legislation, and when a still more distinct and violent assault was seen to be approaching, the Archbishop wrote a letter to Selden, member of a committee for enquiry upon the subject, requesting that the "unfortunate canons" might be suffered to die quietly, without blemishing the Church, which had too many enemies both at home and abroad.1

The vote of the House of Commons administered a blow to Convocation from which it could not recover. That assembly, indeed, again appeared as the twin sister of the new Parliament. Representatives of the province of Canterbury met on the 3rd November, the day on which the Lords and Commons assembled. The usual formalities having been observed, a sermon preached, and a prolocutor chosen-Archbishop Laud addressed the clergy in Henry the Seventh's chapel, in a manner which shewed that he heard the sound of the brewing storm, and had sense enough to discern the impending danger. So had others of the assembly. Accordingly, some one proposed in the Lower House, that "they should endeavour according to the Levitical law to cover the pit which they had opened, and to prevent the designs of their adversaries by condemning the obnoxious canons." But the majority, not willing to be condemned till formally accused, heeded not this warning; yet the members avoided giving further provocation, and, feeble themselves, they only watched the proceedings of their parliamentary neighbours. When the resolution of the Commons was passed it paralyzed them. The Upper House did not meet again after Christmas, nor the Lower after the following February.2 The assembly of the Convocation of York had been prevented by the death of the Archbishop, and the new writ issued came to nothing.

Here we shall pause for a moment to watch other forces coming into play.

Laud' orks, vi. 589.

2 Lathbury's Hist. of Convocation, 267.

TWO

CHAPTER III.

WO ideas of Church reform evolved themselves: one already indicated, that of separating from simple primitive Episcopacy all prelatical assumptions,—and another, which amounted to a decided revolution in the Church, including the extinction of Episcopacy altogether. While the former rose out of reverence for the Reformation under Elizabeth, combined with disgust at the history of prelatical rule, the latter had a deeper and wider cause.

When Episcopacy strove to maintain itself in England, after the shock given to ecclesiastical power in the days of Henry VIII. and Edward VI., Presbyterianism made good its position at Geneva under Calvin, and at Edinburgh under Knox. The connexion between the two cities and the two Reformers, and between them both and our own country, everybody knows. The exiles who had found a home, not only on the shores of the beautiful Lake Leman, but also on the scarcely less beautiful banks of the Lake of Zurich, brought with them, when they returned home after the Marian persecution, strong Presbyterian predilections. Calvin, also, exercised a direct influence on some of the English Reformers; and the system of John Knox, in such close neighbourhood as the north of the Tweed, could not fail to affect those

who were studying the question, "what ought to be the Church of the future?"

Indications of Presbyterian sentiments in the England of Elizabeth are very numerous.1 They wrought within the Episcopal establishment without producing a severance. Cartwright was a Presbyterian. He contended for the abolition of archbishops, and archdeacons, and would retain only bishops or presbyters to preach the word and pray, and deacons to take care of the poor. Every Church, by which he meant a "certain flock," was to be governed by its own ministers and presbyters, and these were not to be created by civil authority, but chosen by popular election. The directory of government, found in the study of that eminent Puritan after his death, said to be composed by Travers, is in perfect harmony with this Presbyterian scheme. Certain clerical meetings, under the auspices of Cartwright and Travers, took a decided synodical shape.2 This element continued in the Church under the Stuarts, notwithstanding the efforts of bishops to extinguish it.3

Certain Puritans of a Presbyterian turn, formally separated themselves from the Establishment so early as 1567, and met together for Nonconformist worship in Plumber's Hall. An organized Presbytery appears at Wandsworth in 1572,-in the Channel Islands, where the Government of England could not reach it, the system was fully

1 See Letter to Bullinger by Sandys, 1573.-Zurich Letters, 294.

2 Fuller, ii. 504-5.

3 It frequently appears in the records of that period. There is a curious example in the introduction to the will of Humphrey Fen. -Cal. Dom., 1633-4, p. 468.

4 They claimed as precedents the

Protestants in Queen Mary's time, and the exiles at Geneva, that used a book framed by them there.Strype's Parker, i. 480.

There is at Horningsham, in Wiltshire, an old meeting-house, with a large stone in the end wall, bearing date 1566. When the stone was put there is not known, and

established in 1577; and Presbyterian classes may be traced in Cheshire and Lancashire, Warwick and Northampton, during the last few years of the Tudor dynasty. Organized Presbyterianism is seen but faintly in the early part of the seventeenth century, but Presbyterianism, as a sentiment within the Established Church, is distinctly visible. Nonconformity of another kind was also on the increase at this period. Churches of the Independent and Baptist order may be discovered in Tudor times, but they became more apparent and numerous in the days of the Stuarts. Their rise and progress will be afterwards

described.

How Puritanism glided into a state of separation, and the nonconformist in the Church became a dissenter outside its pale, is curiously illustrated in the Records of the Church assembling in Broadmead, Bristol. In those records is a story of a certain zealous lady of that city named Kelly.1 "She kept a grocer's shop in High Street, between the Builders' Inn and the High Cross," and that she might bear a testimony against superstitious observances, "she would keep open her shop on Christmas Day, and sit sewing in the face of the sun, and in the sight of all men." Afterwards, when she heard a clergyman she did not like at the parish church, "away she went forth before them all, and said she would hear no

whence it came I cannot learn, but the Rev. H. M. Gunn, of Warminster, informs me that, according to tradition, some Scotch Presbyterians, disciples of Knox, came over from Scotland to build Longleat House for Sir John Thynne, in 1566. The building went on for thirteen years, when Sir John died. They refused to attend the parish

church, and obtained a cottage in which to meet for Divine service, with a piece of land attached for a grave-yard. This house, Mr. Gunn says, turned into a chapel, has been preserved till now. Though originally a Presbyterian, it long since became an Independent place of worship.

1 Afterwards Mrs. Hazzard.

So

more, and never did." Puritan emigrants to New England embarked at Bristol, and would abide with Mrs. Hazzard "if they waited for a wind." Women actually sought to be confined in the parish of a Puritan clergyman, to avoid the ceremonies of "churching and crossing." "The consciences of the good people began to be very weary.' Then it pleased the Lord to stir up some few of the professors of this city to lead the way out of Babylon." "Five persons began to go further, and scrupled to hear common prayer, even four men and one woman." that in the year 1640, those five persons met together at Mrs. Hazzard's house, "at the upper end of Broad Street, in Bristol, and came to a holy resolution to separate from the worship of the world and times they lived in, and that they would go no more to it." In this case, we see how dissatisfaction with the Established Church gradually led to positive separation, and how extremely feeble, in some instances, was the commencement of organized dissent. But the spirit working in the way just indicated, slowly, and without much notice, came suddenly and boldly on the surface, soon after the Long Parliament had opened.

Though the incumbents of the metropolis were almost all High Churchmen, there were many Puritan lecturers in the city with strong Presbyterian sympathies, supported by wealthy citizens, and in high repute with the multitude. Amongst them, Dr. Cornelius Burgess is a very noticeable man-already mentioned as the fast-day

Records of the Baptist Church, Broadmead, Bristol, 10-18. See also Cal. Dom., 1634-5, p. 416, for arguments by Dr. Stoughton, on the duty of separation.

As women were active in promoting Puritanism, so they had been a century before in promoting Protestantism.-See numerous examples in Foxe's Book of Martyrs.