute officers and ministers under
them, for the good of the people, and without
any King or House of Lords." The Anghcan
Church, as we have seen, had been already
utterly destroyed.
" In things of the mind," CromweU had
written to Speaker Lenthall seven years
before the commencement of his Protec
torate, " In things of the mind, we look for
no compulsion, but that of light and reason."

Puritanism. 1 2 1
And the chief corner-stone of his policy was
freedom of conscience In the broadest accep
tation of the phrase. He had destroyed
kingly tyranny with the sword, and subvert
ing that extraordinary system of constitu
tional .government which, both before and
since the Commonwealth, had placed every
important office of the State In the hands of
the nobihty, clergy, and gentry, he had sub
stituted his own righteous, personal rule re
luctantly, and as the only possible means of
upholding the glorious cause which had
triumphed at the cost of so lavish an ex
penditure of blood. Now, for the first and
only time In our history, England enjoyed the
blessings of civil and religious Hberty and
equality ; no invidious distinction of sect for
political purposes now existed to desolate the
land with its atrocities ; the harmony and re
pose of the rehgious world was complete. At
liome the administration of the laws was
prompt and impartial ; reviving industry and
extending commerce scattered plenty ; abroad
England had reached her highest pinnacle of
^lory. Our invincible fleets — reappearing in
the Mediterranean for the first time since the
Third Crusade — coerced or crushed the pira-

122 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
tical states of Barbary. Italy submitted to our
just demands ; but HoUand and Spain, brav
ing- the Protector's wrath, were In succession
smitten, bleeding to his feet, never to recover
from their panic-fear during the lifetime of
their conqueror. The Puritan hero had made
good his proud but patriotic boast, "that he
would render the name of an Englishman as
much feared and revered as ever was that of
a Roman." But in annihilating the kingly,
aristocratic, and spiritual power, and in effacing
the privileged classes, he had evoked a host
of traditional and implacable enemies and slan
derers, whose existence will be coeval with
that of the interests they represent.
On the 30th of January, 1661, the demons
of royal and aristocratic revenge and hate
tore the rotting carcass of the immortal
Oliver from its grave, and dragged it to
Tyburn on a hurdle. There they went
through the ghastly farce of hanging and
mutUating, as an attainted traitor, our dead
patriot and hero, who ahve had made the stout
est of them quake and tremble. His body they
flung into a hole at the gallows' foot, but that
glorious head of his, whose nod so lately
shook the world, they stuck upon a pole to

Puritanism. 123
scare and terrify the people whom he had
freed and loved so well. Thus did our Nor
man Caste repay the magnanimous victor of
Newbury, Marston Moor, and Naseby, of
Preston, Dunbar, and Worcester, for their
Hves, honours, and estates, which his con
quering arm had won from them, but which
his clement heart gave back.

IV.
RESTORATION OF THE NOR
MAN MONARCHY,
ARISTOCRACY, AND CHURCH.

i66g — 1685. — The Commonwealth survived
the great Protector for nearly two years,
and was only subverted by the treachery
and treason of Monk and Montague. These
abandoned traitors having cashiered from
the army and the fleet under their respec
tive orders, the multitude of plebeian
officers who at that glorious epoch had, for
the first and only time in English history
won distinction in their country's service,
prepared to use the armed forces of
the Republic thus emasculated, as their
blind instruments for its destruction ; and in

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, &c. 125
exchange for a lavish bestowal of honours
and wealth, to sacrifice, not simply the
liberties of their country, but the lives of
their companions in arms. And that famous
renegade Lord Thomas Fairfax shares in this
monstrous Infamy and treason. Acting In
concert with Monk in Scotland, he appears
in arms at York, at the head of the nobihty
and gentry of the northern counties, and
keeps open for the advance of his impene
trable ally, the high-road to London. Pro
testing to his Roundhead veterans, at each
step, his boundless loyalty to the Common
wealth, which they were resolute to maintain,
Monk marches rapidly southward, pubhcly
canes an officer at York , who charges him
with the design of restoring Charles Stuart,
and undisputed master of the metropoHs,
declares to General Ludlow, " Yea, we must
live and die together for a Commonwealth "
at the very moment when he had practically
accomplished its complete annihUation. Then
betrayed Puritanism fell on evil days and evil
tongues, and persecution was again rampant
in its midst.
A.D. i66g. — "Plain George Monk" — now
become his Grace the Duke of Albemarle —
had indeed restored the monarchy, but the

126 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
legislative reconquest of England to the yoke
of Anglicanism was effected and maintained
by a vast and permanent conspiracy of the
Court and caste, whose motives are best
iUustrated by the language of the chief
actors themselves. Thoroughly cured of
that love of Hberty which, in setting them
in battle-array against King Charles I., had
immolated privilege with prerogative, the
Roundheads of noble birth had deserted
the popular cause, and rallied round the
monarchy and Church, henceforth adopting
Anglicanism as the sacred badge and symbol
of their political unity and consequent supre
macy. But the Puritan gentry, from whose
ranks had sprung CromweU and Hampden,
Winthrop and Ireton, Pym and Endicott,
the champions of popular liberty In both
worlds, had given the death-blow to national
sovereignty by their abandonment of the
good old cause which was their glorious
crown of immortahty. " A common suffer
ing," says Green, "had thrown the gentry
and the episcopalian clergy together, and
for the first time in our history the country
squires were zealous for the Church." In
deed, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say
that the political and social conditions and

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, &c. 127
distinctions of the Norman Conquest were
again revived in England. The King and
the nobility, the landed gentry and the
clergy, rescued by Monk— to their own
amazement and In their own utter prostra
tion — from political shipwreck, and restored
without a blow to the vast heritage they had
lost on the battle-field, confronted In a com
pact and hostile mass the democracy that
had overwhelmed them. Their inglorious
and bloodless triumph over the invincible
but betrayed heroes of Marston Moor and
Naseby, of Dunbar and Worcester, had in
flamed rather than allayed their hatred of
their late plebeian conquerors, to whose
magnanimity under the Commonwealth they
were alone indebted for the preservation of
their lives, honours, and estates ; and burn
ing with shame and indignation at the sub
version of their supremacy, which, founded
in brute force and universal confiscation, had
been transmitted from father to son in an
unbroken Hne of succession extending over a
period of six hundred years, and Intent on
repairing the ravages of the late Revolution
and preventing its recurrence, they resolved
to reduce England to the ancient servitude
by means of atrocious legislation that should

128 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
be as effectual of its purpose as their ances
tors' swords which achieved the original Con
quest, whilst possessing the additional virtue
of enabling them thenceforward to appeal to
the sanctity and majesty of the law in 'justifi
cation of their usurpation and tyranny ; and
having packed, by the corruptest practices,
the Infamous Cavalier or Pension Parhament,
which was composed for the most part of
young men, who were, says Pepys, " the
most profane swearing fellows that ever I
heard in my hfe," that odious legislature —
the first-fruits of the complete reconciliation
of Court and caste — proceeded In cold blood
with its horrid work of reconstruction and
revenge. " We have thought," said King Charles in
his Declaration to the House of Lords from
Breda, " we have thought it very fit and safe
for us to call to you for your help In com
posing the distempers and distractions of the
kingdom, In which your sufferings are next
to those we have undergone ourselves, and
therefore you cannot but be the most proper
counsellors for removing these mischiefs and
preventing the like for the future." And
now, addressing the Cavalier Parliament —
which he had literally commissioned after

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, &c. 1 29
" so many and great revolutions to provide
proper remedies for those evils " and " to
raise up the banks and fences which have
been cast down" — the King declared : " We
can never differ but in judgment, and that
must be when I do not rightly express
myself or you do not rightly understand
me ; but our interest is so far linked toge
ther that we can never disagree." " In God's
name," said the King, " In God's name pro
vide full remedies for any future mischiefs.
Be as severe as you will against any new
offenders, especially If they be so upon the
old principles, and pull up those principles by
the roots." But he deprecates any infringe
ment of the Act of Indemnity as endangering
"the good disposition and Security we are all
in," and also as the " breach -of a promise I
so solemnly made when I was abroad," and
concluded his speech by referring " the rest
to the Chancellor." And accordingly the
Lord Chancellor Clarendon told them : " You
ought to thank God that after all the prodi
gies in Church and State you have lived to
see the King at the opening of Parliament."
..." You are the great physicians of the
kingdom, and, God knows, have many way
ward and froward and distempered patients." K

1 30 The Pilgrims and the Anghcan Church.
And singling out the Puritan clergy as especial
objects of vengeance, he proceeded : " There
is a sort of your patients which I must re
commend to your utmost vigilance, utmost
severity, and In no part to your lenity or
indulgence ; such who are so far from valu
ing your prescriptions, that they look not
upon you as their physicians but their
patients. . . . These are the seditious
preachers . . . who, by repeating the very
expressions and teaching the very doctrine
they set on foot In the year 1640, sufficiently
declare that they have no mind that twenty
years should put an end to the miseries we
have undergone." Their "preaching has,"
says he, "all the marks by which good men
are taught to knoV and avoid the sin against
the Holy Ghost." And he declares : " If you
do not provide for the thorough quenching of
these firebrands, king, lords, and commons
shall be their meanest subjects, and the whole
kingdom kindled into one general flame."
He next referred, In the strangest language,
to the attempted riot in the streets of London,
of about fifty or sixty mlUenarlans, the main
body of whom, headed by their leader — a
cooper of the name of Venner — Colonel
Corbet, with nine horsemen only, had charged

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, dfc. 1 3 1
and utterly routed in Wood Street. " The
most desperate," says he, " and prodigious
rebellion broke out in this city that hath been
heard of in any age ; and by the multitude of
intercepted letters from and to all the counties
of England, in which the time was set down
wherein the ' Work of the Lord ' was to be
done, by the desperate carriage of the traitors
themselves and the bragging of their friends,
it may be concluded the combination reached
very far ; and if the indefatigable industry of
the Lord Mayor had not prevented It, pro
bably the fury would not have been extin
guished before this famous city, or a great
part of it, had been burnt to ashes ; there
fore it will become your wisdoms to provide
new remedies for new diseases, and to secure
the precious person of our dear Sovereign
from the first approaches of vUlainy, and the
peace of the kingdom from the first overtures
of sedition." And this attempted riot, with^
the suppositious plot which he at once con
cocted and denounced, served as pretexts for
the initiation — under the mask of religion —
of the most cold-blooded, prolonged, and
deadly political persecution recorded In our
history. With a vivid recollection of that disunion in

132 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
spiritual matters which had led to their political
effacement under the Commonwealth, the
King and his advisers resolved to recon
struct the old monarchical and aristocratic
constitution upon those ancient ecclesiastical
foundations which had been its firm support
through so many ages, and the undermining
of which had alone laid the glittering super
structure In the dust. " How much," says
the King, " how much the peace of the State
is concerned In the peace of the Church, and
how difficult a thing it is to preserve order
and government In civil, whilst there is no
order or government in ecclesiastical affairs,
is evident to the world ; and this Httle part of
the world, our own dominions, hath had so
late experience of it that we may very well
acquiesce in the conclusion without enlarg
ing ourself In discourse upon it, it being a
subject we have had frequent occasion to
.contemplate upon, and to lament abroad as
weU as at home." And after professing his
own high affection and esteem for the Church,
" the reverence to which hath supported us,
by God's blessing, against many tempta
tions," he expresses the hope that all men
wiU acknowledge " the support of the
episcopal authority to be the best support

Restoration of the Norman Monarchy, &c. 133
of rehgion, by being the best means to con
tain the minds of men within the rules of
government." And the Lord ChanceUor,
Clarendon, the King's chief adviser and
absolute guide in ecclesiastical matters,
bluntly declared that aU the enemies of the
Church, without distinction of Individual or
sect, were also the enemies of the existing
pohtical system. And in pursuance of these
views the Anglican Church was re-estab
lished ; those of the ejected bishops who
were still alive were restored to their sees ;
the vacancies in the episcopal bench were
filled up ; the surviving episcopalian clergy
returned to their benefices ; the Liturgy was
again read In the churches ; and, finally, in
order to secure the rising generation, to the
Church alone was entrusted the direction of
the education as well as the religion of the
nation. And the Church was not slow in
demonstrating its zeal and fervour for the
interests of the monarchy and aristocracy
who had revived it, and to whom it was a
political necessity. That monarchy, whose
restoration had hung on so slender a thread,
that Monk had declared, after he had
cashiered his Republican officers, " the army
are jealous of me that a king is at the bottom

134 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
of this design," and had warned Charles,
through Sir Charles Grenville, even after his
occupation of London, that "while no one
wished his Majesty greater felicity, or with
greater passion desired his restoration, yet if
it were not cautiously attempted it would be
out of his power to serve him in it " — that
monarchy, in a word, which Monk — whose
cool and steadfast mendacity staggered and
confounded friends and foes alike — had
founded in treason, fraud, and intrigue, was
now declared by the Church to be a divine
institution, and passive obedience and non-
resistance articles of religion ; whUst her own
politico-ecclesiastical organization, which had
perished twenty years before in the blood and
crimes of Laud, but which the Popish Charles
had resuscitated, for avowedly pohtical pur
poses, was again loudly and unblushingly
proclaimed the only true and ApostoHc
Church. Henceforth, AngHcanism is to knit
into a holy and indissoluble brotherhood the
monarchy and the privileged classes. Under
the banner of the Church, the new crusaders
march from victory to victory, till every
citadel of power Is stormed. Masters of
Parliament, of place, of public instruction,
the nobUIty, clergy, and gentry might make

Restoration of the Norman Monarchy, &c. 135
a prouder and truer boast than the Grand
Monarque himself, and say, " We are both
Church and State." Indeed, they mould the
mind of England at their wiU, or crush re
sistance, and, in the name of monarchy Itself,
eclipse the splendours of the Crown.
We must now relate the notorious, yet
necessary, details of this legislative recon
quest of England. The Cavaher Parliament
ordered that upon a certain day all of its
members should publicly receive the Com
munion according to the Anghcan ritual, on
pain of expulsion, and that the various Acts
of the Long Parliament, which had abolished
the monarchy, Church, and House of Lords,
should be burnt by the common hangman.
The last strongholds of the Republicans, the
boroughs, were wrested from them by the
Corporation Act, which excluded aU but
Anglicans, not simply from the municipalities,
but from the magistracy, and from^aU civil
offices in every county and town. This
measure gave to the nobihty and landed
gentry — who, as possessors of the soil, were
already masters of the counties — a controUIng
influence over the parliamentary representa
tion of the boroughs, as electoral rights were
either exclusively restricted to members of

136 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
the corporations, or Hmited to so smaU a
portion of the inhabitants as to render the
governing bodies always paramount ; and,
from time immemorial, those municipal cliques
had practically surrendered the electoral fran
chise they dared not freely exercise to the
neighbouring aristocracy or the Crown. By
the renewal of the Act of Uniformity, or rather
by the passage of a new Act, whose more
stringent conditions of conformity were framed
expressly for the expulsion of the Puritan
clergy, attendance at the parish church on
Sundays and holidays was made universally
compulsory, under the severest penalties.
This odious Act further exacted from all
private and pubhc schoolmasters, and tutors,
not in holy orders — who were to receive
episcopal license on pain of three months'
imprisonment — as well as from all clergy
men — who must henceforth receive epis
copal ordination — the oath of non-resist
ance, and a declaration, also on oath, of their
approval of the entire contents of the newly-
revised Liturgy ; while all persons who dared
to speak against the Book of Common Prayer
— which had been a dead letter in England
for twenty years — or to dispense with its use
in their religious services, incurred the penalty

Restoration of the Norman Monarchy ,&c. 137
of forfeiture of goods for the first offence, a
year's imprisonment for the second, and im
prisonment for life for the third. Moreover,
all former laws and penalties for establishing
religious uniformity were stiU to be in force,
and applied to the present form. But political
retaliation and revenge, under the garb of
religious zeal, culminated In the Conventicle
Act. This atrocious Act empowered any
single magistrate to inflict on all persons
above the age of sixteen who were at any
meeting in a private house, where more than
five persons were assembled besides the
family, " under colour or pretence of any
exercise of religion," which was not Anglican,
a fine of five pounds or three months' im
prisonment for the first offence, ten pounds
or six months' Imprisonment for the second,
and for the third, on conviction by a jury, a
hundred pounds or seven years' transportation
to some American plantation — other than
New England or Virginia, where they would
have been received with open arms as blessed
martyrs — and In the event of escape or return,
the offenders were to suffer death, without
benefit of clergy. For the better execution
of this Act, in addition to the civil authorities,
the militia and military were enjoined, on the

138 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
certificate of any magistrate, to " dissolve or
prevent any such unlawful meetings, and to
take into custody aU such persons as they
shall think fit." Moreover, unHmited power
was given to the miserable spies and informers
who made a trade of infesting by day and
night the homes of the Puritans. " This
Act," so runs the preamble, " this Act, and
all clauses of it, shall be construed most
largely and beneficially for the suppressing of
Conventicles, and for the justification and en
couragement of all persons to be employed In
the execution thereof." The Five Mile Act
prohibited all Nonconforming ministers — un
less they took the oath of non-resistance
and swore never to attempt " any alteration
of government in Church and State " — from
approaching within five miles of any city,
borough, or corporate town, or of any place
where they had ever preached, under the
penalty of a fine of fifty pounds and six.
months' imprisonment. FinaUy, on the pre
tence that the mere handful of EngHsh Roman
Catholics endangered the stability of their
despotism in Church and State, estabhshed
by law, the Cavaher Parliament passed the
Test Act, which excluded them from the
public service, by exacting from all State

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, &c. 139
officials the oath of allegiance and supremacy,
together with a declaration against transub
stantiation. Although ostensibly directed
against the Roman Catholics alone, yet the
Test Act, by an unscrupulous device, Involving
a parhamentary breach of faith, was made to
include the Puritans, whom it doomed to
political ostracism, by requiring all office
holders, civil or military, to be public com
municants of the Anglican Church. This was
the last of that black Hst of modern " bloody
statutes " — the Corporation Act, the Act of
Uniformity, the Conventicle, Five Mile, and
Test Acts — which were expressly framed for
the annihilation or conversion of the Puritan
Republicans of England — we may say of the
English nation itself, for it had been Puritanic
for twenty years — and for the " pulling up by
the roots " of those glorious principles of civil
and religious Hberty and national sovereignty
which they had enthroned at home during the
Commonwealth, and which their martyrs, the
Pilgrim Fathers, planted for ever, when, land
ing on Plymouth Rock, they took possession
of the New World. Thus did our caste and
court reconquer England — this time by means
of odious legislation — as completely and abso
lutely as their Norman ancestors had effected

140 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
the first Conquest on the battie-field of Hast
ings. And armed with this terrible weapon
they proceeded, with all due forms of law, to
wreak on their late plebeian conquerors a cold
blooded, ferocious, and dastardly vengeance
for their inglorious overthrows on so many
famous battle-fields.
Anglicanism now emerged from its teni-
porary eclipse more terrible than ever. For
upwards of a century had its hierarchy dih
gently and unsparingly used the stake, the
block, and the halter to enforce uniformity ;
but the prelates of the Restoration surpassed
all their predecessors in the enormity and
magnitude of their atrocities. The scaffolds
streamed with the best blood of Puritanism.
The prisons, vile and pestilential dens which
baffle description, were crowded to suffoca
tion with the martyrs. " I saw," writes the
Anglican Pepys, " I saw several poor crea
tures carried by, by constables for being at a
conventicle. They go like lambs, without
any resistance. I would to God they would
either conform, or be more wise and not be
catched." " Dr. Manton," writes another
contemporary, " though he had great friends
and mighty promises of favour, was sent pri
soner to the Gatehouse for preaching the

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, &c. 141
Gospel In his own house in the parish where
he had been formerly minister, and for not
taking the Oxford oath and yet coming within
five mUes of a Corporation ; and he continued
there six months, and all that time (1670)
the meetings In London were disturbed by
bands of soldiers, to the terror of many and
the death of some." " Above four hundred,"
says Crosby, " were crowded into Newgate,
besides many more in the other prisons
belonging to the city and parts adjacent."
Twelve thousand Quakers alone were Incar
cerated at one time, of whom three hundred
and sixty-nine were released from their suffer
ings by death. The total number of those
who perished — amongst whom were Joseph
AUeyne and Vavasour Powell — in those horrid
dungeons in the reign of Charles II. was
nearly eight thousand, and of the countless
host who suffered for conscience' sake the
names of sixty thousand have been left on
record. In their Insatiable thirst for revenge
on their conquerors, whom disunion alone had
vanquished without a struggle, the sanctity of
death was not respected by the enemies of the
Puritans. The graves were ransacked, and
made to yield up to the cord, knife, and axe
of the executioner, the sacred relics of the

142 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
heroes of the Commonwealth. With the
ferocity and barbarism of cannibals the
Anglicans — who, like the Nihilists, had
preached and practised political assassina
tion ; had foully murdered both Dorislaus and
Ascham, our republican ambassadors at the
Hague and Madrid, and had repeatedly
attempted to assassinate great Oliver him
self — mutilated the putrid bodies of men
whom In life they had never encountered on
the field of battle but to be utterly routed.
They descended even to a lower depth of
Infamy, which was the lowest. The Church,
in Its zeal for the cause of its restorer and
patron, one of the most immoral of monarchs,
affected to regard as a desecration of West
minster xA.bbey the sepulchres of the saint-
Hke mother of the Protector and of his
favourite daughter. And the sacrilegious
hands of Its myrmidons, to whom nothing
was sacred, plucked from their graves the
bodies of those noble women, and thrust
them — together with the remains of aU the
illustrious dead that had been interred in the
Abbey during the Commonwealth — Into a
common and obscure trench.
The Puritan ministers were deprived of
their Hvings en masse for refusing to conform.

Restoration of the Norman Monarchy, &c. 143
and were replaced by Anglican clergymen,
notorious for their " pride and debauchery."
And this expulsion on St. Bartholomew's day
of two thousand Cromwellian rectors and
vicars from their parishes and homes, to face
henceforward their everlasting foes, poverty
and persecution, completed the triumph of
Anglicanism, and ushered in the reign of all
the vices. National honour revelled In this
universal saturnalia. The victorious fleet of
HoUand, sweeping the seas, ascends our
rivers, devastating everything In Its course.
The Metropolis, wasted by plague and fire,
was at its mercy, and was only saved from
utter ruin by the invaders' ignorance of Its
defenceless condition. So low had England
faUen that it was reported the Grand
Monarque, the servile ally of Cromwell, had
said in jest, " He knows no reason why his
cousin the King of England should not be as
wUling to let him have his kingdom as that
the Dutch should take it from him." The
betrayed and deluded nation was now restored
to its right mind. "It is strange," writes
Pepys, " it is strange how everybody do now
adays reflect upon Oliver and commend him,
what brave things he did, and made all the
neighbour princes fear him."

144 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
But scarcely had England, stripped of her
ancient military renown, been again laid pros
trate at the feet of her old masters than their
unholy aUiance was snapped asunder. Court
and caste alike claim supremacy, and the
despised and Ignorant multitude, deprived of
every vestige of political power, is in turn the
dupe and victim of either cynical combatant.
Yet King Charles was the reluctant and in
voluntary accompHce of the aristocracy and
Church in their ferocious and wanton perse
cution of his Dissenting subjects. Satisfied
with the political annihUation of the Repub-
Hcans, with the execution as traitors of a
moiety of his father's judges, and with the
judicial murder of Sir Harry Vane, which he
deemed a dire necessity of pohtics, the King
compelled the House of Lords — who would
have excepted from a general pardon every
servant of the late Republic^ — to pass a BUI
of Indemnity, declaring that he would ever
hold good the sacred promise he had made at
Breda, without which neither he nor they
would have been restored to their lost rights.
And infamous as was the private character of
the King, it is impossible to doubt the sin
cerity of his endeavours to secure liberty of
conscience to all his subjects, seeing that the

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy , &c. 1 45
whole course of his reign — which might have
been one of profound personal tranquillity and
satisfaction had he sUently assented to perse
cution — was a long and unsuccessful struggle
with the aristocracy and Church for the
attainment of that object. " I shall never
think him a wise man," said Charles to the
Cavalier Parliament, " or that he can be my
friend or wish me well, who would persuade
me ever to consent to the breach, in the least
degree, of a promise I so solemnly made
when I was abroad and performed with that
solemnity." And prompted by sentiments of
honour and humanity, and perhaps by the
personal conviction of the inherent right of
all people to freedom of conscience, the King
attempted to mitigate the ferocity of legisla
tion, which he was powerless to control, by
granting a royal dispensation from its
penalties. And on the 26th of December,
1662, in moderate and guarded terms, in
order to avoid offence or surprise, he issued
his first Declaration of Indulgence. After
expressing his firm adhesion to the Act of
Uniformity and his abhorrence of military and
arbitrary power, he referred to his promise of
liberty of conscience contained in his Declara
tion of Breda, and said : " That as in the
L

146 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
first place he had been zealous to settle the
uniformity of the Church of England in dis
cipline, ceremony, and government, and shaU
ever constantly maintain It ; so, as for what
concerns the penalties upon those who, living
peaceably, do not conform themselves there
unto, through scruple and tenderness of mis
guided conscience, but modestly and without
scandal perform their devotions in their own
way, he would make it his special care, so far
as In him lay, without invading the freedom
of Parliament, to inchne their wisdom next
approaching sessions to' concur with him in
making some such Act for that purpose as
may enable him to exercise with a more
universal satisfaction that power of dispens
ing, which he conceived to be inherent in
him." And in his speech on the reassembhng
of Parliament he gently referred to the declara
tion he had Issued, and in the hope of pro
curing for It a Parliamentary sanction, mildly
observed "that if the Dissenters would
demean themselves peaceably and modestly
he could heartily wish he had such a power of
Indulgence to use upon occasion."
But the Cavalier Parliament — who brought
to their task of reconstructing the British
Constitution a collective conscience and re-

Restoration of the Norman Monarchy, &c. 147
sponsibility which could afford to set at
defiance every principle of right and justice,
of patriotism and pity — would tolerate no
check on their absolute power. In their
judgment, the Restoration system could only
permanently be maintained by the conversion
of the English nation to Anglicanism, which
they thought might easily be effected by a
constant, indiscriminate, and rigorous enforce
ment of the " sohd and lasting " laws pro
vided for that purpose. And a committee of
the House represented to the King in hollow,
yet significant terms, that they had con
sidered the nature of the Declaration of
Breda, and were humbly of opinion that they
could absolve him from it. That the In
dulgence professed would establish schism
by law, increase sects and sectaries, under
mine the authority, and endanger the ex
istence of the Church, and tend to dissolve
the very bonds of government. That it
would give Dissenters an " opportunity to
count their numbers," and " lead directly
and inevitably to open disturbance." But,
on the contrary, " that the asserting of the
laws and the religion established, according
to the Act of Uniformity, is the most probable
means to produce a settled peace and obedi-

148 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
ence throughout your kingdom." And, in
conclusion, they assure the King, while forcing
him to withdraw his Declaration of Indul
gence, and to assent to a fiercer persecution
of his Dissenting subjects, that " if any
persons shall presume to disturb the peace
of the kingdom, we do in all humility declare
that we wiU for ever, and in all occasions, be
ready with our utmost endeavour and assist
ance to adhere to and serve your majesty,
according to our bounden duty and aUegi-
ance." Meanwhile, King Charles — the rightful
heir of the Norman Conqueror, who had
founded the Anglican Church, and bestowed
on the ancestors of our aristocracy their
honours and estates, nay, who had forced
them against their will to conquer England —
would not consent to meekly play the part of
a mere king In name ; but persisted in his
endeavours to achieve, not for a moment the
pohtical enfranchisement of his people, whom
he ever regarded with " great clemency
and tenderness," but their deliverance from
wanton persecution. It is true that the
only matter wherein the King and Parliament
could seem to differ was that of Indulgence
and Toleration — for so the canting and insult-

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, ^c. 149
ing phrase ran — to Nonconformists, which
Charles, solemnly pledged by his Declaration
of Breda, and by his personal promises to
the Presbyterian clergy, had always betrayed
a great desire to grant ; but the bi each could
not fail to widen. And when a deputation of
Dissenting ministers, at the recommendation
of Sir John Barber and others, waited on the
King with an address, professing their loyalty
and acknowledging his clemency, Charles
told them : " Though such Acts have been
made, I am against persecution, and hope
ere long to stand on my own legs, and then
you shaU see how much I am against it."
And the Dissenters, satisfied by the King's
proposal of Indulgence, that he had the will
if not the power to deliver them at least
from persecution, were encouraged to resist
comprehension in a Church which was to
them the badge of temporal, as well as
spiritual servitude, flattering themselves with
the constant hope of royal toleration.
But the Lords and Commons, the bishops
and clergy, believing that a relaxation of
their sanguinary laws, enforcing conformity
to Anglicanism and imposing Anglican tests,
would shatter at a blow their carefully-recon
structed constitution ih Church and State,

150 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
now proceeded to defend that regime of
tyranny and persecution by the novel pre
tence that nothing could more encourage
and promote Popery than an Indulgence of
Protestant Dissenters, whUe nothing could so
effectually secure the peace of the kingdom
as the suppression of both. They then pro
ceeded to sow divisions between the King
and people, whom they had outwitted and
overpowered, and whose coalition they feared,
by attacking the Court on its weak side, its
inclination to Roman Catholicism, and by
raising the sinister and ominous cry of " No
Popery." So long as the King, from fear of the
Revolution, had headed the nobility, clergy,
and gentry in their legislative reconquest of
England, the Cavalier Parhament had advo
cated the widest stretch of the royal preroga
tive ; but no sooner does that genial and
clement voluptuary, touched with pity, recoU
from the wanton persecution of his people,
who had acclaimed his return, than those
" profane swearing " legislators, ensconced
within their impregnable Parliamentary for
tress, pose as the champions of the majesty
and sanctity of the law and of the " true
Protestant religion " enthroned in Anglican
ism ; and with unexampled and unabashed

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, &c. 1 5 1
effrontery those wily phrasemongers denounce
the King's dispensing and suspending power
as subversive of the Constitution in Church
and State, and his toleration of Dissenters as
a cloak for the encouragement of Papists ;
and with ghastly irony, yet marvellous finesse,
they brand their unhappy Puritan victims,
who simply desired immunity from persecu
tion, as the instruments of arbitrary power
and the tools and engines of the Church of
Rome. Nay, more, resorting to their favourite
and habitual weapons of calumny, mendacity,
and cant, the Malignants, in order to divert
pubhc attention from their own real and
abiding tyranny, indirectly attacked the Court
by inflaming the bigotry and rancour of the
illiterate and credulous multitude against the
mere handful of their Roman Catholic fellow-
countrymen, whom they accuse of entertaining
the preposterous design of proselytizing Pro
testant England, of subverting the existing
Government, and of establishing Popery and
arbitrary power amidst universal massacre and
conflagration, at the same time protesting
that the free and indiscriminate enforcement
of their bloody statutes — the only effectual
bulwark, say they, now against Popery —
could alone save the nation from such un-

152 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Churtfit.
speakable horrors. And the Immoral device
had its desired effect, for the Dissenters —
indeed, we may say the nation, which had
been Puritanic— stripped of all political and
social Influence by the secession from their
ranks of the Puritan nobility and landed
gentry, deprived of all Intellectual training
save that imparted by Anglican priests and
schoolmasters, and decimated by relentless
and cruel persecution, while too weak to
defend their own project of Hberty, were
yet averse to a toleration that would have
embraced the Papists, many of them de
claring that they would "suffer anything"
rather than appear to promote Popery. And
the King, abandoned by "God's silly people,"
as he somewhat irreverently caUed the Dis
senters, and confronted by the combined
privileged classes, ready to do battle for the
terrible legislation which had practically en
throned them, was constrained to confound
in a common persecution both Puritans and
Papists, and to link, brand, and suppress
them as the common enemies of Church
and State.
They extorted from the King a proclama
tion for the banishment, by a given day, of
all Popish priests and for the enforcement

Restoration of the Norman Monarchy, &c. 153
of the penal laws against all Popish recu
sants and such as were suspected of being
so ; and although Charles, in his speech of
the I oth of February, 1667, had strongly
recommended to both Houses " That you
would seriously think of some course to
beget a better union and composure In the
minds of my Protestant subjects in matters
of religion, whereby they may be induced not
only to submit quietly to the Government,
but also cheerfully give their assistance to
the support of it," yet in their reply the
Cavalier Parliament, contemptuously ignoring
the royal motion, humbly petitioned his
Majesty " That he would issue out his pro
clamation for enforcing the laws against Con
venticles, and that care might be taken for
the preservation of the peace of the kingdom
against unlawful assemblies of Papists and
Nonconformists." And accordingly the King,
destitute alike of principle and power, was
induced to publish the required proclamation,
in expectation of a liberal subsidy from the
Commons. Again and again they extorted
from the reluctant but dependent monarch
like acts of submission, and as often both
Houses of the Cavalier Parliament "returned
to his Majesty their thanks for his care of

154 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
the public in issuing out his proclamation for
suppressing Conventicles, and humbly de
sired his Majesty to continue the same care
for the future."
But the struggle between the Court and
caste was only temporarily suspended, and on
its resumption it assumed wider and more
sinister proportions. The Anglicans, who
had made war on Holland in 1664, to pre
vent it from giving shelter and assistance to
their Republican fellow-countrymen, no sooner
found their own tyranny menaced by the
King than they formed a close and traitorous
connection with John de Witt, the Pensionary,
whUst Charles, with a sagacity which subse
quent events sadly demonstrated, entered into
an aUiance with France for the partition —
reserving, however, sovereign rights for his
nephew over certain provinces — of Holland,
the centre of intrigue against his Govern
ment, the powerful auxiliary of his disaffected
nobility, clergy, and gentry, and the formid
able rival of his realm.
At this juncture the Prince of Orange, at
the instigation of his mother, the King's
sister, resolved to visit England, ostensibly
to solicit his uncle's interest and support in
his ambitious designs on Holland and ta

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, &c. 155
demand payment of certain sums claimed
by the Princess Dowager; but no doubt his
polestar was the English crown, where his
ambition was so soon to centre and so near
to which he stood by right of birth. By a
secret article of the Treaty of Westminster
(AprU 5, 1654) the Dutch, In abject sub
mission to the inexorable wUl of Oliver
Cromwell, their conqueror, had pledged them
selves under the great seal of the States
never to admit the Prince of Orange or any
descendant of King Charles I. to be their
stadtholder, general, or admiral, and the Per
petual Edict had solemnly ratified this exclu
sion. But the disinherited Prince, who had
been lately chosen First Noble of Zealand,
and had now reached his twentieth year,
began, in the quaint but suggestive language
of Sir Williara Temple, our ambassador at
the Hague, " to shew himself very forward,
and to deserve the Character of being a most
extreme, hopeful Prince : And to speak more
plainly, something much better than he ex
pected, a young Man of more Parts than
ordinary, and of the better sort, that is, not
lying in that Kind of Wit which was neither
of Use to one's self nor any body else, but in
good plain Sense, which shews Apphcation,

1 56 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
if he had Business that deserved it, and with
extreme good and agreeable Humour and
Dispositions, and thus far of his way without
any Vice : besides being sleepy always by
ten a Clock at Night, and loving Hunting
as much as he hated Swearing, and prefer
ring Cock-Ale before any Wine."
Before setting out the Prince of Orange,
with his habitual caution, earnestly pressed
his admiring gossip, but unconscious tool.
Sir William Temple, for his opinion as to his
chances of success in England, saying that
" all his best friends in HoUand were of
opinion, that In case that should wholly fail
him, his journey would prove of great prejudice
to his affairs at home, by letting his friends
see how little he was considered by his
Majesty, whose countenance would be a
great support to him in the course of his
fortunes." The King, who seemed already
instinctively to distrust his treacherous kins
man, discouraged and deferred from time to
time his journey ; but Dutch William, like
his Norman namesake — to contrast a pigmy
with a giant — was not to be diverted from
any fixed design. He embarked at BriU,
October 27th, 1670, upon one of his Majesty's
yachts that waited there for him, and arrived

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, &c. 157
at Margate on October 29th, and since the
Conqueror appeared at the Confessor's Court,
no foreigner has landed on our shores so
wantonly destructive of the English race as
he. The Court received him with royal
honours, and the caste with enthusiasm, as
if they already recognized In him their natural
leader and protector In their struggle with the
King for the maintenance of their absolute
supremacy in Church and State. The Lord
Mayor, Aldermen and Sheriffs of London
wait upon him with a congratulatory address,
and subsequently entertain him with extra
ordinary magnificence at Drapers' HaU. He
is received with every mark of distinction
by both universities ; Oxford conferring on
him and on distinguished members of his
suite honorary degrees. For nearly four
months he protracted his portentous visit,
which was ominously associated with Roches
ter, where he passed his first night on Eng
lish soU, and whence he took his final depar
ture (February 15th, 1671). And although
he had obtained no satisfaction of his claims,
yet he expressed himself " infinitely sensible
of the great tenderness and affection expressed
to him by their Majesties during the time he
had been in England, and not less satisfied

158 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
with the universal esteem and respect of the
Court and people here." And in all human
probability the Prince of Orange at this time
initiated his dark conspiracy with the privi
leged classes for the mutual maintenance of
their respective interests and pretensions.
A.D. 1672-1674. — Before entering on his
second Dutch War, the King issues his
second Declaration of Indulgence, wherein
he asserts that his care for the preservation
of the rights and interests of the Church
had been sufficiently manifested by the
whole course of his government, and by the
many and frequent ways of coercion that had
been used for reducing the nation to religious
uniformity. " But," continues he, " it being
evident by the sad experience of twelve years,
that there is very httle fruit of all these
forcible courses, we think ourselves obhged to
make use of that supreme power in ecclesias
tical matters which is not only inherent in us,
but hath been declared and recognized to be
so by several statutes and Acts of Parlia
ment." Therefore, in order to quiet the
minds of his subjects in matters of religion,
to induce foreigners to settle in their midst,
to encourage trade and commerce, and to
prevent dangers that might arise from private

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, &c. 1 59
meetings and seditious Conventicles, he sus
pended aU penal laws against Nonconformists
and Papists, and set free the hosts of martyrs
who thronged his gaols, whose numbers are
not recorded, but may be fairly guessed from
the fact that twelve thousand members of the
petty sect of Quakers alone were released by
this very act. The Nonconformists were
aUowed by special license to erect for their
own use, in all parts of the kingdom, a
sufficient number of public places of worship,
but the Papists were restricted in the exercise
of their religion to their own houses. Yet the
King deems it prudent, from fear of the
aristocracy and Church, to warn all his sub
jects that should they presume to abuse this
Hberty and preach seditiously, or " to the
derogation of the doctrine, discipline, or
government of the Established Church," he
should proceed against them with the utmost
rigour, testifying at once his severity to
punish offenders, and his Indulgence " to
truly tender consciences."
But the riobUity, clergy, and gentry, who
lived in constant dread of the recurrence of
their dismal fate under the Commonwealth,
and who believed the atrocious penal laws to
be an indispensable bulwark against the

i6o The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
democracy, were prepared to sacrifice both
dynasty and nation in their defence. There
fore the " profane swearing members " of the
Cavalier Parliament humbly represent to the
King that, considering the Declaration of
Indulgence, they found themselves bound in
duty to inform him that Penal Statutes, in
matters ecclesiastical, cannot be suspended
but by Act of Parliament ; in other words, by
themselves, who had specially passed those
Acts — in terror of the Republic, which had
been their grave — as legal guarantees for the
security and perpetuity of their strangely re
covered ascendency. The King — most pro
bably influenced by his mother's early teach
ing, as well as disgusted and repelled by the
ferocity and canting hypocrisy of resuscitated
Anglicanism — was at heart a Romanist, and
the Duke of York an avowed adherent of
Rome, and on this peg the aristocracy and
Church now hung the defence of their mon
strous despotism. King Charles's Declaration
of Indulgence, which sprang undoubtedly from
" his great clemency and tenderness to
his people," they call a violation of their
glorious constitution In Church and State
¦ — for by that euphemism they henceforth
designate the sovereign and despotic sway of

Restoration of the Norman Monarchy, &c. i6i
the aristocracy and Church — an invasion of
the legislative attributes of Parliament, and a
mere cloak for the furtherance and final
establishment of Popery and arbitrary power.
And resorting to their old device of assailing
Charles and James on their weak side, their
secret or avowed conversion to the Catholic
faith, they proceed to rouse and inflame —
by declamation in the churches as elsewhere
— the passions and bigotry of the ignorant
and deluded multitude against their Catholic
fellow-countrymen and the Court, by raising
the specious yet false cry of apprehension
and alarm at the growth of Popery and
arbitrary power. And a few days afterwards
they presented to His Majesty another
address, humbly representing that the best
means, in their opinion — parodying his own
words — " for the satisfying and composing
the minds of his subjects," would be a free
and indiscriminate persecution of both Puri
tans and Papists, by the rigorous enforce
ment of the odious Penal Laws, which had
been avowedly enacted for the annihilation
of the Republicans and their principles, but
which they now pretended were the most
effectual defence against the ghastly spectre
Popery, they conjured up at will, to scare the
M

i62 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
nation and confuse opinion as to the true
character of their conflict with the Court.
Finally, the Cavalier Parliament — whose
grants of money to the King had always
been limited and periodical, so that, as they
said, he might the oftener have need of them
— absolutely refused to grant supplies until
the Declaration of Indulgence was with
drawn. And the King was again obhged to
abandon his people — destitute ahke of leaders
and organization, and the unconscious dupes
of the real and enduring conspiracy of the
aristocracy and Church — to the fierce tempest
of persecution, which was the bitter penalty
they had to pay for their unpardonable crime
of routing on so many glorious battlefields
the proud descendants of our Norman Con
querors, and freeing England, for a brief
space, from their cruel yoke.
Meanwhile, events on the Continent had
given the Dutch ally of the aristocracy and
Church an opportunity of displaying his
courage, exercising his matchless skUl in
intrigue, and gratifying his ambition in his
native land. Placing themselves under his
leadership and protection, they had neces
sarily adopted his Dutch foreign policy as
their own most insane English policy, and

Restoration of the Norman Monarchy, &'c. 163
were paving the way, more or less uncon
sciously, for the transference of the destinies
of their country into the hands of a profound
but unprincipled politician, who would reck
lessly squander the blood and treasure of
England in furtherance of his own ambitious
and impracticable mihtary projects. This
Dutch prince of German lineage, fraU and
emaciated in body, but astute and vigorous
in mind, was a striking example of strength
and capacity in the midst of dangers. At
the age of twenty-two he had been appointed,
in violation of the Perpetual Edict, and in the
teeth of John de Witt's most strenuous oppo
sition, commander of his country's armies.
It was an hour of greatest danger. Louis
XIV. and Charles II. had commenced their
unprovoked war with the avowed object of
subjugating Holland. The French armies,
commanded by the great Marshals Turenne
and Conde, had occupied the country almost
without opposition as far as Amsterdam.
This moment of national calamity had been
seized by the aristocratic adherents of the
Prince as a golden opportunity for destroy
ing their ruling democratic rivals. An ob
scure miscreant, of the name of Teikel, had
revealed a pretended plot of Cornelius de

164 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
Witt, the brother of the Grand Pensionary, to
assassinate the Prince of Orange. The
deluded rabble, behevlng themselves be
trayed, had risen In revolt, and, headed by
Orange chiefs — who, at the instigation of the
Prince, subsequently rewarded the murderers
— had torn in pieces the Grand Pensionary,
John de Witt, and his brother in the streets
of the capital, and had overthrown the demo
cratic constitution of HoUand. The popular
cry is for Wilham, who, undismayed in this
terrible crisis, assumes the management of
affairs. His military operations are, as usual,
unsuccessful ; there is a clamour for peace.
Knowing that the fate of HoUand is in his
hands, the combined monarchs, Louis and
Charles, tempt the astute Prince to abandon
a glorious struggle which promised to his
lofty ambition so rich a harvest of political
and military renown, with the bribe of the
sovereignty of the meagre wrecks of that
shattered State ; but in vain. When Buck
ingham, Charles's envoy — with whom he tem
porized, and whom he tricked — losing aU
patience, haughtily asked him whether he did
not himself perceive that Holland was lost
the wily Dutchman — assured of speedy suc
cour from Germany and Spain — coolly re-

Restoration of the Norman Monarchy, &c. 165
plied, " There is one certain way by which I
can be sure never to see it lost, I wUl die in
the last ditch." His counter-declaration to
one of his greatest confidants, whilst utterly
destructive of this measured bombast, which
was his ordinary vehicle of dissimulation, stUl
indicates his fixed determination to prosecute
the war at aU hazards, short of the supreme
one of self-immolation. " I am resolved,"
said he, on being asked how he Intended to
live when Holland was lost, " I am resolved
to live upon my lands in Germany, and I
would rather spend my life in hunting there
than sell my country and liberty to France
at any price." His spirit reanimates others,
the dykes are cut, the country is inundated,
and the hosts of France are compeUed to
retire. There is a reaction, an uprising in
Europe in their favour. The Cavalier Par
liament compels Charles to conclude a
separate treaty with Holland ; Spain and
the Empire coalesce against France, and
HoUand is saved. But saved at the ex
pense of the loyalty and patriotism of the
English aristocracy. " I will confess to
you," said the Prince of Orange, in a
confidential conversation with Sir WUliam
Temple, our ambassador at the Hague, " I

1 66 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
wiU confess to you that during the late
war, neither the States, nor myself in par
ticular, were without application made to us
from several persons, and considerable ones
too in England, who would fain have en
gaged us to head the discontents that were
raised by the conduct of the Court in that
whole war, which I knew was begun and
carried on quite contrary to the humour of
the nation "^ — ignorant he should have added
of his enduring plot with the privileged classes
against themselves, whose successful issue
would lay two hundred thousand of their
number into Inglorious graves in Flanders —
" and might," continued he, " and might
perhaps have proved very dangerous to the
crown, if It had not ended as it did." And
although with his habitual astuteness he had
declined to accede to their premature invita
tion to invade England, yet he had firmly
estabhshed and consohdated his vast and
permanent conspiracy with the aristocracy
and Church, against the Stuart line and
English nation, whose momentous conse
quences this ensuing history will unfold.
A.D. 1674- 1678. — On the conclusion of
peace with HoUand, the King commanded
Sir WiUiam Temple to represent to the

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, &c. 167
Prince of Orange that His Majesty knew of
the treasonable practices of certain of his
subjects, and would esteem it an Infinite ser
vice if His Highness would reveal to him
their names. But the Prince — who must
have regarded with grim humour the innocent
design of the King to draw from himself a
disclosure of his own plot and partisans,
blandly replied, " He was sure the King
would not press him upon a thing so much
against all honour, as to betray men who pro
fessed to be his friends." The alarmed
monarch then despatches as his special
envoy to the Hague the Earl of Arhngton,
who on his arrival told Sir William Temple :
" That he was come over to set some things
right between the King and Prince that he
doubted were amiss, and to settle a perfect
kindness and confidence between them for
the future." But the Prince, who stUl main
tained a close correspondence with the dis
affected aristocracy and Church, and regu
lated his conduct by their advice, treated with
scant courtesy the royal envoy. The King's
overtures were curtly, or categorically, re
jected, or set aside. He met the proposal of
a secret treaty with King Charles to assist
him against any rebels at home, by affecting

i68 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
to wonder : " That the King of England could
be so ill-beloved, or so imprudent as to need
such assistance." And upon mention being
made of a match with the eldest daughter of
the Duke of York, he curtly replied : " His
fortunes were not in a condition for him to
think of a wife." Moreover he expressed
dissatisfaction with what he called the arro
gance and Insolence of Lord Arlington's
expostulations, and declared that he spoke to
him as if he were dealing with a chUd whom
he might make to believe what he pleased,
and behaved " as if " — and this reminds us of
his descendant the immortal " Citron " — " he
had taken himself for the Prince of Orange
and him for Lord Arlington." In fine, this
arch-conspirator, who in league with English
traitors had already contemplated the de
thronement of his uncle, declared that
Arlington's language was so artificial and
Ulusory that " everybody knew that he, who
was a plain man, could not bear it," and
added that if the King had " remembered he
was his nephew, though nothing else," Lord
Arlington would not have acted as he had
done. Soon after the failure of these negotiations,
and just before the meeting of Parliament in

Restoration of the N orman Monarchy , dfc. 169
April, 1675, the King having heard that the
Prince intended coming over to England
against the approaching sessions, wrote to
Sir William Temple, commanding him to
hinder it, as If His Majesty believed some
revolutionary design prompted such a visit.
This the Prince denied, assuring Sir WiUiam
Temple : " That Lord Arlington had Indeed
talked of a journey after the peace should
be concluded, in the meantime he hoped the
King would not suspect him guilty of any
disrespectful thought ; he was His Majesty's
servant, and if he could do him no service he
would at least do him no hurt. But if the
King would be otherwise possessed he could
not help it ; he had desired the Ambassador
to assure him that there had been no ground
for such a report." And yet, notwithstanding
this denial, the Prince received about the
same time a letter from Lord Arlington,
in which he reiterated his accusations ; and
of which in an excited manner His Highness
complained to Sir William Temple, saying :
" It was impertinent, and that he therein
mentioned the foresaid imaginary resolution
of his going over to England as a thing
certain, and intended by him for raising heats
in the Parliament and commotions in the

1 70 The Pilgrims and the Anglicaji Church.
kingdom, and added that it was like to prove
but IU friendship between him and the King^
if it was to be made with blows." And re
ferring to a remark of the Earl's to the effect
that the Dutch "had some old wounds among
them which would stUl bleed If care were not
taken of them, the Prince said : " He knew
well enough what was meant by that expres
sion," for Arlington had told Monsieur Read,.
in England during the negotiations for the
last peace, that the King could cause the
Prince to be served as De Witt was, if he
chose to set about it. Here he flew, or
feigned to fly, into a violent passion against
Lord Arhngton, calling his " proceeding
malicious and insolent," and said he would
write to him what he deserved, but would
never have any further communication with
any of His Majesty's Ministers : he would
write to the King himself
The alarm of Charles at this dark and
dangerous conspiracy of the Prince of Orange
with the aristocracy and Church, found ex
pression on the opening of Parliament in
1675. The Lord Keeper, addressing the
Lords and Commons in the King's stead,
after referring to the " calumnies and
slanders" which had been leveUed at the

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, &c. 1 7 1
Stuart dynasty from HoUand, but which he
trusted would only serve to give them fresh
opportunities of testifying " their loyalty
and zeal," concluded his speech with the
foUowing remarkable words: " You have 'all
the reason in the world to make men see
this ; for you have the same monarchy to
assert, the same Church to defend, the same
interest of nobility and gentry to maintain,
the same excellent King to contend for, and
the same enemies to contend against." This
appeal was not made entirely in vain. The
hostility of the Cavalier Parliament to the
Court had diminished since; the peace.
Destitute alike of principle and patriotism,
it had complacently subsided into the com
mon pensioner of Europe. Bribes from all
sides were freely flowing into its capacious
maw. It was notoriously in the pay of
France, Spain, Germany, and HoUand, who,
in mutual emulation, distributed their money
amongst its members. And the respective
influence, in the Cavalier or Pension Par
liament, of the chief contending powers of
Europe, was in arithmetical proportion to
their bribes.
MeanwhUe, disasters in the field had modi
fied the views and policy of the Prince of

172 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
Orange. He had been surprised and routed
at Mount Cassel by his Hfe-long rival in arms
and constant conqueror, the celebrated Mar
shal Luxemburg. This was the first of that
long series of reverses, extending without a
break over two sanguinary wars — and cul
minating in our awful overthrow at Landen —
whose ceaseless repetition drew from the
Dutch " asthmatic skeleton" the petulant ex
clamation : " Can't I beat that little hump
back ! " and from the invincible " upholsterer
of Notre Dame " the contemptuous rejoinder :
" How does he know I have got a hump
back ? He has never seen it." Schooled by
the catastrophe of Mount Cassel and its grave
consequences, the Prince of Orange had re
flected on his rash refusal to marry the eldest
daughter of the Duke of York, and in the hope
of repairing his broken fortunes by dragging
England blindfold to his side, he now re
solves on the matrimonial union he had before
declined. But first, in his garden at Hon-
slaerdyk, he secretly confers with his blind
partisan. Sir William Temple, on this im
portant project. And having made that per
haps unconscious traitor promise to answer
him " as a friend, or, at least, an indifferent
person, and not as the King's ambassador,"

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy , &c. 1 73
he candidly confessed that, during the last
Dutch war, a considerable section of the Eng
lish aristocracy had repeatedly invited him to
invade England with a foreign army, and,
placing himself at their head, to overthrow the
Stuart dynasty. He further declared It was
at the instigation of " all these persons" that
he had rejected, a brief year since, the prof
fered hand of the presumptive heiress to the
EngHsh Throne. And fortified by the assur
ance of shallow Temple that the match
" would be much for his interest and honour,"
he writes at once both to the King and Duke
to solicit their favour in this matter and their
leave to visit England. But WiUiam's over
ture was received with coldness, for Charles
resented the refusal of his former offer, and
was indignant at the Prince's intrigues with
his subjects. Then the proud but subtle
stadtholder, who, through his own folly, saw
the Crown of England, with aU its mighty
possibilities slipping for ever from his grasp,
humbles himself, and sends to England Myn
heer Bentink — that "wooden man," as Marl
borough called him, and the future founder of
our ducal house of Portland — to beg the
King's permission for the Prince's journey
hither, in order that he might apologize to his

1 74 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
uncles for his past offences, and set before
ihem his future plans and pohcy. And when
Lord Treasurer Danby — on whose advice and
Temple's the Prince was acting at this junc-
ture-^hints that the proposed alliance might
induce the Prince of Orange to abandon his
English partisans and adopt the views and
policy of the Court, King Charles consents to
his coming over, on the condition that he re
turns before the opening of Parliament. But
once aUowed to land in England, the Prince,
warmly supported by the Danby Ministry and
by the disaffected privUeged classes, could
easily impose his will upon the Court. The
King desired to adjust a plan of general paci
fication before the consummation of the mar
riage ; but the Prince declared that, as things
then stood, his aUies were Hkely to have hard
terms of peace, and that, for his part, he
never would sell his honour for a wife. That
night, at supper, Temple called upon him, and
found this perfect master of dissimulation in
the worst apparent humour he had ever seen
him. He declared that he regretted he had
ever come to England, and resolved he would
stay but two days longer, and then he would
leave if the King persisted in his resolution of
making the peace precede the marriage.

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, &c. 1 75
" But," said this petty foreign , potentate,
whom aristocratic treason had made master of
the fate of England, and who resorted to the
covert threat of civU war and Dutch invasion
to coerce the King, " but," said he, " before
I £0 the King must choose how we shall live
together from henceforward ; I am sure it must
be as the greatest friends or as the greatest
enemies." And, in obedience to the wishes
of the Dutch stadtholder, Sir WiUiam Temple,
early in the morning, repeated this tentative
and inflated discourse to the King, and did
not faU to represent and magnify the evU con
sequences of braving the Prince's threat of an
open rupture, considering the disaffection of
so many of his subjects, and the repeated
invitations which several of the chiefest of them
had sent both to the Prince and the States
General during the whole course of the late
war. The King hstened attentively to the
ultimatum of his nephew, and to its vigorous
enforcement by Sir Wilham Temple. Con
scious of the isolation of his brother and him
self, and Intimidated by the wily and resolute
bearing of the Prince and his English parti
sans, whose intrigues had already endangered
his throne, the King reluctantly consented to
the match. A.D. 1677. " Well," said he, in

176 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
language which revealed his uncertain frame
of mind, " well, I never was yet deceived in
judging of a man's honesty by his looks, and,
if I am not mistaken in the Prince's face, he is
the honestest man in the world ; and I wUl
trust him, and he shall have his wife ; and you
shall go immediately and teU my brother so,
and that it's a thing I am resolved on."
The Duke received the royal message with
surprise, but said : " The King shall be
obeyed; and I should be glad if all his sub
jects learned of me to obey him. I tell him
my opinion freely upon anything ; but when
that is done, and I know his pleasure upon it,
I obey him." The Prince — the only actor in
this mighty drama who measured its full im
port — was at first incredulous of the tidings ;
then, realizing the magnitude of his success,
he fell upon the neck of Temple and embraced
him, saying : " You have made me a very
happy man, and that very unexpectedly."
We may here observe parenthetically that
the Prince of Orange was at that time twenty-
nine years of age, and the Princess Mary
seventeen ; that our Protestant hero enroUed
among his mistresses Elizabeth Villiers, one of
the maids of honour of his child-wife, whom
he further outraged by a sullen and sulky

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, &c. 177
demeanour until he had extorted from her her
right of succession to the EngHsh throne.
A few days after the celebration of the mar
riage the King, the Duke, and Prince, assisted
by the latter's partisans. Lord Danby and Sir
William Temple, vainly conferred together
upon a plan of pacification. The King's
favour had facilitated the Prince's advance
ment to the stadtholderate ; the King's hand,
in giving him his bride, had placed the Eng
Hsh crown within his reach ; but the Prince,
dead to every sentiment save that of personal
ambition, now strives — in league with the dis
affected aristocracy and Church, who sought
to divert the public mind from home affairs by
foreign broUs — to force upon King Charles
his miserable continental pohcy. The Dutch
had warred successfully against the combined
arms of France and England, and HoUand
had been saved. But saved too soon to
satisfy the Prince of Orange, who, prompted
by personal rancour and ambition, now poses
as the champion and arbiter of Europe, and
the rival and foU of the Grand Monarque, for
whom and for the French he entertains an un
conquerable hate, the outcome partly of King
Louis's mordant scorn of his inflated " little
cousin," and subsequently envenomed by a
N

1 78 The Pilgrims and. the Anglican Church.
private feud, springing from the seizure of his
petty princlpahty of Orange. He had be
come, by the force of events, the central
figure of a mighty coalition, and the com
mander of its armies ; and, as his power
expands, the lust of mihtary glory, that
eternal curse of princes, seizes him, and
regulates his pohcy. Proud to be the acci
dental master of so many legions which peace
would snatch from him, this offspring of the
war dreads a general pacification as the grave
of his military career, and the eclipse of his
political consideration. When Temple told
him Pensionary Fagel had said he thought
the Dutch should make a separate peace, and
that he did not know a man in Holland who
was not of his mind, the Prince rephed :
" Yes, I am sure I know one, and that is
myself, and I'll hinder it as long as I can ;
but if anything should happen to me, I know
it would be done in two days." He wishes
to prolong the war tiU he had accomplished
the, for him, impossible task of reducing
France to the limits fixed by the treaty of the
Pyrenees ; in other words till, sated with glory,
he had beaten conquered and dismembered
France to his feet. And now, forsooth, with
Spain, the Empire, Europe at his back, he

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, &.c. 1 79
must constrain King Charles — and this was
the immediate object of his marriage — to
place the Hves and fortunes of his people in
the Prince's hand, to minister to his greatness.
The King desired to effect an equitable peace,
and pressed on all the belligerents the advis
ability of mutual concessions. He was even
prepared to fight for the preservation of
Flanders, for he had confessed " he could
never Hve at ease with his subjects " if that
country were held permanently by the French :
short of that eventuality, however, and wisely,
he was indisposed to involve Erigland in con
tinental complications. But the Cavaher
Parliament — in secret league with the Prince
of Orange, whose interests were both identical,
and who had both, rising from their own ashes,
destroyed the democratic constitutions of
their respective countries, and had virtually
enthroned in England and in Holland a
vanquished aristocracy — but the Cavalier
Parliament, I say, adopting the Dutch foreign
policy of the future " great and glorious
deliverer" of the aristocracy and Church,
much to the indignation of the King, besought
him to make no peace with France, tiU he had
stripped her of all the territories which she
had acquired since the Pyrenean treaty ; and

i8o The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
further passed a resolution praying him that
" he would forthwith enter into an actual war
with France." Moreover, they voted the King
an address, in which "they besought him to
conclude a league, offensive and defensive,
with the States-General of the United
Provinces, against the growth and power of
the French King, and for the preservation of
the Spanish Netherlands; and to contract
such other aUiances with the aUies as should
appear necessary for that purpose." This
sinister proposition they supported with
specious arguments, and — anticipating the
language and the odious foreign policy of the
Parliaments of our Dutch and German kings
— they promised unlimited supplies for main
taining what they caUed the honour of the
crown and the safety of the people. But
King Charles, who had been always tender of
the lives of his subjects, resolutely refused
to second the ambitious and impracticable
designs of the .Prince of Orange, or to minister
to the political requirements of the restored
aristocracy and Church, to whose tranquil
enjoyment of sovereign power, foreign warfare
— under a King of English blood — was an
absolute necessity. And Holland, perceiving
that the time had not yet come for England,

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, &c. 1 8 1
protected by her native king, to immolate
herself to Dutch ambition and aggrandize
ment, concludes, unknown to the Prince, a
separate and advantageous treaty with the
French. But when he hears the peace of
NImeguen is signed — July 31, 1678 — the
Prince of Orange — who was by birth a cosmo
politan, whom no particular natlonahty could
claim — maddened at seeing his mighty pro
jects of ambition baffled, suddenly and
treacherously attacks the army of the Duke
of Luxemburg, resting securely on the faith of
the treaty, and throws away in this disastrous
fight some seven thousand lives, in the vain
hope of forcing HoUand to resume the war
and England and King Charles to succour her.
He fails, thanks to the patriotic constancy of
the King, and the holocaust of victims he had
slaughtered on the battlefield of St. Denis was
but a barren sacrifice to his pure spite and
passion. The failure of the Prince and Parliament to
fasten on King Charles their foreign policy —
which ten years later cost us twenty years of
sterile bloodshed, and inaugurated a century
of wanton warfare with the French — precipi
tated their coUision with the Court. Con
scious that Charles and James — who with the

1 82 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
vices common to their age and to the Prince
of Orange, had yet as English princes a
" great clemency and tenderness to their
people " — would never willingly concur —
although concurrence would have brought
to both repose and safety and a ready
acquiescence in any system of religion or
foreign policy they might have chosen to
adopt, even in that of assisting the French to
ruin the Dutch — conscious, I say, that Charles
and James would never willingly concur in
the enforcement by atrocious and universal
persecution of their odious Test and Penal
Laws, which had at once enslaved the nation
and eclipsed the power and splendour of the
crown ; nor adopt their nefarious and san
guinary foreign policy ; the Cavalier Parha
ment resolved on the virtual subversion of
the Stuart dynasty and the seizure and
permanent retention of the Conqueror's
throne. And taking advantage of the lucky
accident of Charles and James's secret or
avowed conversion to the Catholic faith, the
Prince and Parliament accuse the Court — an
accusation which the whole career of both
the King and Duke belies, although they
naturally and patriotically sought a French
aUiance as a counterpoise to the vast con-

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, &c. 1 83
spiracy against the nation and themselves,
of the aristocracy and Church with the
Dutch Prince and Ruling caste — of the
preposterous design of Romanizing and
enslaving England by means of the mili
tary power of France. And prompted by
the maxim that " a bad title makes a good
king," that is, a king subservient to the wUl
of his makers, the privileged classes prepare
to pave the way to the throne for the Prince
of Orange, who as a foreigner — like their later
German proteges — could never love or be
beloved by Englishmen, and must, perforce, in
order to retain his crown, indissolubly link the
great name of King to the real and enduring
conspiracy and usurpation of a caste. And
on the pretence that a Catholic sovereign
would endanger the constitution in Church
and State, as they with grim and mocking
humour style their despotism, the Cavalier
Parliament resolve at once to force the King to
disinherit his brother, and stultify himself by
accepting a successor of their own selection,
who is forthwith to be brought to England
and formally recognized, in virtue of his wife,
as the presumptive heir to the Stuarts' throne.
To effect this monstrous revolution they resort
to measures akin to those which led to the

184 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
murder and mutilation of John and Cornelius
de Witt by the deluded mob of the Hague,
and to the consequent elevation to practically
sovereign power of the Prince of Orange in
Holland. A.D. 1678-1682. — Within a fortnight of the
signing of the peace of NImeguen, the baffled
conspirators suborn a gang of perjured mis
creants to ruin the Duke of York, by de
nouncing his co-religionists, and subsequently
the Duke himself, as the authors of that
basest of all impostures and viUainies, the
horrid and detestable Popish Plot. The first
and vUest of those sanguinary scoundrels, the
foul and loathsome Titus Oates, finding that
the King scouted and ridiculed his gross im
posture, resolved to appeal to the mob — as
the multitude were now for the first time
contemptuously called — who, steeped in
lamentable but involuntary ignorance, always
listened with credulity to any defamation of
the Catholics. For this purpose he made an
affldavit of the truth of this pretended Plot of
the Jesuits for the murder of the King and
the subversion of the Protestant religion be
fore Sir Edmundbury Godfrey — a magistrate
of Westminster and a partisan of the Catholics
— who, seeing on the list of the intended

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, &c. 1 85
victims the name of one of his particular
friends — the Secretary of the Duke of York
— warned him of his danger. A few days
afterwards the corpse of Godfrey was found
in a ditch near London, with his own sword
thrust through his heart with such force as to
stick out at his back ; but the absence of
blood from the wound, a broad purple mark
-encircling his broken neck, and bruises on his
breast, proved that he had been most foully
murdered. But who were his murderers ? The
drops of wax which besmeared Sir Edmund-
bury's clothes were meant to indicate that he
had been strangled at night by Jesuits, for in
that age tapers were only used by Roman
Catholic priests in their rehgious services, and
by persons of the highest rank. But in all
probability — as his death was necessary to the
success of the Plot — the unhappy Godfrey
was the forerunning victim of that long list of
innocent men, whom Buckingham, Shaftes
bury, and their accomplices — under the tutel
age and in the interests of the Prince of Orange
— had, with diabolical Ingenuity and cruelty,
doomed to the horrid death of traitors, in
order, by sheer terror, to force the King,
whom they made a participator in their
atrocities, to consent to the exclusion of his

i86 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
brother from the throne. Yet these aristo
cratic terrorists and revolutionists, with their
vile tools, declare that the murder was an
attempt of the Jesuits to smother the Plot,
and hang three servants of the Queen on the
false charge of having strangled Godfrey in
Her Majesty's palace, and in a certain
chamber tenanted at that very moment by
the King. Meanwhile they proceeded to
utihze their monstrous crime. Anticipating
the orgies of the sans culottes of France,
they make a ghastly spectacle of Godfrey's
corpse, parading it, with every mark of osten
tation, through the principal streets of the
metropolis, and afterwards exposing it in
public for several days. But the crowning
demonstration was' the funeral. In front of
the vast procession marched in full canonicals
the Anghcan clergymen of London ; and
behind the bier, a thousand gentlemen in
mourning, including many members of the
legislature, headed, and excited to outrage by
their countenance and presence, their wretched
dupes the mob — clamouring for the blood of
the Catholics, a general massacre of whom
seemed imminent. This was a repetition of
the nefarious tactics of the Dutch aristocrats-
at the Hague, who, inflaming the rabble with

Restoration of the Norman Monarchy, &c. 187
the cry of a sham Plot to assassinate the Prince
of Orange, had stifled the democratic re-
pubhc of Holland in the blood of the De
Witts. Happily the innate magnanimity of
the English populace restrained their hands
from the shedding of innocent blood, and
restricted their share in the reign of terror
which had now commenced to a moral
support of the atrocious crimes perpetrated
under the cloak of religious zeal by the privi
leged classes for the practical subversion of
the legitimate monarchy, and the consequent
perpetuation of their own pohtical and spiritual
supremacy. That incomparable vUlain, Titus Oates —
the honoured pensioner of WiUiam III. — on
being summoned to the bar of the Lower
House, declared that the Pope had assumed
the sovereignty of the British Isles, and had
delegated his authority to the Jesuits ; that
the general of that order had already ap
pointed a Government of Catholic noblemen
and gentlemen whom he named, and had
bestowed the dignities and benefices of the
Anglican Church on foreign as well as native
Romanists ; that the Jesuits were raising up
a French party to overthrow the Prince of
Orange in Holland, and were fomenting revo-

i88 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
lution In Ireland and Scotland ; while in Eng
land they had not only decreed the massacre of
the leading nobility and gentry, but also the
assassination of the King, and the elevation to
the throne of the Duke of York as the Pope's
vassal. And a subsequent informer — the oft-
convicted swindler and impostor, Wilham Bed-
loe — Invested the marveUous Plot with new
horrors, by declaring that French and Spanish
armies — France and Spain being at that very
time engaged in mutual slaughter — were to
be landed In England, and after effecting a
junction with the native forces raised by
the Catholic lords, were to fire London,
commence a general massacre of the Pro
testants throughout the kingdom, and, should
the Duke of York prove refractory, place
the government in the hands of a com
mittee of noblemen appointed by the Pope.
Archbishop Sheldon — the blackest and most
odious type of Anglican prelacy — whose per
secutions were merely political, and " who
¦considered religion chiefly as an engine of
policy," fanned the flame of popular bigotry
and fanaticism. And the Church staunchly
seconded the efforts of its primate. " None,"
says Hallam, " none had more contributed to
raise the national outcry against the accused,

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, &c. 189
and create a firm persuasion of the reality of
the Plot, than the clergy in their sermons,.
even the most respectable of their order,.
Sancroft, Sharp, Barlow, Burnet, TiUotson,
Stillingfleet ; inferring its truth from Godfrey's
murder and Coleman's letter, calling for the
severest laws against the Catholics, and im
puting to them the fire of London — nay, even
the death of Charles I." Both Houses of
Parhament, also affecting to believe in the
horrid imposture, proclaim a solemn fast,
ordain a special form of prayer to be con
trived for the occasion, and vote unanimously :
" That there is and hath been a damnable
and hellish plot, contrived and carried out
by Popish recusants, for assassinating and
murdering the King, for subverting the Govern
ment, and rooting out and destroying the
Protestant religion." They represent to
Charles that their paramount duty is "to
endeavour by the most speedy and effectual
means the suppression of Popery within this
your kingdom, and the bringing to public
justice all such as shall be .found guUty of
the horrid and damnable Popish Plot." And
in a subsequent address they pray : " That
His Majesty would be pleased to order the
execution of one Pickering, a prisoner in

i 90 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
Newgate, and of divers priests and Jesuits,
who had been condemned by the judges at
the Old Bailey, and in the several Circuits ;
to the great emboldening of such offenders,
in case they should escape without due
punishment." Terrorized by the Cavalier
Pariiament, the horrified King — who in private
denounced and ridiculed the gross imiposture,
saying that " he was accused of being In a
plot against his own life," — was nevertheless
constrained for the preservation of that life
to become the reluctant instrument of their
will. The Catholic lords were at once thrown
into the Tower, and two thousand of their
co-religionists into the various gaols of the
metropolis. One proclamation banished all
Cathohcs from London, another ordered
their arrest throughout the kingdom. The
abused nation was beside itself with fear
and rage. In the capital the train-bands
and volunteers were under arms night and
day, patrols paraded the streets, batteries
were planted at Whitehall, and barricades
erected in aU the leading thoroughfares, in
expectation of the predicted Catholic rising.
The fermentation spread to the remotest
districts of the kingdom, and every centre
of population presented in miniature the

Restoration of the Norman Monarchy, &c. 191
humiliating spectacle of the metropoHs. At
the same time the mob was enlisted in the
service of the caste. The chronic, and in
the main, the unfounded jealousy and dread
of Romanism entertained by the populace
since the Reformation, had always been a
potent force in politics, and had been often
used by the aristocracy and Church as a
means for the attainment of their selfish
purposes ; but never was it so unscrupulously
and triumphantly brought into operation as
during their long, and — but for their canting
party-cry^ — their utterly hopeless, nay, im
possible struggle with Charles and James for
the absolute sovereignty of the British Isles.
Reared systematically by AngHcanism in a
state of the grossest ignorance, and abused
with the wUdest views and calumnies of
Romanism, the masses were now easily de
luded by an unprincipled and designing caste
into the insane behef that a Popish knife
menaced every Protestant throat ; and were
led to participate in a series of cowardly and
bloody excesses, which were quite alien to the
national character, and which in all human
probability will ever form the darkest scenes
in our history. Misled by their hereditary
masters, they clamour for the blood of the

192 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
Catholics, and, thronging the courts of law,
maltreat the witnesses of the accused, greet
with roars of applause their unjust condem
nation, and, with eager step and fierce yells
of rage and execration, follow them to the
gaUows. Convicted on the false testimony
of the basest of mankind of conspiring the
death of the King, the subversion of the
Government, and the destruction of the Pro
testant religion as by law established in the
Church of England, batches of unhappy
victims were hanged, drawn, and quartered,,
all protesting before God, with their last
breath, that they were wholly innocent of the
crimes laid to their charge, and for which,
amidst such black and brutal surroundings,
they suffered the awful doom of traitors.
Meanwhile the Cavalier Parliament, which
had stuck at no crime to raise the popular
tempest, hastened to turn it to account. The
atrocious statute of the reign of Ehzabeth,
ordering all native Catholic clergymen to
leave the kingdom within the space of forty
days, on pain of death, was again declared to
be in force. The Parliamentary Test Act —
which was not repealed till 1828 — was hur
riedly passed, without opposition, disabhng
Puritans as well as Papists from sitting in

Restoration of the Norman Monarchy, &c. 193
either House of Pariiament or holding any
office, civil or military, under the Crown.
The Duke of York was forced to seek refuge
in Flanders. The Queen herself was accused
of having said to a party of Jesuits, within
earshot of Oates, who lay concealed behind
an open door, that In revenge for the infideli
ties of her husband " I will join In his death
and the propagation of the Catholic faith ! "
And, drunk with the audacity and vUlainy of
his aristocratic accompHces, that perjured
monster, as hideous in person as in character,
appears at the bar of the House of Lords and
in blatant tones impeaches " Catherine, Queen
of England, of high treason." Hereupon the
Cavalier Parliament present an address to the
King praying that the Queen and her domes
tics might be at once removed from White-
haU. "The viUains," exclaimed the indignant
and outraged monarch, " the villains think I
have a mind for a new wife ; but, for all that,
they shall see I will not aUow an innocent
woman to be abused." He assures the ter
rified Queen of his protection, and orders her
vile calumniator — who he knew was tutored
in his base and bloody work — to be placed
under arrest and kept in close seclusion. But
the Cavalier Parliament, conscious that these
o

194 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
restrictions would be fatal to the Plot, imme
diately force the King not simply to release
their infamous but invaluable associate, whom
they impiously declare " the saviour of his
country," but to grant him a generous pen
sion and apartraents in the palace of White
hall, and a special guard to protect him from
Popish assassins. They next proceed to
attack the King himself for having made an
application to the Court of France for the
same disgraceful pecuniary aid which they
themselves, without excuse, had been re
ceiving, and which had won for them the
epithet of the Pension Parliament, when their
existence was suddenly cut short by a disso
lution A.D. 1678.
Thus perished abruptly, under circumstances
of peculiar and unexampled infamy, the Cava
lier or Pension Parliament, after a prolonged
existence of nearly eighteen years. Its mis
sion, however, had been fully accomplished.
The offspring and delegate of the vanquished
descendants of our Norman Conquerors, whom
Monk had rescued from pohtical shipwreck
and restored, in aU their pristine strength
and splendour, to their ancient proud pre
eminence, the Cavalier Parliament had re
established on a legal basis the old Norman

Restoration of the Norman Monarchy, &c. 195
domination which the RepubHc had sup
planted after six centuries of tyranny and
oppression. But in its work of reconstruc
tion it had introduced such momentous
changes in the revived political and reli
gious system of the Norman Conquest as
practically to strip the Crown of all real
power so far as the Internal government of
the country was concerned, and to estabhsh,
by the enactment of such " solid and lasting
provisions " against all future democratic re
volutions as the Corporation Act, the Act of
Uniformity, the Conventicle, Five MUe Test,
and Parliamentary Test Acts, the despotism
and tyranny of the aristocracy and Church.
In a word, the Cavaher Parliament, placing
both King and people at its feet, transmitted
to succeeding Parliaments, elected almost
exclusively by, and composed almost entirely
of, hereditary property and rank, a legal title
to arbitrary power which the territorial fami
lies — forewarned by their dismal fate under
the Commonwealth — would never voluntarily
abdicate, and of which they could never be
deprived but by a violation of their strangely
reconstructed Constitution In Church and
State ; and on the altar of their atrocious
laws — as they doubted its continued loyalty

196 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
to their, vast and permanent conspiracy
against the nation whom they evermore
distrusted — the aristocracy and Church stiU
resolved to immolate the Norman dynasty
of the Stuarts.
Thrice did the King — in the hope of
securing the return of a House less hostile
to the legitimate and national monarchy,
which was now the only obstacle and check
to caste despotism — summon new Pariia-
ments ; but elected practically by the nobility,
clergy, and gentry, they were composed of
almost entirely the same members and advo
cated the same policy. Each successive Par
liament — in close communication with the
Prince of Orange, who, with the basest
motives, entered deeply into all their in
trigues, encouraged their wildest excesses,
and at the same time, by his secret emis
saries, kept alive the popular panlc^ — were
alike bent on the perpetuation of their reign
of terror tiU they bad forced the King to
disinherit his brother by the passage of the
BUI of Exclusion. At their instigation the
Prince urges on the King the advisability of
submission to the will of Parliament, and the
States-General of Holland, through Pensionary
Fagel invite Charles, without delay, not

Restoration of the Norman Monarchy, &c. 197
simply to sacrifice his brother to the ambi
tious designs of their stadtholder, but Eng
land Itself to the military requirements of
HoUand. But King Charles, standing alone
in his realm — as on a previous occasion he
had told King Louis — resists all pressure,
foreign as well as domestic. He saw that
the tide of popular frenzy was on the turn,
that the mob was sated with innocent blood,
and that his triumph was at hand. For
nearly two years had this reign of terror
lasted, during which period of time the lives
of the Catholics, and of the Royal Family
itself, were literally at the mercy of AngH
canism and of its instruments and dupes, the
treacherous and perjured informer, and the
illiterate and brutal mob ; but the general
behef in the monstrous Plot had been
solely kept alive by the foulest judicial
murders. And the execution of the Earl of
Stafford — after a lengthened trial by the
House of Peers — who, like the less noble
victims of the Popish Plot, died protesting
his innocence of the crimes for which he was
condemned, and expressing the hope that
the delusion of which he was the victim
would soon pass away, and the stigma cast
on his name would be speedily effaced — at

198 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
length opened the eyes of the masses to the
snare Into which they had been entrapped.
They now regarded with shame and remorse
the horrors in which they had blindly partici
pated, and with indignation and abhorrence
the malignant factions which had wilfully
deluded them. And the King shared the
fierce resentment and poignant sorrow of the
multitude. " The Queen Consort," writes
Terriesi, the Tuscan Minister in London,
" the Queen Consort affirms that he never
came into her private cabinet where she kept,
after their execution, the portraits of the
Jesuits who were massacred in that false
conspiracy, without turning towards them and
kissing their hands, and asking their pardon
in the humblest and most penitent form,
without dilating passionately on his own
guUt and on their innocence, concluding with
the remark that they were now in a place
where they could truly know whether His
Majesty had been forced to act as he did,
and entreating that they would pray God on
his behalf to pardon the offence " (a.D. 1681).
And in this frame of mind King Charles,
taking advantage of the sudden revulsion of
popular sentiment, dissolves his fifth and last
Parliament, and appeals in a royal manifesto

Restoration of the Norman Monarchy, &c. igg
to the nation to judge between him and thgm,
whom he accuses of insisting on the exclusion
of his brother from the succession, notwith
standing all the remedies he had proposed
for the security of the Anglican Church ; and
of forbidding anyone to lend him money, in
the hope that his financial needs would con
strain him to a servile compliance with their
wiU ; in a word, of endeavouring by the most
unwarrantable and seditious means to estab
lish their own arbitrary power — which they
had indeed by law effected — on the ruins of
the Monarchy. The Declaration was received
with the liveliest demonstrations of loyalty by
the people, who rejoiced at the emancipation
of their sovereign from aristocratic tyranny.
And the King, whose easy and clement dis
position was observed to change very visibly,
and to become cruel and vindictive, owing to
the countless indignities and dangers he had
undergone, thirsting to avenge the innocent
blood he had been compelled to shed, enlists
the gang of perjurers who had sworn away
the Hves of the Catholics into his own
service, and thinking that no retahation on
opponents so steeped in infamy could be
unjust, turns this vile weapon with deadly
effect against its late employers.

2GO The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
Then was witnessed one of those political
changes of front and general abandonment of
so-called principles, which were characteristic
of our governing classes in the presence of
overwhelming danger. It is true that they
had already nominally divided into two hostile
parties, the one favouring and the other
opposing an unHmited royal prerogative ; but
in reality one and indivisible in origin and
interest, the Whigs and Tories have never
faUed to coalesce — since their dismal over
throw by Oliver Cromwell — whenever danger
from whatsoever quarter menaced the sove
reignty of their common order. And now
recognizing the peril of a prolongation of
their struggle with King Charles, supported
by the multitude, the vast majority of the
nobihty and landed gentry, with the whole
body of the clergy, hushing their sinister and
Immoral cry of "No Popery," which for the
nonce had lost its ancient potency, rally
with an outburst of sham loyalty round that
Norman throne they had erewhile so vilely
sought to seize and fill with a foreign puppet
of their own selection.
The Declaration of the King was read in all
the churches. And the clergy who had been
hitherto the chief supporters of the Popish

Restoration of the Norman Monarchy ,^0. 201
Plot — assured ofthe King's protection — again
elevate the doctrines of passive obedience
and non-resistance into articles of religion,
and denounce eternal punishments against all
who dare resist "the Lord's anointed and
the ministers of the only true Church upon
earth." And the Prince of Orange shared, in his
own person, the discomfiture of his partisans.
At this crisis of his and England's fortunes,
with the audacity of a born conspirator and
revolutionist, he came to England on the
pretence of inducing Charles to adopt his
continental policy^ but in reality to ascertain
the strength of the Exclusionists, to revive
their drooping courage, and renew by personal
intercourse his miserable intrigues with them.
And Monmouth — never a serious rival — with
the other leaders of the dwlndhng Whigs —
soon for a time to be discredited and ruined
by their participation in the murderous Rye
House Plot — hasten to court their eagerly
responsive Dutch protector, panting as ever
to seize by any means his uncle's crown, and,
for his personal glory and aggrandizement,
to embroil the EngHsh nation with the French.
To hasten and facilitate the accomplishment
of this vast design, his aim had ever been to

202 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
alarm, to hnk together, and direct aU menaced
interests, the petty privUeges and properties
of the Corporation cliques, together with
the mighty political and social forces of
hereditary property and rank. In a word,
he decreed that the corporations of the towns
— those bribes and sops of the astute
Norman to the wealthier section of the con
quered race — should march side by side with
the Norman baronage, landed gentry, and the
Church under his aU-protectIng banner. But
his tampering with the Corporation of the
city, with whom he dined Immediately on
reaching London, and his ostentatious con
ferences with the wrecks of the defeated
faction remaining steadfast to their nefarious
Popish Plot imposture — whose chief con
triver, Titus Oates, he subsequently patro
nized and pensioned — at length aroused the
disgust and indignation of the Court, and
brought to a somewhat abrupt close his brief
but sinister visitation.
A.D. 1682-1685. — -But the so-called second
tyranny of the Stuarts was in reality the un
bridled reign of caste ferocity. The King
indeed, dispensed with Parliaments, but their
atrocious laws were in full force. And the
haughty and implacable caste, Hving in

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, &c. 203
constant dread of the democracy, who, in
their judgment, could be only held in due
subjection by the rigorous enforceraent of the
repressive legislation provided for that pur
pose, exacted from the King, as the price of
their reviving loyalty, the gratification — under
the old disguise of fierce religious persecution
— of their unslaked vengeance on their late
plebeian conquerors. Nay, more, with un
paraUeled effrontery they cast upon the Dis
senters — whom, in order to estrange from the
Court, they had, by foully slandering the
Catholics, ensnared into a passive partici
pation in their own detestable imposture — the
whole odium of the Popish Plot, branding
them, in a multitude of addresses to the King,
with the vUe epithets of rebels and viUains.
Yet King Charles, whose priniciple and
practice it had ever been to free the con
sciences of all his subjects, again mUdly
makes mention of a proposal for the renewal
of the Indulgence to Nonconformists ; which
had, however, immediately to be withdrawn
in deference to the contemptuous opposition
of the caste, who denounce all Puritans as
the professed enemies of the King, the
Church, and State. And during the re
mainder of his reign the gaols were crammed

2G4 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
to overflowing with hosts of unnumbered
martyrs, of whom four thousand alone be
longed to the petty sect of grave and peace
ful Quakers. He died rejecting the religion
of the sycophantic and persecuting prelates
who hung about his bed, craving to share his
dying blessing with his mistresses.
The nobler features of his character — ob
scured by glaring personal vices — he shall
himself portray. Under the shadow of the
Republic, and as a barrier against Its immi
nent restoration, he had consented to those
odious laws which virtually enslaved his
people and himself. Too late, he reahzes
the momentous consequences of his, perhaps,
involuntary act, and standing alone in his
realm — misrepresented and maligned — he
did all that a single arm could safely do to
rescue the disarmed multitude from the per
secuting and revengeful fury of their here
ditary and legally constituted tyrants and
masters. " Though such laws have been
made, I am against persecution, and I hope
soon to stand on my own legs, and then you
shaU see how much I am against," was his
reply to a deputation of Dissenting ministers,
who recognized In him their sole protector
" I have always been tender in matters of

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, &c. 205
blood, which my subjects have no reason to
take exception at ; I shaU, therefore, con
sider it, and return you an answer," was his
rebuke to an address of the Cavalier Parlia
ment clamouring for the instant execution of
innocent men, falsely condemned as Popish
Plot conspirators. When the caste, through
their mouthpiece, the Cavaher Parliament,
urged him to draw the sword of England in
defence of purely Dutch and German in
terests, he resolutely refused. " This king
dom," said he, " this kingdom must neces
sarily own the vast advantage it has received
by peace, whilst its neighbours only have yet
smarted by the war." In a word, like his
gallant grandsire, Henry of Navarre, King
Charles the Second had a "great clemency
and tenderness to his people," and forswear
ing his aUiance with the privUeged classes,
when he perceived that, having fettered the
democracy, they were still insatiate of sheer
revenge on their late plebeian conquerors,
he risked his crown — in spite of their oc
casional estrangement from him through
the mendacities and slanders of their com
mon enemies, who feared their coalition —
vainly endeavouring to deliver them from
persecution. And though he faUed to per-

2o6 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
manently mitigate the ferocity of legisla
tion which his and their enemies thought
necessary for the maintenance of the Restora
tion system, yet in defiance of the aristoc
racy, the Church, and their Dutch ally, King
Charles the Second saved England — and that
is his lasting title to our gratitude — from the
untold horrors of wanton Continental warfare.
In Scotland, prelacy was guilty of still
more atrocious barbarities on the Cove
nanters. There an entire nation had to be
reduced to the yoke of episcopacy, and to an
army was entrusted the task of the conver
sion. The thumb-screw, the rack, and the
iron-boot were called into constant requisition
as adjuncts to that army. And the unique
mission of the brutal and semi-savage
soldiery of Turner, Dalziel, and Claverhouse
was to hunt down and Imprison, or to torture
and massacre, at their will, the fugitive
martyrs. It was not a persecution in the
ordinary acceptation of the phrase, but rather
the proscription of the whole Scottish people
of the Lowlands. Multitudes of the Cove
nanters were transported as slaves to America.
But ere they quitted their native land, episco
pacy set its fell brand upon them. Many of
the men were mutilated, and the women were

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, &c. 207
burnt on the cheek with a hot iron. A detail
of those barbarities would " harrow up the
soul" and freeze the blood of the most
caUous-hearted ; but the subject is too re
pulsive, too heart-rending to dweU upon. It
wUl be sufficient to state that the cruelties
inflicted on the Covenanters have stamped
that era of Scottish history as emphatically
the time of persecution. Thus did the
lords and lairds of the Drunken Parlia
ment and its successors avenge on the
democracy their brief exclusion from power
under the Coramonwealth.
In Ireland, Anglicanism was ever synony
mous with injustice and tyranny ; for the
greater portion of its soil had been confis
cated, and the revenues of its ancient and
National Church had been alienated since the
Reformation. There, it was a pohtical
organization pure and simple, and affected
no pretensions to a sacred mission beyond
the pale of its immediate supporters — the
Anglo- Irish colonists and conquerors. So
far indeed was it from attempting the evan
gelization of the Celtic population, that its
clergy were Incapable even of speaking the
Erse tongue, and were in reality but sine-
curists, who held their benefices by virtue of

2o8 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
social and political influences. Irish Angli
canism was the symbol of the most atrocious
despotism which has perhaps ever existed in
a civilized community to desolate and shock
mankind. It ever went hand-In-hand with
the secular power in the interminable wars of
extermination which were waged against the
rehgion and race of Ireland. It was the
incarnation of that inhuman policy which
had for years harried the Celts to insurrec
tion, that it might confiscate their lands; in a
word of a policy whose unique object was the
utter annihUation of the Celtic race. The Celt
therefore confounded in a common hatred
Protestantism and the English race — the
Anglican Church and foreign oppression.
Popery was to him the symbol of indepen
dence, the Romish priest was to him a
brother In blood and faith, but the bishops
and clergymen of the Established Church —
ahens alike in race and sentiment, and mem
bers of a persecuting priesthood — were to
him the worst embodiment and type of
foreign domination. Yet this garrison
Church of the conquerors was, until re
cently, with an injustice at once grotesque
and insulting, caUed the National Church,
and was imposed on the conquered as a

Restoration of the Norman Monarchy, (Sfc. 209
badge at once of their spiritual as well as
temporal servitude.
Moreover — and here 1 must be guUty of a
brief digression — Anglicanism has intensified
the mutual animosities of the rival races who
people Ireland, and its spiritual laches have
undoubtedly contributed to the perpetuation
of the Roman Catholic religion there. WeU
had it been for Ireland had the extermination
of Popery been accomplished at the time of
the Reformation. I believe it to be that
country's greatest curse. I beheve that we
may attribute to it most of the poverty and
crime which so rankly flourish there. I be
lieve that were Ireland twenty times as large
and twenty times as fertile as it is at this
moment, that the same misery and poverty
would exist so long as the Romish priest ex
ercised his baneful influence over the con
sciences of the ignorant, and therefore
credulous and superstitious inhabitants, an
influence which destroys all individual self-
reliance, aU freewiU of action, the indispens
able conditions for material success aU the
world over. My experience of a section of
the Celtic Irish Romanists in America has
forced these convictions on me. One would
have thought that poverty in Texas and
P

2IO The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
Louisiana would have been utterly impos
sible, and that there the Irish Celt would
have been in his glory. But alas ! what to
my astonishment was the condition in
which, to a great extent, I found him ?
It is the same old, old tale. I found the
same poverty, the same dirt, the same rags,
and last of aU, and the cause of all, the
same ignorance and superstition, that so often
pain the sight, and heart too, of a stranger
in Ireland. Such is my general personal
experience of the Celtic Irish Romanist in
Louisiana and Texas. Ask any American
northerner or southerner and he will tell you
as his experience, that all the material advan
tages of his great country will avail the Celt
little or nothing, so long as his conscience is
fettered by the bonds of Romish priestcraft.
But let the scales of superstition drop from his
eyes, let him put his trust in his God and in his
own right arm, instead of in his priest, and you
wUl see him march with the foremost of any
nation to assured success, and his chUdren
wUl become great in the land of his adoption.
You wUl ask then : " What remedy, what
antidote is there for this Incubus Popery —
this admitted curse of the Irish race ? " My
reply is, Justice on our part to the down
trodden Celts.

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, &c. 2 1 1
For whUst it is an indisputable, nay a
notorious fact to those who have lived in the
United States, that most of the adult Irish
emigrants live and die in the religion in
which they were boni and bred, and suffer
throughout their whole lives from the evil
effects of its teaching, it should be distinctly
remembered that it is at the same time
equally indisputable and notorious that, in
perhaps the majority of cases, the descen
dants of these emigrants renounce altogether
the religion of their fathers. You will ask
then why it is they cling so tenaciously to
the Romish superstition in their own country ?
And I will answer you frankly even at the
risk of offending your national prejudices. I
wUl endeavour to state the case from an Irish,
or rather Celtic point of view. They cling
to Romanism partially because of ignorance ;
because its priesthood is Celtic, that is to
say national ; because it is, or rather has
been, a politically persecuted church ; but I
aver chiefly because they believe that a re
ligion which permits one nation to oppress
another as England, or rather the aristocracy
of England, has oppressed Ireland, must ne
cessarily be false.
You win ask : " In what consists this
oppression ? " My reply is briefly this. The

212 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
population of Ireland, as you know, is com
posed of two distinct races, the Celts or
aborigines and the Anglo-Irish, between
whom there Is as wide a gulf as divers re
ligions and origin, and seven centuries of
hostUity can create. The Celts number
nearly four milhons and the Anglo-Irish
about one million and a half. The latter
possess thirteen-fourteenths of the soU,
which has been wrested from the Celts, not
at one fell swoop at the Norman Conquest of
Ireland in 1169, but piecemeal, extending
over nearly seven centuries of time. The
later great confiscations of land under James
I., Cromwell, WiUiam HI., and even under
George IIL, are so comparatively recent as
to be StiU fresh in the Celtic mind, and by
their very freshness they reopen the whole
history of their struggles with their con
querors. The whole aristocracy of Ireland
are with a very few exceptions of the con
quering race. The administration of justice,
together with every office of power, trust, or
emolument, is with comparatively speaking
few exceptions also in the hands of the con
querors. Finally the policy of the British
Government, and especially of the Anglo-
Irish landlords, has been, to root out of the

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, &c. 213
soil and to expatriate the native Celts, whom
they have dispossessed of their lands, and so
successfully has this inhuman policy been
carried out, that the native Celtic population,
within the last forty years, has decreased
from seven and a quarter to less than four
miUions. And what has been the result of a policy
by which the entire Celtic race has been de
liberately and systematically sacrificed to ten
or twenty thousand, more or less, Anglo-Irish
landlords and EngHsh noblemen ? The most
natural result in the world. The Celtic Irish
are disloyal almost to a man, and the British
Government has generally found it necessary
to govern Ireland by the bayonet of the
soldier, the musket of the policeman, and the
treacherous lie of the informer. Such is the
condition of the native Irish, and that of the
stranger is scarcely better. Every English
man who sets foot on a proclaimed district in
Ireland is at once subject to the surveillance
of the poHce, and is liable at any moment to
arrest and imprisonment.
Such then is the state of Ireland, and what
do you think of it ? In times of peace I
admit we can afford to set at defiance every
principle of right and justice ; but we should

214 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
remember that we cannot tell what a day
may bring forth ; that breakers may be ahead
in the shape of foreign war ; and that should
such be the case, we all know that it is a
desperate game we are playing at, imperilling
the interests, aye the very integrity of the
empire. We should do well to bear in mind a past
and most disastrous page of our history, and
to take warning therefrom. Some century
ago, the King and aristocracy of this country
endeavoured to impose an illegal tax on the
Americans ; they resisted, and with foreign aid
defeated us ; and we, with a* grotesque in
consequence, have ever since belauded and
exaggerated the virtues, the valour, and the
cause of a people we attempted shghtly to
wrong, and have placed their chief, Wash
ington, on a pinnacle of glory, unique of its
kind, extolling him as a model of all the
virtues. Shall we persist in our Injustice towards
Ireland, until — involved in foreign war — the
Celts with foreign aid throw off our yoke ?
and shall we then, to be consistent, exalt
some Irish Washington as far above the
American one as Ireland's wrongs have ex
ceeded those of America? Or profiting by

Restoration ofthe Norman Monarchy, &c. 2 1 5
the lessons of the past, shaU we hold out our
hand to our Irish brethren and say : " You
have helped to make this empire what it is.
From Cressy and Agincourt to Candahar and
Tel-el-Kebir you have fought side by side and
shed your blood with us. We confess you
have met with great injustice in the past, not
at the hands of the people of England, but
of the aristocracy, who have been hitherto
our masters as weU as yours. England, like
Ireland, mourns the expatriation of her stur
diest sons, and the confiscation of her soil.
But we have finally shattered our oppressors'
power, and we are determined that neither
race shaU henceforth be sacrificed to them."
Then would Ireland, believing in your
justice, and casting aside all religious and
national prejudices, be prepared to receive
your teaching. Justice first and above all
things — but this by no means embraces the
monstrous crime and blunder involved in the
concession of Irish legislative independence,
which would speedily entaU the severance
of the sacred bonds that so happily unite the
Imperial Sister Islands of the West — and then,
as the Romish superstition has its foundation
in ignorance, flourishes in ignorance, but dies
with ignorance, education will be its sovereign

2i6 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
remedy. Ring in their ears the words and
deeds of the PUgrim Fathers ; teach them
the civU and rehgious principles of the later
Puritans, principles which have made the
democracy of England — under the different
designations which locahties have given it —
the regenerating and ruling force on earth.
Then I believe that — perhaps within a gen
eration, but certainly in due course of time —
the Celts of Ireland, Hke their brother Celts
of Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall, wiU be
come as intensely Protestant as they are now
passionately Roman Catholic.
We all know, and none of us better than
those who have lived in Roman Cathohc
countries, that the Church of Rome, as a
religious system, has no real vitality in it. Its
vitality is Hke the artificial vltahty of the
galvanized corpse, which moves, which has
an apparent Hfe — but
" Its bones are marrowless, its blood is cold.
There is no speculation in those eyes
That it doth glare with!"
Still this Church is a political necessity to
the despotisms of the Continent. For the
Romish priests — who are but the tools of the
governments, and who preach as a religious

Restoration of the Norman Monarchy, &c. 2 1 7
dogma, passive obedience to the powers
that be — keep the weak-minded and ignorant
classes of those countries in subjection by the
dread of the eternal punishments they denounce
against all who dare resist their tyrants, whom
they style the Lord's anointed. And in order
to maintain this state of things, the crowned
despots of the Continent uphold with all their
moral might that " Triple Tyrant " the Pope,
whose power without such aid would In an
instant, " Like the baseless fabric of a vision,
Fade and dissolve away."
I believe that a round unvarnished history
of the Roman Church would of itself be^
sufficient to make any man, who has the heart
and blood of a man, shrink with horror from
contact with that unholy, that accursed thing.
Educate, then, I say, and the Romish
superstition will die. Then will Ireland be
not only the " Gem of Ocean," as the Irish
delight to caU her, but the home of a free,
contented, and prosperous, because a united
people, united by the strongest of all bonds,
the bonds of a common, a holy faith.
In Wales, Anglicanism had ever been a
negative rather than a positive curse. There

2i8 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
the hierarchy — being also sinecurists, and
almost to a man strangers — were incapable, had
they been disposed, of preaching the gospel
to the Welsh. And so appalHng and complete
was the state of spiritual darkness and desti
tution which prevailed in Wales, owing to this
culpable neglect, that prior to 1804 but few
Bibles in the native tongue were to be found
throughout the principality. Heathenism had
perhaps resumed its sway in Wales, had not
honest men been raised up to prick the con
science of a slumbering nation, and to shame
to an artificial exertion, by their noble example,
a section of that recreant priesthood who had
been traitors alike to their God, their con
science, and their country.

V.
BETRAYAL OF ENGLAND AND
THE NORMAN LINE
INTO THE HANDS OF THE DUTCH INVADERS, BY THE NOBILITY,
CLERGY, AND GENTRY.
A.D. 1685-1688. We have traced the dis
tinctive characteristics of Anglicanism in
England and Scotland to the reign of Charles
II. , and in Ireland and Wales to our own times.
We shall now resume the consideration of the
History of the Church in Great Britain.
Towards the close of the reign of the
Merry Monarch, as the Anglicans have com
placently styled King Charles 1 1., the Uni
versities — those thrones of AngHcanism and
nurseries of caste — fired with mutual emu
lation, profess and teach, in singular
perspicuity of terms, the most des-

220 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
potic principles. The University of Cam
bridge, through its Vice-ChanceUor, addressed
the King in the foUowing terms : " We wiU
stiU beheve and maintain, That our kings
derive not their tities from the People, but
from God : That to him alone they are ac
countable : That it belongs not to subjects,
either to create or censure, but to honour and
obey their sovereign, who comes to be so, by a
fundamental hereditary right of succession,
which no religion, no law, no fault or forfei
ture can alter or diminish." And on the very
day of Lord Russell's execution, the Univer
sity of Oxford, in enunciating the same well-
known axioms, had somewhat superfluously
declared, " submission and obedience — clear,
absolute and without exception — to be the
badge and character of the Church of Eng
land." And its absolute subserviency to the
capricious will of its royal masters had been
hitherto never — save during the Popish Plot
commotion — ^caUed into question, and was a
fact of historical notoriety. But we now ap
proach the period when, touched in its own inte
rests, it became false to the doctrine which gave
it existence, and a traitor to its supreme tem
poral head. The Romish James had now
ascended the throne, and so long as he assented

Betrayal of England, &c. 221
to their atrocious persecution of his Dissenting
subjects, the nobUity, clergy, and gentry were
his partisans and abettors. They had com
bated to a man the rising of the deluded
democrats under Monmouth, and after its
merciless suppression, a section of them had
shocked even the brutal Jeffries by their in
decent scramble for the prisoners, who were to
be sold as slaves in America. But no sooner
did James manifest an intention to dispense
with and suspend the odious laws on which
their own despotism was founded, and possibly
to revindicate the rights of the old Roman
Church to their detriment, than the rich and
powerful Anglican episcopacy — with its sup
porters and patrons, the temporal peers and
landed gentry, the inheritors of the ancient
abbey lands — plotted -his ruin. Fearing to
rely on the Enghsh nation, which might in
the throes of a popular revolution have again
taken the management of affairs into its own
hands, they resolved to invite into the country
a foreign army, and by Its means effect a
revolution which should maintain and per
petuate their menaced monopoly of political
and sacerdotal power. The struggle thus
inaugurated was simply' a revival of that
miserable conflict between privUege and

222 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
prerogative which had been brought to a close
towards the end of the reign of Charles II.
Court and caste again fight for supremacy over
the prostrate body of a despised nation, which
was in turn the prey and dupe of either suc
cessful combatant. Both were discredited
by sinister antecedents. The unspeakable
horrors of the Popish Plot, and the barbarities
which for a quarter of a century had desolated
the homes of Dissent — or rather the homes of
the betrayed democracy of Puritanic England
— had branded the caste with eternal infamy ;
whUst James's persecution of the Covenanters
— although political rather than religious —
was a ghastly comment on his zeal for
freedom of conscience. Both were be
spattered with blood of Sedgemoor, and of the
victims of Kirke and Jeffries. The battle-cry
of either was a specious, yet false utterance.
But the caste asserted its right to pre
eminence in political crime, and crowned its
double treason by a standing conspiracy with
the foreigner, on whom it relied for final
victory. I cannot sympathise with either of these
warring elements — both noxious in their
origin and essence — but of the two great
rival evils James was certainly the lesser one.

Betrayal of England, &c. 223
Moreover, the Stuart King possessed one
supreme virtue which his adversaries lacked
— a true, if misdirected patriotism, that would
at least have shielded England from wanton
warfare and dismemberment.
" I think it fit," says he, addressing his
Privy Council within an hour of his brother's
death, " I think it fit to declare to you that
I win endeavour to follow his example, and
most especially in that of his great clemency
and tenderness to h s people." " I have,"
said he, addressing his Parliament, " I have
a true English heart, as jealous of the honour
of the nation as you can be, and I please my
self with the hopes that, by God's blessing
and your assistance, I shall carry the reputa
tion of it yet higher in the world than ever it
has been in the time of any of my ancestors."
And on another occasion he said : " Our
chief aim has been not to be the oppressor,
but the father of our people." And yet
again, " I will venture even my life in defence
of the true interest of this kingdom." And
when threatened with Dutch invasion, he
repeatedly rejects the offer of French armed
assistance, declaring to his people : "Although
I have had notice for some time since that a
foreign force was preparing against me, yet I

224 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
have always declined any foreign succours ;
but rather have chosen, next under God, to
rely upon the true and ancient courage, faith
and allegiance of my own people." And
after his dethronement, when none could
doubt the sincerity of his language, he refused
the aid of an overwhelming French force for
the reconquest of his lost kingdoms, saying :
" He did not choose to owe his restoration to
foreigners, but to his own friends." And at
the Boyne, as he beheld the cavalry of
HamUton committing havoc in the ranks of
his enemies, he was heard repeatedly to
exclaim : " Oh ! spare my EngHsh subjects ! "
And when from the beach of La Hague, and
under fire of the EngHsh . flotilla — indeed,
the horse of the bailiff of Montebourg, who
was by the side of King James, had its
leg broken by a musket shot from one of the
gunboats — he witnessed the destruction of
the French fleet, and with it his last hope of
restoration, he could not refrain from ex
pressing his admiration of the valour and
conduct of those gallant seamen, whom in
happier days he had styled "the strength
and glory of this nation," and whom he had
so often led to victory. " None but my
brave English tars could have done this ! "

Betrayal of England, &c. 225
cried the dethroned monarch, proudly, as
Rooke wrapped in flames the mighty three-
deckers of De TourviUe.
During the late reign James had urged the
King to a life and death struggle for the
overthrow of the despotic caste, but Charles,
recognizing the hopeless character of such an
unequal contest, had wisely declined to foUow
the leading of his reckless brother. " You
may, if you like, set out on your travels again,
but I am too old to stir, and shall remain
where I am," the King, it was reported, had
been overheard to say to the Duke. Yet
James, with a simplicity peculiar to himself,
hopes to induce his Parliament, composed of
monarchical Church of England men, to
repeal voluntarily the Test and Penal Laws
which had legalized the Restoration of the
ancient domination founded by the Norman
Duke, of which AngHcanism was the eternal
spiritual symbol, and its abolition the im
mediate signal of democratic revolution.
With this object in view, he had recourse
to an expedient which he trusted would
overcome all opposition. The leading
members of both Houses are summoned
separa,tely to his presence, and are entreated
— as a personal obligation to their monarch —
Q

226 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
to vote for the repeal of the repressive legisla
tion of the Cavalier Parliament ; in other
words, to set at liberty the hosts of Puritans
and Cathohcs, who for conscience' sake
tenanted, with thieves and cut-throats, the
gaols of England ; and to throw open the
parhament, the public services, and the uni
versities to their countrymen of aU denomina
tions. WhUst James was closeted at White-
haU with the legislators in town, the judges,
then on circuit, summoned to the different
county towns the members in the country,
and made to them, on behalf of the King, the
same proposals. But the aristocracy and
Church— who had been commissioned by
King Charles II. " to provide after so many and
great revolutions, proper remedies for those
evUs, and to prevent the like for the future,"
and who, in eager execution of the royal
mandate, had, under the shadow and in terror
of the RepubHc, passed in rapid succession
the Corporation Act, the Act of Uniformity,
the Conventicle, Five MUe, Test, and Parlia
mentary Test Acts, as lasting and impregnable
barriers against the democracy, which, under
the guidance of the invincible Oliver, had con
quered them, and from whose capacious jaws
the powerful arm of the traitor Monk alone

Betrayal of England, &c. 227
has rescued them — scouting their repeal as an
act of political suicide, bluntly refuse to
accede to the wishes of the King, whose new
form of appeal to their loyalty and patriotism
they ridicule as private lecturings, tamperings,
and mean closetings. We have already seen
how the nobility, clergy, and gentry had, by
their practical pohtical annihilation of both the
democracy and crown, become the depositories
of all power ; how they had estabhshed, with
loudest protestations of loyalty, that worst of all
tyrannies, the absolute domination of a restored
and vindictive caste of conquerors, destitute
alike of individual conscience and responsi
bUity ; how, filled with a permanent distrust
and dread of their late plebeian masters, they
had with all due forms of law again enslaved
the nation ; how, strong in their dark and
permanent conspiracy with the Prince of
Orange and the Dutch, they had striven to
overawe and crush the recalcitrant Court by
the exclusion, on the flimsiest of pretexts, of
the Duke of York from the succession, heap
ing on his devoted head all the monstrous and
impossible crimes attributed to the Papists
by the infamous contrivers of the Popish
Plot. And we now behold them confronting
their King with haughty defiance, and answer-

228 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
ing his appeal for mercy on his subjects, with
fiercer outrages. At their command the
persecution, which had abated since the death
of Charles 1 1., was renewed with redoubled
violence. Every Dissenting chapel was closed,
and every conventicle dispersed. The gaols
could not contain the multitude of martyrs.
Yet the pulpits of the Church, which perpe
trated these horrors, resounded with the
wUdest and fiercest denunciations of the
Cathohcs, and by implication, of the King
their co-religionist and head. After enduring
this virulent abuse and persecution for two
years, James's patience was quite exhausted.
And fortified by the opinions of the judges in
favour of a dispensing power, he resolved to
shatter at a blow the despotism of the privi
leged classes by the abrogation of the terrible
laws which were its sanction and foundation.
A.D. 1687. ^Accordingly he told his Privy
CouncU he had been led to take this step
from having observed, " That although an
uniformity in religious worship had been
endeavoured to be established within this
kingdom in the successive reigns of four of
his predecessors, assisted by their respective
parliaments, yet it had proved altogether
ineffectual. That the restraint upon the con-

Betrayal of England, &c. 229
sciences of Dissenters, in order thereunto
had been very prejudicial to the nation, as
was sadly experienced by the horrid rebellion
in the time of His Majesty's father. That the
many penal laws made against Dissenters had
rather increased than lessened the numbers of
them. And that nothing could more conduce to
the peace " and prosperity " of this kingdom,"
or be more in accordance "with the principles
of Christianity, than an entire liberty of con
science." And in pursuance of this speech,
King James issued, on the 4th of April,
1687, his celebrated Declaration of Indul
gence, which, Hke the testament of Edward
the Confessor, in favour of William the Con
queror, was made the pretext for a foreign
invasion, attended with consequences more
momentous, vast, and durable than those of
any event recorded in our history since the
Norman Conquest.
After briefly referring to the difficulties
which preceded and followed his accession to
the throne, and to his desire to reign in the
hearts of his people, the King expresses his
regret that they and he were not members of
the same Church : " yet," continues James,
" we humbly thank Almighty God, it is,
and hath of long time been our constant

230 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
sense and opinion (which upon divers oc
casions we have declared) that conscience
ought not to be constrained, nor people forced
in matters of mere religion : It has ever been
directly contrary to our inclination, is inju
rious to the trade and growth of nations as we
think it Is to the interest of government, which
it destroys by spoiling trade, depopulating
countries, and discouraging strangers ; and
finally that it never obtained the end for which
it was employed. And in this we are the
more confirmed by the reflections we have
made upon the conduct of the four last reigns :
For after all the frequent and pressing endea
vours that were used in each of them to re
duce this kingdom to an exact uniformity in
religion, it is visible that the success has not
answered the design, and that the difficulty
is invincible." Therefore the King by virtue
of his royal prerogative — making no doubt of
the final concurrence of Parhament — sus
pends the execution of all penal laws in
matters ecclesiastical, and freely grants to
aU his subjects " leave to meet and serve
God after their own way and manner, be It in
private houses, or places purposely hired or
built for that use." " And forasmuch," pro
ceeds the Declaration, "as we are desirous

Betrayal of England, &c. 231
to have the benefit of the service of all our
loving subjects, which by the law of nature
is inseparably annexed to, and inherent in
our royal person ; and that none of our sub
jects may, for the future, be under any
discouragement or disability (who are other.
wise well-inclined, and fit to serve us) by
means of some Oaths or Tests that have
been usually administered on such occasions ;
we do hereby further declare, that it is our
royal wUl and pleasure, that the Oaths com
monly caUed the Oaths of Supremacy and
Allegiance, and also the several Tests and
Declarations mentioned in the Acts of Par
liament made in the 25th and 30th years of
the reign of our late royal brother King
Charles the Second ; shall not at any time
hereafter be required to be taken, declared or
subscribed by any person or persons whatso
ever, who is or shall be employed in any
office or place of trust, either civil or mihtary,
under us or In our Government." " And we
do further declare it to be our pleasure and
intention, from time to time hereafter, to
grant our royal Dispensations under our great
seal, to all our loving subjects so to be em
ployed, who shall not take the said Oaths or
subscribe or declare the said Tests or Decla-

232 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
rations in the above-mentioned Acts, and
every of them."
At the same time the King guaranteed to
the clergy and laity of the Anglican Church
the fuU and entire possession of all their
privUeges and properties, including both the
Church and abbey lands ; but he destroyed
their political and ecclesiastical supremacy,
took from them the right to brand and butcher
their fellow-countrymen, in order, from purely
pohtical motives, to estabhsh religious uni
formity, and set free the unnumbered host of
Puritan martyrs — in whose ranks, we know,
there were twelve hundred members of the
petty sect of Quakers — whom they had thrust
into their pestilential gaols with criminals of
every grade of villainy.
We all know that, had King James con
sented to remain at the head of their vast
conspiracy against the nation, the nobihty,
clergy, and gentry would have readily assented
to any system of religion or foreign pohcy he
might have chosen to adopt ; but, perceiving
that he was determined to free his people and
himself from their civil and religious tyranny
and oppression, they resolved with foreign
bayonets to dethrone him, and their first step
towards the accomplishment of this design

Betrayal of England, &c. 233
was to reduce him to a state of utter isolation
by robbing him of the hearts of his subjects.
Therefore the nobility, clergy, and gentry,
dreading the consequences of this attempted
alliance of the King and people, close their
ranks, muttering that the Declaration of
Indulgence was a Jesuitical contrivance ;
that it was a dispensing of all the laws at
once ; and, as the champions of the sanctity
and majesty of the law, they unfurl the
banner of legality, inscribed with the names
of those modern Bloody Statutes — the Cor
poration Act, the Act of Uniformity, the
Conventicle, Five Mile, Test, and Parliamen
tary Test Acts — which were at once the
infallible witnesses of their own triumph and
of the King and nation's servitude. Nay,
more. At the instigation of their Dutch
Protector, whose interests were identical with
their own, they declare that their bold and
brutal struggle with the King for supreme
domination in the British Isles was a religious
war forsooth, a. mortal conflict between the
Anghcan and Roman Churches on whose
issues hung the fate of EngHsh Protes
tantism ; and these secret confederates of
the Pope and of the Catholic despots of the
Continent, taking advantage of the lucky

234 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
accident of the King's conversion to Catho
hcism and of the bigotry of the multitude
whom they had reared in a state of the
grossest ignorance and deluded with the
wUdest views of the policy of the Church
of Rome, accuse the royal apostate, as they
call him, of entertaining the preposterous
design — having first conquered their aUies,
the Dutch — of enslaving and Romanizing
England by means of the military power of
France. Moreover, the Anglican Churches
are again transformed into political arenas,
and the Anglican clergy — " the most remiss
of their labours in private, and the least severe
in their hves " of any religious body of that
age in Christendom — into unscrupulous poh
ticians, who, trembling for their benefices,
again, as at the time of the Popish Plot,
attack the King through his slandered co
religionists. With marvellous yet traditional
finesse the Anglican clergy divert attention
from the menaced Anglican tyranny by rivet-
ting the public gaze and concentrating the
pubhc thought upon a ghastly phantom, the
weird yet grotesque offspring of their own
imagination, nicknamed by them the Roman
Cathohc Church — which, by-the-bye, was at
that very moment plotting and eagerly pro-

Betrayal of England, &c. 235
moting King James's ruin and the Prince of
Orange's advancement to his throne — suc
cessfully protesting from every pulpit that
their close ally, the Pope, was the common
enemy against whom every EngHsh Protes
tant must fight who would escape destruc
tion. But Dissenters of aU denominations present
addresses to the King thanking him for his
Declaration of Indulgence and acknowledging
in unmeasured terms his clemency and pity ;
and their one distinguished leader haUs with
enthusiasm the royal profession of a doctrine
which he himself had always fondly cherished,
and in defence of which had suffered long and
harsh imprisonment. That illustrious person
age, supreme in the history of our race for
nobihty of character and achievement, stands
steadfast by the King. Him, whose Hfe had
been the beau ideal of Puritanic rectitude, the
Anglican traitors immediately brand as a
Jesuit in disguise. He was, say they, bred at
St. Omer, and he received priest's orders in
Rome itself. The Immortal founder and law
giver of the famous State of Pennsylvania,
whose honoured name alone has saved the
fair fame of their generation from total eclipse,
deigns to answer his unworthy adversaries.

236 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
" If," says he, " an universal charity — if the
asserting an impartial liberty of conscience —
if doing to others as we would be done by,
and an open avowing and steady practising
of these things in aU times, and to all parties,
will justly lay a man under the reflection of
being a Jesuit, I must not only submit to the
character, but embrace it too. . . . For
these are corner-stones and principles with
me, and I am scandalized at aU buildings
which have them not for their foundations."
Champions of the same cause. King James
and William Penn were natural aUies. " The
King loved him as a singular and entire
friend, and imparted to him many of his
secrets and counsels. He often honoured
him with his company in private, discoursing
with him of various affairs, and that not for
one, but many hours together, and delaying
to hear the best of his peers, who were at the
same time waiting for an audience." He was
a constant attendant at Court, and so dis
tinguished by royal favour that " his house
and gates were daily thronged by a numerous
train of clients and supphants desiring him
to present their addresses to His Majesty."
Their confidence was mutual. It was the
firm belief of WiUiam Penn that though

Betrayal of England, &c. 237
King James was himself a Romanist, he was
yet a friend to religious liberty, and that he
sincerely held the glorious principles he had
promulgated in his Declaration of Indulgence.
And the arch-quaker, as the Dutch with
apprehension caUed him — after an abortive
but sublime attempt to bring the Prince of
Orange over to his views — devotes himself with
unabated ardour to the great work of uniting
in one powerful organization all Dissenting
sects for the defence of the legitimate mon
archy, by whose prerogative alone the tyranny
and oppression of the privUeged classes —
who would never voluntarily abdicate their
legal rights — could then have been subverted.
But this was a task beyond the power of
any single arm, and other leaders of birth
and standing the Dissenters lacked, for, as
we have already seen, the Puritan nobility and
landed gentry, in terror of the democracy
which had shattered the titled and untitled
landed aristocracy, together with the Church
and Throne, had at the Restoration rallied
round their respective orders and the Church,
adopting AngHcanism as the sacred symbol
and indissoluble bond of their political unity
and consequent supremacy. Moreover, the
tempest of persecution, which had raged

238 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
with scarcely intermittent fury ever since the
Restoration, had disorganized and decimated
the reeling ranks of Dissent, whilst their
rigorous exclusion from the universities and
public schools, and their legal deprivation of
the power to educate their own children, had
probably lowered the intellectual status and
weakened the political and religious principles
of the rising generation of Dissenters. And
at the outset of his enterprise, the combined
privileged classes with united voice confound
in common calumny and slander both Penn
and James, to thwart whose righteous pur
poses they tranquilly resume — in confident
reliance on the inteUectual darkness which
since the Restoration they had striven to
shed In all Dissenting homes — their ancient
tactics of confusing the opinions and dividing
the ranks of the Dissenters, by raising false
issues and specious cries delusive of the
true character of their struggle with the
Court. Meanwhile King James, blind to the uni
versal treason of which he was the object,
StiU set his heart on inducing the aristocracy
and Church, together with their creatures the
Corporation cliques, to return a Parliament
pledged to the abolition of the very laws

Betrayal of England, &c. 239
which had practically enthroned them. And
it was to influence and prepare them for the
ensuing general election that the King under
took in the summer of 1687 an elaborate pro
gress—whose cardinal points were London,
Portsmouth, Bath, and Chester — accompanied
by his loyal follower and friend, the stainless
WiUiam Penn, who, animated with the purest
motives of philanthropy and patriotism, had
enthusiastically embraced and championed
the royal principles and cause. And hand
in hand the Quaker and the King — the only
powerful patrons and protectors of the multi
tude who thirty years before had committed
the unpardonable crime of conquering the
proud descendants of our Norman conquerors,
and subverting the throne, Church, and baron
age founded by the Norman Duke— ^entered,
misrepresented and maligned, on their pU
grimage of mercy, to rouse a slumbering and
forsaken nation, and dehver it from cruel
bondage. Everywhere the public functionaries
of the counties, with brilliant retinues, atten
ded him, and vied in their official harangues
with the Corporations of the towns through
which he passed in wUd expressions of bound
less loyalty and devotion. But when in his
replies the King, in conciliatory tone and

24G The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
language, urged — perhaps unconscious of the
magnitude and bearing of the revolution he
proposed^the repeal of the Test and Penal
Laws, they were reserved and silent, at once
perceiving, as they beheved, a political abyss
that was yawning at their feet, ready for
the second time to engulf them. Deputations
of the common people also flocked around
him, and were encouraged to give utterance
to the sentiments they "held in common with
the King. Then was witnessed the strange
spectacle of the Norman monarch appealing
to the multitude against the Norman aris
tocracy who had enslaved them both ; and
loud bursts of popular applause often greeted
the successor of the Conqueror as he de
nounced the Anglican tyranny, and promised
with the concurrence and support of the
nation a speedy deliverance from its yoke.
But strong in their legal rights, and their con
spiracy with the foreigner, the territorial aris
tocracy and the Church contemned the demo
cracy and their aspirations, and ridiculed the
uncouth language of their addresses : whilst
they regarded the King — Fitz Alan though
he was — as a traitor to the conquering Nor
man caste of which he was the lawful head ;
and his appeals for support to their late demo-

Betrayal of England, &c. 241
cratic conquerors, as the lowest degradation
of royal authority.
Encouraged by the popular demonstrations
of loyalty to his government and person which
his prolonged progress had everywhere evoked,
King James took the desperate and fatal reso
lution of forcing the Norman caste and their
creatures, the Corporation cliques, to return
such members to Parliament as would be ready
and willing to second his clement efforts for
the civU and religious emancipation of his
people from their yoke, emphatically declar
ing that he would have the odious Test and
Penal Laws repealed, and that he would
tolerate no man in any place of authority who
was not prepared to carry out his views. This
resolution he publicly declared in CouncU, at
WhitehaU, on Sunday, December the 11th,
and afterwards Issued a royal proclamation in
the foUowing terms : " His Majesty having
by his gracious Declaration of the 4th day of
April last granted a Hberty of Conscience to
all his subjects, and resolving not only to
maintain the same, but to use his utmost
endeavours that it may pass into a law and
become an estabhshed security to after
ages ; hath thought fit to review the lists
of the Deputy-Lieutenants and justices of
R

242 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
the peace in the several counties, that those
may be continued, who shall be ready to con
tribute what in them lies towards the accom
pHshment of so good and necessary a work ;
and such others added to them, from whom
His Majesty may reasonably expect the Hke
concurrence and assistance." The Lord-Lieu
tenants, summoned to the King's presence,
were accordingly directed to appoint in their
respective counties a commission composed
of three noblemen who were empowered to
influence the impending elections by visiting
every influential elector and sohciting his vote
in favour of candidates pledged to support
the clement and patriotic policy of the King.
But more than a half of them peremptorily
refused ; many others evaded their instructions
by affecting to misunderstand them ; and in
the counties where the inquisition was made
the resistance of the privileged classes was
universal. All thought of an immediate con
vocation of Parliament had to be abandoned,
but the baffled King would not give way.
The hereditary successor of the very monarch
who had bestowed on the Norman ancestors
of this aristocracy and Church their honours
and estates, and by his strength of will had
forced them to the Norman Conquest, King

Betrayal of England, &c. 243
James scorned to be the mere head of their
vast, conspiracy against the nation, which
exacted from him a constant and ferocious
persecution of his subjects, and the ultimate
adoption of a murderous and suicidal foreign
pohcy. Misrepresented and mahgned he
blindly and madly strove to force them to
break those legal chains, which, whUst stifling
Puritan and democratic England, gaUed and
constrained himself. Hitherto he had struck
down individual members of the Norman
caste, and at intervals Ormonde and Danby,
Devonshire and Halifax, Clarendon and
Rochester, Lumley and Nottingham had felt
the weight of his displeasure ; but now they
fell in masses. At one feU swoop a host of
the greatest nobles — the Duke of Somerset,
Viscounts Newport and Falconberg, the Earls
of Oxford, Shrewsbury, Derby, Dorset, Rutland,
Abergavenny, Pembroke, Abingdon, Bridge-
water, Northampton, Scarsdale, Thanet, Gains
borough and many others were at once dis
missed from their Lord-Lieutenancies. Their
sateUites, the landed gentry on the bench and
in the militia, shared the same fate, and many
of the corporations lost their charters. Indeed
aUlord-heutenants, deputy-heutenants, justices
of the peace, officers of the mUitIa, mayors,

244 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
aldermen, and other officials who had not in
formal terms complied with the wishes of the
King were dismissed from their public em
ployments, and their places were fiUed with
Dissenters and some few Roman Catholics.
But the EngHsh co-rehglonlsts of James who
were thus installed in public offices were less
numerous than the band of Dutch adventurers
whom the Dutch Deliverer subsequently
raised to place and power in England. In
a word we may say that for the second time
since the Norman Conquest the aristocracy
and their parasites were swept almost en
masse from the public service. But undis
mayed they close their ranks, and as one
man defiantly confront the King cajoling and
deluding the nation as to the true character
of their confiict with the Court until such time
as their Dutch ally is disposed to rescue
and reinstate them. The King next attacked
his clerical adversaries. Hitherto the revolt
of the Church had been but partial, although
His Majesty's attempt to throw open its
universities and correct its monstrous abuses
had aroused a general spirit of suspicion and
resentment in the bosom of that third element
of the Triple tyranny — one and indivisible in
origin and essence — which affected to sanctify

Betrayal of England, &c. 245
the rest. But on the 27th of AprU, 1688,
James published his second Declaration of
Liberty of Conscience, and rashly com
manded that it should be read In aU the
churches, immediately after Divine service,
on two successive Sundays. As might have
been foreseen, the clergy, like their fast aUies
the squires and nobles, reverence and uphold
the sanctity and majesty of the inhuman and
vindictive laws, which made them the coUec
tlve tyrants of the throne and nation, and, of
course, defy the King. The rebeUion of the
Church was headed by the Primate and six
of his suffragans, who waited on King James
with a Protest, in which they declared that
Parhament — the permanent citadel of the
conquering caste, which they would never
voluntarily surrender, and of which they were
the absolute possessors untU 1832 — could
alone alter the laws ; and they therefore de
cline to publish the King's iUegal, but most
righteous Declaration, which anticipated by
a century and a half the ci nl and religious
emancipation of Cathohcs and Dissenters ;
indeed, we may say of the nation. Hemmed
in on every side, and baffled by the legally
victorious caste, the infuriated King — be
lieving that the people, like himself, perceived

246 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
and scorned the chicanery and mendacity of
their common adversaries, who unblushingly
pretended that the laws which they had
framed expressly for fettering the unconquered
but betrayed democracy had now become a
necessary bulwark against Popery and arbi
trary power — threw the bishops — as they
refused to give bail, and eagerly courted a
cheap crown of martyrdom-^Into the Tower.
But during their trial an incident occurred
which decided the fate of King James and
the future destinies of England. Some
months before, His Majesty had announced
by royal proclamation the approaching ac
couchement of the Queen ; and the aristocracy
and Church — in collusion with the Prince of
Orange — immediately insinuated that their
monarch, who, according to their own con
fession, "was never worse than his word,"
meditated the foulest of impostures. They
therefore demanded that the Princess Anne
and the Protestant ladies of the Court should
be allowed to obtain certain proofs of the
actual condition of the Queen, which they
cynically observed might be easily given to
women. This infamous proposal was naturaUy
rejected with the sovereign scorn it merited.
But on the birth of the Prince of Wales, the

Betrayal of England, &c. 247
King's dehcacy in thus screening the Queen
from personal outrage was made use of as a
pretext for accusing both of the unnatural
villainy of foisting on the nation a supposi
tious heir to the throne. A few days after
the Norman caste and Dutch Stadtholder had
seen their hopes of a legitimate fulfilment of
their ambitious projects thus entirely blasted,
the bishops appeared at the bar of the King's
Bench to take their trial for libel. At once
the menaced orders rally round their spiritual
confederates. More than sixty Peers, with
many other persons of distinction, sit out the
trial, and overawe and intimidate both the
judges and the jury. And the multitude —
behind whose backs and in whose despite a
knot of aristocratic traitors and revolutionists
had that very day summoned into England
a foreign army to maintain their tottering
tyranny — applauded the acquittal of men
who were subsequently driven from their sees
by their Dutch Deliverer for refusing to re
cognize the logical consequences of their
disloyalty. Sublimely ignorant of the foul
conspiracy, of which, in common with the
King, they were the destined victims, and
wildly conceiving that aU resistance of royal
authority must tend to popular Hberty, the de-

248 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
mocracy blindly spurned the alliance of their
royal and solitary champion and protector,
who would have snapped the fetters of the
caste and saved them from the bloody foreign
yoke which it was contemptuously preparing
to impose upon them. Deluded London was
en fete. And amidst the confused din of
gun-firing and the jangling of bells, and in
the lurid glare of bonfires, the besotted and
roaring mob burnt before the very doors of
Whitehall an efflgy of the Pope, unconscious
that that Holy Father, Innocent XI. — in
pursuance of a common policy — was march
ing hand-in-hand with the Dutch Protestant
Deliverer to dethrone King James.
As we have already seen, the interests of
our privileged classes and the Prince of
Orange were Inseparably joined together ;
for James had persistently striven to destroy
the legalized despotism of the former, and
had scornfully rejected the selfish and ambi
tious foreign policy of the latter, indignantly
refusing, as a patriotic English King, at the
behest of the Dutch Stadtholder, and in
defence of purely Papal, Dutch, and German
interests, to plunge his subjects Into the
countless horrors of a mad and wanton war
with France. Therefore his treacherous

Betrayal of England, &c. i\g
and mendacious son-in-law and nephew — In
concert with his Catholic and Protestant
allies — was conspiring with our privileged
classes to dethrone the King, as the only
obstacle to his vast design of using England
as a blind and passive instrument for the
gratification of his boundless ambition and
insatiable passion for war.
And in obedience to the instructions of
Van Dykvelt and Zulestein, his envoys and
emissaries at the EngHsh Court, the Angli
cans, take advantage of the popularity they
had acquired by the trial of the bishops to
make overtures to the Dissenters for a close
alliance, pretending that the rival claims of
the Prince of Orange and the Prince of Wales
to the throne were simply a question of Pro
testantism without distinction of sect against
Cathohcism. They protested that James's
zeal for the abolition of the Test and Penal
Laws sprang, not as the King said, from
" his great clemency and tenderness to his
people ; " but, so ran their shibboleth, from
his determination to establish Popery and
arbitrary power in England. And should
they remain steadfast to their Protestant
convictions, and withstand the proselytizing
zeal of the King, then the Anglicans, with

250 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
their traditional audacity, unblushingly as
sured the Dissenters, would King James and
his handful of English Cathohcs — whose
authority had been contemptuously and
openly defied by every noble, squire, and
parson who conceived his monstrous pri
vileges endangered by the Declaration of
Indulgence — then would King James and his
handful of EngHsh Cathohcs " destroy us
both." And in order to devise the best
means " to prevent their imminent ruin," the
Anglicans sought secret conferences with the
Dissenters, whom they earnestly entreated to
reject the aUiance of the King, to whom they
attributed all the political chicanery of the
Church of which he was a member, and they,
they should have added, were the close aUies,
declaring that as a Romanist he was not
bound to keep faith with heretics, but might
resort to any subterfuge in order either to
convert or exterminate them. And if the
Dissenters would forego " the fair oppor
tunity of revenge " which was now within
their grasp, and, regarding as a delusive
snare that freedom from religious persecution,
and that pohtical as weU as religious en
franchisement which the King had granted
to them in defiance of AngHcanism, would

Betrayal of Eng lan d, &c. 2 5 1
make common cause, in their hour of deserved
peril, with the nobility, clergy, and gentry ;
instead of attempting to restore, under the
auspices of the King, and the guidance of
Penn, the political supremacy and glory of
democratic Puritanism, then would their late
persecutors magnanimously extend to them
that legal toleration, which, it was pretended,
had been hitherto denied to them, lest their
feUow-victims the Catholics should have also
profited thereby. The Anglicans further ex
pressed contrition for the past persecutions
of the Church, throwing the blame, however,
of every act of political vengeance which
they had wreaked on their late Dissenting
conquerors since the Restoration — under the
mask of religion — upon the Court, to which
they dared declare, in the face of heaven,
they had reluctantly submitted. Finally they
most mendaciously protested — and each suc
cessive year for the following century and a
half bore witness to their perjury — that they
would be no longer separated from their Dis
senting "brothers" by ancient and cruel
laws, which they professed — in bold defiance
of historic fact — had yet been in the main
leveUed against their Roman Catholic feUow-
countrymen. Moreover, that accomplished

252 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
orator, the Marquis of Halifax — the un
suspected mouthpiece of the Prince of
Orange — published at that time a letter of
advice to the Dissenters, wherein he in
sinuated with much artifice the two-fold
caution : that the Court was to be suspected,
and that it would be neither Christian-like
nor prudent " to hazard the public safety " —
the Anglican despotism he meant, which an
aUiance of the Puritans with the King would
have endangered — " either by desire of ease
or revenge." The noble Marquis also declared
with an amusing loftiness of tone : " That all
their former haughtiness towards the Dis
senters was for ever extinguished, and that
the spirit of Persecution was turned into a
spirit of Peace, Charity and Condescension.
That the Church of England was convinced
of its error, in being severe to them ; and all
thinking men were come to a general agree
ment, no more to cut ourselves off from the
Protestants abroad, but rather enlarge the
foundations upon which we are to build our
defences against the common enemy."
" The common enemy " being that decayed
potentate the Sovereign Pontiff, who spurn
ing the mild and innocent advances of the
English King, had, out of mortal fear and

Betrayal of England, &c. 253
hate of Cathohc France, thrown himself
passionately into the arms of their self-styled
Protestant Protector, whose coffers, it is
said, the Holy Father filled with the timely
loan, which subsequently let loose the Dutch
invading force on England, for our deliverance
from the Papal yoke. Deluded by these hollow
promises and monstrous calumnies, the Dis
senters, with incredible infatuation, or perhaps
from sheer helplessn,ess, " waited " in utter
ignorance of all precise knowledge of the
Anghcans' foul conspiracy with the foreigner,
" in expectation of seeing the effect of the
Marquis's declaration on behalf of the
Church party." In other words, by rejecting
— from a blind fear of the Church of Rome,
and In complete ignorance of its policy — ^the
alhance of the King, the Dissenters aban
doned the political field, together with the
control of their future destinies, into the
hands of their hitherto remorseless adver
saries, the nobUity, clergy, and gentry, who
resisted the repeal ofthe Test and Penal Laws,
less from fear of the King than of the demo
cracy, against whose resumption of sovereign
power those legal barriers had been expressly
raised, and of which the demohtion in their
judgment would naturally and inevitably have

254 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
led to the restoration of the Commonwealth
in England. In a word, the Dissenters, with
marvellous credulity, relied, of course in
vain, on the benevolence of their eternal per
secutors and conquerors for that civU and
religious liberty and equality which the King
had granted to them as a natural right, and
which was co-extensive with that enjoyed by
their posterity to-day. Thus King James,
by his Declaration of Liberty of Conscience,
lost the support of the nobihty, clergy, and
gentry, without winning to his side any
section of the deluded democracy, who,
destitute of leaders and organization, and
cowed by a persistent and ferocious persecu
tion of seventy and twenty years' duration,
were, perhaps, incapable of affording any
solid support to the throne.
We have already seen with what unnatural
perfidy the Prince of Orange had conspired
with the aristocracy and Church against both
of his uncles, striving by the vUest means at
once to force on Charles his miserable foreign
pohcy, and to strip the Duke of York of his
inheritance. And on the accession of James
1 1., and whUe professing in common with the
Princess the greatest affection for his father-
in-law, he secretly abetted the ambitious

Betrayal of England, &c. 255
designs of Monmouth — to thwart whose pre
tensions to the throne, which Shaftesbury
warmly advocated, he had, through Halifax,
in the preceding reign, quashed the Exclusion
Bill — and though they both aimed at the
same object, he suffered the Duke, In spite
of the protests of the English Court, to equip
an armament in HoUand, and to form the
plan of an invasion, in hopes of kindling civil
war in England, and of facihtating his own
seizure of the throne, by ruining at once
a formidable rival and embarrassing and dis
crediting the King. It is even said that the
Prince kept up a correspondence with the
Duke, through his favourites, during the
early stages of his enterprise, although Mon
mouth had, in his Manifesto, accused King
James of being the author of the Fire of
London and the Popish Plot ; denounced him
as an assassin, tyrant, and usurper ; branded
him as the murderer of King Charles, and
vowed to avenge his reputed father's death
in the blood of the royal fratricide. But
when he heard Monmouth began to gather
strength, and was proclaimed King, he not
only hurried over the English regiments
which were in the service of the States, but he
likewise despatched his favourite Bentinck, as

256 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
envoy extraordinary, to acquaint the King,
" That though he looked upon the Duke of
Monmouth to be a man of no great parts, yet
he had a warhke genius, and was better skilled
in the military art than any the King was to
employ against him, and, therefore, if His
Majestypleasedjhewould not onlylend him his
troops, but come in person to head his army."
The same proposal had been previously com
municated to Skelton, the English ambas
sador at the Hague, who had transmitted it
to the King, together with his suspicions of
the sinister designs of the Prince. And
James, believing that his son-in-law was
capable of usurping his throne, after he had
defeated Monmouth, dismissed the discredited
Bentinck, teUing him : " He should acquaint
his master that their common interest did
require the Prince's staying In Holland," and
added : " He did not take His Highness's
zeal for his service to be at that time season
able." Moreover, the Prince subsequently
received with open arms, and honoured with
high command, the abandoned ruffian Kirke,
who played the most villainous part in this
rebeUion, which Marlborough and Lumley
had suppressed. Yet now they all — Prince,
aristocracy, and Church — cast the whole

Betrayal of England, &c. 257
odium of its mercUess suppression on James
alone. And having — on the birth of the
Prince of Wales — painted the King " as
black as hell," they proceed forthwith to
dethrone him. The trial of the Bishops had
been regarded as a crisis in the struggle
between the Court and caste which would be
decisive in its consequences, and their ac
quittal had left the baffled monarch ap
parently powerless and isolated. Yet the
caste, conscious that no mendacity or
slander could indefinitely postpone the ulti
mate coalition of the King and people for
their political repression, had on the eve of
their great victory, officially deputed — in
obedience to a signal of the Prince of
Orange — seven of their number to despatch
a formal invitation to their Dutch Protector to
invade England with a foreign army. We know
not the precise terms of the momentous docu
ment which Devonshire, Danby, Shrewsbury,
Lumley, Compton Bishop of London, Edward
RusseU, and Henry Sidney — all cursed with pri
vate grievances which prompted their dark
deeds — signed and sent, in the name of the aris
tocracy and Church, to the Dutch Pretender;
but practically those parricides and traitors
said: " The birth of the Prince of Wales per-
S

258 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
petuates our hopeless conflict with the Court,
and supplants you as the King's presumptive
heir. Therefore, in defence of our common
cause, which his legitimacy ruins, we brand
the child as counterfeit, and call on you to
come and be our king, protesting that — in
order to remain the tyrants of the nation
which the Test and Penal Laws have made
us — we will, on your appearance, at the head
of a sufficiently powerful foreign force to
ensure our personal safety, betray into your
hands our native Court and country."
The Prince of Orange — whose wife's right
of succession to the throne, which she had
solemnly transferred to him, had been super
seded by the birth of the Prince of Wales —
reahzedaU the importance of the supreme crisis.
" It is now or never! " he exclaimed, as secretly
and rapidly he collected troops and transports
for a descent on England. The ties of blood,
political honour, legitimate right, all were
sacrificed to his ruling passion, an inex
tinguishable hate of France — the natural
outcome of an insatiable ambition, which
aimed at a virtual dictatorship of Europe —
to gratify which, by enrolling England among
her enemies, he now compasses the ruin of
his uncle and father-in-law, and the usurpation

Betrayal of England, &c. 259
of his throne. AU Catholic as well as Pro
testant Europe — outside the menaced frontiers
of fair France — support the unprincipled in
vader, for the patriotic refusal of King James
to join the continental onslaught on the French
had made the mighty league of Augsburg his
implacable foe. So Austria, Holland, Spain,
the German, Scandinavian, and Itahan States,
together with the Papacy itself, had formed,
with the Prince of Orange and the EngHsh
aristocracy and Church, a vast conspiracy for
the dethronement of King James as the only
obstacle to their gr9.nd design of making
England their cheap and chief defence against
the dreaded power of France. Surrounded
with traitors — indeed the Slates-General of
HoUand, in justification of their share in the
invasion, declared in a pubhc manifesto to
the European powers that the whole body of
the nobility, clergy, and gentry had invited
the Prince of Orange to undertake this enter
prise — surrounded with traitors, the infatu
ated James was lulled in a blind security
by the reiterated professions of devotion of
the Prince and Princess of Orange. It was
officially declared to the King : " That their
Highnesses ever had, and were resolved ever
to preserve a profound submission to His

26g The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
Majesty as they thought themselves in duty
bound by the laws of God and nature."
And, " I am sure of my beloved daughter "
is James's eternal answer to Louis's warnings
of domestic treason and foreign levy, and his
urgent offers of a powerful fleet and army for
his succour and protection. And on the ad
vice of those arch-traitors, Sunderland and
Churchill, the betrayed King publicly and
indignantly repudiated the alliance of France,
and thus temporarily alienated and disgusted
his solitary ally at the very moment when the
Grand Monarque, by massing French troops
on the Dutch frontier, and by proclaiming
that any attack on the English King would be
a declaration of war against himself, had
practicaUy baffled the designs on England
of the Dutch Prince and people, and had
filled them with a terror of French invasion.
But the King's fond delusions were rudely
dissipated by the publication of a forged
memorial purporting to be an address from
the Protestants of England and Scotland to
the States of HoUand, enumerating their
grievances, and calling on the Prince of
Orange to come over and redress, together
with the Prince's reply thereto in the shape
of Declarations addressed respectively to both

Betrayal of England, &c. 261
countries. In these manifestoes this Dutch
champion of the legalized despotism of the
aristocracy, the Church, and their parasites and
dependents, the Corporation cliques solemnly
declared that King James's " setting up an
Ulegal Commission for ecclesiastical affairs
by which not only the Bishop of London was
suspended, but the president and feUows of
Magdalene College were arbitrarily turned out
of their freeholds : His turning out of pubhc
employments all such as would not concur
with His Majesty in the repeal of the Test
and Penal Laws : His invading the privileges
and seizing on the charters of most corpora
tions, and placing Popish magistrates in some
of them," and his imprisonment and trial of the
seven bishops, had " made all men apprehend
the loss of their lives, liberties, honours, and
estates." And after accusing him of enter
taining the preposterous design of enslaving
the nation by means of an army of Irish
Papists, proceeds to blacken the character
of both the King and Queen by perhaps the
most wanton and infamous aspersions re
corded in history. He unblushingly asserts
— and thus reveals the real motive of his
enterprise — " That there were great and
violent presumptions inducing His Highness

262 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
to believe that the King's evil counsellors, in
order to the gaining of more time for the
effecting of their ill-designs, had published
That the Queen had brought forth a son,
though there had appeared, both during the
Queen's pretended bigness and in the manner
wherein the birth was managed, so many just
and visible grounds of suspicion, that not
only He Himself, but all the good subjects of
the Kingdom did vehemently suspect That
the pretended Prince of Wales was not born
of the Queen. And though many both doubted
of the Queen's bigness and of the birth of the
child ; yet there was not any one thing done
to satisfy them or put an end to their doubts.
That since his consort the Princess, and like
wise he himself, had so great an interest in
this matter, and such a right as all the world
knew, to the succession of the crown," he
thought it his duty, on private as weU as
pubhc grounds, to appear in arms in England,
not with any view to conquest, but only to
defend, himself "from the violence of these
evil counseUors " in the prosecution of his
benevolent enterprise. And in conclusion he
said : " We have thought fit to declare that
we win refer aU," including " the inquiry into
the birth of the pretended Prince of Wales,"

Betrayal of England, &c. 263
to a "lawful Parliament," knowing full well that
all Parliaments were elected by and composed
of the Conquering caste who— assailed by
their legitimate King whose power they had
eclipsed and whose alliance with the enslaved
democracy they feared — were already pledged
to hail him as their " great and glorious
Dehverer." His German allies having provided an array
of 30,000 men for the defence of Holland
during his absence, and the States-General,
or, as some assert, his close ally Pope Inno
cent XI. having, to the great astonishment of
the English and French ambassadors, ad
vanced a loan of four million florins to defray
the expenses of his expedition, the Prince of
Orange fixed on the 5th or 6th of October as
the day of embarkation. But, detained for
more than a week by tempestuous weather,
and beaten back by a furious storm on first
venturing to sea, it was not until the 1st of
November that he finally set sail from Hel-
voetsluys, and on the 5th his fleet of 50 raen-
of-war and 600 transports, having luckily
eluded the more powerful armaraent of Eng
land under Lord Dartmouth, cast anchor in
Torbay. On the following day his motley
force of 15,000 men, bearing aloft the Dutch

264 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
flag emblazoned with the specious but false
device, " I wiU maintain the Protestant re
ligion and the Liberties of England," advanced
slowly through the rain and mire into the
interior and in four days reached Exeter.
The Prince had expected that on his first
landing all the nobility and gentry of the
West would have joined him, but, notwith
standing their universal disaffection, nine
days passed without anything happening to
encourage hira ; not a person of distinction
had dared to come in. Moreover he per
ceived that the Mayor and Aldermen of
Exeter visited him from fear rather than
affection, and that he was badly in want of
recruits, and stiU more of money, and there-"
fore he began to despair of the success of
his expedition. His troops, composed of
men literally drawn from every country
between the Gulf of Bothnia and the Bay
of Biscay, were also discouraged ; he himself
thought of abandoning his enterprise, and in
a council of war dehberated on a proposal to
return to Holland. In his disappointment
and dismay he publicly declared that he was
betrayed, and vowed that he would re-embark
and, in his turn, betray his accompHces, by
transmitting to King James the secret corres-

Betrayal of England, &c. 265
pondence of his subjects, so that his uncle
might know where to strike. Buf one Bur-
rington, a gentleman of Crediton, having set
the evil example of open treason by joining
his standard, the nobles and squires of
Somerset, Devon, and Dorset flocked into
Exeter In considerable numbers. The Prince,
on the 15th of November, received them in a
body, and made to the parricides and traitors
the following hypocritical and canting speech.
We raay say here that on the eve of his em
barkation for England, he had declared to the
States-General of Holland that the " only
aim of his expedition was the welfare of
their country," and that " should he attain
his ends he would set the States at greater
hberty, and free them from the fear of their
neighbours, and the haughty tyranny of
those that would enslave them." And sub
sequently, when referring to the strongly
expressed wish of the nobUity that he would
not risk his Hfe by going in person to Ireland
to fight King James, he described his and
their Glorious Revolution in words of flame
which cast a lurid glare upon two hundred
thousand English corpses weltering in their
gore, the unhappy victims of his baleful and
blundering butcheries in Flanders. " They

266 The Pilgrims ai;id the Anglican Church.
are only afraid," he writes to his Dutch
favourite, Bentinck, " they are only afraid I
shaU get killed before I have done their work
for them ; as to their friendship, you know
very well what that is worth in this country."
But now he speaks in quite another strain.
"Though we know not," says he to them in
broken English, " though we know not all
you persons, yet we have a catalogue of your
names, and remember the character of your
worth and interest in your country. You
see, we are come according to your Invita
tion and our Promise. Our duty to God
obHges us to protect the Protestant religion,
and our love to mankind, your liberties and
properties. We expected, you that dwelt so
near the place of our landing, would have
joined us sooner ; not that it is now too late,
nor that we want your military assistance so
much as your countenance and presence, to
justify our declared pretensions, rather than
to accomphsh our good and glorious designs.
Though we have brought both a good fleet
and a good army — to render these kingdoms
happy, by rescuing aU Protestants from
Popery and Slavery, and Arbitrary Power, by
restoring them to their rights and properties
estabhshed by law, and by promoting of

Betrayal of England, &c. 26^]
peace and trade, which is the soul of govern-'
ment, and the very life and blood of a nation —
yet we rely more on the goodness of God and
the justice of our cause than on any human
force and power whatsoever. Yet, since
God is pleased we shall make use of human
means, and not expect miracles for our pre
servation and happiness ; Let us not neglect
making use of this glorious opportunity, but
with prudence and courage put in execution
our so-honourable purposes. Therefore,
Gentlemen, Friends, and Fellow Protestants,
We bid you and all your followers most
heartily welcome to our Court and Camp.
Let the whole world now judge if our preten
sions are not just, generous, sincere, and
above all price, since we might have even a
Bridge of Gold to return back. But it is our
Principle and Resolution, rather to die in a
good cause than live in a bad one, well know
ing that virtue and true honour is its own re
ward, and the happiness of mankind our great
and only design."
Then the Prince of Orange — who exacted
both the crown of England and the blood and
treasure of its people as his recompense for
maintaining with foreign bayonets the legal
ized system of caste despotism which King

268 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
James had vainly striven to subvert — then
the Prince of Orange, I say, and the noble
men and gentlemen who were with him at
Exeter, entered into an association or alliance
for the better prosecution of their purely
personal revolutionary projects, and to con
fuse, mislead, and paralyze the deraocracy,
whose lasting servitude they planned under
the raask of zeal for the Protestant religion
and popular liberty — these parricides and
traitors, the close alhes of the Pope and the
Cathohc powers, proraulgated from the camp
of the Dutch army of invasion the following
most audacious Declaration : " We do engage
to Almighty God, and to His Highness the
Prince of Orange, and with one another to
stick firm to this cause, and to one another,
in the defence of it, untU our rehgion, laws,
and liberties are so far secured to us in a Free
Parliament, that they shall be no more in
danger of falling under Popery and slavery.
And whereas we are engaged in the common
cause under the protection of the Prince of
Orange, by which means his person is exposed
to danger, and to the desperate and cursed
designs of Papists and other bloody raen ; We
do therefore soleranly engage to God, and to
one another. That if any such attempts be

Betrayal of England, &c. 26g
made, we wUl pursue not only those that made
it, but all their adherents, and all we find in
arms against us, with the utmost severity of
just revenge, to their ruin and destruction.
And that the executing of any such attempt
(which God, in His infinite mercy, forbid)
shall not deprive us from pursuing this cause
which we do now undertake, but it shall
encourage us to carry it on with all the vigour
that so barbarous an attempt shaU deserve."
Everywhere the descendants of our Norraan
conquerors turned traitors to the legitimate
successor of the Norman Duke, who, on the
battlefield of Hastings, gave to their ancestors
absolute possession of both the soil and
sovereignty of England. The Earl of Bath
surrendered Plymouth to the Dutch Invader.
Lord Delamere headed a rising of the nobles
and squires of Cheshire, and took possession
of Manchester on his way south. Danby
raised the standard of revolt at York, and, with
the peers and gentry of the North, effected a
junction at Nottingham with the great lords
of the Midland and Eastern counties, whom
Devonshire and Chesterfield had summoned
to arms. Lord Lumley seized Newcastle;
Lord Shrewsbury occupied Bristol ; Lord
Herbert of Cherbury was in arms in Wor-

270 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
cestershire ; and the Duke of Norfolk, riding
at the head of three hundred gentlemen into
Norwich, declared for the Dutch Stadtholder.
The army, officered, as at all times, ex
clusively by the caste, was naturally the centre
of a vast conspiracy against the King. Al
ready Lords Colchester and Abingdon, with
many other officers of distinction, had deserted
to the enemy, and Lord Cornbury, the eldest
son of the Earl of Clarendon, the King's
brother-in-law, had by treachery partially
succeeded in carrying over three regiments of
cavalry to the Dutch camp. When James
arrived at the head quarters of his array,
numbering forty thousand men, at Salisbury,
most of the principal officers waited on Lord
Feversham, the commander-in-chief, and de
sired him to acquaint His Majesty " that upon
any occasion they would be ready to spill the
last drop of their blood in his service, yet they
could not in conscience fight against a Prince
who was come over with no other design than
to procure the calling of a free parliament for
the security of their religion and liberties."
The appearance of our last EngHsh King in
the midst of an English army was the signal
for the blackest episode of this most infamous
revolution. A foul conspiracy was formed by

Betrayal of England, &c. 271
the arch-traitor ChurchUl, the ruffian Kirke,
and Trelawny, a brother of one of the im
prisoned bishops, to arrest the King and carry
him off to the invaders' camp. And to facili
tate the execution of this odious project, these
parricides and would-be regicides urged their
royal master to visit the outpost at War
minster, in order to inspect Kirke's division.
The unsuspecting King consented, and Kirke
and Trelawny hastened to rejoin their forces
on the pretence of making preparations for the
royal reception and review. A sudden indis
position of the King alone prevented the per
petration of this supreme act of treachery and
treason, and the baffled traitors, with Chur
chill's brother, Berkeley, and the Duke of
Grafton, fled by night to the enemy's quarters
at Axrainster. Strengthened by the adhesion
of the ruHng caste, the Dutch Invaders
steadily advanced on Salisbury, whilst the
English array, disorganized and demoralized
by the universal disaffection or desertion of
its officers, commenced a disorderly retreat.
The first stage of their retrograde moveraent
was Andover, where Prince George of Den
mark and the Duke of Ormond, after sup
ping with the King, took horse, and rode off
with Lord Drumlanrig and other officers of

272 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
rank and quality to the enemy's camp. Sur
rounded by traitors, capable at any moment
of reviving ChurchlU's horrid plot, King
James now lost heart and fled to London,
foUowed by the wreck of his betrayed but un
conquered soldiery, who finaUy took up their
quarters in the suburbs of the capital.
The King reached WhitehaU to learn that his
favourite daughter Anne, together with her
favourite. Lady ChurchUl, and Compton,
Bishop of London, had left that very day
to join the rebel lords at Nottingham. " God
help me," was the piteous cry of our modern
Lear, bursting into tears, " God help me I
My own chUdren have forsaken me." Yet
he summoned a council of some forty or fifty
peers and prelates then in town — who, far
from their Dutch protector, again swore
fealty to him — and despatched commis
sioners to Hungerford to treat with their ally
his son-in-law. But these were his last acts
of royal power. The councU soon dispersed,
and several of its members — including the
Earls of Clarendon and Oxford and the Duke
of Somerset — went over to the enemy. In
deed, the tide of aristocratic treason and
defection flowed steadily and placidly west
ward. Every day the Court and camp of

Betrayal of England, &c. 273
England dwindled to complete extinction,
to revive in the Court and camp of the
Dutch invader. The situation of the King
was now quite desperate, and the Prince of
Orange, while affecting a wiUingness to treat,
resorted to a system of veUed intimidation to
force James to take flight. He declined, at
least, a pubhc conference, with Lords Hah-
fax, Nottingham, and Godolphin — masked
traitors all — whom James had sent to Hun
gerford as his comraissloners ; and he deputed
the Earl of Clarendon — who had publicly and
grossly insulted the King in his misfortunes
— and the Earl of Oxford to treat with them.
Through these parricides and traitors he
practically demanded an instantaneous share
of James's throne ; and though he verbally
consented, on the conditions of a conqueror,
to a temporary suspension of hostilities, yet
he never slackened for a moraent the rapid
march of his troops on the capital. More
over, the deluded mob — a favourite weapon
of the Prince of Orange, both in England
and in Holland — was again incited to attack
the King and his co-religionists. A procla
mation published in the Prince's name — but
afterwards disowned by him — commanded
everyone to search out, seize, and treat as
T

274 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
bandits aU Catholics who, contrary to law,
were in possession of defensive weapons, for
(so ran that atrocious manifesto) a certain
king, in league with the King of France, had
sworn to extirpate the Protestant faith, and
unless the Papists were at once secured they
would destroy by fire and massacre both Lon
don and its citizens. This incident roused
the fury of the people against the King and
Catholics almost to madness, and an inflam
matory but senseless doggerel, called " Lilli-
buUero " — which gave expression to another
insane charge the Prince of Orange brought
against King James of designing to enslave
and Romanize England by means of an army
of Irish Papists — kept alive the popular frenzy
and delusion, and blinded the nation, until
too late, as to the real and lasting usurpa
tion and tyranny which the Dutch prince and
the conquering Norman caste were then con
solidating, by foreign force and foulest fraud,
without their intervention, in their midst.
Thus did his foreign and domestic enemies,
resorting to the odious tactics of the Popish
Plot, again, by terror of the deluded mob,
hasten King James's flight.
Bereft of reason by the awful treachery and
desertion of which he was the helpless victim.

Betrayal of Englan d, &c. 275
the King gives way to the dictates of des
pair. He sends the Queen — who shares his
terrors, for she had also been subjected to
intimidation and assured that she, in com
mon with her' predecessors, was liable to
Parliamentary impeachment — and the Prince
of Wales to France under the escort of the
celebrated Count of Lauzun, then in exUe
here. Lauzun's whole career had been a
series of romantic escapades, and his character
is best illustrated by his promise to this same
Queen on his departure for the Boyne cam
paign " to bring the usurping Prince of
Orange a captive and in chains to her feet."
They escape, under his conduct, from White
haU, by the backstairs, to the waterside, and
cross the Thames in an open boat, on a dark,
tempestuous night., Queen Mary — a chaste
and beautiful princess of the house of Este,
with her child, the infant Prince of Wales, in
his nurse's arms — waits under the waUs of
Lambeth Church, exposed to the pitiless fury
of the winter's blast and the pelting rain,
while a coach was got ready at a neighbour
ing inn. This shameful scene of the betrayal
and abandonment of the Conqueror's infant
heir by the descendants of his Norman fol
lowers was the grave of their boasted loyalty

276 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
and honour, and should be emblazoned on
their every escutcheon as a brand of inde
lible infamy. FoUowed on horseback by a
friend of Lauzun, they pass unobserved
through Greenwich, and reaching Graves -
end in safety, embark in the yacht that lay
ready to receive them. In a few hours they
landed at Calais. The next night the King
— after leaving orders to Lord Feversham to
disband his forces as incapable of offering
"resistance to a foreign army and a poisoned
nation " — escaped from his palace, and with
but two attendants made his way to Sheer-
ness and went on board a hoy in the offing,
bound for France.
This sudden dissolution of all government
was the signal for the wildest anarchy and
confusion. During the 11th and 12th of
December London was in the hands of a
riotous mob, and that period of terror and
outrage was followed by what was long re
membered as the " Irish night," a scene of
strange and grotesque horror which is happily
unique in our history. The Prince of Orange,
or his partisans, in order to throw the nation
into a state of universal tumult and trepida
tion, and so prepare the popular mind for
his reception as a saviour of society, had

Betrayal of England, &c. 277
recourse to an effectual but Infamous strata
gem. A party of his emissaries, having the
dress and air of country fellows, arrive about
midnight at Westminster and cause a sudden
uproar and panic by reporting that the Irish
Papists whom Feversham had disbanded
were again in arms, and had reached
Uxbridge in full march on London, putting
aU before them to fire and sword. Within an
hour the dreadful rumour filled the doomed
city. The alarm-bells were rung, the drums
of the train-bands sounded the reveiUe., the
affrighted citizens, roused from their first
slumber, stood to their weapons ; lights blazed
in every window. In their distraction and
terror the Londoners fancied they saw in
the distance the smoke of the conflagrations
which announced the approach of the Irish
Papists and heard the dying groans of the
Protestant victims of Irish savagery. And so
complete had been the measures taken by
the authors of this nefarious plot that a
general terror spread itself that very night
over the whole kingdom. Every important
city and town — alarmed by identic letters,
framed to delude and terrify the ignorarit,
and dehvered aU at once— -presented the
same strange and humUiating spectacle of

278 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
armed multitudes awaiting the approach of
Papistical hordes, who, they had been warned,
were bent on an Indiscriminate slaughter of
the Protestants, attended with all the unspeak
able horrors of the atrocious Irish raassacre
of 1 64 1. But when day dawned the nation —
scared by a phantora array, yet ignoring the
presence of the Dutch — was sobered by the
humUiating conviction that it had been the
dupe of a foul and malignant trick, attributed
by some to the Prince of Orange himself,
but more commonly ascribed by the popular
opinion of the time to Marshal Schomberg,
his lieutenant. It learned with shame that
the Irish troops whom James had so unad
visedly brought into England, and whose
presence was so prejudicial to his cause, did
not number three thousand men.
Meanwhile the Dutch army had advanced to
Windsor, where the Prince of Orange and his
English adherents were thrown into the
wUdest confusion by the startling Intelligence
that King James had been detained at the
moment of his departure. The hoy on which
he had embarked had been run ashore near
Sheerness for ballast, and about eleven o'clock
at night, before the tide could float her, had
been boarded by fishermen in search of

Betrayal of England, &c. 279
fugitives. The appearance of the King,
disguised as a country gentleman, at once
attracted their attention. " This is Father
Petre," shouted one feUow ; "I know him by
his hatchet face." And swearing that their
prisoner should not depart until he had been
examined by a magistrate, they imme
diately seize and search the King, and finally
carry him ashore at Feversham. There, at
an obscure inn, amidst the insults of the
deluded rabble who took him for a Jesuit —
that incarnation of the Evil One, the Angli
cans to ruin James had taught them to
believe — the unhappy monarch declares him
self their King. For very shame of these
indignities, which by their treason they had
brought upon King James, the peers and
prelates— -who had already sent a pressing
invitation to the Dutch Invader to hasten to
the capital and fill the vacant throne — des
patched Lord Feversham with two hundred
Life Guards to protect the King from insult,
but to allow him fuU liberty of action, and to
encourage and facilitate his further flight.
But James no longer desired to escape.
Lords Middleton and Winchelsea had pointed
out to him that his throne would have been
for ever lost had he vacated it by flight ; but by

28o The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
remaining he was King, and might challenge
his right : and the Dutch prince could not
now dethrone hira without playing the odious
part of an usurper, and casting on himself and
wife the indelible stain of filial baseness and
ingratitude. James's broken spirit revived at
these suggestions, and he resolved to return to
his capital. On the other hand the Prince of
Orange — believing the King had gone — had
already assumed the attributes of sovereignty,
and his principal adherents had arranged
among themselves the different offices of
state they were to fill ; but when undeceived,
they, in this supreme crisis of their fortunes,
at once resorted to the very plan which the
merest accident alone had thwarted. As we
have already seen, they were stealthily effect
ing, with a foreign army, a revolution from
which the people were jealously excluded,
with a single eye to their own interest and
ambition, under the fraudulent and hypo
critical pretext, that the King and Queen, in
order to gain time to establish Popery and
arbitrary power in England by raeans either of
arraed bands of Irish Papists or of the railitary
power of France, had been guilty of the
unnatural villainy of foisting on the nation a
suppositious heir to the throne. They there-

Betrayal of England, &c. 281
fore feared delay, which would have unmasked
their fraud, and might have brought about
a coalition of the King and nation — their
common victims — for their own destruc
tion. And to prevent this possible catas
trophe they now resolve to frighten the
infatuated James to a repetition of his insane
attempt to escape out of his kingdom. His
messenger, Lord Feversham — whom he had
sent from Rochester with a letter to the Prince
inviting him to St. James's with what number
of troops he might think fit, to confer with the
King on the affairs of the nation — was placed
under arrest for disbanding the English army
which had remained loyal in spite of the
treason and desertion of its officers ; and
Zulestein — soon to be created Earl of Roch-
ford — was despatched by William to decline
a conference, and to forbid James to approach
the capital. But the Dutchman missed him
by the way, and the King entered London in
triumph amidst the loudest acclamations of
joy of all classes of the citizens, the ringing
of beUs, the burning of bonfires, together, says
a contemporary writer, " with every other
proof that the people who hated Popery loved
the King." It is evident that the presence
of the foreign invader — which was as great a

282 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
surprise to the nation as to the King himself,
and as gross an outrage to the national as to
the royal susceptibilities — had revived his
waning popularity ; and that the people
now began to perceive that they had been
" poisoned " against their solitary protector
the King, by the slanders and mendacities of
the aristocracy and Church, whose legalized
despotism he had vainly striven to subvert,
and of a Prince whose murderous and am
bitious foreign policy, he, with the truest
patriotism, had steadily rejected, and whose
pretensions to the English throne he had
blasted by the birth of the Prince of Wales.
But his enemies, perceiving their danger,
would aUow hira no respite. They imme
diately resolved on a desperate venture which
should make or mar their fortunes. Scarcely
had James re-entered his Palace when
Zulestein delivered his insolent message.
And soon afterwards the King was fiUed with
fresh terrors by the announcement of Fever-
sham's imprisonment. Yet on the following
day he sent the Earl of Musgrave with his
compliments to the Prince of Orange, who
had by this time reached Sion House, while
the Dutch guards had occupied Kensington
and Chelsea. There at nightfall they re-

Betrayal of England, &c. 283
ceived orders to take military possession of
the Palaces of Whitehall and St. James's
either by fair means or open force. St.
James's was entered at ten o'clock, and a httle
later a detachment of horse and foot, under
the command of Count Solmes, marched
rapidly through the Park to WhitehaU, and
took up a position in order of battle oppo
site the Coldstream Guards, who were
on duty at the Palace. As the English
seemed indisposed to dislodge, the Dutch
marched up to them with their matches
lighted, as if about to commence an attack.
The Earl of Craven — a distinguished veteran
of eighty — who commanded the Coldstream
Guards, declared that no foreign prince should
make a King of England a prisoner in his own
palace so long as he retained life. And one
weU-directed volley from the Coldstream
muskets might yet have stung the outraged
and deluded nation to prompt and decisive
intervention in its own affairs. I do not
doubt that the rattle of a Dutch fusilade
through the corridors of Whitehall and the
groans of the dying would have opened all
eyes to the true character of an enterprise,
which, under the mask of aU the virtues,
violated every principle and tie the world

284 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
holds sacred ; and that it would inevitably
have rallied round the Stuarts' Throne, the
oppressed democracy, of which it was the
solitary and vanishing defence, against com
bined aristocratic and foreign tyranny, usurpa
tion and conquest. But James, who was
retiring to rest, having vainly desired Count
Solmes to leave hira in charge of his own
people for that night, forbade all resistance,
and, at his command, the Coldstream Guards
sullenly abandoned their posts. By eleven
o'clock at night the Dutch were In full posses
sion of the palace, and double guards were
placed over the person of the King. Thus,
by a singular irony of fate, was our last King
of English blood made a prisoner in his own
capital, amidst its slumbering citizens, by the
Dutch guards of that very prince whose con
quered countrymen, at the command of Crom
weU, had, by the Perpetual Edict, excluded
not simply from the stadtholderate of his own
country, but from its military and naval
services. The King again retired to bed and to sleep,
but about one o'clock in the morning he was
roused from his first slumber by a deputation
of noblemen, who came with a message from
the Prince of Orange, and insisted on an im-

Betrayal of England, &c. 285
mediate audience. Admitted to his bedside,
they delivered to him the following order from
his son-in-law and nephew : — " We desire you,
the Lord Marquis of Halifax, the Earl of
Shrewsbury, and the Lord Delamere, to tell
the King that it is thought convenient, for the
great quiet of the city, and the great safety of
his person, that he do remove to Ham, where
he shall be attended by his guards, who will
be ready to preserve hira frora any disturb
ance." Having read this extraordinary cora-
raand, he said he would coraply with it.
Whereupon the lords desired him to leave
early, before ten o'clock that very morning, so
as to avoid meeting the Prince on his way to
London, where he would be in a few hours.
The King again acquiesced, and the lords
took their leave ; but when they had reached
the privy chamber they were recalled, and
told by the King that "he had forgot to ac
quaint them with his resolutions before the
message came, to send my Lord Godolphin
next morning to the Prince, to propose his
going back to Rochester ; he finding by the
message Monsieur Zulestein was charged
with that the Prince had no mind that he
should be at London, and therefore he now
desired that he might rather return to Roches-

2 86 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
ter than go to any other place." The lords
blandly replied that they had no authority to
accede to His Majesty's request, but that they
would immediately acquaint the Prince there
with, not doubting but that his answer would
be to His Majesty's satisfaction. A message
was accordingly despatched in hot haste to
His Highness, who was stiU at Sion House,
and who, delighted at the success of his
stratagem, ordered Mynheer Bentinck to write
a letter, which reached Whitehall before day
break, expressing his ready compliance with
the King's proposal. The English commis
sioners of the Dutch invader, who were
effecting and superintending the final over
throw of our ancient Norman Monarchy, lost
no time in the execution of their momentous
mission. The royal barge was immediately
got ready and brought round to Whitehall
stairs, where the King — with the acclamations
of London still ringing in his ears — having
taken leave of the Spanish ambassador and
other persons there present, went on board,
attended by two English and three Scotch
lords. The Marquis of Halifax stood suUenly
aloof, covering his monstrous treason by
affected indignation at his bootless errand to
Hungerford; but his brother traitors, the Earl

Betrayal of England, &c. 287
of Shrewsbury and Lord Delamere, appeared
much moved as they betrayed the legitimate
successor of the Norman Conqueror — who
held his Crown by the same title they held
their honours and estates — into the hands of
their allies the Dutch. In a storm of wind
and rain the royal barge put off from land,
and, surrounded by boats filled with Dutch
soldiers, dropped slowly down the river. The
angry billows of the noble stream buffeted
furiously the frail bark, and seemed to protest
against the folly and infatuation of its native
Monarch by thus retarding his mad flight.
Not until nine o'clock at night did he reach
Gravesend, where he was met by some troops
of Dutch cavalry, who, the next day, guarded
him by land to Rochester.
The same day— the i8th of December —
the Dutch invader marched into London —
which was already occupied by his motley
bands of foreign mercenaries — and about three
o'clock in the afternoon came to St. James's.
It rained very heavily, yet a great crowd had
assembled to witness his arrival. But the
Prince — probably resenting their enthusiastic
reception of King James the day before- — took
the road through the park to the palace, and the
disappointed and snubbed citizens, drenched

288 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
to their skins, dispersed to their homes.
This incident served to Increase the indigna
tion which the Prince's midnight arrest and
subsequent unnatural intimidation of his uncle
and father-in-law, in spite of his subraission,
had excited in the breasts of both the army
and the people. They began to suspect,
what was indeed self-evident, " that this spe
cious undertaking would prove to be only a
disguised and designed usurpation." But
" Sans berger que pent le troupeau."
The public bodies, however, waited upon him
with a fulsome address, in which, referring to
the rapid success of his enterprise, they said,
" astounded we think it marvellous." They
further assure him that " led by the hand of
heaven," he had preserved " our laws, which
are our ancient title to our lives, hberties, and
estates, and without which, this world were a
wilderness." The lords spiritual and tem
poral, about seventy in number, also repaired
to St. James's to offer their congratulations,
and, at his desire, adjourned to the House of
Lords, to consider the most effectual measures
for convoking a parliament for the regulation
of the affairs of the nation, upon the basis of
his Declaration, which he formaUy presented

Betrayal of England, &c. 289
to them for that purpose. After reading that
unique document, and voting him their thanks
for his " so great kindness to these king
doms," Irt coming over, they proceed : " And
we do hereby declare that we wiU, with
our utmost endeavours, assist His Highness
in the obtaining of such a Parliament with all
speed, wherein our laws, our liberties and pro
perties, raay be secured, and the Church of
England in particular, with a due Hberty to
Protestant Dissenters, and, in general, the
Protestant religion and interest over the whole
world may be supported and encouraged, to
the glory of God, the happiness of the estab
hshed government in these kingdoms, and the
advantage of all princes and States in
Christendom, that may be herein concerned."
In other words, the grateful peers and prelates
eagerly and enthusiastically adopted their
"great and glorious deliverer's" most insane
foreign policy — -which he had so persistently
and vainly striven to irapose upon Kings
Charles and James — and in pursuance of it
" supported and encouraged. . . the Protes
tant religion and interest over the whole
world," by making England the stolid and
quixotic charapion and practical paymaster of
Pope Innocent XI. of Rome himself, and of the
W

290 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
Cathohc despots of Austria, Spain, Bavaria,
and Savoy. Yet so insecure did the parrlclde.s
and traitors feel, whUst James remained in the
country, and might appeal to the nation for
support, that the whole assembly signed, with
four or five exceptions, the same engagement
or association which the nobility and gentry had
already subscribed at Exeter, pledging thera-
selves to mutual support until the objects of
their movement were accomplished. The next
day the Duke of Norfolk, by whose Influence
the nobUity and gentry of the eastern counties
had been induced to declare for the Prince of
Orange, was received by His Highness with
the highest honours at the palace of St.
James's. The King soon hears of these proceedings,
and is confirmed by them in his fatal resolu
tion of escaping to France. His enemies
afford him every facility ; the snare Is trans
parent even to his disturbed and shaUow in-
teUect. The garden of the house in which he
lodged descended to the river, and was easily
accessible to the boats of several vessels,
which lay at no great distance, ready to set
saU. Yet, although closely watched by Dutch
soldiers on aU other sides, the back door of
the house was left without any guard. Fully

Betrayal of England, &c. 291
conscious that there was nothing his rival so
much desired, or his friends dreaded as his
flight, he was yet. constrained by that inexor
able master, an abject and panic fear. Visions
of death under every horrid aspect — the axe
of the executioner, the poisoned cup, the
assassin's dagger — 'haunted his heated and
disordered imagination, and paralyzed every
manly faculty. Nothing was lost had he been
but true to hiraself Two ways were yet open to
hira, either of which would have led hira back
to his throne. But resistance or subraission
is alike impossible to the betrayed craven.
In vain does Dundee boldly urge an appeal to
arms. " The question, sir," he exclaims,
" the question, sir, is whether you shall stay
in England or fly to France ? Whether you
shall trust to the returning zeal of your native
subjects, or rely on a foreign power ? Here
you ought to stand, keep possession of a part,
and the whole wiU submit by degrees. Re
sume the spirit of a king ; summon your sub
jects to their allegiance ; your array, though
disbanded, is not annihilated ; give rae your
commission, and I will collect ten thousand
of your troops, I will carry your standard at
their head through England, and drive before
you the Dutch and their Prince." It is true

292 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
that the King acknowledged the soundness
and feasibility of Dundee's manly counsel,
but said that it would lead to a civU
war, and expressed his conviction that the
nation would soon recover its senses
without an appeal to that terrible ordeal.
In vain does Lord Middleton, with his
other friends, Aylesbury, Lichfield, Arran,
and Dumbarton, counsel submission. Nothing,
they assure hira, in substance, if not in words,
could prevent his regaining his throne, if he,
the proud Norman heir of their creator the
Conqueror, would publicly renounce what was
portentously called the dispensing and sus
pending power ; and — placing himself unre
servedly at the head of the vast and permanent
conspiracy which the nobihty, clergy, and
gentry had formed against the nation since
their unexpected restoration to all power by
the traitor Monk — would accept the role of a
mere titular King of a revengeful and con
quering caste. All of them unite in depre
cating the suicidal act of flight, and in
pointing out its natural and inevitable conse
quences a virtual abdication of the throne,
which latter consummation, I suppose, few
men in England desired beside the Prince of
Orange and his immediate and implicated

Betrayal of England, &c. 2g^
partisans. Lord Middleton, above aU, im
plored James to remain, though In the re
motest part of his dominions. " Your
Majesty," said he, " may thrown things into
confusion by your departure, but it wiU be
but the anarchy of a month ; a new Govern
ment will soon be settled, and then you and
your family are ruined for ever." But no
remonstrance could revive a spark of courage
In the breast of this unhappy victim of un
natural and unparalleled treachery and treason,
whose very misfortunes predisposed him to
become the facile subject of a ghastly and
grotesque scare. The arrest of Feversham,
the sudden seizure by Dutch Guards of the
posts round WhitehaU, and the visit an hour
after midnight of the three traitor lords to
the bedside of the King, ordering him to
quit before midday the capital which had
just welcomed his return with boundless en
thusiasm, were three acts of a solemn farce,
which the cowardice of James converted into
a domestic and national tragedy. The miser
able sham appeared to the eyes of Its wretched
victim in the light of a stern reahty. King
James beheved, as was Intended, that his
son-in-law meditated his death by poison or
assassination. And prompted by this craven

294 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
fear, he resolves on immediate flight. But
first he wrote a Declaration of his motives
for this strange procedure. He declared that
his life was in danger frora the evU designs of
a nephew, who, without a cause, had painted
him as " black as heU," by accusing him of
the unnatural vUlainy of foisting on the nation
a suppositious heir to the throne, in order to
rob his own daughter of her birthright ; and
who, on this foul aspersion, which he knew in
his conscience was false, as well as on the
flimsy pretext of defending the religion and
liberties of England, had invaded his domi
nions, seized hira at raidnight in his own
palace, and driven hira frora his capital.
Therefore, to preserve his life and liberty of
action, he withdrew only until the country
opened its eyes to the false pretences by
which it had been deluded, and sumraoned
him to return. This Declaration of the King,
like all his royal utterances, was literally true,
and had he remained in England, the raen-
dacities and slanders which hurled hira from
his throne must have been unmasked to the
confusion and ruin of his enemies. It was
infaraously false to demonstration that James
(a) made "all men apprehend the loss of
their lives, liberties, honours, and estates ; "

Betrayal of England, &c. 295
(3) that he foisted on the nation a supposi
tious heir to the throne ; (c) or that he
designed to establish Popery and arbitrary
power either by means of an army of Irish or
French Papists. But it is quite true that,
prompted byhis " great clemency and tender
ness to his people," he staked and lost his
crown in the mad, but magnanimous attempt
to free them from the legalized tyranny of
the aristocracy, who — freshly remembering
their dismal overthrows at Newbury, Marston
Moor, and Naseby, at Preston, Dunbar, and
Worcester — still deemed their odious Test
and Penal Laws as necessary barriers against
the Revolution, without which the democracy
might yet again, and finally, sweep away the
Conqueror's Baronage, Church, and throne.
But morally just as was his cause, our modern
Lear, maddened by his misfortunes, fled from
his prison-house on Sunday, the twenty-third
of December, about three o'clock in the
morning, without coraraunicating his design
even to Lord Durabarton, who lay in his
chamber, and who did not awake untU after
the King's departure. And, accompanied by
his natural son, the Duke of Berwick, and
two attendants, he repaired on horseback,
through storm and darkness, to the place

296 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
appointed at the river's side, where Captain
MacDonnel, with a small skiff, waited to
receive him. He was immediately conveyed
on board a smack, which set saU with a
favourable wind, and after a rapid voyage he
landed on the shores of France ; abandoning
without a struggle a surprised and deluded,
but loyal and generous people, who were
inert only because of his inertness, as a prey
to the conquering Norman caste, who had
again with foreign force and foulest fraud
subdued them and the sceptre of his an
cestor, the Norman Duke, to the bloody
sway of their Dutch Deliverer, and bearing
with him the peaceful fortunes of England.
For that very day the Prince of Orange, on
receiving the joyful tidings of King James's
flight, sent a peremptory order to the French
ambassador to leave England within twenty-
four hours, thus plunging this country — in
prompt fulfilraent of his promise to the
Dutch States-General — into a disastrous
war of nine years with the French, in de
fence of purely German, Dutch, and Papal
interests, which was followed, after a four
years' truce and in pursuance of the same
Dutch policy, by the longer, costlier, and
bloodier War of the Spanish Succession.

Betrayal of England, &c. 297
And thus was inaugurated a wanton and
sanguinary system of foreign policy, un
known to our history under our legitimate
kings, which squandered the blood and
treasure of England, not in defence of
English honour and interests, but for the
gratification of the inflated ambition of our
petty foreign rulers and the aggrandizement
of their Continental States.
The legitimate and national monarchy
having been thus destroyed, the lords spiri
tual and temporal desire the Prince to sum
mon by circular letters a Convention Parlia
ment, and in the meantime to take upon
himself the administration of public affairs.
But as the peers had manifested an intention
of holding the Prince to the letter of his
Declaration, he introduces a new element
into the discussion by inviting all the gentle
men then in town who had sat in the House
of Commons during the reign of Charles II.,
together with the principal members of the
Corporation of London, to concur in this
request. The Convention accordingly met
to dehberate, in the words of the Prince,
^' under the shelter of my arras." And first
these delegates of the aristocracy and Church,
and of their parasites, the Corporation cliques

298 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
—under the protection of the Dutch army of
invasion then in occupation of London — with
marvellous audacity and plausibility, declare
" that King James having endeavoured to
subvert the Constitution of the kingdom by
breaking the original contract between King
and people, and by the advice of Jesuits and
other wicked persons having violated the
fundamental laws, and having withdrawn him
self out of the kingdom, had abdicated the
government, and that the throne had thereby
become vacant."
But they omit to teU us that " the Consti
tution of the kingdom," as they phrase it,
which King James had " endeavoured to sub
vert," was the Restoration despotism of the
aristocracy and Church, and that " the fun
damental laws" which he had "violated"
were those modern "Bloody Statutes" — the
Corporation Act, the Act of Uniforraity, the
Conventicle, Five MUe, Test, and Parlia
mentary Test Acts — on which the Cavaher
Parliament had astutely founded that atro
cious despotism. And having on the false
pretence of dread and apprehension of their
own ally, the Church of Rome, thus formally
deposed King James and stripped the infant
Prince of Wales of his right of succession to

Betrayal of England, &c. 299
the throne, they proceed forthwith to dispose
of the Stuarts' glorious heritage. As we have
already seen, the Prince of Orange was pledged
in honour to submit to the decisions of the
Convention Parliament ; and it is evident
that many of its members shared the fond
delusion of the Duchess of Marlborough, who
said — speaking in defence of her husband
and herself — " I do solemnly protest, that if
there be truth in any raortal, I was so very
siraple a creature, that I never dreamt of his
being King. I imagined that the Prince
of Orange's sole design was to provide for
the safety of his own country, by obliging
King James to keep the laws of ours ; and
that he would go back as soon as he had
made us all happy : that there was no sort of
difficulty in the execution of this design ; and
that to do so much good would be a greater
pleasure to him than to be the king of any
country upon earth." But no sooner was it
proposed by some to confer the crown solely
on the Princess, and by others to establish a
regency, than the Prince, seeing the great
object of his ambition, for which he had
conspired for sixteen years, about to slip for
ever from his grasp, promptly and decisively
intervenes. He summoned the principal

300 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
peers, his co-conspirators, to his presence, and
knowing, after all, that they could not possibly
do without him, he did not seek to conciliate
them, but bluntly told them that he would
neither be regent nor accept a crown depen
dent on his wife, adding " He would not think
of holding anything by apron-strings." But, if
they chose to offer him the crown entirely to
hiraself and for his whole Hfe, he would
freely accept it, and if not he would return
to HoUand, having done that which he had
promised. The Convention Parliament was
therefore obliged to reconsider its decisions
and come to a different settlement. And, as
some with reason feared the intervention of
the nation, and others that the Prince would
seize the crown, they, under the pressure of
circumstances of their own creation, declared
the Prince and Princess of Orange King and
Queen of England, " And that the sole and
full exercise of the royal power be only in,
and executed by the said Prince of Orange."
Then this lago of politics, the victims of
whose treachery were his nearest kindred,
unblushingly declared: "This is certainly
the greatest proof of the trust you have in me
that can be given, which is the thing which
makes us value it the more : And as I had no

Betrayal of England, &c. 301
other intention in coming hither than to pre
serve your religion, laws and liberties, so you
may be sure that I shall endeavour to support
them." This was the Prince's public and
official history of his share in the Glorious
Revolution ; his private and confidential nar
rative of the same event will bear repeating
here, if only for the sake of contrast and
comparison. Referring to the prayer of the
aristocracy that he would not risk his life by
fighting James in Ireland, he writes to his
Dutch favourite Bentinck : " They are only
afraid I shall get kUled before I have done
their work for them ; as to their friendship,
you know very well what that is worth in this
country." Indeed, his declaration of loyalty
to his makers was but a mere formality, for the
aristocracy and Church were fully conscious
that their monstrous privUeges and properties
could never be endangered either by their
Dutch or German nominees and creatures,
who as foreigners could never secure the
national sympathies In opposition to them
selves. Henceforth the great name and
prestige of king was intentionally and indis
solubly interlinked with the tyranny and
usurpation of a caste, who, masters by right of
conquest of that fountain of all their honours

302 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
and estates, the Conqueror's throne itself,
fiUed It at will with foreigners of their own
selection. And, by an unwritten compact,
the nominal Dutch or German head of this
vast and permanent conspiracy against the
nation was aUowed to preoccupy the pubHc
mind with wanton and sterile continental
warfare, whilst the aristocracy and Church
enjoyed in perfect tranquiUity that absolute
possession of the soU which their Norman
ancestors had conquered for them on the
battle-field of Hastings, together with a com
plete control of the legislature and govern
ment of England.
This Glorious Revolution, as it was termed,
not only gave a legal consecration and prac
tically a right of reconquest to the old
Norman domination, but it placed on the
throne a prince who, owing his crown to the
aristocracy, was but a puppet in their hands.
This nominee of the lords was the head of the
State Church. The revenue of this State
Church was now virtuaUy the property of the
lords. This political and religious organiza
tion formed a common system, and it is this
combination of spiritual and temporal interests,
together with, untU recently, the exclusive
possession of the national universities, which

Betrayal of England, &c. 303
has hitherto given to the Anglican Establish
ment, and the pohtical system of which it is
the spiritual offspring and representative,
energy and durabihty. The Church now
transferred its allegiance to an oligarchy
presided over by a nominal and alien king.
And this Dutch king, together with his
German successors, was bound by coronation
oaths to maintain to the utmost of his power
the quasi-religious institution of which he had
been made supreme temporal head, and " to
preserve unto the bishops and clergy all such
rights and privileges as by law do or shall
appertain unto thera, or any of thera."
" Nothing," says Hallam in tones which
happily belong to the past, " nothing was
done by the multitude ; no new men, either
soldiers or demagogues, had their talents
brought forward by this rapid and peace
ful revolution." Indeed the English king
and nation were the common and help
less victims of that infamous conspiracy
of the aristocracy and Church with the
Dutch prince and ruling caste, who had
for sixteen years waged a dark and
unnatural warfare against both Charles and
James, of calumny and imposture, of fraud
and intrigue, of mendacity and canting

304 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
hypocrisy ; and who, seeing their legitimate
pretensions to the absolute sovereignty of
the British Isles frustrated by the birth of
the Prince of Wales, suddenly attained their
ends by foreign force and the foulest domestic
treachery and treason. That England which
under the Commonwealth had seen van
quished Holland a suppliant at her feet, now
beheld a Dutch army in possession of
London, a Dutch prince seated on her
throne, his Dutch followers — the Bentlncks
and Keppels, the Schombergs and GinkeUs,
the Auverquerques and Zulesteins — enroUed
among her nobles ; his Dutch generals at
the head of motley bands of foreign mer
cenaries, interspersed with British troops,
conquering and confiscating for her own
masters her Sister Island ; and she her
self, passive and helpless, transformed into
a political sateUite of Holland by the grate
ful parricides and traitors whom the Prince
of Orange had practically and conscious
ly enthroned. And, booted and spurred,
this bastard Alexander was Hfted by our
aristocracy and Church — traitors ahke to
their native king and country — Into the
saddle of the British Bucephalus, and in
wanton quest of mere military glory that

Betrayal of England, dfc. 305
ever fled from hira, the rank cosmopolite
adventurer urged the hitherto invincible
steed through the fire and smoke of eight
inglorious campaigns, during which mad
career of blundering disasters it staggered
and fell beneath him from sheer exhaustion
on the bloody fields of Steinkirk and Neer-
winden. And having drained it of its best
blood the Inept and callous rider stigmatized
as vile the war-horse which, pitted against
far mightier antagonists, the traitor Marl
borough guided with perfect ease to complete
and endless victory.
Moreover, the aristocracy and Church per
petuated with foreign bayonets their in
famous usurpation and tyranny by conclud
ing a treaty with the States-General of
Holland, which enabled them for the next
two generations, in times of popular com
motion, to pour Dutch troops into England for
the maintenance of the extraordinary regime
their own countrymen had established.*
* The most complete and utter condemnation of the
Glorious Revolution is the subsequent high treason of
the aristocratic revolutionists against their Dutch Deliverer
himself, whom they would have replaced by King James
had the latter consented to condone the surpassing
treachery of every parricide and traitor.

X

VI.
DESPOTISM OF THE
NOBILITY, CLERGY, AND
GENTRY UNDER THE PRESI
DENCY OF DUTCH AND
GERMAN PUPPET KINGS.

1688-1885.— Thus did the "nobihty, gentry,
and clergy," who rose in defence of "the
privileges and properties which had descended
to them from their ancestors," substitute in
the sacred name of liberty an oligarchical
for a kingly tyranny. And this usurpation
of power by the aristocracy, with the trans
ference of the crown to nominal and alien
kings, inaugurated that wanton and bloody
era of English intervention in continental
warfare, which was indispensable to the main-

Despotism of the Nobility, Clergy, &c. 307
tenance of a system of government destitute
alike of legitimate and popular right. And
this atrocious pohcy was omnipotent from
1688 untU 18 1 5, during one-half of which
period of time England was bleeding at every
pore, combating stolidly and blindly, " paying
all and fighting all," as her allies jestingly
observed during the disastrous War of the
Austrian Succession, at the behest and in the
interest of a caste and court, which ruled,
injured, and deluded her. Happily, this policy
received its coup de grace at the hands of
Mr. Disraeli, when under popular pressure —
guided, sustained, and enforced by John
Bright — the late remarkable Lord Beacons-
field, in gross violation of the principles of his
party, took his famous " leap in the dark,"
or, in other words, when he virtually trans
ferred the government of this country from
the nobility, clergy, and gentry to the host
of electors he called into existence. Per
ceiving, when too late, the momentous con
sequences which must Inevitably flow from
his revolutionary but involuntary act, he
strove — after covering England with ridicule,
by placing on the head of its monarch that
fool's cap and beUs, an Asiatic Imperial
crown, and deluging Turkey with blood by

3o8 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
the hypocrisy and imbecility of his state-craft
— he as persistently as frantically strove to
revive the hideous policy of the past by
plunging this nation into a mad and iniqui
tous war in defence of Austrian and German
interests, in order to divert the mind of the
country from home affairs, and so to retain
in the hands of the privUeged classes that
complete and absolute control of the reins
of government which has been from time
immemorial their exclusive and unchallenged
birthright. To recapitulate. The astute and ambitious
Dutch Stadtholder who effected the Revolu
tion of 1688 was as King of England — In a
military sense at least — but an inglorious
Edward III. or Henry V., who disastrously
revived, after two centuries and a half of
almost uninterrupted peace, the national
animosities of England and France. In
different to the honour and interests of this
country, he recklessly sacrificed her blood
and treasure in defence of Holland. And
the Dutch and their alhes, who a few years
previously had stemmed the tide of French
conquest at Seneffe, at St. Omer, and at St.
Denis, beholding in England their quixotic
champion, naturaUy became lukewarm in their

Despotism of the Nobility, Clergy, &c. 309
own cause, and sluggishly supported their
new aUy in fighting their own battles. " Let
us see what sport these English buUdogs wiU
make ! " exclaimed Count Solmes derisively,
as, deaf to their cries for succour, he witnessed
the slaughter of Mackay and his raen at the
bloody fight of Steinkirk. In a word, Wilham
III. and the caste which crowned him initiated
a system of foreign policy which, under this
Dutch King and his German successors —
and with one memorable exception in Dutch
and German wars — had whitened a hundred
battle-fields with the bones of Englishraen,
whose every epitaph raight be : " Died Abner
as a fool dieth " — a policy, which rending the
English race and erapire in twain, has lost us
the New World, and called into existence the
only nation that can ever be our dangerous
rival — a nation whose embattled hosts in
civil strife numbered two million English-
speaking combatants. Finally a pohcy
whose simple history, Ulustrated with such
disastrous and wanton butcheries as Landen
and Malplaquet, Fontenoy and Lauffeld, Sara
toga and Yorktown, is at once the raost
terrible indictraent and strongest condemna
tion of that caste and ahen Court which,
usurping sovereign power, maintained their

3IG The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
usurpation in the life-blood of a confiding and
ingenuous people, whose interests they be
trayed, whose character they behed, and
whose empire they dismerabered. And such
is " the old traditional foreign policy " which
sorae of our statesmen are stiU proud to per
petuate. And the home policy of the nobility, clergy,
and gentry was as atrocious as their foreign
pohcy. Let us select a single incident frora
several of a tragic sort recorded by SmoUet
as an Illustration of its ferocity (a.D. 1714).
" One Bournois, a schoolmaster, who affirmed
that King George had no right to the crown,
was tried and scourged through the city, with
such severity, that in a few days he expired in
the utmost torture." One more fact, and I
have done. (19th June, 1720.) "John Mat
thews, aged about eighteen, was this day
executed at Tyburn, for, while an apprentice,
publishing a pohtical work." Indeed, in order
to Inspire an universal terror of their usurpa
tion and tyranny, they enacted a code of
English laws of the most barbarous and bloody
character. On our statute-book they dared
Inscribe sorae three hundred offences, great
and small — frora the stealing of five
shillings out of a shop, to crimes of the first

Despotism of the Nobility, Clergy, &c. 311
magnitude — to all of which they attached the
awful penalty of death. And everywhere
throughout the length and breadth of the
land, the gallows creaked and groaned with
the dangling corpses of the unhappy victims
of what the caste called " law and order."
And what was the character of our parha
mentary representation under this odious
domination ? The control of the House of
Lords and of our untitled territorial magnates
— extensive owners of what were cynically
called rotten, close, and pocket boroughs,
which they bought and sold Hke other mar
ketable property, and many of which had but
a nominal existence — over the Lower House,
was absolute and complete untU the Reform
BiU of 1832. The Duke of Norfolk was
represented in the House of Commons by
eleven members ; Lord Lonsdale by nine ;
Lord DarHngton by seven ; the Duke of Rut
land, the Marquis of Buckingham, and Lord
Carrington each by six ; w^hile the families of
Ponsonby, HiU, and Beresford returned sixty
members to the Irish Pariiament. In short, in
England and Wales eighty-seven peers returned
two hundred and eighteen merabers of parha
ment, and one hundred and thirty-seven more
were elected by ninety commoners, and sixteen

312 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
by the Government. In Scotland thirty-one of
its forty-five members were chosen by twenty-
one peers, and the remainder by fourteen com
moners. While of the one hundred represen
tatives of Ireland, fifty-one were sent to the
second branch of the legislature by thirty-six
peers, and twenty by nineteen comraoners.
Thus it appears that of the six hundred and
fifty-eight raembers ofthe House, four hundred
and eighty-seven were elected by nomination,
and only one hundred and seventy-one by in
dependent constituencies. But even in these
so-called independent constituencies, the suf
frage was generally so excessively narrow and
unequal — at the time of the American War of
Independence there were but one hundred
and sixty thousand electors in England, while
Scotland and Ireland had practically none at
all — that their representation also, by means
of unstinted bribery, coercion, and corruption,
was virtually in the hands of the great neigh
bouring landowners. Nay, more, even in the
very few great cities and commercial towns,
whose voters could not be bribed, coerced, or
corrupted, either by the landowners or the
Government, the popular candidate, with a
majority of votes, was often if not Invariably
prevented by the vilest of practices from se-

Despotism of the Nobility, Clergy, &c. 313
curing his seat. The late Lord Farnborough
assures us that, " If not defeated at the poll
by riots or open violence — or defrauded of his
votes by the partiality of the returning officer,
or the factious manoeuvres of his opponents —
he was ruined by the extravagant cost of his
victory. The poll was liable to be kept open
for forty days, entailing an enormous expense
upon the candidates, and prolific of bribery,
treating, and riots. During this period, the
pubHc-houses were thrown open, and drunken
ness and disorder prevailed in the streets and
at the hustings. Bands of hired ruffians —
.armed with bludgeons, and inflamed with
drink — paraded the public thoroughfares, in
timidating voters, and resisting their access to
the polling-places. Candidates, assaUed with
offensive and often dangerous missiles, braved
the penalties of the pillory, while their sup
porters were exposed to the fury of a drunken
mob." Indeed, at every period of our history
— If we except the glorious era of the Long
Parliament — the House of Commons repre
sented the descendants of our conquering
Norman aristocracy, and not the conquered
populations of the British Isles. Well might
the younger Pitt indignantly exclaim — in even
too great amplitude of phrase — on seeing his

314 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
strenuous efforts at political reform baffled by
a coalition of the Whig and Tory sections of
what was ever practically the one and indi
visible ruling caste, " This House is not the
representative of the people of Great Britain.
It is the representative of nominal boroughs,
of ruined and exterminated towns, of noble
families, of wealthy individuals, of foreign
potentates." And such was the monstrous
parliamentary hydra which enthroned itself in
1688, on the ruins ahke of the RepubHc and
of the legitimate Monarchy.
Still, the accession of WiUiam III. gave a
great impetus to the development of Puri
tanism, or rather to the sects to which it gave
birth, and which AngHcanism has somewhat
superciliously styled the Dissenting bodies.
Although they had been politically crushed,
owing to internal dissensions and the secession
frora their ranks of the Puritan nobility and
gentry on the death of Crorawell, the various
sects increased in numbers daily ; and the
accession of the Dutch Stadtholder— who
was a professed Calvlnist, and an advocate,
not only of religious toleration, but also of
the political equality of all sects — gave sorae
degree of importance to a large section of
the community, perhaps the largest numeri-

Despotism of the Nobility, Clergy, &c. 3 1 5
caUy, which, before and since the Common
wealth, had been relentlessly persecuted by
the governing powers.
In Scotland popular indignation at once
swept away episcopacy, which for a quarter
of a century had literally desolated that land
with fire and sword.
The Anglican regime, under the pressure
of necessity, now for the first time in its
history ungraciously conceded to Dissenters'
rehgious toleration ; not, it was kind enough
to inforra them, as a right, but as an indul
gence. The Dutch WiUiam desired that all
classes of the community should participate
in the government of the country, but his
masters ruled otherwise. The caste decided
to brand for ever as pohtical pariahs its late
conquerors ; and in subsequent years it per
sistently strove to revoke the trifling conces
sions which had been wrung frora it at the
Glorious Revolution. Anglicanism continued
to manifest the same evil, persecuting, in
tolerant spirit, which was inherent in the
institution ; and it even succeeded, in the
reign of Queen Anne, in passing the iniqui
tous Occasional Conformity and Schism Bills,
which again for a brief space crushed Dissent
beneath the iron heel of persecution. But

3i6 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
from 1 7 19, when these Acts were repealed, a
certain restricted and insolent toleration was
extended to all religious bodies, save the
Papists. Henceforth in large towns Dis
senters could assemble together for the
worship of God without fear of molestation ;
but in the rural districts they were still subject
to the grossest outrages. There the Church,
in league with ignorance, abetted and en
couraged the mob in acts of violence ; so
that small assemblages of Dissenters were
constantly liable to dispersion and brutal
raaltreatraent. Moreover, they were debarred
from serving their country in any but a menial
capacity, for the cabinet, the field, the bar —
in a word, every office of power, trust, and
emolument was in the hands of Churchmen,
and was esteemed an inheritance to which
they had an inalienable and prescriptive right.
Conscious that no Stuart Prince would
tolerate their monstrous usurpation of aU
power, or' pardon their Infamous betrayal of
the nation and King James, the nobUity,
clergy, and gentry supplemented the " Glo
rious Revolution " of 1688 by the Act of
Settlement of 1701, which, on the false pre
tences of liberty and religion, excluded from
sovereign power the legitimate successors of

Despotism of the Nobility f Clergy, &'c. 317
the Conqueror, branding the faraous Fitz
Alans forsooth as mere Pretenders, and in
stituted the so-caUed Protestant succession by
raising to the English throne those caricatures
of royalty, our buckram Kings of the House
of Hanover ; the best of whom, in striv
ing to subdue, with Gerraan serfs, the derao-
cratic offspring of the English founders of
Araerica, divided" by a sea of blood the two
great branches of our glorious race. Coarse,
ilHterate, and debauched, the heathen Welfs
of the Hanoverian Hne stand out — blood
stained, yet ridiculous — frora the pages of
our history, piUoried for ever by their political
crimes and social vices.
1 7 14-1885. — In spite of the forced indul
gence extended to Dissenters, the disastrous
and bloody era of the Welfs was in many
respects one of the darkest epochs in the
history of AngHcanism. And in no respect
does it appear more orainous and dark than
when viewed in its educational aspect. It
will be suggestive as well as instructive to
mark the striking contrast presented by
Puritanism and Anglicanism in the matter of
universal education. It is one of the dis
tinguishing characteristics respectively of the
Norman domination symbolized by Angli-

31 8 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
canism, and of the proper democracy of
England signalized by Dissent. Unlike the
Puritans — who imraediately after their arrival
in Araerica initiated their famous system of
free schools, which at once brought instruc
tion to every soul of the comraunity — the
Anglican Church ever strove to paralyze the
energies and stifle the nobler aspirations of
the people by systeraatlcally withholding
frora them the inestimable boon of mental
culture. Knowing its own history, and the
object and end of its existence, it justly
deemed ignorance its staunchest ally and
surest safeguard ; and naturally regarded the
masses — the many-headed beast it has been
the fashion to call them — as an enemy to be
distrusted and depressed, rather than a friend
to be enlightened and elevated. Wise in its
day and generation, it consistently sealed the
book of knowledge from the gaze of the
multitude ; for it was perfectly conscious that
a modicum of mental culture, sufficient to
have enabled them to appreciate a round,
unvarnished history of the origin and de
velopment of Anglicanism, would have alone
ahenated from it the sympathies of all men
whom social prejudices had not enlisted in its
service, or whose personal or political in-

Despotism of the Nobility, Clergy, &c. 319
terests were not bound up with Its existence.
And such has ever been this Church's re
pugnance to universal education and its
cupidity, that it has not hesitated to appro
priate to its own uses the ample revenues
which benevolent men for raany ages had
bequeathed to their country, with the express
object of promoting the spread of popular
education. The private endowments of
grammar and other charity schools which
had been entrusted to its guardianship were
found, even In our own times, to have been
diverted from the noble object of their founda
tion — in a word, to have been embezzled by
their spiritual administrators.
The political aspect of AngHcanism during
the same epoch must be depicted in equally
sombre colours. True to its own interests,
and to the interests of its masters, who feared
that a prolonged peace, by inducing a popular
examination of home policy, might endanger
their monopoly of political and sacerdotal
power, this Church sanctioned with its high
authority, when it did not actively encourage,
those wanton and iniquitous wars which
during the Georgian era dismembered our
glorious empire, deciraated its people, over
whelmed it with debt, and at one period

32G The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
menaced it with total ruin. The devoted
slave of the oligarchy and of its creature, an
alien Court, this Church could rank amongst
its great but not disinterested patrons the
German mistresses of our German kings.
And yet the second George — ungrateful to
the caste which permitted him to wage on
Gerraan soil, with British troops, for fifteen
years, two bloody and inglorious wars with
France — was especially fond of reviling his
sycophantic partisans, the prelates of the
Church of which he was the supreme
temporal head. For example, when Sher
lock, Bishop of Salisbury, wrote against
the Quakers' Rehef BiU, our coarse and
dissolute Defender of the Faith described the
Fathers of the Churqh as " a parcel of black-
coated, canting, hypocritical rascals." And
to the remonstrances of his Queen, who desired
hira to be less severe in his strictures on the
bishops, this royal punchinello — steeped to
the lips in British blood — is reported to have
rephed, " I ara sick to death of all this foolish
stuff, and wish with all ray heart that the devil
raay take aU your bishops, and the devil take
your rainister, and the devil take the Parlia
ment, and the devil take the whole Island,
provided I can get out of it and go to

Despotism of the Nobility, Clergy, &c. 321
Hanover." But notwithstanding this petu
lant outburst of royal sentiment, the foreign
king was powerless to harm the Church,
which had now attained the summit of its
material prosperity. It was in possession of
one-twelfth of the revenue of England, yet the
dignitaries of that Church, the priests who
officiated at her altars, the spiritual shepherds
of the poor and infirm of a suffering nation,
were — I speak advisedly — amongst the raost
unprincipled of mankind. When, in addition
to this charge, I assert without fear of con
tradiction, that hypocrisy, that simony, that
Infidehty, stalked unabashed through every
grade of that time-serving priesthood, I have
painted a picture of sacerdotal iniquity to
which the whole world scarcely affords a
parallel. Such were the antecedents of AngHcanism
until 1828, when the Test and Corporations
Acts were repealed, and the Cathohc Eman
cipation BiU was passed in the teeth of its
opposition. Then were the Dissenters com
pletely freed frora the Anglican yoke, frora a
tyranny over the conscience unexampled for
its duration and cold-blooded ferocity. But
the artificial and unjust distinctions and
privileges of a religious caste still remain to
Y

322 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
perpetuate and enforce, though less ostenta
tiously than of yore, the arrogance and politi
cal traditions of AngHcanism, and to create
an impassable gulf between the co-religionists
of Milton and Cromwell, and the disciples of
Laud and Charles I. ; or rather between the
democracy of England, and the ancient Nor
man domination, of which Anglicanism was
the offspring, and has ever been the spiritual
representative and champion.
At first sight it appears somewhat singular
that Enghshraen who are ordinarily so jealous
of the renown of their compatriots, should
suffer the deeds of the Pilgrims to perish In
oblivion, and that they should tolerate the
malignity of the calumniators, who have
systematicaUy vUified the heroes of the
Coramonwealth. But the strangeness of this
neglect and ingratitude is apparent rather
than real when we reflect that the Anglican
Church — together with the ancient Norman
domination — the persecutor of the Pilgrims,
the vanquished, but, in the very nature of
things, the eternal enemy of its Puritan
destroyers — is stiU, in name at least, trium
phant in our midst. That this Church, besides
being in the enjoyment of fabulous revenues,
is the main, I had almost said, the only avenue

Despotism of the Nobility, Clergy, dfc. 323
to all preferment, and that moreover re
taining almost exclusive possession of the
universities and aU public educational endow
ments, it is not only in a position to bribe,
coerce, or crush the trained intellect of the
country, but is also enabled to mould the
mind of that section of the community which
has hitherto governed us at its wUl. That
being a political rather than a religious
organization, it regards events from a purely
professional and secular standpoint, and im
pregnates all its instruction with an Anglican,
that is to say, an anti-Puritan leaven, ever
making its artificial Christianity subservient
to its political aims. Finally, that being
irabued with the principle which gave it
existence, and which constitutes its present
vitality, this Church believes self-interest to
be the cardinal and invariable raotor of
mankind, and is therefore incapable of ap
preciating the stern self-sacrificing faith of
the Puritans, whose motives it misrepresents,
whose reputation, it slanders, and whose
achievements It ignores.
And when, in our own day, the prelates of
this institution, with real or affected ignorance,
make arrogant and insolent allusions to what
they are pleased to call Dissent, it is time

324 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
that the descendants of the Puritans should
reraind their persecutors that we, in coraraon
with our glorious ancestors, repel their institu
tion, not as a rehgious sect, but as a pohtical
and anti-national organization, created and
subsidized by despotic raonarchs, and sub
sequently sustained by the governing oligar
chical caste for the maintenance and perpe
tuity of their respective tyrannies. We charge
them with having, in return for a lavish
bestowal of honours and wealth, systemati
caUy prostituted the Word of God Itself to
the political purposes of their royal and noble
patrons. And in common with the " Pilgrims,"
we denounce their ceremonies and dignities as
" monuments of idolatry," and deem the
Scriptures In their hands as " holy things in
the custody of the profane, the Ark of the
Lord in the hands of the Phihstines." We
are conscious that, but for disunion and cul
pable lukewarmness In the ranks of Dissent,
the existence of their monstrous institution to
our own times had been impossible — In spite
of its Jesuitical organization, its boundless
wealth, and its pohtical connections. But,
notwithstanding our shortcomings and our
derehctions of duty in the cause of political
truth, we believe we see the beginning of the

Despotism of the Nobility, Clergy, &c. 325
end of Anglicanism, which success alone has
rendered respectable and tolerable, and which
will faU, like its parent stem of Rome and Its
rejeton of Ireland, amidst the execrations
and contempt of mankind. And with Its
destruction we shall witness the complete
triumph of the glorious principles of inde
pendent Christian worship and national
sovereignty in combating which Anglican
ism has sacrificed hecatombs of victims.
Happily the political system, founded in
blood and rapine by the Norman Duke — which
since 1688 had degenerated into a vast and
permanent combination against the British
nation of the aristocracy and Church, headed
by their Dutch and German puppet kings —
has been shattered to pieces by legislative
victories more glorious and enduring than
Marston Moor and Naseby. And Its destruc
tion must speedily entail the dissolution
and final disappearance of the Conqueror's
throne. Then wUl for ever cease that
fatal influence which our German Court has
exercised since 1714 over the foreign pohcy
of England, an influence which in the past
lost us America and made us the cheap
defence of Germany against the French, and
which in the future might possibly involve us

326 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
StiU in the interests of Gerraany in perpetual
rivalry or hostility with her natural and
dreaded eneray Russia, twenty raiUions of
whose race the Germans and Austro-Germans
hold in brutal bondage.
MeanwhUe, it will be well to remind the
prelates that the descendants of the Puritans
h ave a history as well as they, but a history
free from the brand of persecution and the
taint of State patronage. The co-religionists
of the Protector Crorawell, of Harapden and
Blake, of MUton and Bunyan, of Vane and
Penn, and of a host of good as well as great
men, have nothing to desire in the matter of
mere earthly renown. To their galaxy of
iUustrious dead It would be difficult to find in
the world's annals worthy parallels. The
brightest page of England's history is but a
record of their achievements. Subverting the
ancient Norman domination, which for centu
ries had oppressed her, the Puritans, by their
genius and valour, made Republican England
the terror and wonder of the world. And their
persecuted ones, " whom nothing but the
wide ocean and the savage deserts of America
could hide and shelter from the fury of the
bishops," have increased and multiplied untU
they have become a great nation, perhaps at

Despotism of the Clergy, Nobility, &c. 327
this moment the greatest nation on earth, at
whose whisper the throne of MaximUian
vanished into thin air, and his body mouldered
into dust ; at whose command the legions of
France slunk, with hurried and fearful tread,
from American soU ; the moral effects of whose
might withered the laurels of Solferino and the
Malakoff, and shook to its very centre the
throne of the late crowned conspirator of the
TuUeries. WhUst I lament the narrow-minded obsti
nacy of an ahen king, and the tyrannical and
illegal acts of an oligarchy which destroyed
the unity of the Enghsh-speaklng race, and
cost us the most desirable land the sun looks
down upon, I rejoice none the less in Its pros
perity and might, for I cannot forget that its
people have sprung frora our own loins, that
they " Speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spoke — -the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held ; "
and that In spite of passing clouds and jarring
interests which the foreign element in America
embitters, envenoms, and often creates, I
firmly beheve — and I speak with a personal
knowledge of the country — that the heart of
the native born American nation is as our

328 The Pilgrims and the Anglican Church.
heart ; and that the nightly prayer of the first
American colonists, " God bless England, our
dear native land," finds to-day a responsive
echo in every Anglo-American breast. I be
lieve that the stiU'small EngHsh voice which
guides and controls the destinies of the Great
Republic will at all tiraes silence the clamours
of its naturalized but alien citizens, and aUay
the quickly irritated susceptibilities of its own
people ; and that all the clouds which may
lower upon the kindred nations wiU be " in
the deep bosom of the ocean buried." Finally,
I beheve that the sound, unfettered, EngHsh
comraon-sense of both countries will even
tually restore that unity to the English-speak
ing race which the political crimes of an
oligarchy destroyed, and that England — with
her mighty brood of nascent giant nations —
and Araerica, raarching hand-in-hand in the
forefront of civilization, will raise regenerate
and free the poor and oppressed masses of
mankind.

.THE END.

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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