ORIGINAL RECORDS
OF
EARLY NONCONFORMITY
UNDER PERSECUTION ^ND INDULGENCE
VOL. III. HISTORICAL AND EXPOSITORY
ORIGINAL RECORDS
OF
EARLY NONCONFORMITY
UNDER PERSECUTION
AND INDULGENCE
TRANSCRIBED AND EDITED BY
PROFESSOR G. LYON TURNER, M.A.
VOL. III. HISTORICAL AND EXPOSITORY
T. FISHER UNWIN
LONDON LEIPSIC
ADELPHI TERRACE INSELSTRASSE 20
1914
PREFACE
THIS Third Volume is not a sequel, but an Introduction. I should like
to say more. In issuing it, I want it to be distinctly understood that
even for me it is not * the conclusion of the whole matter ' ; and that
for many I hope it may prove merely a new ' beginning.' Years of
work upon the materials presented in the First Volume have convinced
me that round each personal name, linked as it is in those ' Original
* Records ' with a place-name, or the names of several places, there
might be built up a story full of interest and stimulus if only local
records and local tradition could be made to yield their information.
Where that has been possible, I have found State Papers, Civic Records,
Lay Subsidy Rolls, Diocesan and Parochial Archives (specially those
which are consulted least viz., Churchwardens' Accounts and Vestry
Minutes) have often brought the home, the social life, the civic career,
the active ministry, and repeated * Sufferings ' of these early Non-
conformists to light, so that they have begun to live again. In a few
cases, something of what may be done in this field will be found
incidentally in the following pages <?.., in the accounts given of John
Hickes, Thomas Watson, Jeremy Holwey, Samuel Tomlins, Robert
Mascall as actively engaged in securing licences under the Indulgence
either for themselves or others. Perforce this has been possible only
with a very few. My hope is that these few may prove object-lessons
of what may be done by local research and individual interest in
scores, it may be hundreds, of the names which those * Original
4 Records ' contain.
My task in this volume has been a much humbler and more
restricted one. It has been to gather what information I could to set
the documents themselves in their historical environment : to show as
far as possible the origin and characteristics of each, and so to invest
them with a personal interest and give them a living personal signifi-
cance. Both with the Episcopal Returns, and with the Indulgence
vi Preface
Documents, much more may be accomplished with fuller knowledge.
What I have been able to bring together, however, is a beginning
which it is hoped will give them greater significance and value than
they can possibly possess to the reader who has not been prepared by
previous study to fit them more or less perfectly into their proper niches
in the history of the great Nonconformist movement. * Great,' I call
it, because I present these volumes to the public not as an * apologia,'
but as a tribute to the memory of these heroic men and women. How-
ever much or little of their theological opinions we may individually
share, and however far from their modes of life and thought and speech
we may have drifted in the development of the religious life of the
British people, is to me a matter of only secondary concern. What has
become the fixed and central thought in my own mind about them all,
and what I fain hope will prove the point of fascinating interest to
others in our day, is that in each of these men and women we find
convictions so deep and strong on the spirituality and freedom of
religious worship and ritual that they were prepared to suffer expulsion
from ' place ' and influence, severance in these matters from closest
friends and from society they prized, fine, imprisonment, excommunica-
tion, and exile, rather than use outward forms and phrases that to them
had a significance they could not accept, and which hurt their < tender
4 conscience.'
That others had been prepared to suffer for theirs does not lessen
the honour I am prepared to give to these, and that some among them
may have been willing to inflict what in changed times they were
now prepared to endure, does not make the role of persecutor less
hateful, or the policy of persecution less barbarous, unwise, and un-
Christian.
The notices of the Bishops who sent up their Returns to Lambeth,
and of the Nonconformists who left their applications or receipts
for licences at Whitehall, are alike slender. Space would have coun-
selled brevity, had not ignorance in many instances compelled it.
Further to expand, correct, and vivify these notices would repay those
in whom opportunity and ability unite to make it possible. What has
been done in handling the Addresses and Petitions to the King, in
tracing the fate of applications for Public Halls, and discovering why so
many ' derelict ' licences may still be seen in the Public Record Office,
of course, might have been done by anyone else, and quite possibly
by some with greater clearness, conciseness, and force. What I have
done, however, may at once save many labour they could ill bestow
Preface vii
upon documents, and stimulate others to do the thing better them-
selves.
The first two volumes had appeared only a few weeks when I learned
from Rev. John Stanley, F.R.Hist.S., of Longhope, that some years
ago he had discovered, in another volume among the Tenisonian MSS. in
Lambeth Palace Library, one of the missing Episcopal Returns made in
1669 that, namely, sent up to Sheldon by the Bishop of Oxford. With
a generous courtesy, of which I here make public and grateful acknow-
ledgment, he forwarded me a careful transcript of it, with permission to
make what use of it I pleased. I have reproduced it at the end of this
volume in form exactly uniform with those reproduced in Volume I.
from Volume 639 of the Tenisonian manuscripts.
The Bishop who sent it in was the third in succession who had
occupied the See since the Restoration. Robert Skinner was the first,
having exercised Episcopal functions during the Interregnum, and
being restored to the See in 1660; William Paul was the second,
appointed only in 1663 (the year after the Act of Uniformity was
passed) ; Walter Blandford followed him in 1665, and held the See
till the year (1671) preceding Charles's Declaration of Indulgence, when,
on Blandford's translation to Worcester, the Hon. Nathaniel Crewe
took his place, the first bishop to sit in Parliament as bishop, and,
later (from 1697), a ^ so as inheriting a peerage. It was therefore by
Walter Blandford that this Return was made.
In form it is regular, detailed and full. The places in which
Conventicles are reported are distributed fairly evenly over the different
parts of the county ; but it is a singular and striking fact that none
are reported in Oxford City itself, or in the villages immediately
adjacent.
Yet three years later, licences are freely asked for and secured for
the Cathedral City, and for the villages of Wolvercut, Worton, and
Sandford quite near to it. The places reported in 1672 arrange them-
selves in three groups: (i) About Banbury and Deddington in the
North ; (2) about Woodstock and Witney to the West ; and (3)
along the Buckinghamshire border from Thame and Watlington to
Henley-upon-Thames.
Of the Denominations reported, as usual, the Presbyterians are the
most numerous ; but the Quaker meetings are numerous too. Con-
gregationalists are separately reported only once, and that in Chipping-
Norton ; being generally associated with either Presbyterians, or Baptists
* mixt.' They are always called * Independents,' The purely Baptist
viii Preface
Conventicles are few, and it is noteworthy that some of these are described
as Seventh-day Baptists, * Sabbatarians, who observe Saturday.'
One point is characteristic of Blandford's report in common with
those from Dr. Glemham of St. Asaph's, Francis Lloyd of Llandaff,
and Hacket of Lichfield. He draws special attention to the military
element in the Nonconformists of Oxford County. Of the two
Conventicles which he reports at Henley-on-Thames, the one of
' Quakers,' and the other of * all other sorts of Sectaries but chiefly
4 Presbyterian,* he says : * The principal Frequenters & promoters of
' both these Meetings are such as were officers & soldiers in y e Parlia-
4 ment Army.' Of the Anabaptist Conventicle at Hooke Norton, he
says : The ' Leading persons ' were * such as were Soldiers under
4 Lambert ' ; while he notes the mixed Conventicle at Chadlington was
1 held in the house of Robert Clements, an old Anabaptisticall Soldier ' ;
while, among the * Principal abettors ' of the Quaker Conventicle at
Tadmerton, he mentions specially * Benjamin Ward, a Quarter Master
* in Cromwell's Army.'
In noticing the Teachers who were ejected clergymen there is a
notable absence of the strain of contempt characteristic of Seth Ward
and some of the other bishops. He refers to them four times as * Non-
' conformist Ministers ' ; only once as * one so-and-so,' and then it is
of * one Dunce an itinerant Nonconformist.' In speaking of the Ana-
baptist Teachers, however, there is no doubt he likes to dwell on their
secular occupation, speaking of * Stamp a Brazier of Abingdon,' a
Sabbatarian teacher at Worborough ; ' William Duggrove, Tobacco
c Cutter'; < John Tomkins, Bottle Maker'; 'John Combes, Shoe-
4 maker,' and 'one Coombes, a Miller,' probably his brother, as they are
both of Abingdon.
The numbers frequenting the Conventicles he rarely omits to
mention. The two Conventicles at Watlington, and the Quaker
meeting at Sibbord Gore, are the only instances. Nor does he seek to
belittle them. Several he estimates at numbers hovering about the figure
50 five below and one or two above ; three he puts at about 100 the
Baptists of Wilcot and Worborough, and the Quakers at Brize Norton ;
and four he reports as of 200 all mixed Conventicles, at Adderbury,
Bicester, Coggs (close to Witney), and Thame.
In drawing out a Summary of the places arranged topographically, I
first thought of making it separate from that already printed in Vol. II.,
pp. 826-830. On second thoughts, however, it appeared a more useful
and practical arrangement to draw up a Summary which would include
Preface ix
the references to those licensed under the Indulgence (already given in
Vol. II.) as well as those reported in Blandford's Return, thus making
the new Summary uniform with those given in my Classified Summary
in Vol. II. This I have done, making it Appendix II.
For a little, I was * at a stand ' as to how to formulate my references.
Referring to the transcript of Vol. 639, I found that between the
Returns from Norwich, covering R. 226 to R. 231 inclusive, and
that from Sarum commencing at R. 236, the leaves R. 232, 233, 234,
and 235 were left blank. In 639 the Returns from the several Dioceses
are arranged alphabetically, and two of the missing Returns have initials
between * N ' and ' S ' viz., Oxford and Rochester. In the absence
of any trace of the Return from Rochester, therefore, I have divided the
Return from Oxford between these four pages ; assigning the first ten
Conventicles to R. 232, the next eleven to R. 233 and 233/>, the
next two to R. 234, and the last four to R. 235. The sections vary
considerably in length, but I have so divided them to present them in
geographical groups.
To the Rev. John Stanley, therefore, all students of this period are
deeply in debt for the recovery of these Oxford Returns and the
addition of this Original Document to those presented in the first
part of Vol. I.
I must tender my thanks, too, to various correspondents who have
pointed out errors in the text and arrangements of Vol. II. Many of
them are due to carelessness in revision of proofs. These I give
separately in Appendix IV.
Many more have arisen from the attempt to arrange all the personal
names under denominational headings. In many cases both in the
Episcopal Returns and in the Indulgence Documents the denomination
of the Conventicle and Conventiclers reported in the one, and of the
person licensed, or for whom a licence was sought in the other, is not
stated. I now see that it would have been wiser to keep a section in
each County for these, leaving it for the student by further research to
discover the sect to which each belonged. In my desire to make the
Classified Summary as definite and complete as possible, however, I
assigned each and all to one of the four chief denominations (Presby-
terian, Congregational, Baptist, and Quaker) on the best grounds I
could find. In some cases I am satisfied with the correctness of
my classification, chiefly where some person or persons frequenting
the Conventicles (reported in the Episcopal Returns), whose denomi-
nation is not there designated, have their denomination definitely
Preface
assigned in the Indulgence documents ; but, in many, the grounds I relied
upon in assigning the denomination were, I own, very inconclusive even
to myself.
In the Episcopal Returns, for instance, I have allowed my choice of
sect to be determined largely by that of closely neighbouring Conventicles,
and in the Licence entries by the denomination named in the entry
immediately preceding or following it. In many others, too, I confess to
ranging many with the Presbyterians, simply because Presbyterians were
almost everywhere in an overwhelming preponderance of numbers ; and
I assumed that those who were Congregationalists, Baptists, or Quakers,
would be generally known as such, or would be almost certain to
proclaim their denomination, whereas the moderate 'Presbyterians'
would not be so anxious or so likely to name themselves.
The result is, that I have discovered many false assignments of this
kind. The greater number of them have been Baptists, and for the
corrections of my mistakes in this respect I am indebted almost wholly
to Dr. Whitley of Preston, Lanes (Secretary of the Baptist Historical
Society). I suppose no man living has such detailed and accurate
knowledge of early Baptist history, and I am glad to say that he has
gone most carefully through the whole of my Classified Summary in
the light of the enormous mass of information he has accumulated of the
Baptists of those early days, and has been good enough to communicate
to me the result of his examination with express permission to publish
them in this volume. I append them entire in Appendix III. I should
have been glad of similar corrections from experts in the history of any
other of the great denominations, but I have not received them.
In my Preface to Vols I. and II. I was glad to acknowledge the
'kindly offices' and 'unfailing courtesy' of Mr. S. W. Kershaw,
then Librarian at Lambeth Palace. I must take this opportunity of
expressing my gratitude to his successor, Rev. Claude Jenkins. It
was through his assiduous search among the Sheldon papers that I
have been able to present to my readers a transcript of the licence
issued by Sheldon to Nicholas Butler to * practise the art of medicine '
(p. 162). Quite recently, Mr. Jenkins tells me, he has come upon ' his
actual subscription, with his autograph.' He adds : ' It is rather
' amusing, for the clerk has assumed that he is intending to subscribe for
' another purpose, and has begun with (in Latin) " I Nicholas Butler,
' " being about to be admitted into the sacred order of Deacon," and then,
4 no doubt in response to a protest, has crossed it out and begun again
' properly.' Further, in response to an enquiry, I addressed him as to
Preface xi
the summary scheme entitled 'Religious Census, 1676. Account of
' the Province of Canterbury,' referred to and commented on in pp. 140-
144, and reproduced on p. 142, he tells me that it was sent to his
predecessor, Mr. Kershaw, about 1872, by a Mr. Robinson. So that
the monogram reproduced by me on pp. 140 and 142 was probably
Mr. Robinson's ; and the full name of our authority for the accuracy of
the transcript was John or James Robinson.
One explanation I must make which, by the historical student, will,
I hope, be accepted as an apology. Throughout this work in the
Classified Summary, as well as in this Third Volume all references to
' Calamy ' are, strictly speaking, not to the original Calamy, but to the
Second Edition of * The Nonconformist's Memorial . . . originally
4 written by Edmund Calamy, D.D. ; Abridged, Corrected, and
4 Methodized ... by Samuel Palmer . . .' in three volumes, published
in London 1802-3. The true Calamy is to be found in his < Abridgment,'
1702; his 'Abridgement,' 1713, 2 d volume; and his 'Continuation,'
1727, 2 vols. The British Museum catalogue has misled the
unwary by entering Calamy's work under c Baxter,' and by entering
Palmer's work under ' Calamy.' It is true there are cross references.
Yet only Palmer's second edition is placed on the Reference shelves, and
in the ' Reading Room ' catalogue this is not entered under * Palmer '
at all, but only under ' Calamy.'
I cannot close this Preface without adding my special and grateful
acknowledgments of the kindly welcome given to Vols. I. and II., and
of the valuable help given me in the preparation of this Third Volume.
The notices of the former which appeared in the journals and reviews
were, almost without exception, sympathetic and appreciative ; and
letters addressed to me by co-workers in this field of historical research
were more encouraging still.
In the preparation of this volume, however, I cannot but speak with
special gratitude of the critical help and suggestions of two personal
friends. The first rough drafts of these sheets received the patient and
able revision of Rev. A. M. Perkins of Midhurst, whose gifts and learn-
ing are not known as widely as they deserve to be ; and the whole of
the proof-sheets have passed under the keen eye of Rev. Alexander
Gordon, M.A., formerly Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History at Manchester
University. On many points he freely communicated to me much
valuable information ; and if these pages do not present many slips in
detail, nor many obvious defects in style, it is partly due to his watchful
criticism and his careful scrutiny.
xii Prefc
ace
I send them forth, with no vain hope that they can secure much
attention from * the general reader,' hut with a strong desire that they
may be found to contain for the lover of Nonconformist antiquities, and
the student of early Nonconformist history, fresh light on some of its
less known but germinal episodes, and new inspiration for deeper and
wider historical research.
G. LYON TURNER.
CONTENTS OF VOL. Ill
PART I. GENERAL AND PREFATORY
CHAPTER PAI;E
I. 'ORIGINAL RECORDS': WHAT AND WHERE THEY ARE ... ... 3
II. THEIR FORM AND CHARACTER ... ... ... ... ... 8
1. EPISCOPAL RETURNS ... ... ... ... ... 8
2. INDULGENCE DOCUMENTS ... ... ... ... ... 14
III. THEIR HISTORICAL SETTING, AS OF ' EARLY NONCONFORMITY'... 20
IV. THEIR HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE ... ... ... ... 25
PART II. DETAILED AND EXPOSITORY
SECTION I. EPISCOPAL RETURNS
I. THE EPISCOPAL RETURNS AS RECORDS OF NONCONFORMITY UNDER
PERSECUTION ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 35
II. THE EPISCOPAL RETURNS OF 1665 ... ... ... ... 59
III. THE EPISCOPAL RETURNS OF 1669 ... ... ... ... 69
IV. THE EPISCOPAL RETURNS OF 1676 ... ... ... ... 140
SECTION II. INDULGENCE DOCUMENTS
I. WHAT BROUGHT THEM INTO BEING: *THK DECLARATION OF
INDULGENCE' ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 152
II. THE MEN WHO MOULDED THE SCHEME FOR ITS WORKING ... 160
1. DR. NICHOLAS BUTLER ... ... ... ... ... 160
2. COLONEL THOMAS BLOOD ... ... ... ... 218
III. THE COMPLETED SCHEME AS ACTUALLY WORKED ... ... 246
1. WHITEHALL: ITS HEADQUARTERS AND STAFF ... ... 246
2. How THE LICENCES WERE OBTAINED ... ... ... 274
xiii
xiv Contents of Vol. Ill
CHAPTER |. A f.K
IV. THE MEN WHO ACTUALLY OBTAINED THEM ... ... ... 283
1. FOR THEMSELVES ... ... ... ... ... 283
2. FOR OTHERS (LICENCE AGENTS) 375
(i.) Ejected Ministers 375
(ii.) Laymen (a) In Groups ; (If) Miscellaneous, in
Alphabetical Order 415
(iii.) John Hickes ... ... ... ... ... 578
and James Innes junior ... ... ... 618
V. ADDRESSES AND PETITIONS ... ... ... ... ... 631
VI. HALLS AND PUBLIC BUILDINGS : FATE OF APPLICATIONS FOR THEIR
LICENCE ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 648
VII. LICENCES MADE OUT, BUT LEFT AT WHITEHALL... ... ... 685
VIII. HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LICENCE DOCUMENTS FOR THE
SEVERAL DENOMINATIONS OF NONCONFORMISTS ... ... 709
1. OF THEIR DATES ... ... ... ... ... 710
2. OF THEIR NUMBERS ... ... ... ... ... 714
SECTION III. BOTH EPISCOPAL RETURNS AND INDULGENCE
DOCUMENTS
I. WIDOWS MENTIONED IN THEM ... .,. ... ... ... 74!
II. GENTRY MENTIONED IN THEM ... ... ... ... ... 758
III. THEIR UNITED TESTIMONY AS TO THE STRENGTH AND DISTRIBUTION
OF NONCONFORMITY ... ... ... ... ... ... 796
APPENDIX L: EPISCOPAL RETURN FOR OXFORD ... ... ... 823
APPENDIX II.: CLASSIFIED SUMMARY (OXFORD)... ... ... 829
APPENDIX III.: ASSIGNMENTS OF DENOMINATION IN VOL. II. ... 837
APPENDIX IV.: ERRATA IN VOLS. I. AND II. ... ... ... 843
INDEX 86 i
ERRATA TO VOL. III.
I' AGE
26, line 8 from top : ' thee xecution ' should read * the execution.'
89, line 10 from bottom : 'Gonge' should read ' Gouge.'
92, line 10 from bottom : ' Banwell ' should read ' Bunwell.'
94, first line : * ladie swho ' should read * ladies who.'
1 86, line 14 from top : between * this ' and ' most ' insert ' was.'
230, last line : ' and ' should read ' is.'
248, first line of note * : (51) should read (15).
273, line 17 from bottom ; (? 197c) should read in line above between 321 and
(199).
288, line 2 from bottom : * Cawthorpe ' should read 'Cawthorne.'
309, line 3 from bottom : * Ash ' should read * Ashe.'
315, note *, line 2 from bottom : * 7 ' should read ' 73.'
321, line 19 from bottom : after 'Calamy' insert '(iii. 381).'
line 16 from bottom: between 'M r ' and 'Clarkson' read 'David '; and
after 'Clarkson' insert (Cal. iii. 305, 306).
322, line 22 from bottom : for ' W. M.' read ' Walter Marshall.'
338, line 6 from top : 'I' should read 't.'
348, line 2 from bottom of text : space between * Innes ' and 'junior.'
352, last line : * then ' should read them.'
366, line 17 from bottom : ' Ennal ' should read ' Emral.'
405, line 14 from top : * Browne ' should read ' Brown.
429, line 3 from top : ' Ovey ' should read ' Ovy.'
474, line u from bottom : * Milcombe' should read 'Melcombe.'
487, last line but one of text : ' with ' should read ' on.'
510, line 21 from bottom : ' Wortligtonn ' should read ' Wortlington.'
515, line 2 from top : ' great ' should read 'greate.'
536, line 2 from top : 'Recfor ' should read ' Rector.'
546, line 20 from bottom : after * influence ' delete ' and.'
560, line 8 from bottom : * Uffeulme' should read-* Uffculme.'
571, line 14 from bottom : 'Ottic 3 should read 'Ottie.'
578, line i $ from bottom : * agency ' should'read ' agency.'
581, line 6 from bottom: * Plymouth ' should read ' Portsmouth.'
597, first line : ' R.' should read ' Samuel.'
635, line 22 from bottom: delete comma after * Batheaston ' and insert comma
after ' Bathford.'
657, line 21 from bottom and 658, line 17 from bottom: 'James' before
' Bradshaw' should read 'John.'
678, line 15 from top : 'Champlin' should read ' Complin.'
720 (Table) : column headed ' T,' line 3 from bottom : (80) 77 should read (77) 80 ;
column headed ' Licences ' line 3 from bottom : 174 should read
177.
771, line 21 from top : ' Bow' should read 'Cow.'
786, line 10 from top : ' Stregglethorpe ' should read ' Stragglethorpe.'
787, line 7 from top : 'John Nelthorpe ' should read ' Richard Nelthorpe.'
798, line 3 from bottom : 'William Oliver' should read 'John Oliver.'
8 10, line 16 from bottom : ' Boeton ' should read ' Bocton.'
PART I
GENERAL AND PREFATORY
THROUGHOUT this Volume, as in Vols. I. and II., the following symbols
are used:
R for Episcopal Returns.
320 for S. P. Dom. Car. II. 320.
321 for S. P. Dom. Car. II. 321.
B for S. P. Dom. E. B. 27.
E for S. P. Dom. E. B. 38A.
I for S. P. Dom. E. B. 388.
PART I
GENERAL AND PREFATORY
CHAPTER I
'ORIGINAL RECORDS': WHAT AND WHERE
THEY ARE
THE ' Records ' herewith published in printed form consist of two sets
of documents preserved in MS. ; the one in the Library of Lambeth
Palace, and the other in the Public Record Office, Chancery Lane,
London.
These documents are 'original' in a two-fold sense (i) they are
not copies of some older text ; and (2) they are contemporary with the
persons and events to which they refer. They have the special value,
therefore, of being 'first hand' authorities on the subjects with which
they deal. They are now presented in printed form, that they may be
used by those who are unable to consult the manuscripts themselves.
Though fragments, or selected sections of both sets, have been published
in historical journals, or embodied in monographs, they now appear for
the first time complete.
The first set are the Episcopal Returns made by order of the Primate
in the three years 1665, 1669, and 1676, and are part only of the contents
of Volume 639 of the Codices Tenisoniani of the Lambeth Palace
Library.* These are produced in printed form in pp. I to 191 of Vol. I.
The second set are the various State Papers directly connected with
the Issue of Licences under the Declaration of Indulgence published
by Charles II. in 1672. These are produced in printed form in
pp. 195 to 623 of the same volume.
Though all the documents thus reproduced are ' original ' in the
two senses described above, they are not all equally ' original ' in a
third sense of that word.
The documents loosely described as Episcopal Returns are not the
actual Reports or Returns which were sent up to Lambeth by the
various clerical and ecclesiastical authorities who made them. They
are only precis of those Returns drawn up in columnar form by some
official delegated to that work by the Archbishop of Canterbury.! So
* The contents of that volume are fully given in a note at the end of this chapter,
t The proof of this will be found in detail in Chapter II. of this first part.
General and Prefatory
that though we have here in printed form the actual or original pr6cis of
the Archiepiscopal official, we have not the * original ' Returns which
were therein condensed.
The manuscript documents thus given are therefore all 'auto-
graphs,' and, as such, have been reproduced as closely as possible.
Vagaries of spelling and punctuation, contractions, and even palpable
errors, are here repeated, so that the ' Original Record ' may be before
the student, in a form reproducing it as faithfully and accurately as
printers' type can reproduce human handwriting. Of course, the
Editor cannot hope to have avoided all mistakes ; and some peculiarities
in the script it has been found impossible, or at least impracticable, to
reproduce. But in many cases special type has been made for this
work, and every effort has been taken to ensure accuracy.
One thing, of course, could not be presented to the reader, except
by photographic reproduction a process altogether too costly to be
contemplated. I mean the peculiarities of the different handwritings in
different parts of the documents. But these peculiarities are of special
interest only in those cases wherein the writers were men of note.
The precis of the Episcopal Returns are all in one handwriting, but the
personality of the Lambeth official who drew them out is not known,
and if known would probably not be of any special interest.
Of the State Papers connected with the issue of Licences under
Charles's Indulgence, the handwriting of some sections is of very much
greater interest than that of others. These Licence-documents consist
in part or whole of three Entry Books, and two Volumes, or
Albums, which are printed entire. The Entry Books were ' written
up ' by clerks in the offices of the two principal Secretaries of State ;
and it would be difficult for anyone to work himself into any passion of
curiosity to know the calligraphic peculiarities of this purely clerical work.
But the Volumes, or Albums, which are here reproduced fall into an
entirely different category. In these we have the actual memoranda
of application for licences, or of the acknowledgment of their receipt,,
written by those who desired, and by those who secured, the Royal
Indulgence licences, as well as many holograph letters of men who took
a prominent part in arranging this Licence business. And to have
reproduced these by photographic process would doubtless have added
vastly to the interest of this publication. That, however, was out of the
question. To gain that satisfaction the student must go to the Record
Office and personally inspect the original MSS.
The Entry Books are: S. P. Dom. E. B., No. 27, S. P. Dom.
E. B., No. 38A, and S. P. Dom. E. B., No. 383 ; and for the contents
of these, as far as they are here 'published,' the Editor assures the
student he may feel that on pp. 413-418, pp. 419-585, and pp. 586-623
respectively of Vol. I., he has on the printed page all that the MS.
itself would give him.
The letters and memoranda, on the other hand, are contained in
S. P. Dom. Car II. 320, and S. P. Dom. Car. II. 321 ; and these have
been reproduced as nearly as printing type can do so on pp. I9
and on pp. 300-409 respectively.
c Original Records '
In these two volumes, or albums, we have no less than 685 separate
documents, which vary much in historic value ; but some of them possess
high interest.
There are a few licences which were never taken away from
Whitehall, and are therefore still preserved at the Record Office, and
reproduced in these columns. In these, of course, we have autograph
signatures of Charles II. and of Lord Arlington. We have many
specimens of the minute scribblings, and one or two of the larger official
style of Sir Joseph Williamson, the Under-Secretary of State. We
have a considerable and most significant correspondence of Dr. Nicholas
Butler, in an execrable and almost illegible script, mainly directed to
Sir Joseph, though one or two of the letters are addressed direct to his
chief, Lord Arlington.
We have two or three specimens of the small, neat handwriting
of James Innes, senior ; not unlike the cramped but scholarlike hand-
writing of Richard Steele, the close friend of Philip Henry (Matthew
Henry's father), which is to be seen in a score or so of these licence-
memoranda. What greets us most frequently is the large, flowing,
even, and beautifully clear handwriting of John Hickes of Saltash and
Kingsbridge, and of James Innes junior, both models of penmanship,
and perfectly adapted to its purpose of presenting the claims to licences
of the many who could not come to Whitehall to apply in person for
them. The first is a living witness of the educated boldness of a man
whose life-story is a romance, and whose death is a tragedy ; and the
second testifies to the tireless assiduity of one who seemed to pose as
4 universal provider ' of licences for all who wanted them.
Nor could we have a more startling contrast, nor one more ex-
pressive of his wild, adventurous career, than what we see in the loose
vigour and careless spelling of the memoranda put in by Thomas
Blood, of * Crown jewels' fame the hard fighter, the skilful plotter,
and (it must in all fairness be added) the restless advocate of wronged
claims, whether his own or those of others. Here, too, we have
precious fragments from the hand of many of our Puritan heroes ;
ejected ministers like Francis Holcroft of Cambridge, Isaac Chancy of
Andover, Joshua Churchill of Dorchester, Robert Collins of Ottery
St. Mary, Stephen Hughes and Daniel Higgs of Swansea, and Thomas
Watson of St. Stephen's, Walbrook, London. Nor should we fail
specially to mention the memoranda of Thomas Taylor, the friend of
Bunyan, in one of which the handwriting so strongly resembles that
of his friend that so high an authority as Dr. John Brown, Bunyan's
biographer, does not hesitate to claim for 321 (58) that it is an auto-
graph of the Immortal Dreamer himself. With the exception of the
last, every one of these interesting fragments bears the signature of the
writer, so that there is no question as to who wrote them.
Unfortunately, however, a very large proportion of these memoranda
is unsigned. Repeated study of these documents, and careful com-
parison, has enabled the Editor to identify the authors of many of them,
and in brief notes enclosed in brackets he has concisely indicated his con-
clusions. There is room, of course, for divergence of opinion as to
General and Prefatory
these hazarded identifications ; and there is room, also, for much
further research in this direction.
Indeed, it would be a very great satisfaction to the Editor if the
publication of these documents were to stimulate interested experts to
ascertain the authors of many where the handwriting is remarkable and
suggestive, such as 321 (272), or of groups such as (42, 43, 106, and
107) in 320 ; (74 and 76), (108 and 109), (248 and 248 i),' (259, 260)
in the same volume ; and of (24, 25), (352, 353, and 354) in 321.
NOTE TO PART I., CHAPTER I.
The contents of Vol. 639 of the 'Codices Tenisoniani ' are so varied in
their character and of such interest that I here present a detailed analysis
of the whole.
1. (Pp. 1-85.) The Lands and Revenues of Cathedral Churches and
Colleges.
2. (Pp. 86-138.) A Catalogue of all the Furniture of the King's Palace.
[The Editor adds : ' I suppose it was King James I.']
*3. (Pp. 139-319.) Part of the Episcopal Returns.
(i.) (Pp. 139-299.) Returns for 1669 and 1676.
(ii.) (Pp. 300-303^.) 1665. Returns for St. Asaph.
'Hi.) (Pp. 304-308.) 1665. Returns for Exeter.
) (Pp. 310-319.) 1665. Returns for Bristol.
4. (Pp. 319-330.) Returns of Ordinations in various Dioceses from 1666-
1670.
(i.) (Pp. 319-320.) From Xmas, 1667 Xmas, 1668: St. David's
(signed Guliel. Menevensis).
(ii.) (Pp. 321-324.) From Xmas, 1669 Xmas, 1670: St. David's
(extracted from the Archives, Ap. I, 1671).
(iii.) (Pp. 325-326.) From Xmas, 1666 Xmas, 1667: St. David's.
(iv.) (Pp. 327-328.) From Xmas, 1668 Xmas, 1669: St. David's
(extracted Ap. 2, 1670).
(v.) (Pp. 329-330.) At Brecon, 19 Sept., 1669.
5. (Pp. 331 336^.) Bishop of St. David's * Answeres.'
(i.) (P. 331.) To the First Article concerning Ordinacon from
Xmas, 1664, to Xmas, 1665.
(ii.) (Pp. 332-335.) To the Second Article concerning Pluralities
and their Curates.
(iii.) (P. 335.) To the Third Article concerning Lectures and
Lecturers.
[' I answere there is noe Lecture nor Lecture 1 " allowed by
mee in this Dioecess neyther doe I know of or had any
complaints of any/]
To the fowerth Article concerning Schoolemasters
and Instructers of youth. ['All well-affected &c.']
(iv.) (P. 336^.) To the 5 Article concerning Practisers of Physicke.
[Three : all < well affected.']
*6. (Pp. 336^-338.) To the 6. Article concerning NonConformist Ministers.
c Original Records '
(Pp. 339-34L) Blank -
7. (Pp. 341-345.) Benefices in the Bishop of London's Patronage or gift.
(i.) (Pp. 341-342.) Benefices in y e BP of Londons Patronage out of
y e Diocesse of London,
(ii.) (Pp. 343-344.) A note of all such benefices as ar in my L d
Bpp of Londons guift.
(iii.) (P. 345.) Majora beneficia in Civitate Londin.
8. (Pp. 346-353.) The Certificate of Edward Reynolds Clerk ArchDeacon
of Norff w th in the Diocesse of Norw ch returned unto the right
Reverend Father in God Edward Lord Bishop of Norwich unto the
Orders & Instruccons of the most reverend Father in God Gilbert
Lord ArchBishop of Canterbury his Grace &c. as followeth viz*
Concerning Ordinacons Pluralities.
9. (Pp. 355-389.) Returns made by His Majesty's Order of the Hospitals
in England and Wales in 1665.
(i.) (Pp. 356-357.) By Bp. of St. Asaph's.
(ii.) (Pp. 358-362.) Bp. of Bangor.
(iii.) (Pp. 363-367.) By Bp. of Carlisle,
(iv.) (P. 368.) Bpp. of St. Davids and St. Asaph.
(v.) (Pp. 370-377.) Bp. of Durham,
(vi.) (Pp. 378-383.) Bp. of Ely.
(vii.) (Pp. 384-389.) Bp. of Exeter.
10. (Pp. 390-395.) A list of persons Ordained at Exeter from Sep. 2, 1662,
to Sep. 24, 1665.
*n. (Pp. 396-41 7^.) Return of Bp. of Exeter in 1665 of Hospitals, Pluralities,
Scholemasters, Lecturers, Physicians.
Of this Return only portions are reproduced.
12. (Pp. 419-436.) Return of Hospitals {continued from 9).
(viii.) (Pp. 419-425.) By Bp. of Lincolne.
(ix.) (Pp. 425-426.) By Bp. of Norwich,
(x.) (Pp. 427-429.) By Bp. of Peterborough [429. Rutland],
(xi.) (430-436.) By Bp. of Worcester.
*I3. (Pp. 437-438.) Summary of Bp. of Exeter's Full Report.
14. (Pp. 438-445.) Petition re Proposals of Reconciliation and Compre-
hension.
15. (P. 446.) Addition to Return of Hospitals.
(xii.) (P. 446.) Report of St. Magdalen Hospital by Bawtrce in
County of Nottingham.
N.B. The portions marked with an * are those reproduced in the first
part of Vol. I.
8 General and Prefatory
CHAPTER II
THEIR FORM AND CHARACTER
THE first chapter has given a general outline of the documents. It is
now necessary to fill in the outline.
I. THE EPISCOPAL RETURNS.
These are extracts from Vol. 639 of the Manuscript Department of
the Lambeth Palace Library, the full contents of which are described in
the note appended to that chapter. The volume contains 416 leaves,
which are paginated only on one side that which lies to the right hand
when the book is open. [The left-hand page I always refer to as the
back ('') of the previous page.] So that it contains 832 folio pages.
I have transcribed only those which refer to Nonconformists, giving
reports (i) of the whereabouts and attitude of their ministers in 1665,
(2) of their Conventicles in 1669, and (3) of their numbers in 1676,*
and they cover a little under 400 pages out of 832 (more exactly, 395
pages, in whole or part) ; 370 being reproduced in full, and portions
(sometimes larger, sometimes smaller) of 25 more.
The Returns which I have reprinted I have described comprehensively
as Episcopal, because they were sent up to Archbishop Sheldon by the
Bishops of the several dioceses in both provinces of Canterbury and York
in answer to inquiries addressed to them by him in 1665, 1669, and
1676. The form in which they are preserved in Vol. 639, and repro-
duced in print in this work, is not, however (as has been already hinted),
the form in which they were sent up. They have all been edited by
some one employed by Sheldon for the purpose, being reduced to a
uniform scheme, so as to facilitate comparison and present results in as
compact a form as possible.t That they are redactions, not the
originals, one simple fact makes clear : they are practically all in one
clear clerkly handwriting: not in the varied scripts of the different
Bishops, much less in those of the subordinate officials or the individual
clergy whom the Bishops would instruct to gather the various informa-
tion required. Yet it is evident that characteristic phrases, describing
different individuals reported on, have been carefully reproduced ; e.g.,
in two of the few 1665 Returns which have been preserved, such
descriptive phrases are in some cases repeated alike in the brief summary
as well as in the fuller form in which they appear in these pages.
The Editor was evidently of a very logical and exact turn of mind,
for wherever it was possible he has reduced all the returns to a tabular
* They are contained on pp. 139-3186, 331, 3366-338, 354, and portions of pp. 398,
3986, 3996, 4006, 402, 4026, 4036, 404, 4046, 405, 4056, 406; 4066, 4076, 408, 4086, 409,
410, 4106, 411, 4116, 412, 413, 4136, 414.
f Was it by Samuel Parker, afterwards Bishop of Oxford? He had been
appointed as Archdeacon of Canterbury, and his private Chaplain, in 1665, the year
in which the first Returns were asked for.
c Original Records '
scheme arranging the particulars forwarded from different places in
columns, each set apart for information on some particular point.
The inquiries issued in 1665, however, were so varied, and called for
such voluminous answers,* that they could not be compressed within the
limits of a column ; and as a result the very few that are preserved take
the ordinary cursive form, the replies being condensed, and written
across the page. It will be noted, however, that though these are the
earliest in point of time, the returns for 1665 are entered last in this
Vol. 639, coming after the returns of 1669 and 1676.
Both of these latter are arranged or tabulated in columnar form. It
was easy and natural, of course, in the case of those of 1676, as the
inquiries then issued concerned numbers alone viz., the numbers in
each parish of (i) the inhabitants, (2) Popish sectaries, and (3) other
sectaries. But it required more care and the art of severe condensation
to arrange the substance of the reports sent in in 1669 in this tabular
form. Still, it has been done wherever it was possible, though in many
cases, we regretfully conclude, it has been accomplished only by the
exclusion of a large amount of detailed information which would have
been invaluable to the historian of Nonconformity.
In some cases evidently the editor found it impossible to adhere to
his scheme. From the Northern Province, only the Returns from Yorke
diocese (R. 278-285^) and the very fragmentary one from Carlisle
(R. 294) could be thus treated. The returns from the Diocese of
Durham and the Archdeaconries of Chester and Richmond were so
meagre that they could not be cast into columnar form, for they
furnished only ( the numbers of persons that continue to Keep Meeting
and conventicles of pretended Religious worship contrary to the law.'
The names of persons given are so few that they only appear sporadic-
ally in one or two places after the number of conventicles and of those
attending them.
One other departure from this ' cut-and-dried ' system is so rich in
humorous detail that it enables us to realize the loss we have sustained
by the adoption of it.- A paper is given on R. 216, under the
heading of 'Conventicles in Hartfordshire,' containing a most vivid
account of the state of things in ' the Towne of Hartford.'* But that is
the only information furnished from the north-eastern half of the county.
In all other cases the 1669 returns are reduced to tables in which a
column is given to each head of the Archbishop's inquiries. Yet these
inquiries were not read with sufficient care, or the information obtained
was not sufficiently detailed and systematic to allow them all to be
arranged according to one common plan.
The standard arrangement, to which the Editor evidently wished to
adhere throughout, is in five columns : the first containing the names of
the Parishes and of the places in them in which Conventicles were held ;
the second giving the Sect or Denomination to which the Conventiclers
belonged ; the third the Numbers attending them ; the fourth their
Quality and the chief men amongst them ; and the fifth their Teachers,
* See details given in Part II., Section I., Cap I.
| Vide vol. i., pp. 84, 85.
io General and Prefatory
Preachers, or Pastors. In more than half of the Dioceses, the five columns
are headed in exactly the same way and order viz., (i) Parishes and
Conventicles in them; (2) Sects; (3) Numbers; (4) Quality;
(5) Heads and Teachers. In two viz., St. Asaph and Ely there is
variation in the fourth and fifth columns ; the fourth associating with
' Quality ' * Abettors,' meaning influential persons who ' patronized '
or supported these Nonconformist Conventicles ; and the fifth drops the
word ' Heads,' keeping 'Teachers' only; and Sarum (Seth Ward) has
his own precise and antiquated way of putting each : i. ' Parr-w th -y e -
Conventicles in them'; 2. 'Sects of y m '; 3. 'Their Number';
4. 'Quality and Abettors'; and 5. 'Heads and Teachers.'
Canterbury and London adopt a form not exactly like any of the
others, heading the first column ' Parishes and Places,' putting
' Numbers and Quality ' together at the head of the third, heading the
fourth with ' Principalls and Abettors,' and the fifth with ' Preachers
and Teachers.' But the Returns from Bath and Wells could be
arranged only in four columns instead of five. What appears in the
other returns as Column I is split up into two ; giving in the first only
the Parishes in which Conventicles are kept, and in the second ' Places
where such Conventicles are held, omitting the columns for ' Sects '
and ' Quality and Abettors ' altogether, and heading Column 3
' Numbers,' and Column 4 ' Teachers.'
The Returns from each Diocese are given under the Archdeaconries
or Deaneries into which the Diocese is ecclesiastically divided, in every
case the order observed being geographical. Under the head of each
Deanery or Archdeaconry the several parishes it contains are given, in
most cases arranged topographically, but in three cases viz., those of
Canterbury, Lincoln, and Sarum alphabetically, and in these every
parish is named, whether any Conventicle was held in it or no. [Where
there was none, the name of the parish is followed by the figure o.]
The title of the Return from Bath and Wells which was so
awkwardly rendered that it had to be entered in a four-column scheme
gives illuminating evidence as to the way the Returns were made. It
reads (R. 142)* : ' A Certificate of the Conventicles kept within the
County of Somersett & Diocesse of Bath & Wells, According to the
ministers Returnes upon the Instructions given them by my Ld's Grace
of Cant r 7 in His Letters.'
Evidently, then, the ' Origines ' of these tabulated returns were
reports sent to the Bishop by every ' Minister ' (Rector or Vicar) in his
Diocese, sometimes directly, and in other cases indirectly, through the
the Deans or the Archdeacon.
Unfortunately these originals, though evidently sent up to head-
quarters as the material out of which the Episcopal Return was compiled,
have been lost. Nothing, at least, is known of them at the Library of
Lambeth Palace.
To the historical student this is very vexatious, as the frequent refer-
ences to them in the documents which have been preserved show that
they would have contained information with reference to individual
* Vol. i.,p. 5.
c Original Records ' 1 1
Nonconformists which to many investigators would have been of price-
less value. For example : (i) In the Report from Chichester, in four
cases viz., those of Brighthelmstone (R. 173), Itchingford (R. 174),
Lindfield and Pagham (R. 175) the same formula is repeated : ' See
their names in the Returned Under the name Westmeston, again
(R. 173), we have : ' See the Returne figure the 6 th '; and under Rye
(R. 175-6) we have : ' See the names of the Sectaries in the Returne.'
2. In that from Ely, under Doddington (R. 178), we come upon the
phrase, 'See the Minister's Returne,' and under Fulbourne All Sts.
(R. 181) we have, < See y e Returne.'
3. In the Report from Lichfield and Coventry, under Mickleover
(R. 191), we find, 'See Arch. D. Browne's Returne'; and with refer-
ence to the County of Derby (on R. 192) we have : ' For this whole
Archdeaconry y e Archd: Returne'; while it is particularly tantalizing
to see what we may have lost in the Archdeaconry of Coventry (R. 194)
touching the Conventicle held in Dr. Wild's house in Nuneaton (as we
are advertised in the phrase, ' See Arch. D. Rylands Returne '), seeing
that Dr. Wild was the great Puritan lampoonist of the foibles of the
ritual and conduct of the prelatical Episcopalians ; and when we read
under the heading of Newton Regis (R. 194), ' See Arch. D. Ryland's
Return for their Encouragem 1 . ' /'.*., the reasons they allege as having
encouraged them to hold their illegal Meetings.
4. In Seth Ward's Report from Sarum we find under Windsor Nova
(R. 240), < See the Returne for George Starkey's Paper.'
5. In the Report from Worcester the references are frequent. On
R. 273, under Alusten, we have the sentence : < See the returne it's selfe
for the names of some of the chiefe Sectaries '; and under Stratford-
upon-Avon (R. 273) we have: < See the names in the Returne'; while
on the following page (R. 273^), under Kington, we have : ' See the
names in the Returne'; and under Brayles : ' See the Returne for the
names.'
All the above are from the Province of Canterbury. Nor are hints
altogether absent in those from the Northern Province.
6. From York Diocese three times we have the same formula,
< See the Returne it's selfe 'under Barnaby in Willows (R. 280),
under Rempston (R. 281), and under Leeds (R. 283/>) ; whilst on
R. 284, under Thornhill, we have, < See Mr. Lacy's letter.'
Until quite recently I was driven to the conclusion that all this most
interesting information had been irreparably lost ; but a passage which I
recently lit upon in a local history of Mansfield (Notts) shows that in
the Northern Province, at least, some of the original individual returns
have been preserved.
The writer, W. Horner Groves, cites the actual answers sent in
by the Vicar of Mansfield and by the Incumbent of Mansfield Wood-
house and Skegby. And that Mr. Groves is able to give us these two
transcripts suggests that many more may be preserved, discovered, and
given to the world to supplement the information given in 639.
These two are most interesting, and serve to show how carefully the
precis contained in the Lambeth MS. is drawn up.
12 General and Prefatory
The first is from John Firth, who was inducted to the Vicarage of
Mansfield in 1654 by the Board of Triers, on the presentation of His
Highness Oliver, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England,
together with a testimony on behalf of the said John Firth of his holy
and good conversation.* * The present Vicar/ Mr. Sanders says, ' has
4 written that Firth found himself far too comfortable to run the risk of
4 ejection on Black Bartholomew ; and when many of the ejected found
* a refuge in Mansfield, John Firth seems to have been charitably disposed
4 towards them.*
4 The replies made by the Vicar of Mansfield to the set of queries
were as follows :
* " REVEREND SIR,
4 u Whereas you require my present and speedy answer to four
queries.
1 " Be pleased, therefore, to take the following return :
' " To the first query I answer, common fame says there are three
sorts of Conventicles or Church meetings held in this town of Mansfield,
who all have their stated days and times for assembling, and they are
reported to be these first, the Papists ; secondly, the Quakers (neither
of which do appear at the public assembly, i.e. the Church service) ; and
thirdly, the Presbyterians, who do frequent the public assembly here.
' "To the second, the number of persons at the Papists' meetings are
reported to be about thirteen. At the Quakers' meeting, about twenty
ordinarily, and at some extraordinary times threescore. And at the
Presbyterians' meetings in the week-days, not twenty ; but on the
Lord's day, forty or fifty. The quality of the Papists is mean, both
men and women, most of them inhabitants of this town. The
quality of the Quakers mean, most of them women, and inhabitants
of other parishes. The quality of the Presbyterians is better and more
wealthy, some inhabiting in this parish and some in others.
< " To the third, my acquaintance with them is not so considerable as
to enable me to give any positive answer hereunto.
' " To the fourth, the Papists are said to meet at the house of Samuel
Clay or at the house of Henry Dawes, and their speakers to be
sometimes M r . Turner and sometimes M r . Clay. The Quakers are
said to meet at the house of Tymothy Garland for the most part, and it
is said they are all speakers. The Presbyterians are said to meet either
at the house of M r . John Whitlock, or M r . William Reynolds, or of
M r . Robert Potter, or of M r . John Billingsby, or of M r . Robert
Smalley, and it is said that these, or some of these, are their speakers.
This, in obedience to your commands, is returned by
4 " JOHN FIRTH, Vicar of Mansfield.
^" August I2//2, i669."'t
4 The answer to the inquiry as to MansfieW Woodhouse and Skegby
was as follows :
* C. H. S. Transactions, vol. v., No. 4, pp. 228, 229.
f Groves's ' History of Mansfield,' p. 337.
c Original Records ' 1 3
' " In reply to your worshipful archdeacon's letter, I know nothing
but this :
'"That at Mansfield Woodhouse we have no conventicles but
one of Quakers at the house of Robert Bingham (excommunicated
for not comynge to Church), but who they are who frequent it I
cannot say.
* " At Skegby, alsoe, there is a Conventicle of Quakers at the house
of Elizabeth Hatton, widow ; but I cannot learn who they are who fre-
quent them, they being all of the other towns.
' " In the same towne of Skegby, alsoe, there is another con-
venticle reputed Anabaptists and fifth monarchy men held at
Mr. Lyndley's (excommunicated alsoe), but I know neither their
speakers nor hearers.
' " Sir, your most humble servant,
'"FRA: CHAPMAN."'*
The condensed precis of these two returns are given on R. 279 and
279/>. They come under the head of the ARCH-DEACONRY OF
NOTTINGHAM and the Nottingham Deanery. A careful comparison
shows that the variations between original and precis are few and very
unimportant, though the original is, of course, a little the fuller.
* Tymothy ' in the original becomes ' Timothy '; ' Billingsby ' becomes
' Billingsley '; and 'Potter' becomes 'Porter '; in each case the precis
being more accurate than the original : ' Robert Bingham of Mansfield
Woodhouse ' becomes ' Richard B.,' and ' Elizabeth Hatton ' and
4 Mr. Lyndley of Skegby ' become ' E. Hutton ' and ' Mrs. Lindley '
respectively. On the point of ' quality,' however, the precis drops the
two points that the Quakers of Mansfield are ' most of them women,
and inhabitants of other parishes,' and that the Presbyterians are 'more
wealthy, some inhabiting in this parish and some in others.'
One thing is made quite clear by these two documents that the
ultimate ' material ' from which these scheduled Returns were compiled
were the separate Returns prepared by each one of the parochial clergy.
Though these are nearly all lost, however, we still have in some cases
notes or particulars preserved which are of special interest. Such are
those notes introduced in the Returns of St. Asaph in R. 139 and
139; and in the Returns of London R. 221 and 222 ; while to the same
category belong the nine observations (' things observable ') appended by
Archdeacon Parker and Commissary Boucher to their 1676 Returns for
the Diocese of Canterbury (R. 169).
But this incidental reference to the 1676 Returns brings us by a
natural transition to speak of these. In the only two which are pre-
served in this volume in any fulness the tabular form is preserved, the
numbers being arranged in three columns ; those from Canterbury being
headed Q 1 , Q 2 , Q 3 , the reference being to the three Inquiries or Queries
made by the Archbishop (vide R. 163^), and those from Sarum being
headed Popish Recusants, Separatists, and Inhabitants, but preceded hy a
fourth, giving the names of the Minister in each parish which is succes-
* Groves's History of Mansfield,' p. 338.
14 General and Prefatory
sively named.* Two other Returns are made in a Summary Abstract
giving the totals in each Diocese viz., Winton (R. 270) and York
(R. 297).
Let this suffice as to the general form and character of the Episcopal
Returns. We now turn to those of the Licence Documents.
II. THE INDULGENCE DOCUMENTS : THEIR FORM AND
CHARACTER.
The Indulgence Documents are contained in five volumes preserved in
the Public Record Office two of them in the Domestic Series of State
Papers for the reign of Charles II. (viz., Vols. 320 and 321), and three
of them in Entry Books registering appointments which were in the gift
of the King viz., No. 27, No. ^8A, and No. 386.
The former (which are calendared and indexed as S. P. Dom.
Car, II., 320 and 321) contain information connected with the mould-
ing and working of the Indulgence Declared by Charles II. in 1672 and
with the issue of licences under it, of a much more varied character than
that contained in the Entry Books. All that the Entry Books do
is to register the licences actually made out for those whose requests were
'approved' by His Majesty ; but Vols. 320 and 321 contain memoranda
of application for licences (either jotted down on slips of paper, or more
elaborately formulated in Petitions addressed directly to the King), and
acknowledgments of their receipt : together with several drafts of licences,
some actual licences which were never taken away from Whitehall,
and a number of letters. The first two of the Entry Books, there-
fore, are mere ledgers or diaries, which are paged continuously like any
printed book ; and references to them in the calendar, or by anyone
basing a statement on their contents, follow the formula < E. B. 27
(or 38A), page so-and-so.' Entry Book 386 is only an imperfect index
to these, the entries being presented in a condensed form and in the
order of their dates, under the heading of the county in which the
place concerned was situated, the counties being arranged in alpha-
betical order. But Vols. 320 and 321 are rather albums than ordinary
books, in which these documents are mounted ; and reference to them
is made by the number of the document in each volume.
These documents vary considerably in size and extent. Some of
them consist of only two or three lines on mere scraps or slips of
paper, so small that two or three are mounted on a single page ; others
occupy the whole space of an opening ; and others, again, cover two or
three folded pages, like an ordinary letter. In olden time indeed, up
to forty or fifty years ago they were kept in bundles wrapped in brown
paper'; and each leaf had a number affixed to it at the right-hand bottom
corner, whether it was a single slip or a part of a many-paged document.
Now that they are mounted in volumes, however, it is the document as
a whole which is numbered (whether it covers one page only or many),
the numerals identifying them being placed at the top right-hand corner
* For an example in full, vide R. 25S&.
c Original Records ' 1 5
of its first page. The Calendarist, in his precis takes account only of these
latter numerals, so that the formula of reference is always ' S. P. Dom.,
Car. II., 320 or 321, No. so-and-so': and this is the form (abbreviated)
in which all references are made to them throughout this work.
By far the greater number are memoranda of application for
licences, giving simply the particulars required in order to make out the
licence or licences applied for. These memoranda were usually signed
and dated by the applicant, and were personally handed in at Lord
Arlington's office at Whitehall, either to Sir Joseph Williamson or one
of his clerks. Some are signed without being dated, and others, again,
which unfortunately are very numerous, have neither date nor signature.
Certain applications were much more formal and elaborate, being
Petitions addressed to the King. These doubtless were sent by post or
taken to Whitehall by special messenger. Of such petitions fourteen
are preserved in 320 and thirteen in 321. They are examined in detail
in Part II., Section II., Chapter V.
Others were conveyed in letters addressed either to the Treasurer, to
Lord Arlington (one of the Chief Secretaries of State), to Sir Joseph
Williamson (Lord Arlington's Secretary), or to Mr. (Francis) Benson,
Sir Joseph's chief clerk ;* and a very few were sent indirectly under cover
of letters to friends in town : e.g., a letter from Edmund Calamy,
' annalist of the ejected ' to Mr. Ennis (James Inness, senior) [320 (34)] ;
and another from Charles Fisher (on behalf of his father, Samuel Fisher,
of Birmingham), which is unaddressed, but which was probably intended
for Robert Blayney [320 (112)].
Then there is a whole series of drafts of licences, some in Sir Joseph's
handwriting, but more of them in Mr. Benson's, and some printed
forms, the blanks unfilled, which were probably ' proofs ' sent to White-
hall for approval [320 (7) to (17)].
Besides these there are several licences actually filled up (/'.<?., the
particulars written in the blank spaces), all by Mr. Benson ; some
of them neither signed nor dated ; some signed but not dated ; and
some one or two both signed and dated. These last present a problem.
Why were documents in every respect completed, and constituting
an unchallengable authority to the licensee, left at Whitehall (to
be in course of time transferred to the archives in the Public Record
Office), never either taken away nor despatched to the licensee ?
The answer probably will differ in each case, and only a separate
examination of each can furnish the right answer. This examination is
undertaken in Part II., Section II., Chapter VII.
Finally, there is a series of twenty letters from Dr. Nicholas Butler,
most of them addressed to Sir Joseph Williamson, with whom he seems
to have been on terms of special intimacy, with one or two to Lord
Arlington and one or two to Mr. Benson. The last really belong to
* There is one from Francis Whiddon of Totness to Sir Thomas Clifford
[320 (42)] ; there are two from Dr. Butler to Lord Arlington [320 (6) and 320
(196)] ; five at least to Sir Joseph Williamson [320 (35), 320 (211), 321 (137.) 321
(153), and 321 (19?A)] ; and eight to Mr. Benson [320 (271), 320 (297) ; 321 (8),
321 (67), 321 (lb'9); 321 (246), 321 (311), and 321 (341).
1 6 General and Prefatory
the already mentioned group of applications made indirectly in letters;
but those addressed to Lord Arlington, and many of those to Sir Joseph
Williamson, show Dr. Butler to have taken an influential, if not a
leading, part in settling the form the Licences were to assume and the
method by which the Indulgence was to be worked. They also show
that he organized a movement among Nonconformists prompting and
inducing them to avail themselves freely of the Indulgence.
So living an interest has this variety of documents contained in
320 and 321.
The Entry Books, on the other hand, are as meagre and dry as
officialism can make them. The second of them, 38A, is entirely devoted
to the registration of the licences made out under the Declaration of
Indulgence, and is a mass of disconnected names and dates. Each entry
gives simply the particulars with which the licence forms were filled in;
viz., the name of the person licenced (whether as teacher or owner of
the meeting-place) ; the place (town or village) to which the licence
applies ; the denomination or sect of those who were hereby authorized
to meet without disturbance j and the date on which the licence was
issued.
In the first few pages these particulars are given rather more fully
i.e., the connecting phrases are ampler, and in a form to make a separate
sentence for each entry ; but they rapidly become more condensed, until
(when the clerk found that the numbers scarcely lessened as the days
went by) they are put in the compactest and most condensed form con-
sistent with the identification of the licence, the issue of which is
thereby registered.
The pages are ruled with a marginal column, and for nearly sixty
pages that margin is punctiliously filled up with the names of the
person, the denomination, and the place. But Sir Joseph's patience
or that of his clerk, Mr. Benson seems to have been exhausted by the
time fifty-nine pages were thus filled in, and in the other 320 odd pages
the marginal column is disregarded. The licences thus entered in
E. B. 38A number more than 4,000.
This volume was evidently kept in Lord Arlington's office and filled
in by Sir Joseph Williamson and his clerks (chiefly by Mr. F. Benson),
and is a complete register of all the licences obtained through Lord
Arlington. It seems, however, that some would-be licensees applied to
Sir John Trevor. They were only few, and the licences entered are
only fifty in all. The entries cover only six weeks, ranging in date
between April 9 and May 17. These are entered in a separate book,
calendared E. B. No. 27, in which other ecclesiastical preferments were
entered which were in the King's gift.
By previous workers it has been taken for granted that all the licences
entered in these books were actually issued (although many of the
entries in 38A are undated), the date last entered being the date of all the
undated licences entered afterwards till another date is given.
In the earlier stages of my study of these documents I was inclined
strongly to question whether that were the case ; and in the ' Classified
Summary,' which constitutes the body of Vol. II., that doubt is indi-
c Original Records ' 1 7
cated by the insertion of a mark of question before the symbols * L.I.,'
which mean ' Licence Issued.' I had strong reasons for this doubt. In
many cases there is the clearest evidence that the date was not affixed at
the time the entry was made. In some instances the handwriting of the
date is palpably different from that of the ' body ' of the entry ; and in
others, where the handwriting is the same, the tint of the inkmarks is
fainter or more faded. That naturally suggested what I think is most
likely the fact that as soon as ever a Licence-form was filled in with
the particulars for which blanks in the printed formula were left, it was
entered (or should we not say ' these ' were entered ?) in the Entry Book.
But such a filled-in form had no value, conveyed no authority to the
licensee, until it had been signed at the head by the King, and at foot
by Lord Arlington or Sir John Trevor. As that was done, however,
the date was written in the blank left for it in the licence, since the date
of issue was, of course, the date on which these signatures were affixed.
The natural and proper thing for the clerk then and thereupon to do, was
to affix the date to the entry in the Entry Book, to record the comple-
tion and valid issue of the licence. This is done regularly and faithfully
through the first 170 pages of E., with one curious exception
viz., the first two entries on E. (150), which are duplicates of the
licences entered on E. (128) as granted to Dr. Francis Cross [for him to
preach in Thomas Ford's house in Pensford, and for Thomas Ford's
house to be an * allowed ' meeting-place] ; and are defective as not
having Thomas Ford's name in them as well as by bearing no date.
Near the bottom of E. (170) the charm is broken, and for the
rest of the book about 120 pages the addition of dates is most
irregular. The last batch of dated entries is that which extends from
the middle of E. (149) to near the bottom of E. (170) all bearing the
date June 10.
Reflecting on the curious irregularity which succeeds this faithful
and continuous dating of all entries up to that point, it seemed reason-
able to infer that where the date was not appended to an entry, the
Licence, though the c corpus ' of it was filled in, had not been signed by
the King and his Secretary of State, and so was not really issued. Nor
am I sure that this does not represent the facts in many cases.
That it does not in #//, and so may not in any y I am compelled
freely to admit, since cases have been brought to my knowledge of the
existence of licences which were duly issued and are preserved as sacred
treasures by those who possess them, the entries of which were not dated
in E.
Two were mentioned by the late Rev. Bryan Dale (in the course of
a correspondence I had with him on this question in 1905-1906) viz.,
the licences of Thomas Johnson for his own house in Sandall Magna,
entered on E. (253), and that for a meeting-house of Joshua Horton at
Quarrell Hill, Sowerby, entered on E. (288). The first, we learn on
the authority of Joshua Wilson, was (at some time subsequent to 1 82 1 )
in possession of Thomas Johnson's kinsman and namesake of Holbeck,
Leeds ; and the second, Oliver Heywood's biographer, Hunter, distinctly
states was obtained by Joshua Horton < by Mr. Heywood's assistance.'
2
1 8 General and Prefatory
A third has only just been brought to my notice first, indirectly in a
letter from Rev. T. G. Crippen ; and secondly, in a letter addressed to
me by the lady who possesses the licence, and has kindly transcribed the
particulars written in the blanks of the licence-form.
It is the licence granted to Elizabeth Hopden, widow, of Goudhurst
in Kent, for a Presbyterian Meeting-House. Of this licence the entry
in E. is defective in two ways. Not only is it undated, but the denomi-
nation whose interests it was meant to serve is not given.* But, of
course, both particulars are given in the licence itself. The owner
Mrs. Dunn of Redleaf, Tunbridge Wells has kindly furnished me
with them. The denomination was ' Presbyterian,' and the date when
it was issued was November 9, 1672.
Here, then, is a third indisputable instance of a licence being actually
issued, the entry of which is undated, and my suggestion is finally dis-
posed of, and positively disproved, that the absence of a date after a
licence-entry is a safe sign that the licence was never completed by signa-
ture and so never actually issued. Still, of course, it does not prove that
in every instance the entry of a licence in either B. or E. is evidence that
the licence was issued whether the entry were dated or not. It simply
shows that the licence may have been issued spite of the fact that its
entry is undated.
The extreme irregularity of many of the licence entries in the last
IOO pages of E. still keeps my doubt alive. Why else do we find on
one and the same page some entries dated and some undated, as on
E. (181), where two entries are dated ' 15 June,' and all the rest are
undated, or on E. (175), six pages back, where only one entry is dated
viz., '13 June'? All the other entries on pp. 171 189 inclusive
have no date appended at all. [The examples might be multiplied from
the later pages of the book.]
The real significance of this c absence ' of date, at any rate, is so far
from clear that my decision is still justified to print a i note of question '
(?) before the letters ' L. I.' in all such cases.
If that doubt remains, however, one thing has been made quite clear
to me, partly by facts verifiable by the actual entries in E. and partly
by the testimony of Mrs. Dunn's licence : and that is, that it is not
safe to take for granted that the real date of any licence whose entry is
not dated is that of the last dated entry.
By that rule we should be landed in a strange anomaly by the last
dated entry on E. (170) as compared with single dated entry on E. (175).
The last dated entry on E. (170) is < 15 June,' which immediately
follows one dated ' 10 June '; so that we ought to take every undated
entry which follows as that of a licence issued on the i$th of June till
we come to another entry with a date, and that, of course, ought to be
one later than June 15. Unfortunately, however, the next dated entry
viz., that on E. (175) is earlier viz., June 13. And then the rule
would have us conclude that all the licences entered without dates on
pages subsequent to that were issued June 1 3, though all preceding it
* It is entered on E. (280) the second line from the top, and reads : ' The house
of Elizabeth Hopden of Goudhurst in Kent.'
c Original Records^ 19
were issued June 15, until we reach that date on E. (181). [Why are
two dated, when one would serve the purpose ?]
We are not left to natural inference, however, from such anomalies
as these. The case of the licence of ' Elizabeth Hopden ' directly con-
tradicts the rule, and so ' rules it out of court.' The licence is entered
on E. (280). The last dated entry is on the last line of the previous
page [E. (279)], and that is dated 'December 9th, 72.' The rule would
impose that date on this licence as well as on all the undated entries
which follow. Instead of * Dec. 9 ' we find that, as a matter of fact, it
was issued ' the Qth day of November? So the rule will not work, and is
proved to be unsafe. Whatever the probabilities may be, there is no
certainty in such ' a guide,' and the ' wise ' man will not venture to
assign any date to a licence whose entry is undated, even if he be hardy
enough to risk the assertion that the licence having been entered was
actually issued.
The facts about the licences belonging to the last two months of the
year are curious. The only date in November which appears in the
entries is ' November 18,' the first instance of which [on E. (268)] has
the date 'November i8 th ' written in the margin in a line with it.
This date is repeated irregularly in the pages which follow till we
reach the middle of E. (275), when the margin has 'Decem r y e 9 th 72.'
In the midst of these we have a notable licence entered viz.,
that of ' Richard Baxter a Nonconforming Minister to teach in any
licensed or allowed Place ' ; and to this is appended a date not belong-
ing to November at all, but to October, and, stranger still, to a date
earlier than the few October entries. All these scattered through
E. (261) to E. (268) are dated <Octo: 28^,' but Richard Baxter's, on
E. (272) is dated < Oct. 27. 1672 '!
Verily the vagaries of the date-entries in this latter part of E. are
mysteries past finding out !
The only suggestion I can make to account for them at all is a
personal one. Up to June 10 the entries are all dated, and up to that
date the entries are all duplicated [with the singular exception of those
pertaining to London !] in Sir Joseph Williamson's Index (I.).
Beyond that date irregularities commence in E. and all entries in I.
cease.* In E. not only have we the spasmodic and anomalous dating of
some entries and a wholesale omission of the date from others, but the
handwritings vary. Up to June 10 the majority of the entries in E.
and the whole of the entries in I. are in the handwriting of Francis
Benson, Sir Joseph's head-clerk, but beyond that date Francis Benson's
entries are irregular [e.g.) the first eleven entries on E. (194) are in
another hand, as is the first in E. (196), and Nathaniel Robinson's on
E. (201), the last two on E. (207), and Richard Sapper's and William
Clarke's on E. (214), [the same as that on E. (196)]. From the seventh
line on E. (216) to the first on E. (217) are in the same hand as the
* The memoranda of application and receipt in 321, also, practically cease with
that date. There are two dated June 12 [321 (358) and 321 (359)] ; the next three
are dated June 13; 321 (363) is dated June 14, Beyond that there are only fifteen
documents, only one with a June date [321 (373)].
o
j*
2O General and Prefatory
first eleven on E. (194), and so on. . . . [The differences are noted in the
text]. All this surely suggests that up to June 10 the whole Indulgence
matter had Sir Joseph Williamson's close and continuous personal atten-
tion, and that he made the clerical part of the work Francis Benson's
special task ; but that after that date Sir Joseph's direct superintendence
ceased, and matters were left in the hand of Francis Benson, who was
not so impressed with the importance of dating or indexing the entries,
and so let that part of his work slip, and was glad to delegate some of
the purely clerical work to his subordinates.
Was it, then, that in June Sir Joseph left town for his holiday, and
that on his return he found things so neglected that he did not care to
preserve the memoranda, and grew careless himself in the details of the
whole License-business ?
CHAPTER III
THEIR HISTORICAL ORIGIN : AS < OF EARLY
NONCONFORMITY '
THEY are the Records of Nonconformity. The original documents
presented have been selected and published because they record the
doings and the sufferings of Nonconformists.
The Episcopal Returns are Returns of Nonconformists ; of Non-
conformist Ministers and Schoolmasters in 1665 ; of Nonconformist
Conventicles in 1669; and of Nonconformists generally 'all and
sundry,' as the pests which plague the parishes and spoil their quietude
and peace in 1676. The Indulgence Documents deal with the
licences granted to Nonconformists in 1672.
But, further, they are Records of 'Early Nonconformity ' ; because
Nonconformity proper was made in 1662, and documents belonging to
the fifteen years which immediately succeed it perforce deal with the
very earliest Nonconformity of all.
Does any ask: Why not call it Puritanism, since the Noncon-
formists of these fifteen years were the Puritans of the later Stuart days ?
The answer is simple : Nonconformity is Puritanism excommunicated
from the Church and proscribed by the State.
Puritanism had always had to struggle and to suffer, because
Puritanism is essentially a protest against the impurities of the Protest-
antism of the day. In England, Protestantism was more political in its
origin than religious ; a throwing off the secular yoke of the Pope far
more than rejection of the religious degeneracies of Rome. It was
rather a compromise than an insurrection; one object of the formu-
laries it framed in the Book of Common Prayer being to retain as
many Roman Catholics as possible within the Reformed National
Church.
Puritanism was the strenuous effort of the more spiritual section
c Original Records ' 2 1
of a Protestant people to recover a purer faith and a simpler ritual, by
accepting more ingenuously the Word of God as the standard of both
faith and worship.
Inevitably this inner protest and revolt received no encouragement,
but only censure and repression, at the hands of the authorities alike in
Church and State. From its very birth, then, Puritanism has had to
breathe the air and feel the rod of resentment and of persecution.
Under Elizabeth it suffered because she could not brook divergences
in the outward observances of religion, and the standard form which she
approved and would impose on all was practically that of Edward VI. 's
second Book of Common Prayer (1552). Divergence from this was
disregard of her royal will, and such disregard entailed serious conse-
quences. In matters ecclesiastical she insisted on her supremacy, and
she was willing to bear the responsibility of even the extrernest measures
which were taken to enforce her will.
Under the first two Stuarts, however, it was the Church prelates
who were the active persecutors, since both James and Charles were
quite willing to leave all cases of Church discipline to the ecclesiastical
hierarchy ; Charles especially, in things religious, handing over every-
thing to Archbishop Laud.
Throughout these reigns the Puritans were still reckoned members
of the Church of England as by law established ; eccentric and wayward
members who had to suffer for their waywardness and eccentricity, but
still members of the State Church. When any were condemned to
surfer the extreme penalty of the law, it was because their eccentricity
was judged to amount to intolerable contumacy and their persistent
waywardness to rebellion.
With the successful revolt of the Commons against the arbitrary
measures of Charles, their status was soon entirely changed. It was now
the turn of the persecutors to suffer, and of those who had been perse-
cuted to hold places of influence and power. The Episcopal Church
was allowed to continue, but only in a sadly mutilated form. The
Bishops were first banished from the House of Lords, and then their
very office and authority were abolished. To use the Book of Common
Prayer was made a penal offence (.5 was the fine incurred upon con-
viction), and extemporaneous prayer became a central element of public
worship in every parish church and in all the cathedrals of the land.
For a time, with the intrusion and alliance of the Scots, the tyranny of
an Established Episcopal Church was in danger of being replaced by
the tyranny, more dour and bigoted, of an Established Presbyterianism.
When, espousing the Stuart cause under young Charles II., the Scots
broke away into opposition to the Parliament, that danger lessened, and
with their final defeat at Dunbar it soon altogether ceased. Pres-
byterianism was a plant which never found congenial soil in England,
and with the ascendancy of Oliver, church government and religious
observance assumed a greater variety, and were accorded larger liberty.
It was in part Presbyterian and in part Congregational ; only spas-
modically and by stealth was it in any measure still Episcopal. Those
clergy of the old regime who were Puritan in doctrine were allowed to
22 General and Prefatory
retain their livings and to exercise their ministry, provided they were
willing to dispense with the Prayer Book in their conduct of public
worship and were able honestly to profess loyalty to the civil authorities
under the Lord Protector. Those who could not vacated their livings,
many of them crossing to France, there to await the chances of a
change ; and all those who were condemned by the Parliamentary
Commissioners, or by Oliver's ' triers/ as either malignant, inefficient,
negligent, or of scandalous life, were sequestered, but with the merciful
reservation of ' the fifth ' of their recent incomes for the relief of their
widows and children, their places being filled by those who satisfied the
strict requirements of the new authorities as likely to prove able and
' painful ' ministers of the Gospel. The steadfast aim of the Protec-
torate was to provide a ministry scholarly in training, pure in private
character, sober in their mode of life, wholesome and spiritual in their
personal influence and in their pastoral care of the parishioners, and
powerful preachers of the word of God. These were the Puritans
among the older clergy, and, naturally, all were Puritan among the
new. If, in seeking to attain this end, some of the worthier clergy
were displaced who belonged to the old regime, the candid historian
will not hesitate to call it persecution ; a persecution as real as that
which the Puritans had suffered in the olden days. All persecution is
to be condemned as alike a folly and a crime, whether in Puritan or
Anglican, in Royalist or Parliamentarian.
After the death of Oliver, the Commonwealth rapidly fell to pieces,
and within six months the vast majority of the nation were ready,
under the leadership of Monck, to recall Charles Stuart and to reinstate
a monarchy alike in State and Church.
With the Restoration it was inevitable that the Puritans should
again begin to suffer. With the restoration of the Monarchy in civil
government, came, by natural sequence, the re-establishment of Epis-
copacy as the one authorized form of government and the re-instatement
of the Book of Common Prayer as the one authorized formula for
public worship. The re-establishment of Episcopacy ipso facto restored
the Bishops within the Church, with the Archbishops at their head, in
almost all their old authority and power, and installed Charles II. the
anointed King as the titular head of the Church of England, with
power to present or appoint to certain livings which had of old been
within the royal gift. But the re-establishment of Episcopacy made a
Bishop the sole source alike of ecclesiastical discipline and deprivation,
and of valid ordination ; and therefore cancelled most of the sequestra-
tions made by the Commonwealth authorities, and invalidated the
appointments of most of those who had been ' intruded ' into the
sequestered livings. Wherever sequestered clergy, therefore, survived
the Restoration they (naturally enough) claimed reinstatement in the
incumbencies of which they had been deprived, and by a special Act of
the Convention Parliament they were so restored, without a question
asked as to their personal fitness and past record.
The * intruded ' Puritans, too, who had replaced them were
summarily ejected, also without a question asked as to their ministerial
c Original Records'* 23
fitness or the quality of the work they had done, and, be it specially
noted, with no ' fifths ' retained from their stipends for their relief in
their sudden distress. In places where the sequestered clergy had died
before the Restoration, however, Puritan ministers were allowed to
retain their livings if they loyally accepted the new regime in Church and
State, and were able to satisfy the conditions laid down by Episcopal
authority. In some cases, it must be admitted, those conditions were
very rigid. If the ordination of the ministers in question had been only
presbyteral, some Bishops insisted on their re-ordination by the hand of
a Bishop ; and if in the ' Interregnum ' they had been pronounced in
their anti-monarchical and anti-prelatic views, they were required
publicly to recant them. And there were not a few to their honour
be it said who would not stoop to such humiliations, and these were
cast forth as effectively and as pitilessly in 1660 and 1661 as those who
were afterwards ejected on Bartholomew's Day in 1662.
The revival of royal patronage, again, put the occupants of quondam
royal livings, who during the Commonwealth had been appointed to
them either by Parliament or by the Protector, entirely at the mercy of
the King. In some cases, where they were known to have welcomed
the King's return, Charles confirmed their appointment, or if the places
had been promised others, either by him or his ministers, they were
transferred to some other living. Otherwise they were ejected almost
automatically from their benefices.
Numerous as were these ejectments, however, there was no general
movement connected with them vitally affecting the religious condition
of the people. The individual clergy suffered ; but there was no wide-
spread effort made to retain their public services in irregular ways. Great
men like Dr. Thomas Goodwin, Dr. John Owen, Richard Baxter, and
others, were removed from the public ministry to the great loss of the
nation ; but they were content to accept positions in the families of the
Puritan nobility, or betake themselves to the advocacy of Gospel truth
by writing.
A large proportion of the clergy who remained in the Established
Church were still Puritan, and continued to do a noble work within her
borders.
This was not to the liking of the restored Episcopals of the pre-
Commonwealth period. To Royalist statesmen like Clarendon, with
High Church predilections, and to prelates like Sheldon, who were
anxious to restore the Laudian regime, the continued presence in the
Church of these Puritans was irksome and vexatious ; and they soon
moved Parliament to adopt measures which should purge the Church of
this (to them) alien element. To * save the face ' of Charles, who had
taken quite another line in his Declaration of Breda, they consented to
the Savoy Conference, the overt object of which was to devise some
scheme of comprehension by which the Presbyterians might find as
legitimate a home in the Establishment as the High Episcopals. From
the first it was clear that the Bishops were determined that it should
turn out a failure. They insisted on all the points to which they knew
these Puritan Presbyterians had a deep-rooted nay, an ineradicable
24 General and Prefatory
conscientious objection : the necessity of Episcopal ordination for
every minister, the bowing at the name of Jesus in the repetition of the
Creed, the placing the Communion Table against the eastern wall of
the chancel as an Altar, and the reception of the elements kneeling at
the Altar-rail ; the wearing of a surplice and other vestments, which to
the Puritans were relics of Popery, with the use of the sign of the cross
in baptism, and the retention of the phrases to which so many ob-
jected as involving the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration in the Bap-
tismal Service ; with the result, fully anticipated and intended, that the
Conference broke up without effecting anything.
Now the way was clear : by legislation to secure a unity which was
thought to be impossible without uniformity. Without delay was
framed an Act which made the public declaration in the parish church
of ' unfeigned assent and consent to everything contained in the Book
of Common Prayer ' by every Rector and Vicar in the land, the absolute
condition of his retention of his living.
Driven with ease through the House of Commons, it received
rougher treatment in the House of Lords.
To their honour, be it remembered, the Lords would have dropped
the clause about Episcopal ordination in the case of those already in the
ministry, and they were eager to insert a clause to reserve < a fifth ' for
the relief of those who were ejected. The strong wills of Clarendon and
Sheldon overbore these amendments. They fixed on the Feast of St. Bar-
tholomew, August the 24th, as the Sunday on which the public declara-
tion was to be made ; although, on the one hand, the new edition of the
Prayer Book (to the contents of which they were to declare their
unfeigned assent and consent), could not be possibly be placed in the
hands of all the clergy by that day, and although, on the other was it
not rather because r the tithes (which constituted so large a proportion
of their stipends), would not become due till a month later, on the Feast
of St. Michael and All Angels.
With the immediate result we are all fairly familiar. A host of over
two thousand five hundred could not make the declaration, and so ipso
facto were < deprived,' < ejected ' from the livings in which they had so
honourably and efficiently discharged the high work of the Christian
ministry. In many cases the parishioners had become so attached to
their minister, that to have him thus forcibly driven from them, struck
multitudes in the country with amazement and despair. Inevitably,
therefore, this wholesale exile had results both on the Church and on
the nation so serious, so lasting, and so growing that it created a new
situation, and called into being a new thing. These 'ejected' were,
from the spiritual standpoint, the Church's choicest and best ; so that the
' Church of England as by law established ' was seriously impoverished,
most of the men who took the places of the ejected being universally
acknowledged to be inferior to the ejected in culture, grace, and power.
By the personal magnetism they exercised, moreover, the ejected
drew out with them many of their parishioners, who refused to be de-
prived of a ministry they so highly valued. So that < churches ' as well
as * pulpits' were largely emptied by the operation of this Act.
Original Records* 2$
A great body of ministers and people came into being who were
drawn together by their common loss, and had this one characteristic in
common, that they could not * conform J in all things to the Church of
England by law established. Ministers and people alike were made
'Nonconformists' extruded from the State Church by the action of
this law, and by this Act were precluded from returning to its fold as
long as they remained faithful to the conscientious scruples which had
made it impossible for them to remain.
It is quite true it was their essential Puritanism which compelled
them to act as they did ; but it was this legal Statute which made that
action inevitable.
Before the Act of Uniformity many Puritans, though with incon-
venience and occasional sufferings, remained within the Church. From
the moment when it became law, and so long as it remains unrepealed,
a growing host of Puritans and their spiritual descendants were and are
excluded from its borders. By the Act of Uniformity the State Church
ceased to be the Church of the nation. It created Nonconformity, and
the hosts of Nonconformity have grown with the growth of years, till
as successive acts of ecclesiastical bigotry have driven forth fresh
bands of exiles the Nonconformists of England form more than half
the nation.
It is the fortunes of these first Nonconformists, in the fifteen years
which followed the Act which brought them into being, on which
these documents cast much interesting and hitherto unpublished light.
So that it can scarcely be gainsaid that they are rightly described
as ' Original Records of Early Nonconformity.'
CHAPTER IV
THEIR HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE
IN the first chapter we have already seen that these documents have
great intrinsic value merely as fragments of literary antiquity. As
materials for history their interest and value are greater still. True, the
period with which they deal is very brief. It covers only fifteen years.
The persons whom they principally concern, moreover, as judged by
ordinary standards, were comparatively uninfluential and unimportant.
They do not figure in affairs of State, nor do they hold high office
in Church or Court, in army or navy. They are men and women
who by the great reaction of the Restoration had been thrust out of all
places of influence and power, and forced into a background of tem-
porary helplessness, neglect, and even contempt. Thus it has come to
pass that the general historian of the English people has ever had but
little thought to give to them and little space to spare for them. Yet
they are men and women who in the period immediately preceding it,
had been in places of eminence and power. That period, I know, it
26 General and Prefatory
has been the fashion for historians of both State and Church to treat
with haughty insolence or to pass over in contempt. The classic
historian of the Civil War, when between 1642-1647 the nation was
divided in the great struggle of People against Prerogative, Parlia-
ment against King, called it the Great Rebellion, and the verdict
of Earl Clarendon was long accepted as the verdict of history.
Indeed, for the last two centuries men were content to call the great
period that followed its tragic issue in thee xecution of Charles Stuart,
4 the Interregnum ' speaking as little as they dare of its great achieve-
ments, and drawing a veil as far as possible over its inward purity and
sober strength, as though England were no real nation, and had no real
history so long as she had no King. Of the historians of the Church,
too, all this is truer still. In the great county histories the ecclesiastical
section for those twenty years from 1642-1662 is almost an utter blank;
parochial records are interrupted. The splendid spiritual achievements
of ministers who replaced sequestered parsons are utterly ignored, and
even in local church records this illustrious succession more truly
apostolic than that of many who preceded and who followed them is
unrecorded, and has long run the risk of being quite unknown.
With the growing demand in recent years for truth, however, in
history as well as science, and for more thorough historical research, all
this has changed. The men and the events of the Commonwealth are
taking their true place in the history of the English people. Carlyle's
< Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell ' have finally disposed of the
prejudiced distortions which held him up to contempt as a cruel tyrant
and ambitious hypocrite, and have established beyond controversy the
greatness of his soul, the loftiness of his ideals, the absolute sincerity of
his character, and the magnificence of his achievements, both in the
government of the people at home and in the uplifting of the nation's
reputation abroad. Gardiner's * History,' too, has made quite clear to
any candid student that those days of stress and struggle, upheaval and
revolution, were days not to be consigned to oblivion as only blurring
and blotting England's fair escutcheon but days to be held in ever-
lasting remembrance as 'great' days, which brought into prominence
and power i great ' men ; men great in the strength of their character,
in the keenness of their spiritual vision, in the breadth of their purpose,
and in the genuineness and energy, with which they wrought for the
abiding welfare of the people. It must be remembered that in the
period of which we treat most of these men were still alive. Cromwell
was gone ; and with him that strange but mighty fabric which centred
in him, and which, it would seem, only his colossal character and his
resistless will could keep together.
Milton still lived on no longer, it is true, to command the respect
of the Continental nations by his great dispatches, as the Foreign Secre-
tary of England's great Protector ; but in his blindness and seclusion
to wield an influence still wider, and to be felt by generations then un-
born, by his still greater poems, ' Paradise Lost' and 'Paradise Regained.'
The Universities had slipped back into the older hands, which had
allowed them to become more the playgrounds of the leisured aristocracy
Original Records '
and the hot-beds of high Anglicanism than true schools of learning. Yet
Oxford's Vice-Chancellor, Dr. John Owen, and Oxford's Don, Dr.
Thomas Goodwin,* were still living.
The brilliant cluster of court-preachers whom Oliver had gathered
round him, in whom the prophet-fires blazed out in rebuke and warn-
ing rather than in praise and adulations, no longer held high place in
the City, in Whitehall, and in Westminster ; but John Howe, John
Goodwin, and Philip Nye, Dr. Manton, Dr. Bates, and Dr. Jacomb
were all still in London. Richard Baxter with his matured wisdom,
and John Bunyan with his budding powers, were still alive and
active.
Indeed, a great host of the best and strongest men in the Church,
whose teaching had moulded the characters, and whose ministry had
enlightened and uplifted the masses in those strenuous Commonwealth
days, were scattered through the community, ejected from their livings,
extruded from their pulpits, but still the salt of the earth and secret
saviours of the people. Such are the men and women on whom these
' Original Documents ' cast so much fresh light, and of whom they
yield so much fresh information.
In these days of their repression and obscuration, they were yet an
integral and influential factor of the nation. To the historian of the
nation, therefore, they ought to be a subject of great concernment.
To the historian of Nonconformity and of all free movements in
mind and spirit they are of priceless value. These men and women
were the pioneers of all the movements which have taken their rise in
successive outbursts of Anglican intolerance and bigotry, have driven
from ' the Church of England as by law established ' so many of the
most earnest, devout, and energetic of her sons and daughters. Their
names, even the least of them, deserved to be held in everlasting
remembrance. Of the very earliest of them, the names, activities, and
spheres are (directly or indirectly) recorded here.
As material for gauging the strength and distribution of these early
Nonconformists, these documents have value ; but as contributions
towards the formation of a bede-roll of early confessors in this mighty
movement, they are of greater value still.
In the Episcopal Returns of 1669 and 1676 we get most help in
estimating numbers. In the former we have enumerated alike the Con-
venticles held, and the numbers of men and women that frequented
them ; and in the latter, the purely statistical tables of a Religious
Census, whose single purpose is to give directly the number of Non-
conformists in each parish. The Episcopal Returns of 1665 and the
Indulgence Documents directly deal only with individuals, so that only
indirectly and by collation can we gather anything as to collective
numbers ; but both cast most interesting light on their location and
activities.
Both the Episcopal Returns of 1669 and the Indulgence Documents
-of 1672, disclose the differences which distributed these early Noncon-
formists into separate sects or denominations; and on the numbers and
* He was President, for a time, of Magdalen College.
28 General and Prefatory
distribution of these different sects the several regiments of the one
great Nonconformist army these documents have much to say.
In forming our estimates and in drawing our conclusions, however,
there is need of care and discrimination. For this purpose the value of
the two sets of documents is by no means equal. The Episcopal Returns
are founded on the reports of the avowed and generally contemptuous
enemies of the Nonconformists. The Indulgence Documents, on the
other hand, are many of them written by Nonconformists themselves,
and in all cases record their freely chosen conduct. In other words, we
have to bear in mind that (as is implied in the title of this work) the
Episcopal Returns are Records of Nonconformity under Persecution,
while the Licence Documents are Records of Nonconformity under
Indulgence.
Now, under persecution, Nonconformists naturally concealed them-
selves as much as possible from the observation of their persecutors.
They hid their convictions as far as conscience would allow them ; they
met by stealth, and they dispersed swiftly and silently on the first
approach of danger. So that what their persecutors were able to gather
about them and report, from the very nature of the case, was only a
fragment of the actual facts, and we must always regard what we gather
from the Episcopal Returns as an irreducible minimum in regard to the
strength and extent of the Nonconformity of any given district at that
time. Moreover, in most cases it would be natural for those making
returns to shut their eyes to much that they might have seen, and
shut their ears to much which they might have heard, in order to make
good their contention that the Nonconformists were a thoroughly con-
temptible set both in numbers, and station, and character, and so to
commend their ministerial activities to their superiors, as having largely
stamped out this accursed pest.
Under the Indulgence of Charles, on the other hand, the Noncon-
formists were free. They were free to show themselves without fear
of consequences. They were free to claim authority to preach and
worship in whatever way they chose. We might expect, therefore, to
find larger proof of the strength of Nonconformity in the Licence
Documents than in the Episcopal Returns.
Yet, from the very nature of the case, the demand for licences under
the Indulgence affords a very limited means of judging the strength of
Nonconformity in 1672. In many particulars, indeed, it furnishes a
more limited means than the Conventicle Returns of 1669. The
numbers given are only of two sets of individuals the men who sought
liberty to teach, and the men and women who sought the Royal
authority to hold Nonconformist worship in their houses. These
Licence Documents give no information whatever as to the numbers
of the congregations. More than that. Of both teachers and house-
holders, there were many who refused to * desire ' or seek a licence from
such a sovereign as Charles II., who could grant it only by what was
really the despotic exercise of an illegal, even though it were a bene-
volent, autocracy. Rather than obtain relief by means so unconsti-
tutional as this, many preferred a perpetuation of their disability and
c Original Records* 29
suffering under Penal Statutes which, at any rate, were passed by a
freely elected Parliament. Hence, any estimate of the numbers and
strength of Nonconformity gathered from these Licence Documents is
even more undeniably an c irreducible minimum ' than one which may
be gathered from the Episcopal Returns.
Of the numbers of the extremer Baptists, for example, and the
sturdier of the Independents, these documents perforce can give us no
fair conception ; while of the strength of the Quakers they give us no
idea at all, simply because on principle they refused to ask of a fellow-
man (even though he sat upon a throne), a liberty which they claimed
as the native right of every child of man as a true child of God.
Of ' Organized Dissent,' again or rather of Nonconformist church
organization the student will look in vain for materials toward building
up any connected history. For two obvious reasons. In a period of
such incessant harassment and persecution the communities which formed
each conventicle, meeting as they did by stealth and in fear of momentary
disturbance, could use these stolen opportunities only for the practical
object of the direct culture of their spiritual life. They had no leisure
to develop any very definite, much less any elaborate, forms of church
organization. They might maintain such loose connection with other
churches of their own faith and order, whether Presbyterian, Con-
gregational, Baptist, or Quaker, as had arisen in the previous period of
the Commonwealth ; but the natural tendency was rather to loosen such
bonds than to cement and elaborate them. That was palpably the case
with the Presbyterians of the Metropolis and the Eastern Counties.
The classical presbyteries which had been formulated in theoretical
schemes during the Commonwealth to a very limited extent had been
put into practical working ; while the Baxterian Associations (consisting
exclusively of ministers, without reference to denominational standing)
which were formed in that period, and were moulded far more after the
model of our modern Congregational Unions than of Synodal Presby-
terianism, under the pressure of the repressive legislation of 1662, 1664,
1665, an d 1670 weakened, relaxed, dissolved, and almost disappeared.*
Throughout these fifteen years, then, Nonconformist communities,
whatever their special name or denomination in consequence of their
isolation practically became Independent churches.
Of the elementary material out of which the varied Nonconformist
churches in due time developed, we may gain abundant and most
fascinating information.
In the Episcopal Returns we have the fulfilment of Burns's
humorous prayer
' Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us.'
Nonconformists are here treated to vivid pictures drawn by the hand
of clerical reporters, in colours largely tinted by the coloured glasses ot
Anglican prejudice and contempt of the unlawful assemblies reported,
both as to their numbers, quality, and c personnel,' whether in their
* Cf. B. Nightingale's 'The Ejected of 1662,' vol. i., pp. 22-33.
30 General and Prefatory
hosts, their abettors, or their teachers ; and in some, as to the character
and furniture of the buildings in which they meet.
In the Indulgence Documents, however, we have none of these.
In their application for licences the Nonconformists unfortunately give
us scarcely any information on these points. Else we might have the
other side of the question, and see what estimate they made themselves
of their numbers, strength, and social position.
All we have in most cases is the barest description of the building for
which they desire a licence as a meeting-place, and of the preacher
whose ministry in it they desire to secure.
Sometimes the meeting-place is described as an ' outhousing,' or a
' barn,' and sometimes even as ' a building erected for the purpose,' but
in the majority of cases it is simply 'the house' or 'a roome or roomes
in the house' of the would-be licensee. In the case of some more
formal petitions addressed directly to the King, the form or location of
the building may be more exactly described ; and, in all, the signatures
affixed of the principal people in the church or congregation, give us
incidentally the names of those whom the Episcopal Returns would call
the ' Principals ' or ' Abettors ' of the conventicle concerned.
On two points, however, these petitions do sometimes give us explicit
information which is always absent from the Episcopal Returns.
I. The petitioners describe the people assembling for worship as 'a
Church of Christ ' a proof that in all such cases ' a Church ' has been
'gathered,' embodied, or properly constituted, as distinct from the
general congregation or fortuitous concourse of people, assembling in the
building at the time of public worship to join in the c devotions ' or
to listen to the preacher. In the Episcopal Returns, of course, no such
information is ever given. The Bishops deliberately ignore the fact
if indeed they have any knowledge of it that in these Nonconformist
assemblies there was almost invariably a Church within the Church,
composed of those who ' professed and called themselves Christians,' as
men and women spiritually renewed and consciously redeemed by their
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ; and not 'christened' or 'made Christ's'
unconsciously by the sacramental rite of baptism, or kept in union with
Christ by consciously partaking of a rite not less mystical and sacra-
mental (the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper), in which the consecration
of a duly ordained priest makes the bread and wine convey to the com-
municant the Body and Blood of the Lord. The Bishops and their
clergy simply note the illegal assembly of a number of men, women,
and children, who meet on 'the pretence of worship' in buildings
other than the parish church, and share a service which has in their
eyes no spiritual virtue or significance, because its forms are irregular
and spontaneous, instead of following the rubrics and ritual of the
Book of Common Prayer.* To them their gathering is only 'a
conventicle,' made penal by the Act of Uniformity and the Conventicle
Acts.
* Indeed, the Bishop of Bristol in 1665 brings himself to confess that when the
Nonconformist ministers in the county of Dorset meet together in private habitations,
1 about what ' they meet ' noe man knowes ' [R. 315].
c Original Records ' 3 1
2. In these petitions, too, the teacher is sometimes described as ' a
minister of the Gospel,' ' our late minister,' and as one who has solemn,
sacred, ordered functions to discharge. In the Episcopal Returns,
however, the men who conduct these conventicles are merely * Heads,'
4 Teachers,' or ' Preachers,' never Ministers or Pastors. For that title
Episcopal ordination, according to the ritual prescribed in the Book of
Common Prayer, is the absolutely necessary qualification. By a singular
lapse, however, the acceptance of such petitions, and the grant by the
royal head of the Church of their request, was a virtual acknowledgment
of the validity of their claim ; although it must be admitted that in the
licences as actually issued, those authorized to conduct the services are
described as only ' teachers,' as they were in the Episcopal Returns.
Thus the information that we gather of the assemblies which
met under the aegis of the Indulgence, is of the very meagrest char-
acter. We learn simply that there were as many congregations who
met as there were licensed meeting-places, and that they belonged to a
certain sect or denomination therein named.
Indirectly, however, we learn a great deal about individual Noncon-
formists, some ministers, others laymen, from the applications, letters, and
receipts presented in Vols. 320 and 321 of the State Papers. In the
first we have clear testimony to the zeal and the means of those who
are able to journey to London from their place of residence, sometimes
distant parts of the provinces, to make personal application for licences
at Whitehall, and to call at Whitehall to take them away. In many
cases we gain interesting information about Nonconformist residents in
London, who have position and influence with the Court, and are willing
to go to Lord Arlington's office to obtain licences for their friends in the
provinces ; and this often tells us much of the friendships and connections
of the would-be licensee, as well as of the character and energy of the
actual applicant.
Nor ought we to omit from this general estimate of their value and
significance to the historical student, the light cast in many cases on the
topography of London and other cities, towns, and villages in the
country. The implications contained in many of these documents are
of distinct archaeological value.
In fine, one great element of value in these Records is the fresh
original information they contain touching the personal history, activities,
and character of the pioneers of this great Nonconformist movement.
Indeed, in these documents there lies implicit a great bede-roll of
Nonconformist worthies.
To elicit that great bede-roll out of the chaos of names these docu-
ments contain, and to draw it up in the indexes which close Vol. II.
as well as in the Classified Summary which forms the body of it, was
no easy task. But it was a labour of love which kept the Editor in
touch with a company of saints who were also heroes, confessors, and
martyrs. These men and women were those ' of whom ' by its arro-
gance and intolerance the Church of England of that day declared itself
' not worthy.' They were men and women of the spirit, who so firmly
believed that < where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,' that they
General and Prefatory
could not consent to be tied and bound in their worship by the ritual of
the Book of Common Prayer. So we find among them not alone the
clergy who were ejected rather than be unfaithful to conscience on
that Black Bartholomew, but that noble host of their hearers and
parishioners who went out with them, exiled themselves from the
churches and the assemblies which they loved, that they might still
listen to their leaders, and still enjoy the pastoral care of those whom
they had found to be true shepherds and bishops of their souls under
Him, in whose name and spirit they had long ministered.
These are the true c peerage ' of English Nonconformity. In testing
the claims of those claiming to belong to the English gentry, and to
use a crest or coat of arms, heraldic authorities acknowledge validity
only in the case of those who can establish an unbroken descent from
soldiers whose names, and arms, and crests are found in one or other of
the authentic lists of chivalry, who attended the King on some great
military expedition, were known to be with him on some noted battle-
field, or jousted in his presence at some historic tournament. Their
claims are assured, for instance, if they are in the direct descent from
any who figure in the roll of those with Edward I., on the battlefield of
Falkirk, in 1298 ; in the roll of Karlaveroc, among the 1,300 who
attended Edward I. on his third expedition to Scotland ; in the list of
those who took part at the tournaments at Dunstable, in the second year
of his son's reign, in 1309 ; in the roll of those who were in the retinue
of Henry V., at the Battle of Agincourt, in 1415 ; or of those who
attended Henry VIIL, in the meadows between Guisnes and Ardres, at
his meeting with Francis I. and the chivalry of France, on the Field of
the Cloth of Gold, on June 4, 1520. In spiritual matters and for Free
Churchmen, the day of Black Bartholomew and the years of persecu-
tion that followed it, as well as the brief twelve months in which Non-
conformists obtained the aegis of Royal favour, are as critical as are
battles and tourneys for the chivalry of the English kingdom. The
clergy ejected in 1662, and the laity who, in the fifteen years of persecu-
tion which followed, either conventicled with them or joined their
ranks, are the genuine chivalry of Nonconformity. The documents
printed in Vol. I. name a vast number of them, and in Vol. II. the
Editor claims that he has done something towards forming a great roll
of Free Church nobility.
PART II
DETAILED AND EXPOSITORY
THIS Second Part naturally falls into two sections : Section I. dealing
with the Episcopal Returns, and Section II. with the Indulgence
Documents.
SECTION I
THE EPISCOPAL RETURNS
Of these Returns there are three sets: those made in 1665, those
made in 1669, and those made in 1676.
All of them were made during the period in which the aim of the
authorities in both Church and State was to repress, and, if possible, to
stamp out Nonconformity by penal legislation. That gives to them
all certain elements in common. Each set has characteristic features,
due to the phase of this legislation with which it is specially connected.
Each of these calls for separate treatment, so that Section I. will be
naturally divided into four chapters. Chapter I. will deal with the
Episcopal Returns as records of 'Nonconformity under Persecution,'
Chapter II. with the Returns of 1665, Chapter III. with those of 1669,
and Chapter IV. with those of 1676, in detail.
PART II
DETAILED AND EXPOSITORY
SECTION I
THE EPISCOPAL RETURNS
CHAPTER I
THE EPISCOPAL RETURNS AS RECORDS OF NON-
CONFORMITY UNDER PERSECUTION
IN Chapter III. of Part I. we have seen how the Act of Uniformity
created Nonconformity. Its object was to purge the State Church of
Puritanism. We have seen, too, how terribly efficacious it was. At
one stroke it drove out of the parish pulpits over two thousand five
hundred ministers, and out of the parish churches a vast multitude
of their devoted adherents.
Its authors doubtless hoped that by ejectment, and its bitter conse-
quences, the ejected would be cured of their Puritanism ; that, silenced
from any further public ministry, their power to spread it or maintain
it would be stopped, and that Puritanism would die with them. They
found instead that the Act made not only many thousand Noncon-
formist ministers, but many myriads of Nonconformist laymen as well.
This they soon discovered was a more serious state of things than
that which had annoyed and vexed them at the outset of their task.
Instead of being silenced by ejectment, the ministers found their Non-
conformist flocks gathering round them, pleading with them to continue
outside the churches the ministry which they were debarred by law from
continuing within ; and so the State Church was weakened and dis-
turbed instead of being pacified and strengthened. They had raised a
ghost that was no mere shadow or phantom. How were they to lay it ?
They could imagine only one way. They must repress, stifle, and
stamp it out by force by Penal Statute.
Although one penal statute (the Act of Uniformity) had created it,
it was to be starved and killed by others. Only enact penal statutes
numerous and severe enough, and execute them with sufficient con-
32
36 Detailed and Expository
stancy and firmness, and Nonconformity would be put down, starved
out, and disappear.
What are penal statutes, directed against one type of religious life
and worship, but 'persecution'? The editor has been warned by one
kind critic of the two volumes which have been already published, that
he will do well to drop all such phrases as ' pitiless persecutors.' Perhaps
the critic will supply him with a more fitting epithet for those who
devised this legislation, and for those who did their utmost to execute it,
in the hunting out, the cunning surprise, the sudden arrest, the heavy
fining, and the close imprisonment of those whose only crime was their
Nonconformity.
Suppose we grant that the Act of Uniformity as the Act that
created the offence cannot strictly be called an Act of persecution of the
offenders, we submit that even according to the most accurate, even
etymological, meaning of the term, the Penal Statutes of 1664, 1665,
and 1670 were ' persecuting ' edicts, and Acts of bitter persecution in its
fullest and most literal sense. They were framed purposely to pursue, to
harry, to hunt down, to worry, and to penalise Nonconformists out of
their Nonconformity.
If this is not 'persecution,' perhaps my kind critic may tell me
what is.
The Episcopal Returns were ordered and were made in continuous
connection with the successive stages of this attempted repression of
Nonconformity by penal statute. Are they not, then, justly described
as the Original Records of Early Nonconformity under Persecution ?
So far I have said nothing of the authors of this policy, the instigators
of this scheme. The facts are clear enough. Throughout this period,
with the exception of eleven months, the Nonconformists, lay and
ministerial alike, were under continuous persecution, which, pace my
critic, became more and more ' pitiless ' as the years went on. Who
were their 'persecutors'?
The answers have been various.
1. Many without hesitation say 'Charles.' The persecution took
place in his reign. The penal statutes, which were the engine of perse-
cution, all received the Royal sanction before they could be placed
upon the Statute Book of England. Therefore Charles II. was the
persecutor^ the first and only persecutor Nonconformists have ever had.
2. Others accept the implication contained in the historic phrase
which classes the whole series of penal statutes, from the Act of
Uniformity in 1662 to the Second Conventicle Act of 1670, as the
* Clarendon code.' Without any close sifting of the evidence, the Earl
of Clarendon is held to be the ' head and front of the offending,' and
Clarendon is spoken of as the arch-persecutor of Nonconformity.
3. Yet a third answer may be given. Seeing that from beginning
to end it is the supposed interests of the Church of England which it
was the object of all this legislation to conserve, it is most natural to
suppose that the Anglican hierarchy with Sheldon at their head were
at its heart, and were its real inspirers.
The easiest course, to avoid hostile criticism, would doubtless be to
Episcopal Returns 37
say that the responsibility must rest upon all three. In one sense, no
doubt, that is the truth. Still I do not shrink from the attempt to dis-
tribute it more carefully, and cannot avoid the conclusion that the
responsibility is heaviest in the case of Sheldon and his associates, scarcely
slighter, if at all, with Clarendon, but that it cannot fairly be fathered
on the King.
This was undoubtedly the case even with the Act of Uniformity.
That was a penal statute introduced into a Parliament which was
predominantly Royalist and Anglican as contrasted with the Con-
vention Parliament, which had been almost equally Royalist, but also
strongly Puritan but (to use a modern phrase) one which 'had no
mandate ' in this matter. It had been framed by the legal ability of
Clarendon to embody the decisions of Convocation under the lead of
Sheldon, and it was carried through in spite first of the intentional
delays, and then of the merciful amendments of the Lords, by the
strong will of both. Charles did not like it. Rather he was annoyed
by it, as a measure which he shrewdly judged would delay the pacifica-
tion of the country.
Charles was by temperament no persecutor. Such religion as he
had, touched him so lightly that he had no wish to impose it on others.
He seems rather to have regarded the religious sense as an awkward
weakness or caprice of human nature, and as it could not be eradicated
should be good-humouredly tolerated, and be allowed in everyone to
take its own form of expression so long as it was not politically
dangerous. There is no reason, therefore, to question his sincerity
when in the Declaration he issued from Breda he promised toleration in
religious matters to all and sundry. If he had r.ny prejudice or prefer-
ence in favour of one form of religion rather than another, he doubtless
inherited some real reverence for Christianity from his < martyred '
father, along with some ' sneaking fondness ' or some half-instinctive
preference for the Roman Catholic form of it from his exiled mother.
Yet he held any preference so lightly that he was quite willing that
everyone of his subjects should be free to practise whatever form of the
Christian religion they personally preferred or which a ' tender con-
science ' compelled them to adopt, whether it were Romanist or Protes-
tant, Episcopalian or Presbyterian, Independent or Baptist, Arminian or
Calvinist, Sacramentarian or Quaker, providing that by that toleration
he could secure the personal loyalty of each to himself, and thereby
insure a lasting security from having * to take to his travels ' again.
It is true that he dropped his first Indulgence as easily and more
readily than he afterwards withdrew his second. Yet these acts more
really expressed the < bonhomie ' and toleration natural to an easy,
good-humoured, sensual nature than the penal statutes which his tutor
Clarendon, under the instigation of Sheldon, with firm pressure com-
pelled him to sign. Charles repeatedly gave the Nonconformists to
understand in interviews granted to their leaders (most of them ejected
clergy resident in London) that these persecuting edicts would not be
pressed, that the administration and execution of them would be
mitigated as far as possible, and that personally he was disposed for
Detailed and Expository
measures of Toleration if Comprehension of the Nonconformist ministers
within the pale of the State Church were found to be impracticable. As
early as the Christmas after the Act of Uniformity had been passed,
Richard Baxter tells us : 'The King sent forth a Declaration, expressing
' his purpose to grant some Indulgence or Liberty in Religion. . . .
' When this came out, the ejected ministers began to think more confi-
4 dently of some Indulgence to themselves : M r Nye also, and some others
4 of the Independents were encouraged to go to the King, and when they
4 came back, told us : That he was now resolved to give them Liberty.'*
Indeed, it is a significant fact that the whole of these penal statutes
were effective almost in the inverse proportion to the nearness to the
seat of Government of the places where it was sought to enforce them.
In London, at any rate, there was greater security from the operation of
these penal statutes than in any town in the kingdom. Conventicles
continued to be held in the city, and in parts of the Liberties of West-
minster, close to St. James's and Whitehall, { under the nose of the
4 King,' without disturbance from him, and almost with his connivance.
The only exception to this state of things was the year following
the passing of the Second Conventicle Act, when a strong Anglican
was Lord Mayor, and specially during the absence of the King at
Dover, where he was entertaining his sister, the Duchess of Orleans,
and settling the terms of that disgraceful treaty with Louis of France,
which is known to history as the Treaty of Dover.
For one brief period of eleven months, it is true, the Nonconformists
had 'rest' from their persecution; but this we shall see was due
to the personal initiative and action of the King, when, with the con-
currence of his Council (the Cabal), he published his Declaration of
Indulgence. When persecution was resumed, moreover, in 1673,
resumed, too, with greater energy and bitterness than in the whole
decade succeeding the Act of Uniformity, it was more clearly than
before not with Charles's approval, still less through his initiative, but
simply because his hand was forced by the stronger hand that held the
purse-strings of the nation. When Parliament met in February, 1672-
73, Charles readily and cheerfully informed them of his grace and
favour to the Nonconformists, shown in his Indulgence to the tender
consciences of those of his loyal subjects who could not in all things
conform to the Church of England ; roundly told the Parliament that
he would take it ill if they presumed to interfere with what he had
done, and strongly advised them to endorse and confirm his timely
toleration. Parliament was in no mood to meet him in that spirit.
Charles sorely wanted money to carry on the war with Holland, which
he had undertaken in pursuance of the plan sketched in agreement
with the King of France by the Treaty of Dover ; but Parliament was
resolved not to part with a penny until he had cancelled that Declara-
tion, in which he had flouted their authority by acting on his own, and
until he had reinstated in full force the penal statutes, which had been
passed deliberately in full assembly of both Houses. And so, though he
had boasted bravely that in this matter he would * stick to his guns,'
* Reliquiae Baxterianae,' Lib. I., Part II., p. 430.
Episcopal Returns 39
they swiftly turned his flank and compelled his abject surrender. He
broke the seal from the Declaration of Indulgence with his own hand,
and the penal statutes were put in force with more relentless energy
than before.
Many held that licences granted in the eleven months of the Royal
Indulgence were still valid after the Declaration was withdrawn, and
that the penal statutes could only be applied to those who had not
secured a Royal licence. Conventicles, not a few, were therefore
continued, in spite alike of justices and informers. The point was
disputed, and not clearly settled in the courts of law ; though the
preponderant opinion was that in the act of withdrawing the Indul-
gence the King ipso facto had withdrawn his licences as well. For
two years no clear understanding was reached. There can be little
doubt, indeed, that Charles was rather pleased than not with those who
clung to his Royal licence as an aegis against the shafts of persecution
when the penal statutes were reinstated ; and, again, his hand had to be
forced, this time by the Bishops. He had referred the disputed point
to them, and they urged him publicly to declare that the licences he
had issued had been recalled. Accordingly, on February 3, 1675, he
issued such an order in Council ; and, a week later, a Royal declaration
was published, for enforcing the order made in Council, and 'command-
* ing the order to be observed in all its points ' (Frank Bates, * Declara-
'tion of Indulgence,' pp. 140-41).
Thus the hand of the persecutor was strengthened and all shelter
removed from the persecuted, so that for the rest of Charles's reign and
through James II. 's, till the Declaration of 1687, Nonconformists had no
locus standi whatever, and they preached or worshipped in Noncon-
formist fashion at their peril, subject, on conviction, to the extremest
penalties of all the penal laws which had been passed against them.
It is abundantly clear, therefore, that throughout the quarter of a
century through which the Nonconformists had to suffer, it was not
from the pressure of the hand of the King. The Persecution was
Parliamentary and Ecclesiastical, not Royal.
That the part which Clarendon played, though so prominent as to
appear principal, was only secondary, is proved beyond doubt by one
simple fact. When Clarendon fell from his high position as the chief
adviser of the King (deposed as effectually by Charles as was Bismarck
by the young Kaiser in our own day), and fled to France, henceforth to
live in the isolation of an exile, the persecuting policy which he had
framed and formulated was not relaxed. It grew not feebler, but more
relentless.
Clarendon fled in 1667, tne 7 ear when the first Conventicle Act
ran out. A second Conventicle Act was passed in 1670, and with
its more ingenious, though apparently less severe methods, persecution
became more severe and searching than ever.
For Sheldon was still in power, and his insistent influence was never
relaxed ; . . . ?.-id we shall not be far wrong if throughout this section
we speak of 'Sheldon and his associates' as the active spirits in every
stage of these first years of ' Nonconformity under Persecution.'
40 Detailed and Expository
Sheldon's religious ideal for the nation was Unity of Church Orga-
nization and Uniformity in Public Ritual, or (as he loved to phrase it),
' Unity and Uniformity in God's service.' Any breach of the first by
separation from the Episcopal Church he looked on as the deadly sin of
schism ; and any marring of the second by the slightest departure from
the order of service in the Book of Common Prayer he loathed as dis-
cordance, and was determined to stifle with all the energy of an
imperious bigot. Indeed, he fondly thought that he could put an end to
both by making them offences punishable by the law of the land.
It is just possible that if the punishment had been made severe
enough, and if the whole executive power of the State, military as well
as civil, had been employed instantly and constantly to convict offenders
and execute the penalties upon them to the full, he might have effected
his purpose. If the penalty exacted had been the death penalty as in
many periods it was when the Papacy set to work to stamp out the
heresy of Protestantism and execution had promptly followed con-
viction, Nonconformity might have been stamped out.
The history of persecution seems to show that only its severest
forms have any real efficiency. Wholesale massacres may effect their
diabolical purpose. Yet even capital punishment unless inflicted
wholesale does little more than winnow the chaff from the wheat.
' The blood of the martyrs ' even proves the seed of the Church. The
Inquisition, by incessant watchfulness and fiendish cruelty, did extirpate
Protestantism from Spain and the Spanish Colonies. And the Massacre
of St. Bartholomew, followed a century later by the Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes, wellnigh destroyed the Reformed Religion in France.
The persecution of the more stalwart Protestants in England by Mary
and Elizabeth went far to drive out English Puritanism. Yet anything
less than the extremest measures universally applied is invariably worse
than useless.
Penalties less than capital, such as imprisonment, fine, and social or
ecclesiastical excommunication, usually multiply the numbers, and serve
only to purify and intensify the religious zeal of those who have to
suffer ' for conscience' sake.'
It was so with Sheldon's campaign against Nonconformity. As with
so many persecutors, he greatly underestimated the strength of the con-
victions which brought it into being the force and vitality of a
'tender conscience.' Each fresh stage of this evil policy only proved
more clearly its inefficiency, though at each stage he still clung to the
idea that a little more severity would crown it with success.
The Returns which he asked for, and which are presented in
Vol. L, were (we now proceed to show) closely connected with the
several stages in Sheldon's persecuting campaign.
The Act of Uniformity, strictly speaking, is not one of the series
seeing that until it had produced its fatal effects the 'Nonconformists'
had no separate being outside the State Church. Still it would natur-
ally have called forth a set of Episcopal Returns, anterior and intro-
ductory to the other three. Unfortunately for the historical student,
Gilbert Sheldon did not obtain the Primacy till 1663. Had he been
Episcopal Returns 41
elevated to the See of Canterbury at the Restoration instead of Juxon,
there is little doubt that the series of Archiepiscopal Enquiries and
Episcopal Returns which are so striking a feature of his tenure of the
Primacy, would have been prefaced by another in 1663. To a prelate
of such a systematic order of mind, the advantage of a complete and
authentic list of those who resigned their livings, or were ejected from
them on St. Bartholomew's Day, 1662, would have been obvious.
With such a list before him, it would have been comparatively easy
for him to keep his eye, and (if need were) to lay his hand upon them.
Of necessity it took him some time to adjust himself to the new
position, so that though from the beginning he was at the heart of the
movement against the Puritans, and the Act of Uniformity which
turned them into Nonconformists was largely his work, he was not at
leisure enough to take steps to obtain any systematic information about
them till 1665.
Had he obtained such a list and lodged it, like the Returns we here
reproduce, in the Archiepiscopal archives, they would have been in-
valuable, as giving first-hand information by which the historical student
might have tested the completeness of Calamy's list. Not that it would
have rendered Calamy's researches unnecessary, for Calamy would
have had no access to them (any more than he had to those now pub-
lished), such as any accredited research student may now readily secure.
Here we are glad to take a natural opportunity of making the
fullest and most grateful acknowledgment of the larger liberality shown
by the most recent occupants of the See of Canterbury, and of the ready
courtesy shown to all historical students by the librarians at Lambeth
Palace. All the documents bearing upon the history of Nonconformity
which are there preserved, whether printed or in manuscript, are freely
accessible to the historical student. Every facility is given for their
thorough examination, and the freest permission given for their
transcription.
No Return of the ejected ministers was made by the aged Primate
Juxon, and no such list was made in 1662 or 1663. We are dependent
therefore upon the labours of Calamy and Neal as the great martyrolo-
gists of Puritanism and Nonconformity ; save that, in some cases, the
parish registers supply first-hand information. Still, in many of these
the facts are only implied, not stated explicitly ; and, in many more the
parish records are defective or entirely lacking just at this critical period.
The first Returns that were demanded by Gilbert Sheldon were
asked for in 1665, the year following the First Conventicle Act, the first
of the penal statutes designed to extinguish the Nonconformists created
by the Act of Uniformity.
He had fancied, no doubt, that the ejected ministers would not dare
to continue a ministry outside the establishment which by that Act had
been made impossible to them within it. Hard facts proved the futility
of this fancy. The people were as eager for the ministry of their
pastors after ejectment as they were before, and so the Conventicle Act
of 1664 was passed 'To prevent and suppress Seditious Conventicles.'
According to the preamble, it is but a revival of the Act of
Detailed and Expository
Uniformity passed in the thirty-fifth year of Queen Elizabeth's reign.
That Act, entitled 'an Act to retain the Queen's Majesty's subjects in
'their due obedience' (the preamble to the Conventicle Act alleged),
* hath not been put in due execution by reason of some doubt of late
'made, whether the said Act be still in force, although it be very
'clear and evident ; and it is hereby declared that the said Act is still in
' force, and ought to be put in due execution.'
And this Conventicle Act was ostensibly devised ' for providing of
' further and more speedy remedies against the growing and dangerous
'practices of seditious sectaries, and other disloyal persons, who, under
' the pretence of tender consciences, do at their meetings contrive insur-
' rections, as late experience has showed.' [I presume that this reference
was mainly to the abortive Rising in the North, which ' fizzled out '
with disastrous consequences to the handful of old officers in Oliver's
army who engineered it, in the autumn of 1663 and the beginning of
this year 1664. The attempt on Dublin Castle in 1663 could scarcely
be pressed into the range of this disingenuous argument.]
Sheldon and his associates knew well enough that ' contriving insur-
' rections ' or even suggesting the need of political changes, was no
integral part of the proceedings in these assemblies for worship, which
were held in private houses only because the parish churches were
closed against them. They knew that very rarely, and then only among
the Fifth Monarchy men or it might be, most occasionally among a
few zealots of the Baptists and Independents had these meetings for
religious worship betrayed the slightest trace of political animus or
conspiracy. It is only too clear that it was part of Sheldon's policy to
' confuse the issue,' and to fasten on Nonconformists, as such, ' seditious
' designs,' of which he knew perfectly well the vast majority were as
innocent as ' babes unborn.' By such means political prudence was
enlisted in a service to which it would have been strongly averse had it
appeared in its true guise simply as ' persecution,' prompted by prelatical
bigotry.
The preamble was received, and accepted as genuine and as proved,
the scheme of repression embodied in this First Conventicle Act was
endorsed, and the Act itself promptly passed. Aimed at ' Con-
'venticling' as such, it treated all alike preachers or hearers who
gathered together for worship other than that prescribed by the Book of
Common Prayer, and in places other than the parish church, in numbers
greater than four 'over and above those of the same household.' The
penalty for everyone present above the age of sixteen, for the first
offence, was imprisonment for any period up to three months, or the
payment of such sum of money as the justices or chief magistrate shall
fine the offender at, up to 5, in lieu thereof (a money payment so
exorbitant that only those in good circumstances could possibly pay it).
On a second offence, the period of imprisonment and the amount
of fine were doubled. These penalties were severe enough, most would
think. Yet it is clear that Sheldon was not over-confident as to the
effects of even such severity. The penalty for a third offence was
transportation for seven years (though be it observed the Act itself was
Episcopal Returns 43
to 'continue in force for three years' [only] 'after the end of this
' present session of Parliament, and from thenceforward to the end of the
' next session of Parliament after the said three years and no longer '), or
the payment of jioo.
For twelve months this cruel Act had full play. Yet the spirit of
the Nonconformists was unbroken. Ministers and people still gathered,
and that in numbers greater than before. The authorities became
alarmed and angry; and in 1665 Sheldon determined , to issue en-
quiries, which would give him authentic information as to the doings
of these Nonconformists, specially the ejected ministers. True, in
issuing ' Orders and Instructions ' for this first set of Returns his osten-
sible object was the spiritual welfare of his Church and the efficiency of
his clergy, yet each separate line of his enquiry shows that his eye was
keener still on the Nonconformist wanderers from his flock, both clerical
and lay.
Even so strong a Churchman as Edward Cardwell, Professor ot
Ancient History and Principal of St. Alban's Hall, Oxford, is compelled
to admit it. In annotating these Orders and Instructions, reprinted
verbatim in Vol. II., pp. 270-71 of his * Documentary Annals,' he says :
'The orders and instructions which accompanied this letter*
(Sheldon's letter to the Bishop of London) ' had evidently two distinct
' objects in view, the improvement of the orthodox clergy, and the sup-
'pression of Nonconformity. The discipline of the Church appears at
'this time, as indeed might be expected from the recent disorders, to
' have been in a worse condition than at any other period. However
' eminent may have been some of the prelates at the time of the Restora-
' tion, the Church had to contend with these cumulative difficulties, that
' its opponents among the laity were for the most part men of moral
'character and religious profession, and its friends were the members and
' adherents of a dissolute and irreligious Court. A pamphlet, printed at
'Cambridge in 1663, and entitled, "Ichabod, or Five Groans of the
' " Church," complains heavily of undue ordination, loose profaneness, un-
' conscionable simony, careless non-residence, and encroaching pluralities.
' It is at this period that the word "curate" obtained its modern mean-
' ing ; and it is now introduced by the Archbishop into his instructions,
' as a title of a distinct and subordinate office, having previously been
' applied generally to all pastors and ministers. But though the improve-
'ment of the regular clergy is made the prominent object of these
' instructions, it was a point of no little importance to obtain accurate
' knowledge of the numbers and the residence of the Nonconformists.'
So of the six points of his inquiry, we find the fourth, fifth, and sixth
required a Return of the Schoolmasters, Practisers of Physick, and
Nonconformist ejected Ministers.
This information would be of great value to the persecutor, by
enabling him more readily to apply both of the penal statutes already
passed. Having now a ' directory ' of the ejected ministers and of the
nonconformable lecturers, teachers of youth and practisers of physic, he
would know where the conventicles were likely to be held, and would
be able to set his spies and informers to work to far greater effect.
44-
Detailed and Expository
It cannot be doubted that Sheldon looked to the future as keenly
as he did on the past. In concert with Clarendon, he had already
drafted that third penal statute, the Corporation, or Five Mile Act,
which was designed to restrict the area of the influence of the ejected
ministers, by driving them out of all the large centres of population and
from their old spheres of ministerial activity, as the Act of Uniformity
had already driven them out of their pulpits. Indeed it was only suc-
cessive adjournments (dictated by fear of the Plague in King and Court
and prelacy alike) which had prevented Parliament from passing it before
the issue of Sheldon's letter. Parliament had assembled in March, and
Sheldon's letter was not sent till July, so that continuous sessions would
have enabled them to push through this Corporation Act before the
issue of the Primate's * Orders.' Continuous sessions they dared not
hold when the dread Plague was holding high revel in the City of
London, and even in the Liberties of Westminster. So Sheldon could
not wait, and from the seclusion of Lambeth he sent out the Instruc-
tions, which on their face might be thought to concern the state of the
Church in general only, or at most, to aid 'officials' to carry out more
efficiently the spirit of the Act of Uniformity and the detailed provisions
of the Conventicle Act.
Had these '65 Returns been complete, and all of them preserved, we
should have a list of all the Nonconforming ministers who had survived
the first three years of their exile from the ministry. Of those who had
died in the interval we should still have no official information. As we
shall see later, however (Part II., Section I., Chap. I.), what has been
preserved is unfortunately the merest fragment of the whole.
Made in 1665, what we do possess gives us also incidental infor-
mation as to the working of the First Conventicle Act (1664) ; since
the ejected ministers were held to have committed a breach of 'the
* peace as regards Church and State ' if they held ' unlawful assemblies
* for public worship,' or, in other words, if they conducted conventicles as
defined in this First Conventicle Act. In fact, the inference is so
natural as to be almost irresistible, that Sheldon ordered these Returns
very largely that he might gather and tabulate authentic information as
to the working of these two penal statutes (the Act of Uniformity, and
the First Conventicle Act). Surely, however, that is not the whole
truth about them.
There is scarcely any room for doubt that his eye was quite as much
on the provisions of the Corporation Act, whose passage through Parlia-
ment he knew well enough was only delayed. That Act was to make
it illegal for any minister, not strictly * conformable,' who would not
take the Oxford oath, to live in any 'city, or town corporate, or
* borough that sends burgesses to the Parliament,' or even ' to come or
'to be ' within five miles of any such city, town, or borough ' unless
' only in passing upon the road.' There is no doubt that the informa-
tion furnished in return to these enquiries of Sheldon would be of great
value to officials in carrying out this ingeniously contrived and most
oppressive measure. In the preamble to the Act, the description of the
persons to whom the Act was to apply was so comprehensive as to
include all those who would be reported in the '65 Episcopal Returns.
Episcopal Returns 4.5
Every 'parson, vicar, curate, lecturer, and other person in holy
' orders ' who had ' not declared their unfeigned assent and consent to the
1 use of all things contained and prescribed in " The Book of Common
' " Prayer," etc., and had not subscribed the declaration or acknowledg-
' ment prescribed by the Act of Uniformity ; and every person or persons
' not ordained according to the form of the Church of England who had
' taken upon them to preach in unlawful assemblies, conventicles, or
1 meetings under colour or pretence of exercise of religion, contrary to
' the laws and statutes of this kingdom,' came under the ban of this Act ;
and to obtain lists of these people (ministers not properly ordained, un-
satisfactory curates, Nonconforming teachers and physicians as well as
ejected Nonconformist clergy), was the precise object of Sheldon's
Orders and Instructions. So unquestionable was this forward look in
the enquiries, that the candour of Cardwell cannot but acknowledge it.*
So clear is it that the first of this series of Returns had regard to the
persecution of Nonconformists, though of course the persecutors would
have used the euphemism, ' their restraint and suppression,' in place of
the plainer word ' persecution.'
It becomes as clear, also, on the slightest investigation, that it was
the same with the Returns which Sheldon ordered in 1669.
By a singular coincidence the Conventicle Act lapsed the very year
of Clarendon's downfall. As we have seen, it was to continue in force
for three years after the end of the Session of Parliament in which it
was passed, and thereafter to the end of the next ensuing session of
Parliament. It was passed May 17, 1664, and the Session was ter-
minated by a Proclamation of Prorogation on July 15. 'Three years
'thereafter' ran out, therefore, on July 15, 1667, not a month after the
Dutch War was ended by the Peace of Breda. Parliament met on the
25th, but was prorogued to October 10, and then they particularly
thanked the King for displacing the Lord Chancellor Clarendon ;f and,
after passing an Act for the banishment of the Earl of Clarendon, they
adjourned on December 19. This was scarcely necessary as Clarendon
had absconded on November 30, going into an exile in France, which
ended only with his death in 1674.
By the letter of the law, therefore, the Conventicle Act lapsed only
a few weeks after the same Parliament which passed it had pronounced
the sentence of banishment on the man who, next to Sheldon and the
Bishops, had had most to do with its passing into law, viz., in mid-
December of 1667.
* The same note, which I have already cited, goes on to observe about the
Nonconformist ministers :
'They had given offence to the Government by opposing the war which was then
' carried on against the Dutch, and it was determined to subject them to new and
' effectual restraints. The Parliament had assembled in the month of March ; but,
1 owing to the breaking out of the Plague, had been several times prorogued, and
met eventually for the dispatch of business at Oxford in the month of October. On
' the 4th of that month was brought in the bill ' ' for suppressing unconforming
" ministers and schoolmasters " which imposed a strict oath upon them, and such
' limitations respecting residence, as have since given it the name of "the Five Mile
' ' ' Act. " The Archbishop's instructions as to non-conformists, bearing date the jth of
4 July, would seem to have been given in anticipation of this memorable act, and for
1 the purpose of making it effectual as soon as it was passed.'
f This he had done on the 3ist of August.
4 6
Detailed and Expository
When Sheldon issued his next set of enquiries, therefore (in June,
1669) enquiries which concerned Conventicles the Conventicle Act
had been out of active operation for a year and a half, but the Corpora-
tion, or Five Mile Act, had been in active operation little short of
four years.
The Conventicle Act had done little to suppress Conventicles,
though in many parts of the country both the ministers who had con-
ducted them, and the brave laity who had frequented them, had suffered
much at the hands of persecuting Anglicans, and the hardships of
ministers had been much increased by the Five Mile Act in districts
where it was made an effective statute. Though there is no denying the
fact, whatever may be the explanation of it, that neither of these penal
statutes had much effect in the precincts of the City of London, in the
Borough of Southwark, or the Liberties of Westminster.
In the State Papers (Domestic Series) there is proof that the Court
and City officials kept watch upon the Conventiclers. Reports given in
by spies and informers are preserved, which show that the authorities
had knowledge of a number of Conventicles held in the years 1664 and
1665 in the precincts of the City; but there is no proof that any
number of those reported were arrested and penalised, either by fine or
imprisonment. And it is certain that the two terrible calamities which
overtook the Metropolis in the years 1665 and 1666 the Great Plague
and the Great Fire operated, as though by Divine appointment, to
shield the Nonconformists in it from their persecutors, by diverting
their thoughts from the congenial work of persecution to the more
absorbing anxieties and fears for their own personal safety. Indeed, the
Plague and Fire did more than that. The heroism of the ejected
ministers in ministering to the victims of the Plague in 1665, and to
homeless thousands amidst the ashes and ruins of the Great Fire in 1666,
so impressed the public in their favour to the deserved disparagement of
the Established clergy, that neither the Conventicle Act nor the Five
Mile Act could find men sufficiently at leisure from their personal
anxieties and fears to set these Acts in motion, either in the Ecclesiastical
Courts or the Courts of Law (whether at the Petty Sessions or Assizes).
One of the most startling facts in connection with the Episcopal
Returns of 1665 is that for London, where the number of ejected
ministers who had fled from persecution in the provinces was so great,
there are no Returns at all ; and there is no proof whatever that, in more
than two or three instances, the Five Mile Act was put into operation
in London or its suburbs.
Had Humphrey Henchman only made his Returns for the Diocese
of London as complete as Seth Ward's is for Devon and Cornwall, we
should have had a volume of information exceeding in interest and
historic value the whole of the Returns for the rest of England. In
the two years over which his enquiries would have been extended,
the parochial clergy had deserted their posts, and had made no attempt
to send in any reports at all. So that instead of finding in Vol. 639 of
the Lambeth MSS. the most suggestive and illuminating information
about the Nonconformist ejected ministers in and about the City of
Rpiscopal Returns 4.7
London, the Liberties of Westminster, and the Borough of Southwark,
and that circle of suburban hamlets and villages which clustered so
thickly even in 1665 within a radius of five miles of London, the
historical student finds an absolute blank ; and that for reasons which
would certainly favour the further growth of conventicles in number
and influence, and multiply the number of ejected ministers who would
find refuge in the Metropolitan area. There can be no doubt that
the Great Plague and the Great Fire, Clarendon's fall, and the lapse of
the great persecuting Act, conduced considerably to the growth of
Nonconformity in the London area in the years that followed 1667.
The policy of persecution was manifestly failing once more all over
the country. Conventicles and Nonconformist ministers were increasing
in numbers. Their meetings were more open and more frequent.
Despite the promises of the false and fickle King, the persecutors got
little encouragement ; whereas the persecuted, being practically un-
molested, waxed stronger.
We need not wonder, then, that in 1669 Sheldon had come to
realize that unless something further were done, he would have to con-
fess himself baffled and defeated.
Palpably, again, Sheldon's own action in asking for Returns of
Conventicles was intimately connected with the more stringent courses
which he was now urging only too successfully both upon Parliament
and the King. He issued his Orders or Enquiries to the Bishops in
June. A fresh Declaration was published by the King in July ; and
by April of the following year, 1670, the Second Conventicle Act
became the law of the land.
There is no need at this point to give the text of Sheldon's circular
letter, as it will be found in the chapter specially dealing with the
Episcopal Returns of 1669 (Chap. III.) ; but it should be noted that
in its preamble he frankly confesses alarm at ' the continual reports '
which reach him c on all hands of the frequency of conventicles and
* unlawful meetings,' many of them c open,' to say nothing of the still
greater number which met by stealth and in secret.
No less significant is the exaggerated emphasis which he lays upon
the King's disavowal of sympathy with the Conventiclers. We feel
inclined to say : c Sir, thou dost protest too much.' The conversation
cited by him was evidently engineered quite in the fashion of a modern
press interview, so as to lead up to a denial much more definite and dis-
tinct than Charles ever intended his words to convey. The prelates,
however, were bent on working the Royal words to the uttermost, and
the leading question which Sheldon inserts in his Enquiries : ' From
< whom, and upon what hopes, they look for impunity ?' is evidently
intended to elicit answers which will test the value of the King's
disavowal.
How closely the King was pressed by Sheldon is palpable enough
from the following facts :
I. Bishop Kennett notes in June, 1669 (the very month in which
Sheldon issued his Enquiries) : ' An Order of the King in Council to
4 the Bishops, to take a strict Account within their respective Dioceses
Detailed and Expository
'- what Conventicles are held contrary to Law, and who are the
' Teachers ' showing how the Primate had succeeded in fathering his
own little project on the King in Council.
2. The month of July saw other measures taken, which forced the
King to make a public proclamation.
On the 6th, the Judges attended the Lord Keeper to consider 'what
Statutes are now in force for the suppressing of unlawful Conventicles';
and three days later (July 9) ' the Judges gave in their opinion in writing
to the Council concerning unlawful meetings and what Laws were now
in force against them ' evidently calling the attention of the authorities
to the lapse of the Conventicle Act of 1664. Exactly a week after
this judicial Report, the King issues a Proclamation * to put the Laws
' in Execution for the suppression of Conventicles, and particularly to
'proceed against the Preachers, according to the Statute made the iyth
4 of his Majesty's reign, entitled " An Act for restraining Noncon-
'"formists from inhabiting Corporations";' and Kennett's descriptive
notice of it runs: 'Issued upon several Informations given in to his
' Majesty that Those who separate themselves from the establisht
'Worship, do meet in greater Numbers than formerly to such a degree
'as may endanger the Public Peace, by which his Majesty could not
' but take notice how far his known and still avowed Easinesse to
' Indulge tender Consciences is abused thereby.
'Given at Whitehall 16 July Ann regni 21 1669.'
The full text of the Proclamation, as given by Wilkins in his
'Concilia' (Vol. IV., 588), makes clearer than any partial description
can do the alarm of the Prelates, and the astute way in which they
managed to put their views and aims into the King's mouth.
' A Proclamation against numerous Conventicles,
' CHARLES R. :
' Forasmuch as information hath been given us from several parts of
the Kingdom that those who separate themselves from the established
worship, do meet in greater numbers than formerly, to such a degree
as may endanger the public peace, with which we cannot but take
notice also how far our known and still avowed easiness to indulge
tender consciences is abused thereby ; wherefore, by the advice of our
privy council, we have thought fit to issue this our proclamation
straitly charging and commanding all our justices of the peace within
the limits of their several jurisdictions, where they shall find any such
meetings to be held that they put the laws in execution for suppression
thereof, and particularly proceed against the preachers, according to
the Statute made in the seventeenth year of our reign, entituled, " An
" Act for restraining nonconformists from inhabiting in corporations."
'Given at our court of Whitehall this i6th day of July in
the one & twentieth year of our reign, MDCLXIX' (1669).
Nor is it long before they persuade the Parliamentary leaders to take
the further step of passing a second Conventicle Act, an Act which
was not simply to reinstate the Act which had lapsed, but in several
Episcopal Returns 49
points, go further. They began the process in February, still according
to the old style in the year 1669, though we should call it 1670.
The simple chronological notes of Bishop Kennett (Landsdowne
MSS., 1023), tell their own tale. [They are largely extracts from the
contemporary notes of Seth Ward, Bishop of Sarum] :
' February 17. Order in the House of Commons to bring in a Bill
for Suppressing Conventicles.
* March 9. The Commons pass'd the Bill for Suppressing Con-
venticles and sent it to the Lords.
'March 10. M r Treasurer acquainted the House of Commons that
upon attending his Majesty with their Votes and Desires for Sup-
pressing Conventicles and putting the Laws in Execution against the
Papists, his Majesty was pleased to declare that effectual Course should
be taken w th Both.
'March 25. Pro tempore the Bill against Conventicles passed the
Grand Committee of the whole House of Lords, before the passing of
the Proviso concerning the King's Supremacy.
' The King called to me ' (the Bishop of Sarum) ' and told me that
he desired that the Proviso might pass, for this reason ; that the Bishops
and all his friends might see that he would take care of them and of
the Nation in the strict execution of that Act with which he would not
dispense.' [A singular statement in face of the fact that within two
years from that date he had published his Declaration of Indulgence, by
which he dispensed with all the penal statutes by suspending them].
Ward adds in Latin : * He said the same to the Bishop of London, to the
Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, and others,' and continues : ' He com-
manded me to let the Bishops understand so much ; which I did : and
the Proviso passed without opposition, His Royal Highness' (i.e., James,
Duke of York) ' having declared the same things rxiblickly in a speech
in the King's presence.'
'March 28. The Proviso was rectified in the House of Commons,
and all dangerous passages left out.'
Kennett's notes put the last fact rather more fully than Bishop Ward :
'March 28. The Bill for Suppressing Conventicles was sent back
to the House of Commons, who agreed to several Amendments of the
Lords, but adher'd to their Paragraph of making above five an
Unlawful Assembly.'
The last note in the series is :
' March 30. The Commons had a Conference with the Lords
managed by Sir Heneage Finch, who gave the Reasons for their
Adherence and Amendments in the Bill to suppress Conventicles.'
The connection between these Episcopal Returns and both the
Royal Proclamation and the Second Conventicle Act is obvious. As to
the Royal Proclamation, the Returns would give information as to
where and when Conventicles might be discovered, and the Conven-
ticlers arrested ; and giving the names (and often the usual residence)
of the Teachers or Preachers would give facilities for their appre-
hension and penalizing.
A careful consideration of the new features of this Second Con-
4
50 Detailed and Expository
venticle Act, leads us irresistibly to the conclusion that these Episcopal
Returns were deliberately designed to furnish an instrument for the
facile execution of this fresh Edict of Persecution.
The points in which it differed from the First were six :
1. The definition of the term 'Conventicle ' (or 'unlawful assembly')
was extended so as to apply to meetings ' out of doors.'
In the First Conventicle Act its phraseology seemed to contemplate,
and directly to recognize, only meetings held in private houses, within
the closed doors of an inhabited house ; as a Conventicle was constituted
only wiien there were present at the worship five persons or more, above
sixteen years of age, ' over and above the members of the household.'
So that if the persons assembled within the house were warned of the
approach of the legal officers in time to leave the premises, and meet in
the woods, in a glen, or on the open moors near the house, it might be
argued, as it was (on more than one occasion), that there was no
c Conventicle ' according to the letter of the law however many were
gathered together in these other places. In this Second Act, however,
this possibility is expressly foreseen and provided for, as the alternative is
added : c Or if it be in a house, field or place, where there is no family
4 inhabiting,' there is still a Conventicle, wherever ' any five persons or
' more are assembled for worship in other manner than according to the
4 liturgy and practice of the Church of England ' ; in other words,
except in a house, only four persons were allowed to meet ; /.*., one
preacher and three hearers.
2. The penalties for breach of the Act are altered in their amount
and in their incidence.
(1) In the First Act, the penalty is imprisonment for the first
offence, up to three months ; and for a second, or any further offence,
up to six months ; the only alternative being the payment of a fine up
to the amount of .5 for the first offence and up to the amount of ^10
for a second ; and that for any offender whatever, whether preacher or
hearer.
In the Second, the penalty is a fine imprisonment being only the
alternative where the money-fine cannot be got.
(2) Further, there is a great difference made between the preacher
and the hearers.
(a) In the case of the hearers, it is very much less : only five shillings
for the first offence, and ten shillings for the second for each person ; and,
in case of non-payment, distraint of goods up to the value of the fine.
(b) For the preacher, however, the fine is made much higher.
Instead of the 5 per offender (levied on all equally), for the first offence
it is 20 ; and for the second, and any subsequent offence, the enormous
sum of ^40, to be followed by distraint of goods in case of non-payment.
In addition to this discrimination, there was inserted an ingenious
device for securing the money, by working upon the cupidity of possible
informers. In case of poverty making the payment of the fine impos-
sible either directly, in cash, or by distraint upon the goods of the
offender which, of course, would be the case in the greater majority of
offenders (both hearers and teachers), the justice of the peace (before
whom the cases were brought), was empowered to select anyone ot
Episcopal Returns 5 i
those present at the Conventicle of sufficient means and substance, and
call upon him or her to pay for his or her poorer fellow-worshippers,
and in case of refusal, to distrain his or her goods and chattels for fines
which could not otherwise be obtained up to the sum of 10.
(c) And a third distinction is made amongst those who infringe the
Act. The owner of the house in which the Conventicle is held is to
be dealt with by the same rule, and fines imposed on the same scale as
the teacher. ^20 is exacted for the first offence, and .40 for any
subsequent one. The money was leviable either directly or indirectly
from the offender personally, or from some well-to-do person who
was worshipping as guest.
3. The agents employed for the discovery of the offenders.
(i) By provision for their reward, a new and particularly odious class
of men was brought into existence viz., spies, disguised as adherents,
and c informers.'
4. The ' powers ' employed for the suppressing and dispersion of the
Conventicles, and their arrest and punishment in case of surprise.
In the First Conventicle Act the only persons looked to were the
civil magistrates of the district, with their subordinates, and the church-
wardens and clergy of the parish where the Conventicle was held. In
this Second Act, however, express provision is made for calling in the
armed forces of the Kingdom, in case the Conventicles cannot be sup-
pressed by ordinary civil and ecclesiastical authority. Any one justice
of peace could compel the assistance of the militia or any other of His
Majesty's forces.
5. In the disposal of the fines, too, a difference is made, with the
clear design of enlisting the interest of King and commoner alike in an
active prosecution of the Act.
In the earlier Act the fines (where paid to avoid imprisonment and
the cases would be very few indeed) were to be paid to the churchwardens
of the parish where the offender did last inhabit, for the relief of the poor.
In this later Act the fines levied whether from rich or poor
were to be pooled and divided into three equal parts :
One-third was, as before, for the relief of the poor.
One-third was paid into the King's exchequer.
One-third was the spoil of the informer, through whose ' diligence
' and industry ' the Conventicle was discovered and the Conventiclers
arrested.*
* The sums secured were brought to the Assize Courts by the constables or
churchwardens who had levied the fines and handed over to the presiding magis-
trate. The Court then 'ordered' the several 'third parts' to be paid to these several
officials according to the terms of the Act.
The Sessions Books of all municipal corporations must contain a vast amount of
matter which would be of great historic valueito the historian of Nonconformity. By
the courtesy of the Town Clerk of Bristol I was able to verify the truth of this state-
ment as to that city. Under date 16 October, 1670 ' (just six months after the passing
of the Second Conventicle Act), I came upon several entries like the three following :
Paid into Courte
By Jno. Clarke, Chiefe Con ble of the parish of Christchurch :
five & twenty shillings for the offence of Nathaniell Day,
whereof 8s. 4d. due to his Mato (was) delivered to M r Sher(iff) Day,
and 8s. 4d. ... to Sir Rob*- Yeoman for the Informer,
the other third part to the poor. ' A 2
Detailed and Expository
6. The conduct of officials in carrying out the Act. Under the
terms of the First Conventicle Act their zeal was taken for granted. As
representatives of the law of the land, it was presumed that they would
do everything in their power to make the Act effective, by inviting and
gathering information of these < illegal assemblies ' with eagerness and
alertness.
In the six years since its enactment, however, so many of the
justices and magistrates were found to be in league with the Con-
' By Chiefe Con blc of St. Stephens :
55. for the offence of Ezekiell Fogg. l
53. for the offence of the wife of Francis Baily,
55. for the offence of Mary Baldwin,
55. for the offence of Edw. Byfeild,
whereof 155. was delivered to M r Sher. Day,
153 to S r Ro: Yeomans for the Informer,
& another ^ [153.] for the poore of St. James.'
' Received of the Constables of St. James :
lv s (553.) for the offence of Jo n Cumberland.
153. for the offence of Will. Rogers.
53. for the offence of Rich d Christmas.
55. for the offence of his wife.
55. for the offence of Thomas Ellis. '
These last amounts make a total of 855. , and a third part of this would amount
to 283. 3d. ; but to make the division come out in even figures they dock the poor of
35. 3d., and give is. gd. to the King and the Informer above their due ; for we read :
Whereupon
303. [was] delivered to M r Sher. Day [for the King],
303. was delivered to Sir Rob fc Yeomans for the Informer,
and 253. to the poore of St. James. '
Turning the pages of these Session Books ten years after the withdrawal of the
Indulgence, I came upon this :
'6 Aug., 1683. Whereas mony levied on sevall .psons on conviction for Con-
venticles was brought into Court by S r Thomas Earle and delivered to the Town
Clerk.
' Ordered that these 2 bags be delivered to the Sheriffs, and that they issue out
20 lb to M r Ralph Oliffe,
M r Thomas Lugge,
M r John Tilly & others,
the said f>sons claiming a third part of that money as Informers.'
And a year later, upon this :
' ii July, 1684. It was reported that 42 was ready to be delivered pursuant to
the Conventicle Act.
' Brought into Court a bag sealed supposed to contain 42 lb I s , being the mony
levyed on sev r all persons for being at a Conventicle 4th May last in Tuckey's house :
viz: on the goods & chattels of
D. Tucker, Tho. Pope & ux. , Ald n Dolman & ux.
on which were Informers
Tho: Lugg & Tho: Hynor, Jn Hoare & W. Watkins.
4 It is Ordered
That the mony be taken againe to the Mayor, and disposed of according ta
the Act.'
1 This Ezekiel Fogg must soon after have left Bristol for London, for in 1672 he
secured a licence as a Congregational teacher as of St. Pulker's, London that is,
as a parishioner of St. Sepulchre's, Snow Hill. The licence entry [on E. (278)] is
undated, but belongs to the month of December.
Episcopal Returns 53
venticlers (by connivance, if not actual encouragement), that in this
Second Conventicle Act a special clause was inserted, which was
intended to create a zeal where it did not exist and quicken it where it
was lukewarm. Any justice or magistrate who was reported as slack in
the discharge of these duties was liable to a penalty of 100, and any
subordinate to a fine of ^5.
Now of these six points, the first, fourth, and last, are concerned
mainly with a more vigorous and effective prosecution of the Act.
For the application of the other three, the Episcopal Returns are
clearly designed to give the special information the Act required. It was
the three classes of offenders specially selected for fleecing under the
New Act, of whom these Episcopal Returns gave the names in three
out of the five columns in which the precis of the Returns were arranged
viz., the owners of the houses where the conventicles were held, the
well-to-do persons who frequented them, reported as c Abettors,' as those
out of whose pockets or property the fines imposed were in the last resort
to be obtained, and the Heads, or Teachers, who conducted the worship
and preached the sermons.*
Nor could anything more faithfully reflect the whole spirit of the
new Act than the fourth column in its cynically ' financial ' meaning.
Headed ' Quality,' in many instances, it frankly adopted as its standard
nothing touching life or conduct or character, but simply and purely the
j s. d., which it was the object of the Act to extort from those who
still dared to obey their consciences rather than a Parliamentary Statute.
Thus intimately were these '69 Returns, then, connected with the per-
secution of Nonconformists. So clearly were they intended to prove
the disastrous effects of the lapse of the First Conventicle Act, to
prepare for the Second, and to aid its application.
Nor could we have a clearer proof of Sheldon's sense of triumph
when the Act was passed than the letter he sent out in May, 1670. It
is printed verbatim in Wilkins's c Concilia' (Vol. IV., 589) :
' The archbishop of Cant, letter with the King's directions.
1 ARCHIEPISC. CANT. ANNO CHRISTI REG. ANGLIC
Gilb. Sheldon, 8 1670 Carol. II. 22
< The archbishop of Canterbury's letter to the commissary, the dean,
and archdeacon of Canterbury concerning the King's directions to the
clergy Ex autographo penes Thorn, episc. Assaven.
'RIGHT WORSHIPFUL M R COMMISSARY, AND RIGHT REVEREND
M R DEAN AND M R ARCHDEACON,
'It having pleased his majesty and the two houses of parliament,
out of their pious care for the welfare of this church and Kingdom, by
making and publishing the late Act for preventing and suppressing con-
venticles, to lay a hopetul way for the peace and settlement of the
church and the uniformity of God's service in the same ; it becomes us
bishops, ecclesiastical judges, and clergy, as most particularly sensible of
* But see more fully cap. iii.
54 Detailed and Expository
the good providence of God, to endeavour as much as in us lies, the
promoting of so blessed a work. And therefore having well considered
what will be proper for me in my place to do, I have thought fit, and
do hereby recommend unto you as my commissioners jointly and
severally, these counsels and methods which I desire that, in my stead,
throughout my particular diocese of Cant., as well in places exempt as
not exempt, you will pursue ; and which I have also, by my letters,
given in charge to all the rest of my brethren the bishops of my province,
being thereunto encouraged by his majesty's approbation and express
direction in this affair.
4 In the first place, therefore, I advise and require you, that you will
call before you not only all officials, registers, and other ecclesiastical
officers within my diocese ; but that also, by such means, and at such
places as you shall judge most convenient, you assemble before you or
some one or more of you the several parsons, vicars, and curates of my
diocese and jurisdiction within their several deanries ; and that you impart
unto them respectively, as they shall come before you, the tenor of these
my letters, requiring them in my name that, in their several capacities
and stations, they all perform their duty towards God, the King, and the
Church, by an exemplary conformity in their own persons and practice
to his majesty's laws, and the rules of the church in this behalf.
4 Secondly, I advise, that you admonish and recommend to all and
every of the parsons, vicars, and curates within my said diocese and
jurisdiction, strictness and sobriety of life and conversation, checking
and punishing such as transgress, and encouraging such as live orderly ;
that so, by their virtue and religious deportment they may show them-
selves patterns of good living to the people under their charge. And
next, that you require of them, as they will answer the contrary, that in
their own persons, in their churches they do decently and solemnly
perform the divine service by reading the prayers of the church as they
are appointed and ordered in and by the book of Common Prayer, with-
out addition to, or diminishing from the same, or varying, either in
substance or ceremony, from the order and method which, by the said
book is set down, wherein I hear and am afraid, too many do offend ;
and that in the time of such their officiating, they ever make use of and
wear their priestly habit, the surplice and hood ; that so by their due and
reverent performance of so holy a worship, they may give honour to
God, and by their own example instruct the people of their parishes
what they ought to teach them in their doctrine.
' Thirdly, having thus counselled the ecclesiastical officers and clergy
of my diocese in their own particular duties, you are further desired to
recommend unto them the care of their respective jurisdictions and
charges, that in their several places they do their best to win all Non-
conformists and Dissenters to obedience to his majesty's laws, and unity
with the church ; and such as shall be refractory, to endeavour to reduce
by the censures of the church, or such other good means and ways as
shall be most conducing thereunto.
' To which end I advise that all and every of the said ecclesiastical
judges and officers, and all and every of the clergy of my diocese, and
Episcopal Returns 55
the churchwardens of every parish, by their respective ministers be
desired in their respective stations and places, that they take notice of all
Nonconformists, holders, frequenters, maintainers, and abettors of con-
venticles and unlawful assemblies, under pretence of religious worship,
especially of the preachers and teachers in them, and of the place wherein
the same are held, ever keeping a most watchful eye over the cities and
greater towns, from whence is the mischief for the most part derived
into the lesser villages and hamlets.
'And wherever they find such wilful offenders, that then, with a
hearty affection to the worship of God, the honour of the King, and his
laws, and the peace of the Church and Kingdom, they do address them-
selves to the civil magistrates, justices, and others concerned, imploring
their help and assistance for the prevention or suppression of the same,
according to the said late act made and set forth in that behalf.
' Lastly, for the better direction to all those that shall be concerned
in the advices given in this letter, I desire you will give out amongst
ecclesiastical officers and clergy as many copies of the same as you shall
think most conducible to the ends for which it is designed.
' And now, what the success will be, we must leave to God almighty.
Yet I have this confidence, under God, that if we do our parts now at
first diligently, by God's help and the assistance of the civil power
(considering the abundant care and provisions this Act contains for our
advantages), we shall within a few months see so great an alteration in
the distractions of these times, as that the seduced people, returning from
their seditious and self-serving teachers, to the unity of the Church and
uniformity in God's service, it will be the glory of God, the welfare of
the Church, the praise of his majesty's government, and the happiness
of the whole kingdom.
' And so I bid you heartily farewell, and am
' Your most affectionate friend,
' GILB. CANT.
'LAMBETH HOUSE,
''May 7, 1670.'
It is true from the first half of the letter we can see that the Primate
made the passage of the Act the occasion for an earnest effort to bring
his clergy and prelatical hierarchy more thoroughly into line with his
avowed objects of Ecclesiastical Unity and Ritual Uniformity, both in
their private lives and in their parochial duties. Yet the real point of
the letter lies in its second half ; from which we see how he enlists the
whole of his ecclesiastical staff, from the Bishop, Deans, and Archdeacon
of each diocese to the clergy (rectors, vicars, or curates), and church-
wardens of every parish in the work of inquisition for Nonconformist
ministers and Dissenting parishioners with note-book in hand so as to
ply the double work of reclaiming them for the Church, if by any
means they can win them back, and to bring them before the ecclesi-
astical courts, if they remain obdurate or obstinate ; and if ecclesiastical
penalties are not enough to deter them from this irregular worship in
unlawful Conventicles, then they are to set to work the hounds of the
56 Detailed and Expository
law and the military forces of the Kingdom to harry them into obe-
dience or silence.
Nor were these instructions in vain. There is abundant evidence in
the Domestic State Papers and in the Visitation Act Books in all the
Dioceses of the Kingdom, that in 1670 there was a great revival of
persecuting activity. The provision in the Act, which reserved one-
third of the spoil for informers, without doubt largely multiplied their
numbers and inflamed their malicious zeal, so that the two years for
which the Second Conventicle Act was in active operation before the
Declaration of Indulgence suspended all Penal Statutes were signalized
by a more bitter and persistent persecution of Nonconformists than
had been seen since the passing of the Act of Uniformity in 1662.
Two most striking testimonies to this in the provinces are two
small books which were published, the one for the Midlands, the other
for the South- Western Counties.
The former, entitled 'A True and Impartial Narrative of some
' Illegal and Arbitrary Proceedings by certain Justices of the Peace and
* others, against several innocent and peaceable Nonconformists in and
' near the Town of Bedford^ upon pretence of putting in execution the
' late Act against Conventicles, Published for general information,' was
'printed in the year 1670.' Dr. John Brown (in his 'John Bunyan :
'his Life, Times, and Work,' p. 222), judges from its general appearance
that ' it was issued from the press of Francis Smith at Temple Bar.'
The latter with very similar title gives particulars of the like
Illegal and Arbitrary proceedings in the neighbourhood ot Kingsbridge,
in South Devon, in which the persecution centred in the person of John
Hickes, who had been ejected from Saltash, on the borders of Cornwall,
and had fled to this neighbourhood with several others because to it the
Five Mile Act did not apply. Though it was published anonymously,
there is little room for doubt that it came from the pen of John Hickes
himself.
Even in London, for twelve months at least, the new Act was made
a reality in a way no penal statute against Nonconformists had been for
the whole of this decade. There was a beginning made in the month
of March, and in the person of one of the most influential of the Non-
conformist ministers of London, Dr. Thomas Manton, of St. Paul's,
Covent Garden. In the Episcopal Returns of '69 : (R. 219) he is re-
ported as holding a Conventicle of 100 in number 'At his owne house
* in Covent garden ' ; and (under date March 24, 1670), Bishop Kennett
notes ' An Account of the Appearance of D r Manton before the Jus-
' tices in discharge of his Security and his Commitment to the Gate
'House' (Westminster), 'there to remain wth O ut Bail or Mainprise.'
The election of a reactionary Lord Mayor, Sir Samuel Stirling, as well as
the activity of some of the distinctly Episcopalian Aldermen, and of Sir
John Robinson, Governor of the Tower, brought about a brief period of
very energetic persecution in which the Trained Bands and the Horse
Guards were enlisted in the dastardly work of breaking open Meeting-
House doors, wrecking their furniture (pulpits and seats), and then closing
them against the would-be worshippers ; and in other cases, by force of
Episcopal Returns
arms opening them for Episcopal services in parishes where the parish
churches had not yet been rebuilt, though four years had elapsed since
the Great Fire. Curiously enough, however, it coincided with the ab-
sence of the King from Westminster, and his stay at Dover with his
sister from France, signalized by the Secret Treaty which made the
English Crown a pensioner on the bounty of France, and went far to
sell the Protestantism of England to the Pope. With the King's return
difficulties arise, the persecution slackens, and for the year 1671 London
resumes its former condition, as the one place in the whole kingdom where
the Nonconformists are most secure from molestation and persecution.
With the Declaration of Indulgence in 1672, we know all persecu-
tion ceased ; and eleven months of Royal protection no doubt served to
favour and increase the spread of Nonconformity.
Nor was the situation changed so thoroughly as might hastily be
imagined by the enforced withdrawal of the Indulgence in March, 1673.
In many quarters, no doubt, persecution was renewed with redoubled
energy and bitterness. All the cruelties of 1670 and 1671 were
resumed in 1673-4. Still, many who had received licences in 1672-3
maintained that their licences still retained their validity, even after the
King had broken the Great Seal on the Declaration of Indulgence.
The licences were unqualified. No period was stated, no time-limit
was named in them, beyond which they needed renewal. And it was
a point so arguable in a court of law, that in many instances these out-
standing licences constituted a very real barrier against the persecuting
fury of their enemies. Such a condition of affairs very naturally was
far from satisfactory to such men as Sheldon and Ward. Nor did they
rest until, in 1675, they had obtained a public withdrawal of all the
licences by the King in Council.
Again, then, we see that the call for Returns from all the Bishops of
both Provinces, is closely connected with a fresh stage in this Campaign
of Persecution. The Returns of 1676 are synchronous with a recru-
descence of these barbarous measures, and are clearly intended to
encourage and facilitate them. The object of these Returns was to
reassure the persecutors, by convincing them that the opposition they had
to encounter was not so widespread or so influential as it was often made
out to be. They were thus encouraged to continue their cruel work,
in the confidence that a little more persistence and a little more severity
would stamp out the pest, and bring Nonconformity to a perpetual end.
The circular letters which Sheldon directed to the Bishops of both
Provinces, in 1676, enjoined them to give directions to their archdeacons
and commissaries to procure particular information from the church-
wardens of their several parishes on the following enquiries, and transmit
the information to Lambeth after the next visitation :
4 1. What number of persons are there, by common estimation,
inhabiting within each parish subject to your jurisdiction ?
'2. What number of Popish recusants, or persons suspected of
recusancy, are resident among the inhabitants aforesaid ?
'3. What number of other dissenters are there in each parish, of
Detailed .and Expository
what sect soever, which either obstinately refuse or wholly absent
themselves from the communion of the church of England at such
times as by law they are required ?' [Neal, 4 History of the Puritans,'
Vol. III., pp. 195-96].
Cardwell's note upon this letter is so significant ('Documentary
Annals,' II., 288-89) as to deserve quotation :
* From the time of the removal of Lord Clarendon, in the year 1667,
various attempts had been made to comprehend dissenters, more especi-
ally the presbyterians, within the pale of the church of England. In
the year 1673, a bill for their relief passed through the House of
Commons, and was read a third time with amendments in the upper
house, but was not finally adopted by both houses before parliament
was prorogued. In the year 1675, several divines of the church of
England, with Tillotson and Stillingfleet at their head, had private
conferences with Baxter, Manton, and other non-conformists, for the
purpose of arranging terms of accommodation ; but meeting afterwards
with great opposition from the bishops, they abandoned their plan, and
Tillotson expressed their reason for doing so in the following manner :
" It cannot pass in either house without the concurrence of a consider-
" able part of the bishops, and the countenance of his majesty, which at
"present I see little reason to expect." Nevertheless the non-con-
formists had very powerful arguments on their side, and were supported
by able advocates. The duke of Buckingham proposed a bill for their
relief in November, 1675, urging the importance of the measure for
promoting the wealth, strength, and greatness of the nation. Bishop
Wilkins, who died in 1672, had been indefatigable in their favour,
having spoken against the Conventicle Act in 1670, although the King
had endeavoured to prevent him ; and bishop Croft published anony-
mously (in 1675) an address to the lords and commons, under the title
of " The Naked Truth," which recommended that " peace should be
"made with lesser enemies, in order to resist more successfully the
"encroachments of the greater." Among the topics urged at that
period in favour of comprehension great use was doubtless made of the
supposed number and influence of the dissenters, and this letter was
issued by the archbishop for the purpose of ascertaining what was the
degree of credit to which it was entitled. We learn from a pamphlet,
written by bishop Sherlock, in vindication of the Test Act, what was
the result. " The non-conformists of all sorts (including papists as well
" as the others) were computed to be in proportion to the numbers of the
"church of England in the year 1676, as one to twenty ; a number in
" proportion, too small to have any natural strength to hurt the consti-
"tution" (p. 44, edit. 1790). It is evident, however, that such a pro-
portion of discontent was too great to continue stationary. In the copy
of this letter preserved in the Tanner MSS. (Vol. 282, p. 104) is the
following note on the words " What number of persons ?" " The
" Bishop of Norwich doubts whether the word was to be restrained to
" such as were only of fit years to communicate : sc. above the age
"of 1 6."'
All that need be said here is that statistics obtained with such a
clearly defined object can scarcely be looked upon as reliable. When
Episcopal Retur?is 59
the avowed hope of the ecclesiastics who instituted the census was that
the numbers of Nonconformists would be found to be much smaller
than the Nonconformists themselves claimed that they were, we may be
quite sure that the clergy and churchwardens would not overestimate
their numbers ; and can hardly avoid the suspicion that they would
take care that the Returns would confirm the hopes of the authorities.
Thus clearly was each set of Episcopal Returns made by order of Arch-
bishop Sheldon connected with a distinct stage in the campaign of Per-
secution of Nonconformists.
CHAPTER II
THE EPISCOPAL RETURNS OF 1665
THE Episcopal Returns of 1665, preserved at Lambeth, are extremely
meagre. Whether or not they were the only returns made is a matter
of pure speculation.
It is scarce reasonable to suppose, however, that so distinct a demand
on the part of the Primate should have been utterly ignored by twenty
Bishops out of the twenty-six.
Yet the fact remains that in Vol. 639 (of the MS. Department of
the Lambeth Palace Library), we have preserved Returns from only six
Dioceses of England and Wales ; four out of the twenty- two English
Dioceses ; and two out of the Welsh four. Two of English Returns,
moreover, are of no value for our purpose. The Returns from Lincoln
and Norwich contain nothing whatever about Nonconformists. And
one of the two from Wales viz., that from St. Asaph's is as useless
as theirs, because of the Bishop's wilful silence when he might have
told us much. He has the audacity to certify that there are no Non-
conformists in his Diocese, when he must have known (as we shall see
presently) that there were many. So that we have only three Returns
of any value for our purpose.
Before proceeding to any detailed examination of them, however,
a word or two of explanation may not be out of place :
I. To begin with, it so happened that the King had demanded a
Return from the Bishops in this same year 1665, only a few days before
the Archbishop had decided to ask for Returns on certain points on
which he desired both information and satisfaction. The King's
enquiry concerned one subject only viz., the Hospitals or Charitable
Institutions of England and Wales. The Archbishop's concerned six
several items touching the condition of the Church of England,
Ordinations, Pluralities, Lectures, Free Schools, Medical Practitioners,
and Nonconformist Ministers.
It was the King's pleasure to get the information he wanted through
Sheldon. Hence the Bishops received two Orders or Instructions from
the Primate within eleven days of each other.
Little wonder, then, if some of the Bishops should mix up the Royal
60 Detailed and Expository
Enquiry with the Special Enquiries of the Primate; and, as all the
Returns had to be sent to Sheldon, should fail to keep them distinct.
This was the case apparently with even so clear-headed a prelate as
Seth Ward, Bishop of Exeter. At any rate in the Title Page of the
4 Bishop of Exon's Certificate of the things above written' (R. 396),
the first of the six items enumerated of which ' An Account ' is given
' in the Dicecesse of Exeter ' is < Hospitals & Almeshouses ' (instead of
'Ordinations'), the others being (i) * Clergymen holding Pluralities;
(2) Schole Masters ; (3) Lecturers ; (4) Physicians ; (5) Ejected
Non Conformist Ministers.'
That may have been the error of the Editor of his Reports, as
Ward did also faithfully report on Ordinations as well. For while his
account of Hospitals is given on pages 384-389, his list of persons
ordained at Exeter from September 2, 1662, to September 24, 1665, is
given on pp. 390-395, and what follows, the Title Page or Summary,
on p. 396, is his detailed Returns on the five other points. That
Summary applies therefore to what precedes as well as to what follows
it [vide Note to Part I., Cap. I. (p. 7 of this volume)]. It is, of course,
from what follows it that I have made the extracts printed on pp. 1 84-
191 of Vol. I. of this work.
What is somewhat confusing to the student of Vol. 639 (Lambeth)
is that the Returns of Seth Ward (splendidly detailed and complete)
both in answer to the King's Enquiry and all six points of the Primate's
' Orders and Instructions,' are inserted in the midst of a series of Returns
of c Hospitals in England and Wales.' [I imagine, because his Returns
of Hospitals were sent in with Returns on the other six points.]
The series as a whole covers pages 355-438 in Vol. 639.
Those that precede Seth Ward's are: (i) St. Asaph's (pp. 356-57) ;
(2) Bangor's (pp. 358-362) ; (3) Carlisle's (pp. 363-367) ; (4) St.
David's, and (5) St. Asaph's (p. 368) ; (6) Durham's (pp. 370-377) ;
and (7) Ely's (pp. 378-383) ; and those which follow are (8) Lincoln's
(pp. 419-425) ; (9) Norwich's (pp. 425-26) ; (10) Peterborough's
(pp. 427-28), with a separate sheet for Rutland (p. 429) ; (n)
Worcester's (pp. 430-436) ; and (12) (a detached supplement at the
very end of the Volume) the Report of St. Magdalen Hospital by Baw-
tree in the County of Nottingham, which, of course, is a fragment of
the Report from the Diocese of York (p. 446). For the archaeologist,
and historian of the Public Charities of England, this is a most valuable
series of documents. Full as it is, however, it is far from complete.
We miss the Returns from fifteen Dioceses viz. (i) York (save the
fragment about Bawtree) ; (2) Chester ; (3) Lichfield and Coventry ;
(4) Hereford ; (5) Gloucester ; and (6) Oxford, are all lacking from the
Northern half of the Kingdom ; and what is more remarkable, since the
depository is Lambeth : (i) Canterbury, (2) Rochester, (3) London,
(4) Chichester, (5) Winchester, (6) Sarum, (7) Bath and Wells,
(8) Bristol, and (9) Llandaff, are all wanting from the South.
In Vol. 975 we have authentic extracts 'ex REGISTRO GILBERT
' SHELDON ' ; and amongst them the original correspondence of the
Archbishop with reference to these 1665 Returns.
Episcopal Returns 61
It seems that he did not address himself directly to each of the
Bishops of his Diocese ; but wrote personally only to Humphrey
Henchman, Bishop of London, requiring him to communicate the
Archbishop's wishes to all his Brother Bishops, enclosing a Draft of the
' Orders and Instructions,' copies of which the Bishop of London was
to send to all his Episcopal Brethren.
The Archbishop's Letter read as follows :
< His Grace's Letter to the Ld. Bp. of London.
* Right Reverend and my very good Lord. After my hearty Com-
mendations. Having heard frequent complaints from many parts of my
province, not only of great disorders and disturbances caused by ye crafty
insinuations and turbulent practices of factious Inconformist ministers
and others disaffected to y e Governm 1 of y e Church, but also of divers
unworthy persons y 1 even of late years have crept into y e Ministry, to
y e Scandal of y e Church & dissatisfaction of good men, a great part of
which miscarriages are imputed to y e easiness or inadvertency (at least)
of y e Bps who ought to have a watchful eye against such growing
mischiefs. I have therefore thought good, as in like cases hath often
been done by my p r decessors, to recommend to yo r Ldships & y e rest of
my Brethren y e Bps of my Province y e orders & Instructions here w th
all sent, desireing & requiring your Ldp & y m duly to observe y e same
& to give unto me such account & certificates as are thereby required,
w ch , y 4 it may be pformed, I desire yo r Ldp y u will impart y e ten r of
these my L rs together w th a true Copie of y e s d Ord rs & Instructions to
every one of my Brethren y e Bps of my Province w th all convenient
Speed and so I bid y r Ldp heartily farewell.
4 Yo r Ldps very affectionate Friend and Brother,
<GiLB. CANT.
' LAMBETH,
1665.
4 P.S. I desire y 1 yo r Ldp, in yo r Lrs to my Brethren y e Bps, will
quicken y m to make a speedy return to his Maty's Instructions for
enquiries concerning Hospitals by me lately sent & recommended to
yo r Ldp and y m , by his Maty's Command.'
It will be noted that in his P.S. he requests the Bishops of his
Province to expedite the Returns concerning Hospitals, which he had
asked for a few days before on behalf of the King. To be exact, it was
eleven days ; as the letter containing * His Majesties Instructions con-
c cerning the present condition of all Hospitals in England and Wales'
was dated June 26, 1665 (a Monday), and as we have seen the Arch-
bishop's Letter to the Lord Bishop of London was dated July 7 (a
Friday).
Further, the first part of the letter (it should be observed), quite in
the fashion of the Preamble to a Petition, Royal Declaration, or Act of
Parliament, gives Sheldon's own reasons for the course he is taking.
Naturally enough, an Archbishop would desire, on entering his
62 Detailed and Expository
office, to ascertain the condition of affairs in his Province, that he might
realize the exact nature of the task he had undertaken, the faults in the
body ecclesiastic which needed correction, the defects which needed
supplying, and the irregularities which called for remedy, as well as the
quality and efficiency of his ecclesiastical staff as constituting the means
at his disposal for the achievement of his task. Yet, in view of this
preamble, it cannot be denied that Sheldon's outlook is coloured, and his
review is biassed from the first by the presence in his jurisdiction of the
recalcitrant clergy who had been duly extruded from their benefices,
but unfortunately had not been banished the realm. He cannot forget
these ejected ministers whose continued presence in the Province was
(and, from his point of view, could not but be) the source of constant
irritation, discontent, and disorder. It is interesting to observe that he
describes them as 'Inconformist ' (not here ' Nonconformist') Ministers,
that he particularly singles out such as are * factious,' calling their
utterances, public and private, 4 crafty insinuations,' and their continued
meetings for worship and preaching < turbulent practices.' And though
he complains in a general way that sufficient care has not been exercised
by the Bishops in the selection of candidates for Ordination, so that ill-
educated and unworthy men had been admitted (who should have been
sternly rejected), it is clear that even here he is insinuating that some
with Nonconformist sympathies and Puritan inclinations were still
infesting the Ministry of his Church.
' The Orders and Instructions ' otherwise often referred to as
Sheldon's 'Enquiries' are as follows (pp. 178 et seq. of 975) :
< Orders and Instructions by the most Reverend father in God,
Gilbert Ld. ArchBp of Cant, his Grace Primate of all England and
Metropolitan to all the Bishops of his province, and required to be
observed and certified as followeth, viz. :
4 i. Concerning Ordinations.
< I. That all and every y e said Bps w th in their severall Dioceses and
Jurisdictions be very carefull what persons they receive into the
Ministry, & y l none be admitted into holy orders unless he bring with
him L rs Dimissory according to y e 34th Canon ; and y* no Bp being
not within his own proper Diocese do at any time hereafter conferr
Orders upon any person without Licence first from us obtain'd, and y*
in all things y e Canons concerning Ordination be duly and punctually
observed, and y l once every year viz., within thirty days after y e
Feast of y e Annunciation of our blessed Lady S l . Mary the Virgin,
every Bishop do certify unto us y e names, Degrees, Titles & Orders of
every person by him ordained within y e year before ending at Xmas then
last past.
< 2. Concerning Pluralists & Their Curates.
< 2. That before y e Feast of y e Annunciation of our blessed Lady S l .
Mary y e Virgin next coming they and every of them certify to me
particularly y e names, Sirnames, & Degrees of all Clergymen that
Episcopal Returns 63
together with any Benefice with Cure do hold also any Prebend or
Ecclesiastical Dignity or promocon or Sine Cura, w th y e names and
places of y e said Benefices, prebends, Dignities promocons & Sine Curas,
and also the names, Sirnames & Degrees of all Clergymen yt hold two
& more Eccticall Benefices with or w th out Cure, whether within y e
same Diocese or in several Dioceses, and y e Names and Places wherein
y e s d Benefices are ; and within what distance or corhonly reputed
Distance of miles, and whether they hold y e same by lawfull Qualifica-
tion & Dispensacon, and upon w ch of their Benefices, Prebends,
Dignities, or promocons they do reside, and whether they keep and
maintain able Orthodox and Conformable Curates upon y e s d Benefices
where they do not reside ; and whether any of y m keep any Curate
where they themselves do usually reside, and what are y e Names,
Sirnames & Degrees of y e said Curates ; and whether they be
Licensed and approved by the Bp as they ought.
' 3. Concerning Lectures and Lecturers.
< 3. That before y e said Feast day of our Blessed Lady St. Mary y e
Virgin They and every of them particularly certify unto me what
Lectures are set up & Lecturers maintained within their respective
Dioceses. In what Towns, Places, and Churches y e same are set up;
what allowances are made and established for any such Lectures What
are y e Names, Sirnames, Degrees and Qualities of all and every such
Lecturers, and whether such Lectures be set up by & w th y e Consent of
y e Bp of y e Diocese, and whether y e s d Lecturers be lawfully Licensed
preachers & by whom, and how they appear affected to y e Governm 1 of
his Maty & y e Doctrine and Discipline of y e Church of England.
4 4. Concerning Schoolmasters & Instruct 1 " 5 of Youth.
4 4. That before y e s d Feast Day of our blessed Lady St. Mary y e
Virgin. They and every of them particularly certify me how many
and what Free Schools are within their respective Dioceses ; and where
and by whom founded, aud how endowed, and y e Names, Sirnames and
Degrees of y e Schoolmasters and Ushers in y e s d Free Schools ; and also
y e Names, Sirnames & Degrees of all other publique Schoolm rs & Ushers
or Instructers and Teachers of Youth, in reading Writing Grammar or
other Literature, and whether they be licensed and by whom, as also of
all publick Mistresses of Schools and Instructers and Teachers of young
Maids or women, & of all others, men or women, y l keep schollars in
their Houses to board or sojourn, & privately teach them or others
w th in their Houses and whether y e said Schoolmasters Ushers School-
mistresses and Instructures or Teachers of Youth, publickly or
privately, do themselves frequent the publick Prayers of y e Church and
cause their Schollars to do y e same ; and whether they appear well
affected to y e Governm 1 of his Majesty & y e Doctrine and Discipline of
y e Church of England.
64 Detailed and Expository
4 5. Concerning Practisers of Physicke.
' 5. That before y e said Feast Day of our blessed Lady St. Mary the
Virgin, they and every of y m particularly certify me the Names, Sir-
names & Degrees and Qualities, of all practisers of Physick within
their respective Dioceses. In what Towns, Villages, or Places they
live ; whether Licensed and by whom, & how they appear affected to
his Maty's Governm* and y e Doctrine & Discipline of y e Church of
England.
* 6. Concerning Non-Conformist Ministers.
' 6. That before y e Feast of they and every of them
particularly certify me y e Names Sirnames and Degrees of all Non
Conformist ministers y* w th in their respective Dioceses have been
ejected out of any Eccticall Benefice, promocon or Charge for Non
Subscription or Inconformity, & where & how and in what profession
of Life they now do live ; and how they behave themselves in relacon
to y e Peace and quiet as well of y e Church as of y e State and further if
any such like Non-conformists shall have removed from any other
Diocese into any of their respective Dioceses y l they certify y e same
things concerning them as well as of y e others in this Instruction
menconed.
'Given at my Manner House at Lambeth in y e County of
Surrey July yth, 1665.'
A careful scrutiny of this document makes it sufficiently evident
that throughout it Sheldon had a jealous eye upon the * Inconformist '
Ministers, and a scarcely less suspicious one upon any of the minor
clergy, who, though they had subscribed and conformed, were still
strongly Puritan in their sympathies, and were prepared to evade many
of the Canons, which they would not directly disobey. He phrased his
' Orders and Instructions ' so as to reach any who did not ex ammo
accept his High Church regime.
The first two points (concerning Ordinations and Pluralists), for
example, might (at first glance) be said to concern only the strictly
internal affairs of the Church ; but the phraseology of the Instructions
evidently contemplated the possibility that some of those who had been
ordained had not been strictly enough examined as to their attitude
towards Puritanism and Nonconformity ; and that others who were not
thoroughly 'conformable' or ecclesiastically satisfactory, had been
received and retained by Rectors and Vicars who were thoroughly
conformable and satisfactory themselves.
All the other items have a clear bearing, direct or indirect, upon
this matter of * Nonconformity.'
Lectures, as functions which were more or less irregular and
uncanonical, might still be delivered by Nonconformists through the
connivance or permission of incumbents of parishes other than those
from which Nonconformists had been ejected : and the policy of the
Bishops was to discourage, >and by degrees to end the system alto-
Episcopal Returns 65
gether. It was Puritan in origin, and was too much a matter of popular
election, and therefore too evangelical, to please the High Church party.
The education of the young, again, by a direct provision of the Act of
Uniformity (and of the Corporation Act of 1665, to which these
Instructions were meant to be ancillary) had been denied to any ejected
minister or to anyone who could not take the oath prescribed by the
Act. CardwelPs note on this ' particular,' is so illuminating that I cite
it entire (Documentary Annals, II. 274). * The power of the ordinary
'in granting license to Schoolmasters had been declared in the
'Injunctions of Elizabeth (No. XLIIL), in the Canons of 1603; and
'in the Statutes 23 Eliz., c. i, and I James L, c. 4 ; but the further
'power of requiring such Schoolmasters to subscribe a declaration of
' conformity to the liturgy of the Church of England was given for the
'first time in the Act of Uniformity (13 and 14 Charles II. c. 4). The
' House of Lords remonstrated against this clause, but was overcome by
' the pertinacity of the Commons.'
Sheldon required information about Schoolmasters, because he was
anxious to punish any ejected minister who had evaded the Acts, and
to extrude from the Teaching profession any layman who had
Nonconformist sympathies.
Similarly with regard to ' those who practise Physick.' The
Return of Physicians was asked for by Sheldon for two reasons. It was
illegal to * practise Physick ' without a licence : and both the issue of
licences and the licence-fees were the prerogative and the perquisite of
the Church. [As Cardwell puts it in his note on this point. By
Statute 3 Henry VIII. c. n, . . . ' bishops and their Vicars general had
'the right of licensing physicians and surgeons in their respective
dioceses.'] Sheldon's object was therefore twofold : first, to prevent
the episcopal clergy from being defrauded of their dues by unlicensed
practitioners ; and second, to prevent Nonconformists, whether ejected
ministers, retired ministers not episcopally ordained, or specially trained
laymen with Puritan sympathies, from gaining influence, or earning a
livelihood in this way.
In examining these Returns, therefore, I have carefully scrutinized
the answers to Enquiries Nos. 3, 4, and 5, as well as to No. 6. No. 3,
however, much to my surprise, contained nothing concerning the
ejected. Evidently in the four Dioceses which alone are represented in
these Documents, they had neither retained, nor secured, any Lecture-
ships ; but I have made considerable extracts from the Returns of
Schoolmasters and Physicians, as well as transcribed the whole of them
on the sixth and last point.
The information concerning Schoolmasters and Physicians, of
course, mainly touches ' laymen.' It is worth preserving, as many a Non-
conformist of the twentieth century may be proud to find in his lineal
ancestry one of these threatened Nonconformists of the seventeenth.
The chief value of these Returns, however, for the Student of Non-
conformist history, naturally centres in the sixth item 'Concerning
Nonconformists.' Here we have the names of the ejected Noncon-
formist ministers resident in the Diocese of the Bishop who sends in the
5
66
Detailed and Expository
report, the place of their residence in 1665, and their attitude towards
Church and State.
If the Returns had been preserved from all the Dioceses, and this
part of them had been complete, we should as already hinted in
Chapter I. have possessed an Official List of the ejected ministers of
England and Wales which would have been of great historical value.
To judge by the small fraction of these Returns which have been pre-
served, it cannot be said that subsequent research, such as that of Calamy
and Palmer, would have been needless, because it is clear that some of
the Church officials, either from contempt or from fear, shut their eyes
to the signs of Nonconformity in their districts.*
In 1665, moreover, we should miss from such a list the names of all
' ejected ministers ' who had died in the three years which had elapsed
since their ejectment. Yet it would have given us a standard with
which to compare Calamy's and Palmer's lists, and this official catalogue
probably would have largely added to the numbers in theirs.
As we have already said, there are only three preserved in this
Volume of any value for our special purpose : those of Gilbert Ironside
of Bristol, Seth Ward of Exeter, and William Lucy of St. David's.
The second and third are presented in two forms, the briefer in each
instance being a concise summary of the other. They are inserted in
Vol. 639 in a strange succession, rather confusing to the student first
making acquaintance with their contents. First, comes a condensed
summary of Seth Ward's Report (pp. 304-309) ; next we have Gilbert
Ironside's full report (pp. 310-319) containing a careful account of the
Nonconformist ministers resident in the County of Dorset, followed by
a bare list of those ' now Inhabiting within the Cittie of Bristol!,
' contrary to the late Act of Parliament ' (the * Oxford ' or < Five Mile
4 Act ') ; then we have William Lucy's in both forms (pp. 331-338), the
fuller report coming first, and the summary on a single page (p. 338) ;
and the last section, which also contains most interesting detail, consists
of Seth Ward's full report, beginning with the Citty (and Suburbs of the
Cittie) of Exeter, giving in order all the Deaneries of Devon ; and
finishing with those of Cornwall (pp. 396-4 19^). The whole of these
1665 Returns, therefore, as far as they concern Nonconformists, cover
little more than thirty pages of Vol. 639. Still, by careful study of
them, particulars may be gathered on the following points :
(i) As to whether the ejected ministers remained in the parishes
where they had exercised their ministry or had been driven into retire-
ment elsewhere ; (2) as to the distribution of the refugees in the three
counties of Dorset, Devon, and Cornwall ; (3) as to the remarkable
accuracy of Calamy's account of the ministers ejected in these counties,
affording the clearest proof that Calamy underestimated their numbers
rather than overstated them ; and (4) of the valuable additions which
they make to the information Calamy gives of the ejected ministers.
i. First, then, they show that about one-third of the ejected
ministers remained in the parishes where they had exercised their
ministry ; while two-thirds were obliged to leave their parishes and
* One signal instance we have already noted viz., the Bishop of St. Asaph.
Episcopal Returns 67
friends for places in which often they were personally strangers. The
exact number of those who so remained is thirty ; three of them were
still in the city of Bristol, three in the county of Dorset, twenty-one in
Devon (five of whom belonged to the city of Exeter, and two to the
little town of Dartmouth), and three in the county of Cornwall.*
2. Further : the fugitives, whom persecution drove from their
flocks and their friends, are shown to have settled (i) in Dorset gener-
ally, in groups of villages within touch of each other ; and (2) in
Gloucester, Devon, and Cornwall, in little colonies in towns.
(i.) In Dorset we may distinguish two groups ; though in the first
they are so scattered as rather to form a district, consisting of the six
who settled nearest to Dorchester. The second was sprinkled along the
high land, between the valleys of the Stour and Puddle.
(ii.) In Gloucester, four fugitives from adjacent counties had settled
in Bristol, and four other Nonconformists whom Calamy does not help
us to identify.
(iii.) In Devon, colonies of the ejected were to be found in
(i) Thorncombe, in its easternmost corner (four of them) ; (2) Ottery
St. Mary (other four) ; (3) Totnes, two ; (4) Dartmouth, three ;
(5) Plymouth, four ; (6) Exeter, eight, in addition to the seven who had
been ejected from livings in the city ; and (7) two in the western
central portion of the county.
(iv.) Cornwall was distinguished by one remarkable colony of six
Nonconformists in Saltash, a town on its south-eastern border ; the
magnetic centre of the colony being John Hickes, who, only a few
years later, was the inspiring leader of another colony in the adjoining
county of Devon, at Kingsbridge and its immediate neighbourhood.
3. Without question one of the most interesting things about these
Returns is the remarkable testimony they furnish to the general accu-
racy and completeness of Calamy's lists.
In Dorset, of the seventeen mentioned in Gilbert Ironside's return,
fourteen are given by Calamy as ejected from the places named by the
Bishop.
In Bristol, of the eleven he reports as residing in the City, seven are
mentioned by Calamy.
In Devon, the Bishop of Exeter (Seth Ward) reports sixty- four
ejected ministers. Sixty-three of them are mentioned by Calamy ; and
of these sixty-two are alluded to by Calamy as ejected from the places
named by Seth Ward.
In Cornwall, the same Bishop reports twenty, and of these nineteen
are referred to by Calamy exactly as they are reported by the Bishop.
In Wales, the Bishop of St. David's (William Lucy) reports twelve.f
Of these six only are given by Calamy, and one of the six is mentioned
as ejected from a different place from that named by the Bishop.
Of the one hundred and fifteen ejected ministers, therefore, reported
* For the details and names, on this point and those that follow, I would refer
the reader to a paper published in the Transactions of the Congregational. Historical
Society, vol. iv., No. 2, pp. 113-125 ; No. 3, pp. 148-158.
f He was the son of Shakespeare's Sir Thomas Lucy; and, as one might expect,
a stormy prelate. [A. G.]
52
68
Detailed and Expository
in these Returns, ninety-four or ninety-five are mentioned by Calamy ;
and in ninety of these cases the place of ejectment is the same accord-
ing to both authorities : a remarkable proof of Calamy's accuracy.
Further, in the four instances in which the names of the place differ,
careful examination shows that the statements are mutually supple-
mentary, and not contradictory. For in each case the unfortunate
minister was ejected from two places in succession : from the first of them
at the Restoration (in 1660), either to make way for the reinstatement
of the former clergyman, who had been ' sequestered ' by Parliament or
by Oliver's Commissioners, or in the case of places in the Royal
patronage, because his appointment was not allowed to be valid, having
been made by the < Usurping ' Protector or Parliament ; and, from the
second place, * for conscience' sake' in 1662. Two* of these belonged
to Dorset, one to Devon, and one to Glamorgan.
Thus it appears that in regard to ninety-four out of the one hundred
and fifteen ejected ministers reported in these Returns, the names and
places of ejectment given by the Bishops are consistent with the state-
ments of Calamy. It is true that, in all the counties here referred to,
Calamy's list is much longer than that contained in the Bishop's Returns.
In Dorset it exceeds them by 47 (64 as compared with 17).
In Bristol city 6 (9 3).
In Devon 83 (146 63).
In Cornwall 28 (48 20).
In the south-western corner of England, therefore, Calamy enrolls
in his list of confessors two hundred and sixty-seven, as compared with
only one hundred and three reported by the Bishops, that is, an excess of
one hundred and sixty-four ; and in Wales, the discrepancy is even
greater. Calamy's list of ejected numbers fifty-five, and the Bishop's
report only twelve.
This, however, need not cause surprise when we bear in mind the
strong temptation there was, alike to the parsons of individual parishes,
and to the Bishops of the, several dioceses, to minimize the number of
Nonconformists in them, in order to 'make a fair show' of their
corporate loyalty and orthodoxy.
A signal proof of this is given in the Return of George Griffith, the
Bishop of St. Asaph's, which has been excluded from our examination
because he had the hardihood to report of the c Nonconconformists and
ejected ministers' in his see 'None such in this diocese.' We know,
on the contrary, on the sure testimony of Calamy, that four were
ejected in Flint, six in Denbigh, one at least in Merioneth, and nine
in that part of Salop which was in his diocese : at the lowest estimate,
twenty in all.
4. Then there is another set of facts revealed by these Returns,
which makes our confidence the greater that Calamy has not exaggerated
the number of his 'confessors.' It cannot be questioned that in no
* In one of these two cases viz., that of Weymouth or Melcomb Regis local
research has shown that the second place named i.e., Radipole was still cited as
the name of the single parish which included both Melcomb and itself, although
Melcomb Regis Church had long been made the parish church.
Episcopal Returns 69
single instance would a Bishop report as an c ejected Nonconformist*
a minister who did not suffer for his Nonconformity. Yet these
Returns (restricted as they are), give us thirteen names which are not
mentioned by Calamy, so that by that number, at the very least, Calamy
has understated (and not exaggerated) the number of those ejected in the
southern half of Wales and the south-western corner of England.* By
these thirteen names, then, our roll of Nonconformist worthies is
enriched, and our confidence in Calamy's sobriety and trustworthiness
is confirmed.
5. Moreover, the Returns incidentally confirm the accuracy of
Calamy in little details, and in some instances supply facts which
Calamy was unable to furnish. As samples of confirmation, we may
take the cases of Benjamin Way, and Samuel Austin, Thomas Finney,
and Samuel Tapper. We find that in every instance the places to
which Calamy says they retired are just those where the Bishops report
they were resident in 1665. Again, we have examples of supple-
mentary information furnished by the Returns. In the case of Mr.
Martin, Calamy knew not the place of his ejectment. The Returns,
of course, supply it. In that of Mr. John Jordan, on the other hand,
Calamy knew nothing of his career subsequent to his ejectment, while
the Returns show this at least, that he retired to his native city of
Exeter. For others, I would refer the reader to the paper I have already
named, though I have there been able to publish only a small portion of
what I have been able to elicit, viz., what concerns the Congrega-
tionalists.
CHAPTER III
RETURNS FOR 1669
THE '69 Returns are much more complete than those of 1665. Yet
even here much remains to be desired. Five out of the twenty-two
English Dioceses are altogether unrepresented, Hereford, Gloucester,
Oxford,^ Rochester, and Bristol ; while the Bishop of Peterborough
sends in Returns from only half his Diocese, nothing being given con-
cerning the large County of Northampton ; and reports from parts of
the large Diocese of Lincoln are missing, including, unfortunately, the
whole of the County of Lincoln. The peccant Bishops were Herbert
* At first, I had added five others to the list (making the addition eighteen
instead of thirteen), as none of these appears in his index. On closer scrutiny, how-
ever, I found all five mentioned in his work, but belonging to his 'black lists' of
those who 'afterwards conformed.' On further consideration, I agree with Rev.
Alexander Gordon these five should be included, as he most pertinently suggests
that ' to ruin a man's conscience is a worse offence than to deprive him of a living.'
f This statement needs qualification, for Returns for part of the Diocese of Oxford
have been discovered and transcribed by Rev. John Stanley, F.R.Hist.S., of Long-
hope, Gloucestershire. He found them in another of the manuscript volumes in the
Lambeth Palace Library. Through his generous courtesy I am able to reproduce
them.
7 o
Detailed and Expository
Croft, of Hereford ; William Nicholson, of Gloucester ; Walter Bland-
ford, of Oxford ; Francis Dolben, of Rochester ; and Gilbert Ironside,
of Bristol. In Wales only one Diocese is unreported viz., St. Davids,
whose Bishop William Lucy had sent in so illuminating a Return in
1665. In that respect, he was only following the example of his neigh-
bour, Gilbert Ironside, of Bristol. While that is true, however, it is
also true that the Returns deal with only three of the twelve Welsh
counties, viz., Montgomery, Glamorgan, and Monmouth.
Why these two prelates, who responded so loyally in 1665 to
Sheldon's * Orders and Instructions,' should have failed so completely
in 1669, it would be interesting, perhaps instructive, to know. The
third (Seth Ward), whose Returns were complete in 1665, contributes
a report as careful and detailed as his earlier Return. Only in the
interval he has been translated from Exeter to Sarum, so that we have
the benefit of his zeal and exactitude with regard to a much smaller area
viz., the counties of Wilts and half of Dorset (instead of the whole of
the large counties of Devon and Cornwall). To increase our sense of
loss, we find that his successor in the see of Exeter, Anthony Sparrow,
a learned ecclesiastic, who specialised, too, in all the details of the ritual
and organization of the Church of England, and * had suffered many
'things' at the hands of the Puritans in the Commonwealth days,
showed the most extraordinary carelessness in his Returns, touching only
the South-Eastern half of Devon ; even of this giving the meagrest and
most unsystematic account, and reporting nothing at all about Cornwall.
The fact is that the Returns are not nearly so complete as one
might have expected from the number of Dioceses represented in them.
Returns are wanting for seven entire counties : Lincoln, Rutland,
Hereford, Northampton, Gloucester, Huntingdon, and Cornwall ; and
for many counties they are very perfunctory and incomplete. For the
four Northernmost counties this is very noticeable. [John Cosin, Bishop
of Durham, was responsible for these ; and his strong antipathy to
Popery may have made him less eager to ' spy out ' Protestant Noncon-
formists. (He disinherited his only son when he became a Roman
Catholic).]
Edward Rainbow, Bishop of Carlisle, was not a bigot, and did not
trouble himself in this matter ; but, in parts, his Returns are fairly
complete.
For Yorkshire the Returns are a little fuller ; but the Archbishop
(Richard Sterne), though he was one of the Revisers of the Book of
Common Prayer, and had suffered * in the time of Usurp n ,' was not so
keen to search out and report * delinquents J as many others.
The c instructions ' or ' enquiries ' which determined the form of
the Returns, varied slightly as issued to the two Provinces of York and
Canterbury. In those sent to York the reference to the King, as
Supreme Governor of the Church, is more obtruded ; Sheldon's authority
as Archbishop of Canterbury being referred to as mediate or intermediate,
rather than direct or ultimate ; while in those sent out to tne Southern
Province, Sheldon's authority is used as direct and immediate, and the
King's as collateral or even secondary.
Episcopal Returns 71
In W. Horner Groves's ' History of Mansfield,' p. 336, the situation
in the Northern Province is described as follows: 'On the 3ist of
'July, 1669, an order was issued, under direction of his Majesty the
' King and his Privy Council, to Lord Arthur, Bishop of York, under
' the hand of his Grace the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, " To
' " enquire after all Conventicles, or unlawful meetings, under pretence of
" religion and the worship of God, by such as separate from the unitie
' " and conformitie of the Church as by law established." : The return
to be made by the clergy of the Archdeaconry of Nottingham (of which
Mansfield was a part) was as follows /'.*., was determined by the
four following queries :
1. How many Conventicles, unlawful assemblies, or Church
meetings are held in the various parishes in the county ?
2. What number of persons usually frequent these meetings, and
what sort and condition of people are they ?
3. From whom and upon what grounds they look for indemnity ?
4. At whose houses they usually meet, and who are their speakers ?
In the Southern Province, on the other hand, the ' instructions ' or
'enquiries' which determined the form of the Returns were contained
in two letters of Sheldon, one addressed to his Commissary, together
with the Dean of St. Paul's, and the other addressed to the Bishop of
London. The former is preserved verbatim in Wilkins's Concilia
iv. 588. It is headed :
' The Archbp. of Canterbury's letter about Conventicles.
ARCHIEPISC. CANT. ANNO CHRISTI REG. ANGLIC
Gilb. Sheldon 6. 1669. Carol. II. 21.'
It is described :
' The Archbishop of Canterbury's letter to the commissary of the
' diocese of Canterbury about Conventicles. Ex MS. Guil. Sancroft,
arch. Cant, apud Thomam, episc. Assaven.'
We are thoroughly assured of the authenticity of the document, as
(it will be noted) Dr. Wilkins reproduces it from the manuscript
collection of the official whom Sheldon directly instructs to act with his
Commissary in gathering the information required viz., William San-
croft, who eight years later succeeded him in the Primate's chair, and
who was then Archdeacon of Canterbury as well as Dean of St. Paul's.
The letter reads :
' Sir, After my hearty commendations, &c. You cannot choose
(as well as I) but be alarmed on all hands with continual reports of the
frequency of Conventicles and unlawful meetings of those who, under
a pretence of religion and the worship of God, separate from the unity
and uniformity of God's service, to the great offence of all, and fear of
many his majesty's most faithful subjects, who love and truly endeavour
the peace and prosperity of the church and state.* His majesty
in public lately speaking much against these disorderly meetings, and
* It will be remembered (and should be kept well in mind) that these words were
put into the lips of the King, in Council, in the Preamble to the Proclamation they
induced him to publish in July of this year.
Detailed and Expository
expressing an indignation against all reports of him, as if he favoured or
connived at them, was pleased (after he had laid some blame upon the
bishops for want of care in this affair) to declare that henceforward they
should not want the assistance of the civil magistrate to suppress them ;
insomuch that if, hereafter, any bishop shall complain to any justice,
and require his help, if such justice do not his duty herein, then let the
bishop certify, that his majesty may know, who are that neglect
his service.
'Now, Sir, that I may discharge my duty in this particular diocese, I
do hereby desire and require of you that having communicated this my
letter to the reverend Dr. Sancroft, dean of St. Paul's, and archdeacon
of Cant., you consult him for his advice thereupon, and that by the
assistance of him and your officials and officers, and all and every the
parochial ministers, parsons, vicars, and curates, and by all other persons
and means which shall be thought best, you will make speedy enquiry
throughout my diocese, as well in places exempt as not exempt.
4 I. What and how many Conventicles and unlawful assemblies
4 2. or church meetings are held, in every town and parish ?
' 3. What are the numbers that usually meet at them, and
' 4. of what condition or sort of people they consist, and
4 5. From whom and upon what hopes they look for impunity ? *
' When any such Conventicles are found out, if by the ecclesiastical
power and authority they cannot be restrained, you are to complain to
the next justice or justices ; and if they fail to assist, it will be your
part to certify their neglect ; which, if at any time there shall be cause
to do, be sure your certificates be made on good and true grounds, such
as may all be evidently proved, that there be no failing, when we expect
redress. These things you are desired and required to put in speedy
execution, and with all diligence to make your returns to me ; where-
upon you shall receive further advice and instruction.
* And so I bid you heartily farewel, and am,
' Sir, Your very loving friend,
< GILB. CANT.
' LAMBETH HOUSE,
June 8,
< MDC : LXIX.
' Postscript.
4 Sir, To the enquiries about Conventicles in the body of this
letter set down, I think fit that these two following be added ; and I
desire that together with the rest they be enquir'd into viz :
' 6. Whether the same persons do not meet at several Conventicles,
which may make them seem more numerous than indeed they are ; and
4 7. Whether you do not think they might easily be suppressed by
the assistance of the civil magistrate, the greater part of them being (as
I hear) women and children, and inconsiderable persons.
< GILB. CANT.'
* The italics are the Editor's, as well as the numerals indicating the several points
on which enquiry was made.
Episcopal Returns 73
It will be noted that Sheldon's postscript seems to express the fear
that the questions in the body of the letter might be construed as
expressing the desire that the very fullest information should be given ;
and that the fuller the return, the greater the number of Conventicles
reported, and the larger the number of frequenters reported, the better
would the authorities be pleased, and the more inclined would they be
to praise their subordinates for the zeal shown in their inquisition, and
the keenness and skill used in ferreting out those who were seeking to
elude the notice of the authorities. The supplementary questions seem
almost to suggest that it would be a mistake for the clergy to put the
numbers of Nonconformists at their maximum, and that reporters would
better please headquarters were they to show that figures, even when
carefully given, might very easily exaggerate the facts, and make the
Nonconformists appear more numerous and influential than they really
were.
Indeed, such a conclusion is made to appear more than a sagacious
suspicion by a sentence quoted by Bishop Kennett in his collections
from the author of the 'Conformist's Plea for the Nonconformists'
(4to, 1681). On p. 36 of this work the author says: 'In the year
' 1669 we had several Articles sent down to the Clergy, with private
' orders to some, to make the Conventicles as few and small as might be.
' The eighth and last was this " Whether you do think they " (the
' Dissenters) " might be easily supprest by the assistance of the Civil
' " Magistrates ?" Some made bold to answer more than Ay or No.'
The second letter which I reproduce, enshrining these Instructions
or Enquiries, is preserved in Bishop Kennett's 'Collections,' p. 83
(Lansdowne MSS., 1023). It is addressed by Sheldon to his brother
and neighbour, Humfrey Henchman, Bishop of London.
Kennett entitles it : ' A circular letter from Gilbert, Lord Arch-
' bishop of Canterbury, to the Bishop of London, concerning the more
'effectual Suppression of Conventicles,' dated June 8, 1669 :
' RIGHT REV. AND- MY VERY GOOD LORD,
' After my hearty Commendations &c
' Your Ldship, I presume, as well as I, is on all hands alarmed with
Continual Reports of the frequency of open Conventicles and unlawful
Meetings of those who under a pretence of Religion and the worship of
God, separate from the unity and uniformity of God's service to the
great offence of all and fear of many of his Maties most faithfull sub-
jects who love and truly endeavour the Peace and Prosperity of y e
Church and State. Your Ldship (if I mistake not) was present when
his Matie, lately speaking much against these disorderly meetings, and
expressing Indignation against all Reports of him as if He either favoured
or connived at them, was pleased (after he had layd some blame upon
the Bishops for want of care in this Affair) to declare that henceforward
they should not want the Assistance of the Civil Magistrate to suppress
them.
'I have thought fit to desire and require of you to make speedy
Enquiry. What and how many Conventicles or unlawful assemblies
Detailed and Expository
are held in every Town and Parish, What are the Numbers that usually
meet at them, And of what condition, Who are their Ministers Heads
or Governours r What authority they pretend for their Meetings and
from whom and upon what hopes they look for Impunity ? and to send
Certificates hereof.
' Your Ldships very affect, friend and Brother,
<GiLB. CANT.
' LAMBETH HOUSE,
'June 8, 1669.'
The verbal differences in the Queries of these two letters make it
uncertain in what exact form they were issued to the Bishops throughout
the country. The variations in the form and fulness of the Returns
suggest that the Enquiries were not issued in identical terms to all ;
surely a great defect in so vehement a champion of ' Unity and Uni-
' formity ' in ' God's service ' as Archbishop Sheldon !
From Sheldon's letter to his Commissary and Dr. Sancroft, we
should gather that he required information on six distinct points at leas: :
1 . What and how many Conventicles were still being held ?
2. What were the numbers usually attending them ?
3. Of what condition or sort of people they consisted ?
4. From whom and upon what hopes they looked for impunity ?
5. Whether the same persons do not meet in several Conventicles ?
6. Whether they might not easily be suppressed by force ?
Indeed, the first question was a complex one, involving two distinct
questions : (i) In what parishes were Conventicles still held ? and
(2) how many Conventicles were held in each parish ?
In his letter to Henchman, however, there is another particular
mentioned almost more important than any of the six. ' Who are their
'Ministers, Heads or Governors?' And what is stranger still, one
point which is very prominent in most of the Returns is omitted
altogether from both of these drafts of Questions, viz. : * To what Sect,
* Pen>wasion or Judgment do the Conventiclers belong ?'
Strictly speaking, then, the Archbishop required information on no
less than eight distinct points. Five of them are mentioned in both drafts.
1. What are the towns or parishes in which Conventicles were held ?
2. The number of Conventicles held in each this point involving
an enumeration or description of the * places ' in each town or parish
where such Conventicles were held.
3. The numbers usually attending them.
4. The ' sort or condition ' of such Conventiclers ; and
5. The authority they relied on for impunity for such conventicling.
The last of these points, however, does not seem to have been taken
so seriously as the other four. It was one of the two points mentioned
in the postcript to Sheldon's letter to the Commissary and Archdeacon.
And it is noteworthy perhaps quite natural that the other postscript
point was almost entirely neglected in the Returns (6) ' whether these
4 Conventicles might easily be suppressed by force ' /.*., by calling in
the aid of the magistrates' officers and of the military.
Ipiscopal Returns 75
Of the other two points on which information was most certainly
wanted, curiously enough only one was mentioned, and that only in his
letter to the Bishop of London, viz. : (7) The names of the Ministers,
Heads, or Governors and even that query was ambiguous as meaning
either Preachers and Teachers, or simply the most influential supporters,
or * Abettors.' While the 8th particular as important as any viz.,
the sect to which the Conventiclers belonged, was apparently forgotten
by Sheldon altogether in both his drafts.
In drawing the attention of the Student to the variety of informa-
tion which these 1669 Returns contain, I propose to deal : (i) With the
points which are common to them all ; and (2) with the characteristics
of the several Returns.
I. THE POINTS COMMON TO ALL THE RETURNS.
These are five, given in the five columns under which most of them
are drawn up.
(1) The Meeting-Places reported are generally private houses. But
sometimes a barn or outhouse was employed ; and in a few instances a
court-house, a public hall, or even a parish church, when ' vacant,'
* deserted,' or 'desolate' (i.e., unprovided with a minister).
(2) The Sects recognized and enumerated are chiefly four :
(i) Presbyterians ; (2) Congregationalists or Independents ; (3) Baptists
or Anabaptists ; and (4) Quakers. But there are occasional references
to : (5) Fifth Monarchists ; (6) Sabbatarians (or Sabbatharians) ; and
(7) Free Willers.
(3) The Numbers returned are very various, and we may be sure
that in most cases they are understated. Round numbers are usually
given : tens, and scores, and sometimes hundreds.
In some instances the numbers reported would scarcely bring
the meeting within the statutable limit, which made it an * unlawful
assembly,' or 'Conventicle,' according to the terms of the Act of 1664,
or of the Second Conventicle Act, so soon to be passed in March, 1670.
The First Conventicle Act required that there should be more than
four persons present, in addition to the members of the family (or house-
hold) resident in the house where it was held. And the Second required
that five persons at least should! be assembled wherever the Conventicle
was held. Yet in two instances the Bishop of Chichester reports
one at Yapton ' about 6 ' (R. 171), and one at Ditchling ' about 8 '
(R. 172). At Dilhorne George Morley reports < 5 or 6 ' (R. 196),
and W. Fuller (Lincolne) reports ' about 6 ' at Northill (R. 204), whilst
at Hubenham (R. 208) and at Wymeswould (R. 210^) the absurd
number is returned * about 4 * (the legal maximum over and above the
family or household).
(4) The Quality column (sometimes spelt 'Qualitie') contains the
most cynical touches of the whole. These Bishops and clergy evidently
regard moral character and spiritual life as of small moment as compared
with wealth and social position, for it is almost wholly these on which
they comment ; and the exceptions they make are even more discredit-
76
Detailed and Expository
able than their rule, as they consist almost exclusively of the vilest
aspersions on the Quakers, describing the Conventiclers as * of Evill
fame, That live in Adultery and Fornication ' [R. 178] (because, for-
sooth, the Episcopalian clergy do not admit the validity of the Friends'
simple marriage rites). According to the Bishops, the Conventiclers
are generally ' meane,' or 'very poore,' or at best 'of the middling sort.'
A few are ' gentry ' or ' gentlemen,' many are ' mere tradesmen,' their
trades being mentioned with scorn ; but in other cases, with equally
cynical frankness, some are reported as ' of pretty good estates ' (R. 231^) .
On R. 261^ one Acton is admitted to be 'a rich fellow,' while the
Bishop of Lichfield reports 'a yeoman worth ioo lb per ann ' (R. 193) ;
and the Bishop of Llandaff does not hesitate to report 'at Langum '
[R. 188] of 'some 5OO lb a year, some 200, some 100, some 60, &
'some 30,' showing greater familiarity with the phraseology of the
Parable of the Sower than with St. Paul's confession, that ' not many
' wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called.'
The real explanation of this most unworthy characteristic is what
has already been adverted to in Chapter I. of this Section, viz., that the
Second Conventicle Act made fines the prime penalty of Conventicling,
and ingeniously passed on to any well-to-do Conventiclers the responsi-
bility of finding the money for their poorer brethren, from whom,
owing to their poverty, it was hopeless to expect to extract the money,
either directly or by distraint of goods.
Four-fifths of the information given in these 1669 Returns, we thus
see, concern mainly the Nonconformist laity ; as the 1665 Reports
mainly concerned the Nonconformist Clergy. Indirectly, however,
they convey much information about the clergy also. The fifth column
with its return of the ' Heads,' ' Teachers,' or ' Preachers,' gives
abundant testimony to the continued activity of the ejected ministers,
spite the penal statutes ; and this column makes it abundantly evident
that their ministerial activity was not confined to one parish or even
to one neighbourhood, as it was perforce when they were ministers of
the Established Church. These Returns show many of them to be
exercising quite a missionary ministry, travelling far and wide in their
preaching ; and so, as in all cases of persecution, from the first great
persecution after the martyrdom of Stephen onwards, ' being scattered
' abroad,' they helped ' to confirm their brethren ' in the Nonconformist
faith in many places, and to spread their protests against the episcopal
regime.
What is more. They show also that a ministry is springing up
amongst the Nonconformists, from the ranks of those who have never
been in Episcopalian orders.
Many who had had no university training and at this period it
was specially so among the Anabaptists proved their Divine calling to
the ministry of the Gospel by their manifold and effective ministerial
gifts ; men who, like the Apostle Paul, maintained themselves by their
own exertions whether of brain or hand ; some by their professions,
whether as teachers, schoolmasters, or physicians ; and many more by
their trades, as husbandmen, or farmers, silkmen, hatters, weavers,
coopers, clothiers, labourers, or even domestic servants.
Episcopal Returns 77
II. THE FEATURES WHICH ARE CHARACTERISTIC OF THE
SEVERAL RETURNS.
The order in which the Diocesan Reports are given is alphabetical ;
so that geographically we are often carried as on a magic-carpet many a
league, and in all sorts of erratic directions in passing from one to
another.
For convenience sake, in this summary Review of their characteris-
tics, we will follow the same irrational order.
1. ST. ASAPH'S. The Bishop was now Dr. Henry Glemham, who
held the see (according to Stubbs) from 1667 to 1670.* Pepys refers
to him in his Diary in no very complimentary terms. Under date
July 29, 1667, just after his elevation, he writes: 'Among other dis-
4 course my cosen Roger told us a thing certain, that my Lady
'Castlemaine hath made a Bishop lately, namely, her uncle, Dr.
4 Glenham, who, I think, they say is Bishop of Carlisle ' this, of course,
may be correct, though it was to St. Asaph he was actually appointed
more than two months after ' a drunken, swearing rascal, and a scandal
* to the Church ; and do now pretend to be Bishop of Lincoln, in com-
' petition with Dr. Rainbow, who is reckoned as worthy a man as most
' in the Church for piety and learning.'
Was he a relative of Sir Thomas Glenham who was very active
in the service of Charles I., being Governor of York, when it had to be
surrendered to Fairfax, and held the Garrison of Carlisle till they were
starved into submission, and lastly was given the government of Oxford
on the eve of the final collapse of the Royal cause ?f
If he were, this may account for the military allusions in his brief
Report, which notices only two ejected ministers (Henry Williams and
Rowland Nevett) ; and knows far more of the laymen who are
4 principals and abettors ' of the Conventicles reported. * Edward Price
of Bettus, a Captaine in y e late Rebellion ' ; and notes that the Quakers
who gather at Myvod are ' well horsed.' [R. 139.]
2. BATH AND WELLS. Dr. William Piers was Bishop [* Pierse '
(Neal I. 587)], who had held the see from 1637, though (on his death)
the very next year, 1670, he was to be succeeded by Robert Creighton.
The diocese covered the County of Somerset. At the beginning of his
office, thirty-two years before, ' he had shown his prelatical zeal by sup-
' pressing all lecturers in market towns and elsewhere throughout his
' diocess, alleging that he saw no such need of preaching now, as was in
the Apostles' days,' and ' put down all afternoon sermons on Lord's
' days,' and all explanations of the Catechism, charging ministers ' to
'ask no questions, nor receive any answers but such as were in the
Book of Common Prayer' (Neal I. 587). Evidently his was emphati-
cally the religion of the Prayer Book, and the Act of Uniformity would
suit him exactly. It is clear that in his old age he was as loyal to the
Prayer Book as he had been in his youth. In his answers to the
* He was Dean of Bristol, 1661.
f He was his younger brother. His father was Sir Henry Glemham, of Glem-
ham Hall, Suffolk ; and there the Bishop died, January 17, 1669-70. [A. G.]
78
Detailed and Expository
Archbishop's enquiries he takes his own course, and the form of his
Report, which is very full and careful, is yet quite on a model of his
own.* He gives no particulars of the Sect to which reported Con-
venticles belong ; nor of their * Quality ' or ' Abettors.' The first
column, which is usually headed ' Parishes, and Conventicles in them,'
is divided into two : the first giving the name of the Parish only, and
the second, the meeting-place. In most cases this is a private house ;
but he notes four in which the Conventicle is held in a ' Barne ' (two in
Bath Easton, one in Beckington, and one in Glaston, in which *a
* Pulpitt and seats are built ') ; one in which they meet in a 4 sheep-
4 house ' (at Dunkerton) ; one in which it is held in * a Publique Inn '
viz., at Bath ; and one in which it is held in * the Parish Church.'
This last was in Cameley, a remarkable proof of the depth of the
influence of the Puritan pastor, Richard Batchelaur, who had retired to
his own private estate in the north-west corner of Hampshire, where
three years later he took out licences for two houses he held in
Ashmansworth and East Woodhay.
The numbers frequenting these Conventicles are reported as con-
siderable, varying from 18 at Nether Stowey, and 20 at St. Mary,
Axbridge, to hundreds, I to 700. Of the 80 instances in which the
numbers are given, the total attendance reported is over 11,000 (all in
the County of Somerset, be it remembered), so that the average comes
out as nearly 115. In the Conventicles reported, therefore, there must
have been regular Nonconformist worshippers in Somerset of over 13,000.
The special feature of these Returns is the number of teachers
reported, nearly all of them ejected Nonconformist ministers. Two
things appear with equal distinctness. Each of these preachers
ministered to several congregations: and conversely each of these
congregations was ministered to by several preachers.
A careful study of these Returns would enable the historian to trace
the circuit activity of these thirty ejected Nonconformists with some-
thing like completeness. There were ten, who preached in a circuit of
five places or over, deserving of special mention :
(1) To five: Richard Allen, ejected from Batcombe; Thomas
Creese, from Combe Hay ; John Turner, from North Cricket ;
Timothy Batt, from Riston ; John Gardiner, from Staplegrove ; and
Henry Butler, from Yeovil.
(2) To six : Thomas Safford, from Bicknoller.
(3) To seven : John Bush, from Langport ; Robert Drake, from
West Monkton ; and George Bindon, from Wilton.
(4) To nine : John Baker, from Currey Mallett; and,
(5) Most remarkable case of all, John Galpin, from Ashpriors,
who preached to a round of no less than fifteen places.
3. CANTERBURY. This small Diocese, extending only over half the
County of Kent (i.e., the part East of the Medway), was under the
vigilant eye of Gilbert Sheldon himself, Archbishop of the Province, as
well as Bishop of the Diocese.
* Probably the work was actually done by his son and namesake the Archdeacon
of Bath. [A. G.]
Episcopal Retur?ts 79
Curiously enough, the form of his report differs somewhat from the
model adopted for the ' generality ' of the Dioceses. The third column
is made to combine the two details of < Numbers & Quality,' whereas
the latter has generally the fourth column to itself (or in combination
with ' Abettors ') ; and the fourth column, instead of ' Quality ' gives
4 Principalls & Abettors.'
In the City of Canterbury itself, a most careful and interesting
account is given. It is clear that the Independents, under the leader-
ship of John Durant and Francis Taylor, are the most influential and
numerous.
Numbers of those attending the Conventicles are ventured on in
only 8 instances. [In Canterbury, 500 Independents at least ; in Ash,
200 or 300 of the same sect ; in Wye, 50 or 60 Baptists ; in Ashford,
200 or 300 Presbyterians and Independents; in Davington, 100
Presbyterians ; and in Marden about 20 ; while in Chislett, the
Baptists muster 80 or 100 ; and at Hearne, 40 or 50.] In all the rest
he contents himself with the vaguest expressions : c Numerous,' ' not so
4 numerous,' ' very numerous,' ' a great number,' ' not so great,' { some
* few,' * not considerable for number,' { inconsiderable.'
The Nonconformist ministers he specially mentions. The Report
Would certainly give the impression that Nonconformity in Eastern Kent
was not strong, save in Canterbury, Sandwich, and Ashford. It is only
fair, however, to say that it sets the example to several other Dioceses
Chichester, Ely, Lincolne, Sarum, Worcester in the punctiliousness
with which the names of all the parishes are given, even where there
are no Conventicles to report.
4. CHICHESTER. This year saw the end of the bishopric of Henry
King, who died October I, 1669, and the beginning of that of Peter
Gunning. Henry King received the Archbishop's instructions ; but it
was Peter Gunning who sent in the Returns, who was consecrated
March 6, 1669-70.*
Of all the Bishops, Peter Gunning was perhaps the most bigoted,
eager, and virulent against all Nonconformists. He had adhered
to the Prayer Book despite Parliament's ordinance against its use,
employing the Liturgy in his services at Exeter House, Strand, all
through the Commonwealth period. Evelyn f and Pepys,]: we note from
their Diaries, frequented his services, and thought most highly of his
sermons. He had great confidence in his own position in point alike of
theology and ritual ; and had a great contempt for all who presumed to
differ from him. After the Second Conventicle Act had been passed
(1670), the year after the sending in of this Return, he demeaned him-
self to act the part of bailiff or constable, personally visiting places
where Conventicles were being held, and if the doors were fastened
using force to obtain admission to the building. Nay, he even chal-
lenged Nonconformists to public disputation on the points of differ-
* In Bishop Kennett's 'Collections,' under date March 6, 1669-70, we have this
entry (Landsdovvne MSS., 1023) : ' Die Dominico 6 Martis Peter Gunning S.T.P. in
' Episcopium Cicestr. consecratus ab Archb? Cant, in Capella Lambethiana.'
t Vide Evelyn's Diary, December 2 and 25, 1657.
J Vide Pepys's Diary, January i, 1660, and note.
8o
Detailed and Expository
ence between them and the Established Church ; and then displayed
great arrogance and violence in his conduct of the meetings.
The Report for the County of Sussex is not satisfactory. Twenty-
four Conventicles are reported without particularizing the sect : twelve
are credited to the Baptists (always as Anabaptists), eight to the
Quakers, four to the Presbyterians, and only three to the Independents
(one each at East Grinstead and Lewes ; and one, in association with
the Presbyterians at Trotton cum Tuxlith).
One Conventicle is reported at Wartling, near Pevensey, the Sect,
Quality, and Teachers of which are undesignated, but yet admittedly
consisting of * many persons of considerable estates' [R. 174^]. He
concedes, also, that ' Some of y e gentry attended the Conventicle ' at
Stedham [R. 171] ; and that at the Westmeston Conventicle 4 many '
of the Conventiclers were ' of good estate.' The greater number of
those reported as 'Heads & Teach rs> are ejected Nonconformist
ministers some score or so ; and several of them are reported as
ministering to several Conventicles in different places, so that interest-
ing details of their activities at this time might be culled ifrom these
Returns.
This is the first instance, though (as we have already seen) not the
only one in which we come across the tantalizing note : < See the
names in the Returne,' which reminds us how much information we
have lost through the disappearance of these original Returns.
5. ELY. Benjamin Laney was Bishop of this Diocese ; the third see
he had occupied since the Restoration, the first being Peterborough,
which he held 1660 to 1662-63, and the second Lincoln, from 1662-63
to 1667. It was his third year of office in Ely, in succession to Matthew
Wren, a man of very different spirit. Matthew Wren was a great
Laudian and Royalist, and had suffered much for his devotion to King
and Prelacy, vestments and Prayer Book, having lain eighteen years in
the Tower without a trial, though restored to his see on the Restoration,
and had he survived to respond to Sheldon's Instructions and Enquiries,
we should doubtless have had a much more complete Return than we
have from his successor.
For Laney was very averse to the persecution of Nonconformists,
and so was purposely slack in getting and publishing information which
would have brought it upon them. At any rate, of Oliver's Puritan
County, Huntingdon, he sends in no report at all ; and his Report of
Cambridge is just such as we might expect from one who was said to
look at these things ' through his fingers.' He sees hardly any Noncon-
formists in the County. Of the Sects in Ely Deanery, he sees only
Quakers, Anabaptists, and Sabbatarians ; in Chesterton Deanery,
Independents and Quakers ; in Shengay Deanery, only Baptists ; in
Barton and Bourne Deaneries, no sects are distinguished ; in Castle
Camps Deanery, only Baptists, and Quakers ; and in Cambridge
Deanery, Baptists, Quakers, and ' Fanaticks.' The only University-
trained preachers whom he names in the Report are Francis Holcroft
and his associates Joseph Oddey, Samuel Corbyn, James Day, Thomas
Episcopal Returns 81
Lock, and John Wayt. The t other teachers are only c Farmers, Tailors,
4 Labourers, or Bricklayers.'*
The numbers he reports are generally few, from 10, n, and 12
up to 100 (the highest). The two exceptions are a Quaker meet-
ing of 200 at Over, and another Conventicle of 400 or 500 at
Trumpington. His account of their Quality is very contemptuous.
Only in the Ely Deanery does he admit there are ' some Rich.' In
every other case he rings the changes on the following : * Meane
' mechanicks,' ' most meane,' ' very meane,' ' Inconsiderable/ ' of Low
4 Condition,' < of y e common, vulgar sort,' ' very poore condition, scarce
4 a yeoman amongst them,' or ' most women,' * more women than men.'
To his disgrace, too, it is Benjamin Laney who puts in this description
of the Conventiclers at Button (it is clear that they were Quakerst) :
4 Many of Evill Fame, That live in Adultery and Fornication ' simply
because they had not been married according to the rites of the Church
of England.
6. EXETER. Here Anthony Sparrow was Bishop a still greater con-
trast to his predecessor than Laney was to Wren. Like Laney at Ely, he
had occupied the See only two years, for he succeeded Seth Ward on his
translation to Sarum. Seth Ward was second only to the Archbishop
himself in the vigour and ability with which he was pressing forward
the policy of suppression and persecution of the Nonconforming clergy.
We have seen already the accuracy and completeness of his Returns
in 1665 for both Devon and Cornwall. And, judging from the character
of those he sent in this year from Sarum (for Berks and Wilts), we are
sure that had he remained at Exeter those sent in for the much larger
area of this Diocese would have been equally full, and of incomparable
value from an historian's point of view. Anthony Sparrow, however,
had neither the spirit nor the energy to take the trouble necessary to
secure such a result ; so that we have a very brief and fragmentary report
for two counties, which, as we know, were saturated with Puritanism.
* To Congregationalists it should be matter for satisfaction and a worthy sort of
pride that that cultivated apostolic band, Holcroft and his comrades, were all of the
Congregationall Perswasion. '
The Bishop, however, seemed puzzled by the phenomenon of well-educated, even
learned men, like Holcroft, Corbyn, Oddey, Day, and Lock, scouring the country,
and forming ' gathered ' churches wherever they went. He scarcely knows how to
describe them. ' Congregational ' is a term he does not seem to know, though that
is the denominational name by which they describe themselves when applying for
licences three years later.
Conventicles which they had gathered and to which they ministered are reported
as far north as Haddenham, within the Isle of Ely ; and as far south as Meldreth,
with Willingham and Over, Ockington, Milton and Histon, between Haddenham
and Cambridge, and Stow cum Quoy, only five miles from it ; and Orwell, south-
west between Cambridge and Meldreth.
Only four of the ten does the Bishop designate. The Conventicles at Had-
denham and Over, according to him or his informants, are of ' Fanatiques.' Those
at Ockington and Histon are of Independents. The rest he cannot or will not
describe. Was this waywardness in the manner of alluding to them indicative of
the difficulty the Bishop felt as to the way he ought to treat them, or only of the
varying attitude towards these educated Nonconformists of the local clergy from
whom the Reports of their ' conventicling ' were sent up ?
t John Crooke, whom he reports as their Teacher, was a wealthy and learned
Quaker, a Justice of the Peace, whose seat was Beckerings Park, near Ridgmont,
Beds. [' Journal of George Fox ' (Camb.) i. 428.]
6
Detailed and Expository
He was most devoted to the ritual of the Prayer Book ; but he
showed it rather by books learnedly expounding it than by practical
means for enforcing it, and his report for his large Diocese covers only
two pages. Cornwall is untouched, and he returns Conventicles only
in nine parishes in the whole of Devon ; a county in which his prede-
cessor had reported 56 Nonconformist ministers as resident only four
years before (and another 16 in Cornwall), and in which only three
years later no less than 233 licences were taken out for Presbyterians,
59 for Congregationalists, and n for Baptists 303 in all [and 61
licences were taken out in Cornwall],
He rarely seems to know the sect of the Conventicles which he does
report. None are described as Baptists. He only mentions Inde-
pendents, Presbyterians, and Quakers. The numbers reported are
generally high : three are of 100 each, three of 200 or 300, and one at
Collumpton of * nigh 500.' The only exceptions are Mr. Mawditt's
at Ottery St. Mary, where the numbers are ' few '; and the Quakers at
Thorncombe, who are described as ' inconsiderable.' The ' Qualitie '
of some is admitted to be high, ' gentry and tradesmen of good note ' at
Ottery St. Mary; but the common designations are contemptuous
enough 'inconsiderable,' * young persons of the meaner sort,' 'mean'
or 'vulgar sort.'
One thing is noteworthy, that everyone of the eighteen reported as
'Heads and Teachers' are ejected Nonconformists [18, be it noted, as
compared with Seth Ward's 56]. It is deplorable that the Returns are
so meagre where they might have been so full.
7. LLANDAFF. Of this important Diocese, including the whole of
Monmouth and all Glamorgan, except Gower (which was in the
Diocese of St. David's), Francis Lloyd was Bishop, who came to the See
the same year (1667) in which Anthony Sparrow was installed at
Exeter, and Benjamin Laney went to Ely. His report covers six pages,
and shows equal attention paid to the various parts of the Diocese. As
to the Sects, it is a remarkable fact that though three years later nearly
all the licences taken out under the Indulgence were for Independents or
Congregationalists, this Bishop only twice mentions them, and then
he lumps them together with Anabaptists, Catabaptists, and Quakers.
Such a circumstance bespeaks either great ignorance of the facts, or an
intentional misrepresentation of them. It is difficult to believe that it
was ignorance, as these Reports were the result of a special enquiry, so
that the misrepresentation must have been caused by a special grudge
against them or by a special desire to screen them. The numbers of
Conventiclers vary from tens to hundreds, the largest number being 600
at Merthyr Tydfil.
As to Quality, though he reports 'Tradesmen' twice and 'old
'Militiamen,' as well as ' some Farmers ' and others 'of meane Qualitie/
he admits that at Cavelion (Caerlion) 'there are many persons of good
' Estates, being Countrey Gent ' (/'.*., ' County gentlemen ') ' & such as
' either were in Actuall Armes in the late Rebellion, or bred up under
'such'; at Newport, Monmouth, 'some Gent,' and at Llangibby 'some
'freeholders'; whilst at Langwm, Monmouth, there are amongst the
Conventiclers 'some men of competent parts & breeding, & have bin in
Episcopal Returns 83
' y e time of the Late Rebellion in Offices both military and Civill,' and
then gives their value in s. d. some of ^500, some 200, some 60,
and some .30 a year quite after the model of the varying crops of the
good seed in the Parable of the Sower.*
8. LICHFIELD AND COVENTRY. John Hacket was Bishop of this See,
and there is no doubt of the strength of his attachment to the State
Church. He had been appointed to a Diocese in which the Cathedral
had been used as a fortress of the Royalists in the Civil Wars ; it was
from the tower of the central spire that Lord Brook had been shot
(exactly as Nelson was shot from the shrouds of the Redoubtable]. From
such unspiritual uses it had naturally suffered much, so that it came into
Racket's hands in a state of ruin ; but so real was his love for it, that he
spent his personal fortune in its restoration. It was but human nature
that he could not look with very much tenderness on those whose
spiritual kinsmen had inflicted such ugly scars on the fair fabric of his
Cathedral Church, and that he should be specially keen to note any
trace of militarism lingering in the Nonconformists of his Diocese.
And so it is we find him reporting Colonel Saunders, Major Philip
Prinn [< Philip Prinn, who was a souldier ag 1 the King, all or most part
< of the late times of Rebellion '], Captain or Major Barton (twice),
1 a souldier against the King, & a minister att the beginning of the
' warres, who purchased some of the King's lands which he hath lost,
4 and is highly Discontented.' ' M r Hennealse, formerly a Captaine,' a
nameless ' person,' who is c a Nonconformist minister out of Lincoln-
' shire, formerly in Armes against the King ', & * Richard Clementson
4 who was in armes against the King.' He reports one Conventicle, too,
in Matlock, ' where they sound a trumpett to call them together ' a note
absolutely unique in the whole of these Episcopal Returns. As natural
a trace, too, of his political animus is the description of * M r Browne ' of
Milford, Salop, as c a member of Oliver's Little Parliament.'
It is a picturesque touch he gives in reporting a meeting which the
Quakers of Ashford intended holding in the house of Hugh Martin,
that the Justices' Warrant being brought to hinder them, * they went
4 into a Moore & kept their Conventicle.'
In describing the Sects represented in the various Conventicles, he
names most frequently Presbyterians, Anabaptists, and Quakers. Con-
gregationalists and Independents he knows not, or wilfully ignores ; only
once mentioning the 4 Brownists ' at Shenster, and then with Quakers.
The numbers reported as attending the Conventicles are generally small,
from 20 to 30 ; in three places they reached 100 or over at Barton
Dassett, Mickleover, and Birmingham; at Stenson (though only a
hamlet), there are about 160 ; and at Darlaston, from 100 to 200 ; at
Sedgley, about 200 ; at Wednesbury and Matlock, from 200 to 300 ;
at Little Ireton, from 200 to 400 ; and at Walsall, above 300.
The highest number is at the Leather Hall, Coventry, where, to
* It is a very singular fact that from 200 to 30, the figures also appear in
the 'Numbers' column, 'sometimes 200, 100, 60, 30.' Was this a mistake of the
editor in drawing up the precis ? or were the figures of the Parable ringing in the
ears of the Minister who made the original Return ?
62
84 Detailed and Expository
hear Mr. Samuel Bryan, they get almost 11,000. At Nuneaton, where
Dr. Wild is (the Puritan lampoonist), the Bishop reports that the
number attending his ministry have risen lately from 30 to 120 or
more ; and at Stoke-upon-Trent the parson had been very candid, for he
admits : ' They have more company than ye parish Church.' And in
one case we are left to infer the number as 90 at least, because the
informer reports that 'they of (have) gathered 155. in fines for onemeet-
' ing, at 2d. per pole.'
Hacket is no more complimentary than most of his brother Bishops
in describing the * Quality ' of the Conventiclers. They are ' meane
' people,' ' people of meane Quality,' ' the meaner sort of common
' people,' ' inconsiderable fellows,' though in one case (viz., at Stenson),
he has to admit that they are abetted by 'divers considerable persons,'
naming no less than thirteen.
In reporting the Teachers he evidently keeps an eye upon the
ejected Nonconformists, reporting some thirty-five as preaching at
different Conventicles, showing a special antipathy for Presbyterians
(noting one as ' Presbyterially ordained and a zealous Nonconformist'.)*
He evidently relishes the absence of culture in many of the Baptist
speakers. At Bakewell he reports ' a shoemaker, a husbandman and a
' tailor J ; at Stoke the two speakers are ' illiterate persons,' and at Ather-
stone, the Teacher is 'a mercer.' He records the reasons alleged for
holding these Conventicles, spite the penal statutes in the Archdeaconry
of Derby : (i) The expiration of the Act of Parliament [the First
Conventicle Act had really run out in 1667-68] ; (2) the hope of its
being dissolved ; (3) the King's Allowance ; (4) friends at Court : and
those adduced by the Papists at Hathersage are ' All these hopes are
' from the Clemency of the King & Parliament.'
But a unique and very interesting feature of Hacket's Report is that
he cites in three instances the contumacious words spoken at some of the
Conventicles in his Diocese : (i) John Stone of Stenson says : 'he was
' not sorry for carrying on that Conventicle, saying : " The King gave
'"them liberty'"; (2) at Mickleover, Edward "Fleming said to 'a
' soldier of the trained band who was sent to suppress a meeting : "Draw
' " thy sword, if thou Darest " '; and (3) at Lascoe, John Bredsall, who
at the beginning of the wars ' had preached up the Rebellion against the
' King,' used these words : ' " He that Despiseth the Covenant, I say, I
' " say, shall surely goe to Hell." '
9. LINCOLN. This Diocese was as yet uncurtailed, and included
the Counties of Bedford, Leicester, Bucks, and parts of Herts and Hunts,
besides the County of Lincoln.
The Bishop was William Fuller, who had come to the See (like
Lloyd and Laney and Sparrow) in the year 1667, was devoted to the
cause of the Church and Church-order, and sends in a very voluminous
Return, covering nearly thirty pages. Though the general historians
say little or nothing about him, we gather a vivid impression of him
from the pages of Pepys. He and Fuller had been College friends
* Though there were certainly many Independents in this Diocese, the Bishop
observes the same curious silence concerning them which we have noted in the Sees
of Ely and Llandaff.
Episcopal Returns 85
together at Magdalen College, Cambridge, and William Fuller seems
to have cherished the friendship with Pepys all through his life. From
the time of his obscurity in the living at Twickenham through his
successive elevations to the Deanery of St. Patrick's (1660),* the
Bishopric of Limerick (1663) to the See of Lincoln (1667), he seems
glad to have gone to Pepys' house and enjoyed free intercourse with
him ; and on his last elevation Pepys expresses his special delight
because the Palace of the Bishops of Lincoln at Buckdon in Hunts (he
calls it ' Bugden ') is so near Brampton, the Pepys' ancestral home.
William Fuller's love of Church-order and official dignity is shown by
what Pepys tells us (under date June 9, 1661) of his indignation at the
admission to holy orders, by the Bishop of Galway, of a certain Round-
tree, ' a simple mechanique that was a person formerly of the fleet ' ;
but Pepys dwells most upon his personal qualities. On July 18, 1666, he
relates how on returning home he found ' by appointment, Dr. Fuller,
'now Bishop of Limericke, in Ireland,' going on to say, 'whom I knew
' in his low condition at Twittenham, and find the Bishop the same
' good man that ever, and in a word kind to us, and methinks, one of
' the comeliest and most becoming prelates in all respects that ever I
'saw in my life.' And on January 23, 1667-8, he tells us : 'At noon I
''find the Bishop of Lincolne come to dine with us. ... And there
'mighty good company. But the Bishop a very extraordinary good-
' natured man, and one that is mightily pleased, as well as I am, that I
' live so near Bugden, the seat of his Bishopricke, where he is likely to
' reside ; and indeed I am glad of it.' The curious thing is that though
his Reports of Bedford, Leicester, Bucks, and part of Herts are very full,
he sends nothing about Lincoln nor Hunts, in which personally one
would suppose he would take the closest interest, since the Cathedral is
in the one county, and the Episcopal Palace is in the other.
(i) In the Return from Bedfordshire, there are several peculiarities :
The houses where the Conventicles are held in the several parishes
are not particularized, nor the names of the householders given. The
Sects reported are chiefly Quakers (17 Conventicles), and Anabaptists
(n). The Independents have only 4, and the Presbyterians only 2.
The numbers attending them range in each Sect from 6 (the
Quakers at Northall) to about 100 (Independents with Quakers at
Keysoe); but the average is about 40 or 50. The Quality is reported
with the greatest contempt (showing that this Bishop's good nature is
reserved for 'good Church folks'). They are 'ordinary' or 'vulgar
' sort,' of ' meane condition,' of the ' meaner sort,' or ' meanest sort ' ;
the highest encomium being ' middle sort ' (of course referring wholly to
their social standing or financial position).
In his reports of ' Heads & Teachers,' what is most noticeable is the
scarcity of ' ejected Nonconformists,' ' men of university training.'
There are only four such in the whole list a palpable misrepresenta-
* When in Ireland, Fuller was the poet who penned for the Irish consecrations,
in 1661, the inspiring lines :
' Angels look down with joy to see
Like that above a Monarchic,
Angels look down with joy to see
Like that above an Hierarchic.' [A. G.]
86 Detailed and Expository
tion. They are nearly all tradesmen or farmers. But in the group
connected with Bedford, while of course we miss John Bunyan himself
(he was still in Bedford County Gaol), we recognize the associates of
John Bunyan who, three years later, claim and share with their chief
the liberty of the Royal Indulgence, securing licences under it ; and in
two interesting notes (R. 202 and 203), William Foster, Esq., is
prominent (afterwards Dr. William Foster, J.P.), their chief persecutor
(who is made memorable by Dr. John Brown's vivid narrative of his
entrance to the spacious room at Harlington House, holding up a
candle, and of his show of feigned affection, 'as he exclaimed,' seeing by
the light of his uplifted candle who it was, * What, John Bunyan !').
(2) In the Return from Leicestershire, there is the same absence of
description of the meeting-places, except in the very last item in his
list, where we are told (in form which would have elsewhere made that
first column so much more informing) ' a Quaker gathering of some
4 fifty or sixty meet in Widow West's house,' at ' Gurfeild.'
The Sects here are very differently represented as compared with
the adjoining county : for here the Anabaptists are most numerous
(with 20 Conventicles) ; the Presbyterians rank next with 18 ; and the
Quakers muster 13. But the Independents have only 9 ; and only one
of these to themselves (viz., one of about 50 at Mount Sorrell). In all
the other eight, they meet with Presbyterians. This unwonted harmony
between two sects, which (in London and elsewhere) are mutually
suspicious and keep aloof from each other, appears in a single district,
the part of the county south of Leicester.
The ' Quality ' reported is much the same as in Bedford, save that
4 Conventicles are admitted to be composed of ' the better sort ' ; 3 at
Mount Sorrel (one each of Anabaptists, Independents, and Quakers),
and one (of 20) of an unknown Sect at Wanlip.
In the matter of Teachers, again, the contrast between the counties
is very marked. While in Bedford the ejected ministers are the few, in
Leicester they are the many ; and the greater number those who had
been ejected from livings in the county, though some have migrated
from the neighbouring Counties of Nottingham, Shropshire, Northamp-
ton, Stafford, and Cambridge. In this case, as in the County of Wilts,
the Nonconformist ministers seem to have formed themselves into
circuits, preaching at several places in turn.
This is true at any rate of Matthew Clarke (who is reported at no
less than 12 places), John Shuttlewood (at 7), and Richard Southwell
(who is reported as ' Southall ' at 3 places, and as < Southam ' at 2).
(3) In Bucks, he fortunately resumes the practice, adopted with such
interesting results in other counties and Dioceses, of giving the house-
holders' names where Conventicles were held. Amongst these the
names of John Raunce and Isaac Pennington among the Quakers, and
of Mrs. Fleetwood amongst the Presbyterians, are specially noteworthy.
Of the four Sects, the Quakers and Baptists vastly predominate :
24 Conventicles being reported of the former, and 17 of the latter, of
which one is a small meeting styling themselves ' Antipaedobaptists.'
Only 6 Presbyterian Conventicles are returned, and 3 Independent ;
and 2 (in each of them) is a joint meeting.
Episcopal Returns 87
The numbers reported in this county, in almost every case, are very
small ; but there are two exceptions to this. There is one Presbyterian
Conventicle of two to three hundred at Wyrardsbury and Colebrooke ;
and one, of Presbyterians and Independents combined, at Wycombe
Magna, designated in lofty irony ' a holy towne,' which is allowed to be
* very great and y e persons very insolent.' In four cases the report as to
numbers is unique, inasmuch as the numbers in attendance are declared
to be ' decreasing ' ; all of them in the Ouse Valley viz., one each at
Shenley and Stony Stratford, and two at Olney (about two hundred).
In the ' Quality ' column, there are some interesting features. The
description of the first Conventicle named 'None of any Qualitie,'
reminds us of the modern slang 'no class.' Besides the frequent
designations of ' meane,' ' meaner sort,' and ' inconsiderable,' the
Anabaptist Conventicle at Dinton is called ' very indigent.' A Quaker
meeting at Horton is composed of ' silly women and excommunicate
' persons ' ; and another Conventicle at Bledlow, whose denomination is
not given in these Returns, but which from the Licence documents
referring to the place was evidently Presbyterian, shares the distinction
as being ' most silly women.'
In many instances, however, the names of individual Conventiclers
are given (I suppose, as belonging to the ' Quality ') ; two of them
being worthy of special notice, even in this general review : Mr.
William Guy, formerly a J.P. at Wycombe Magna, in whose house is
< a Pulpit ' ; and Mrs. Fleetwood, of Chalfont St. Giles, kinswoman of
the Parliamentary general of that name, and hostess of a remarkable
company of learned and cultured Nonconformist ministers, in which, for
some six months in the Plague year 1665, John Milton had been a
centre of attraction.
Amongst the Teachers, the ejected ministers and laymen about
equally divide the honours ; and the former in equal numbers come
from neighbouring counties, and from different parts of Bucks. The
arrogant animus which describes one so noble and so notable as
Nathaniel Vincent,* who had been ejected from Langley, when he
is reported as preaching to a Conventicle of two hundred or three
hundred at Wyrardsbury and Colebrook (now known as Wraysbury and
Colnbrook) as 'one Vincent' is very pitiable: the dishonesty which
deliberately ignores the fact that Edward Bagshaw, M.A., was the
ejected minister of Ambrosden, Oxfordshire, and simply calls him ' late
4 student of Christ Church, Oxon,' as though he had never been in the
ministry at all ; and the carelessness which calls George Swinnock,
ejected from Great Kymble as ' Mr. Swynnow,' when reporting him
as Teacher ; and ' Mr. Synnow,' when naming his house at Amersham
as a meeting-place for above one hundred Presbyterians ; and Richard
Swinfen, ejected from Marston in Staffordshire as ' Mr. Swinfrow, an
* ejected minister,' is remarkable and inexcusable in one who could be
exact enough when he chose. The triumvirate who were welcomed
* He had covered himself with honour to all right-minded people by the zeal and
self-denying devotion with which he had ministered to thousands in London City,
rendered spiritually as well as physically homeless by the Great Fire, often preach-
ing to crowds in the spaces within the city covered only by ashes and smoking
ruins.
88
Detailed and Expository
under Mrs. Fleetwood's hospitable roof at Chalfont St. Giles, and
honoured the little Presbyterian Conventicle there by their frequent
ministry, is certainly noteworthy for their culture and learning : Edward
Terry from Greenford Magna (Middlesex), Dr. Edmund Staunton from
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and Samuel Cradock from Cadbury in
Somerset. The obscure and confused connection with Waddesden or
two ministers who are reported as preaching at Whitchurch demands
explanation. Calamy gives Mr. Robert Bennett as ejected from
Waddesden ; but he is here reported as simply ' a Teacher formerly ' ;
whereas Mr. Henry Eeling is referred to in this Report as ' ejected att
' Waddeden ' ; Calamy stating that a Mr. John Ellis also ' had another
' of the three rectories there.' Indeed, every one of the names men-
tioned in these Returns for Bucks would repay careful research into the
facts. Nor should we fail specially to notice the two remarks the
Bishop thinks it worth his while to report : (i) At Wraysbury 'they
' say they will uphold their Conventicle in spite of King or Bishop ' ;
(2) at Newton Blostomville, the Conventiclers are such as say 'they
' value Hot his Majesty's Clemency a pin.'
(4) For Herts, there is nothing except a Paper touching the Towne
of Hertford ; but that is so remarkable as to make amends for the
absence of aught else. The description of the great Quaker, Captain
Crooke (mentioned in the Bucks Report (R. 213) as ' John Crooke als
' Croote '), is most interesting ; while the disgraceful case of the clergy-
man Austin has about it elements of high comedy enough to fit it for
treatment by Dr. Wild, or Sam Butler, were it not that the Report
honestly concludes : ' Tis wisht there were other Clergy men of better
' Fame and better qualifyed to deal with that Factious people '! (R. 216).
10. LONDON. This Report touches each part of the Diocese, which
included besides the City of London and its immediate suburbs north of
the Thames, the whole of Middlesex, the County of Essex, that part of
Herts which constituted the Archdeaconry of St. Albans, and Winslow
in Bucks.
Considering the importance of the districts included, the Report is
disappointingly meagre. In Middlesex, the Bishop sends Reports from
only three places : Uxbridge, on its extreme western border, and Hackney
and Edmonton on the extreme east. From Essex, which was so
strongly Nonconformist that in 1672 (only three years later) no less than
157 licences were taken out under the Declaration of Indulgence, there
come the briefest and most imperfect reports, covering barely two pages ;
only naming the towns and villages where Conventicles are held, and
one or two Teachers at each, but giving no particulars as to the build-
ings used as Meeting-Places, as to the numbers frequenting the Con-
venticles, the Sects represented, or the Quality of the Conventiclers.
From Herts we have two and a half pages, and just one about Winslow,
in Berks. But what is most deplorable of all is that on London and
the suburbs, the Metropolis of the country and the great stronghold of
Nonconformity, as well as the asylum of scores of refugees from the
Provinces, we have only five and a half pages.
Though we may be thankful even for such small mercies, seeing
that in 1665 the Bishop sent up no Return whatever ; though a Return
Episcopal Returns 89
complete and full, like Seth Ward's for the Counties of Devon and
Cornwall, would have been priceless, for the materials it would have
afforded the historical student in tracing the history of the ninety
ministers (and over) who were ejected from the City proper, as
well as the score or so just outside the City walls. The fact is, that
Humfrey Henchman had little of the energy and organizing skill of his
predecessor, now Primate, nor the conscientiousness or exactness of Seth
Ward.
Baxter speaks well of him in his account of the Savoy Conference.
After referring to Bishop Morley as the chiefest speaker and most
frequent interrupter (of the Puritan party), and to Bishop Cosins, the
great canonist of the Episcopalians, Baxter says of Henchman, at that
time Bishop of Salisbury : He ' was of most grave, comely, reverend
* Aspect, of any of them. . . .' He * spake calmly and slowly, and not very
4 oft ; but was as high in his Principles and Resolutions as any of them '
(' Reliquiae Baxterianae,' Part II. , p. 363). And Pepys seems to have
been as favourably impressed as Baxter by Henchman's personal appear-
ance, when in 1663-64, soon after his elevation to the See of London
(February 28), he saw him in St. Paul's Cathedral. His words are : < But
' what was extraordinary, the Bishop of London, who sat there in a pew
* made a' purpose for him by the pulpitt, do give the last blessing to the
' congregation ; which was, he being a comely old man, a very decent
' thing, methought.' He was evidently an old man in 1664. His hand-
writing, too, in a letter preserved in the State Papers,* touch ing the preach-
ing of Nonconformist ministers in the City churches in 1665 (the year of
the Great Plague), bears evident traces of his age ; so that his infirmity
should be remembered in considering his Report (four years later still r
1669) .t
(i) It is necessary to observe at the outset that it was only three
years since the Great Fire had reduced the City to ashes, so that we
must not be surprised to find that though (as just stated) there were
over ninety ministers ejected from City churches in 1662, only six Con-
venticles are reported for the area destroyed by the Fire, and only one
building reported as * erected for the purpose ' of public worship, viz.,
Thomas Doolittle's, in Mugwell Street (now Monkwell Street). Still,
Mr. Calamy (the historian's father) is reported as preaching near the
ashes of his father's church in Aldermanbury ; Mr. John Wells, in Great
Wood Street, preaches within bowshot of his old church, St. Olave's,
Old Jewry ; Mr. Thomas Gonge clings to the ruins of his old church,
St. Sepulchre's, for he is reported as preaching 'next doore to the
4 Windmill against St. Sepulchre's'; nor had Mr. Caryll gone far from
St. Magnus', London Bridge, for he is preaching in Alderman Thomas
Knight's, in Leadenhall Street. Outside the City walls, too, Gabriel
Sangar and Dr. Manton still minister in their old parishes in the aristo-
cratic quarter bordering on Charing Cross and Westminster ; the former
in the Strand (he had been ejected from St. Martin's-in-the-Fields) ; the
latter in his own house in the piazza of Covent Garden, in the shadow
of his old parish church, St. Paul's. Mr. Greenhill still preached in his
* S. P. Dom. Car. II. 129, 63.
f He was then nearly 77 ; for he was baptized December 22, 1592.
Detailed and Expository
house close to Stepney Parish Church (whence he and his assistant
lecturer, Mr. Mead, had been ejected) ; and both he and Mr. Mead
were holding a Conventicle in Meeting House Alley in Wapping, 'the
'old House' being reported as 'made as big again as in Cromwell's
'time'; while close by in Redmayd Lane (Wapping), Mr. Kentish,
who had (like Zachary Crofton) been compelled to leave the Tower
Church (St. Catharine's), was preaching 'at a New Brick House with
' Pulpit and Seates.'
But most of the London ministers had migrated, either north to
Smithfield and Moorfields Dr. Owen was preaching in White's Alley
there, and Mr. Needier (of St. Margaret Moses, Friday Street), was
preaching in Finsbury Field or east to Bishopsgate and Spittlefields.
Thus Thomas Vincent had moved from Milk Street to Hand Alley, in
Bishopsgate (where he preached ' in a Spacious Roome built with
'Galleries'), and Dr. Samuel Annesley had left St. Giles's, Cripplegate
(his old parish), for Spittlefields, where, he was preaching at 'a New
' House built for the purpose with a Pulpitt & Seates.'
But the rest of those reported by Humphrey Henchman are refugees
from the provinces (and one, Mr. Grimes, all the way from Ireland,
and two Scotchmen).
Not only in the number of Nonconformist ejected ministers who
are reported, however, is the Bishop's Report miserably defective and
inadequate. In many cases the Sects are not distinguished. The
columns for Abettors, Principals, etc. (which properly filled up would
have been replete with interesting information), is left consistently a
blank. But the numbers attending the Conventicles reported are
admitted to be very large all of them are counted by hundreds.
His notes at the close of his Return for the City, too, are strangely
frank in their admissions. He does not appear to consider its incomplete-
ness involves any reflection upon himself. He says (R. 220/>) : 'Others
' there are of less note, too long to Enumerate, And many not yet dis-
' covered doubtlesse : And the more of late, Because they having re-
' ceived some disturbance in the Countries ' (*.&, ' Counties,' or, as we
should say, 'the Provinces'), 'have made flight to London.' The
Bishop evidently does not think much of the strength of religious con-
viction behind this Nonconformity, for he says (R. 221) : ' Many of
' these Meeting People, especially Presbyterians & Independents, did till
' of late frequent the Church ; And will easily be reconciled again, if
' they see the Government resolute.'
(2) The skeleton report from Essex is remarkable for three things :
(i.) All the ' Preachers or Teachers ' reported with the exception
of three (viz., Messrs. Billaway, Stockdale, and Done) are ejected
ministers. [N.B. Mr. Robert Billio, ejected from Wickham St. Paul,
appears under two curious variants : ' Billoe ' and ' Billowes,' and I have
a strong suspicion that ' Billaway ' is a third.]
(ii.) Two of the eighteen Conventicles reported viz., those at
Coggeshall and Colchester, under the heading of ' Numbers and Quality'
are honoured with the comment, 'hard to be suppressed,' which
shows the prophetic discrimination of the reporter, for they have not
been suppressed yet. The Congregational Churches in Coggeshall and
Episcopal Returns
Colchester are still ' going strong,' and are amongst the sturdiest and
most influential in the county.
(iii.) The note (R. 222) on the Conventicle at Dedham touching
the service held there in connection with the funeral of their late pastor,
Matthew Newcomen, M.A., is of special interest as confirming Palmer's
note (Cal. ii. 196) about Mr. Fairfax's sermon on the occasion.
(3) The incomplete report from Middlesex is nevertheless very
interesting as far as it goes.
(i.) Of the seven little Conventicles reported in Uxbridge, two are
notable, as served by ejected ministers : (a] That at Hillingdon about
a mile from the town then by 'one Butler,' who was doubtless Hugh
Butler, who had been ejected from Beaconsfield, in Bucks (the next
town to Uxbridge on the high road from London to High Wycombe),
but who had on his ejectment retired to Amersham. (He is described in
the Report as ' lately come from Amersham '), and (2) that at Uxbridge
itself, frequented by the ' best in the Town,' and held at the house of
Mr. Buscold, 'a Rich Tanner,' by Hezekiah Woodward, 'an old
* intruding minister of Bray, near Windsor.' [It is of special interest to
the Editor, as Hezekiah Woodward was turned out at the Restoration
to make way for Dr. Edward Fulham (a lineal ancestor of the Editor's),
to whom the living was presented by the Bishop (George Morley).
(Anthony Wood's remarks about the state of dilapidation into which
Woodward had allowed the manse to fall are very caustic.)]
(ii.) The Report for Hackney is notable for its mention of a Lecture
held here by a combination of eight of the ablest and most popular
preachers of London, six of whom were Congregationalists a veritable
galaxy of the 'bright particular stars' of that denomination. They
were : Philip Nye, the; veteran Independent and anti-Royalist ; Dr.
Thomas Goodwin, ex-President of Magdalen College, Oxford, and a
great Congregational ist ; John Griffith, another Independent, who had
been minister at the Charterhouse, and Lecturer at St. Bartholomew,
near the Exchange ; Thomas Brooks, of St. Margaret's, Fish Street, also
of the Congregational way ; Dr. Owen, one of the ablest pioneers of
Congregationalism as the Polity of the New Testament, and late Vice-
Chancellor of Oxford ; Thomas Watson, who had been ejected from
St. Stephen's, Walbrook, Presbyterian. And, besides these, Peter Sterry,
an able mystic ; and Dr. William Bates, the silver-tongued preacher
of St. Dunstan's-in-the-West (Fleet Street), a decided Presbyterian.
(4) The Report from Hertfordshire, omitting Hertford, the county
town (of which we have seen there was a separate account, quite unique
in its character, sent in by the Bishop of Lincoln), centres in the abbey
town of St. Albans, ' where it returns four Conventicles (the Presby-
terian of 100 attendants, by far the largest), served by three ejected
ministers. This is the only instance in which the Presbyterians are
mentioned, although the other six were without doubt of that denomina-
tion, which were served by ejected Nonconformists, viz., Watford,
Idlestree (or Elstree), Codicote, Ridge, Chipping Barnet, and Theobalds
(near Waltham Abbey). One of the three who preached at St. Albans
was Dr. Staunton (Stanton), who had been ejected from Boveden,
whom we have before met as one of the distinguished ministers who
92 Detailed and Expository
enjoyed the hospitality of Mrs. Fleetwood at Chalfont St. Giles. He
also preached at Watford, Codicote, and Ridge.
The other two were : Mr. Jenkins, ejected from Abbot's Langley ;
and Isaac Loeffs (called also Leaver and Leaves), who had been ejected
from Shenley.
The Baptists are reported as having three Conventicles : one at
St. Albans, one at Redbourne, and a third at Watford ; and the Quakers,
as having four (St. Albans, Redbourne, Shephall, and Norton). John
Crooke is reported as speaker at two of them, the J.P. whom we have
met before (in Cambridge and Bedford).*
The meagre reference to 'Theobalds brings us into touch with
London, for both Thomas Wadsworth and Robert Bragge were London
men ; the former having been ejected from St. Lawrence Pountney,
and the latter from All Hallowes the Great, in Thames Street.
The one place in Bucks reported as in the London Diocese is
Winslow.
1 1. NORWICH. Edward Reynolds was Bishop, having been elevated
to the See in 1661. He had been an avowed Presbyterian in the
Commonwealth times, and took the See when offered it, on the distinct
understanding that great latitude should be given to Nonconformists.
Still, when those conditions were not kept, but, on the contrary, the
policy of pitiless persecution was adopted, he did not resign his bishopric,
and worked in the interest of the policy he had protested against by
sending in a full account of the Conventicles held in about half the area
of his Diocese : the eastern half of Norfolk, and the western half of
Suffolk.
(i) In Norfolk, Emneth and King's Lynn, on the north-west
limits of the county, were the only exceptions to the above description
of the area covered by Reynolds's Report. It covers about six pages,
and (quite properly) begins with Norwich, the Cathedral City.
The denominations in the county are very unequally represented in
his Report. The Independents are by far the strongest, for twenty
Conventicles are credited to them. The Quakers, too, are strong, for
they have twelve. But he mentions only four Presbyterians, and three
of these are associated with the Independents. Further, he mentions
only two Baptists ; and one of these is a mixed meeting of Baptists and
Independents. The numbers in many cases are not large, ranging
between 20 and 50; but in 10 instances they amount to 'hundreds,'
the largest number being of Independents, (i) At Besthorpe and
Ban well there is one of < from 500 to 800'; (2) in Yarmouth, one of
about 400 ; while (3) in Norwich, they have 3 Conventicles of 200 or
300. The Quakers' Meeting at Wymundshoe varies in numbers
between 200 and 500.
From his connection with the Presbyterians, Reynolds well knew
the high character and culture of many of the Puritans, yet he reports
the Quality of most of the Conventiclers as ' inconsiderable persons,' or
as c most women,' conceding in the case of Besthorpe and Bunwell
alone, that * some were Gentry,' though he must add, ' and some poore
* people.' Except in the north, where the speakers named are all trades-
* See p. 81 . f.
Episcopal Returns 93
men, and these * of an inferior condition,' the * Heads and Teachers '
are generally ejected Nonconformist ministers, who, be it noted (as
proof of their earnestness and spirit), far more than in other parts of
England, despite the penal statutes, seemed to have remained in their
own parishes, to minister to their devoted flocks.
(2) The Report from Suffolk is distinctly disappointing. In the
north-eastern corner of the county, Nonconformity, as we know, was
peculiarly strong, for only three years later more than five-and-thirty
different places were licensed in this area. Yet it is wholly ignored in
Reynolds's Report, albeit Conventicles are reported, not nearly in the
number or strength that the facts warranted, as distributed evenly over
the rest of the county. Yet the Bishop's informants seemed to be
utterly ignorant of detail, except at Rattlesden, Wattesfield, Bury
St. Edmund's, and Ipswich.
12. SARUM. Here the Bishop was that energetic ecclesiastic, Seth
Ward, who had in 1665 sent in such a remarkably complete return of
the Nonconformists in the Diocese of Exeter, and who had migrated to
Sarum, in that year of Episcopal changes, 1667. He had been in his new
Diocese therefore only two years, yet his Reports for Wilts (the
Cathedral County), with Berks north-east of it, and Dorset south-west of
it, and a fragment of Devon, are as complete as had been his Returns
for Devon and Cornwall in 1665. He finds out the position (social
and political) alike of the householders who owned the meeting-places
and of the ' Teachers ' who spoke at them, so that we have a fund of
information in this score of pages and more, so valuable and so illumi-
nating, that from the historical standpoint we cannot but wish that his
brother Bishops throughout the country had been as zealous and careful
as Seth Ward.
His Report covers over twenty-three pages, fourteen of which are
occupied with Wilts, under the three headings of: (i) The Arch-
deaconry of Wilts ; (2) the Archdeaconry of Sarum ; and (3) the
Peculiars of Sarum in the County of Wilts. Nearly seven pages con-
cern Berks, and the rest touch the western half of Dorset and part of
the north-eastern border of Devon.
(i) As regards the Sects, though in many cases he can apparently
furnish no information, in seventy-eight instances the denomination is
given. Thirty-two of them are Quaker meetings, the Baptists and
Presbyterians have 20 each, the Independents 3, the Fanatiques 2, and
the Fifth Monarchists I. [It is a question whether in Seth Ward's
vocabulary * Fanatickes ' is not an alias of Independents, giving them
five Conventicles.*]
The Quaker 32 is made up of 17 in Wilts and 15 in Berks ; the
Baptist 20, of 13 in Wilts and 7 in Berks ; and the 20 Presbyterian, of
12 in Wilts, 5 in Berks, and 3 in Dorset. The Independent 5 is made
up of 4 in Wilts and i in Berks, and the single Fifth Monarchist
Conventicle is in Wilts. His bias against the Quakers is sufficiently
evident, for though it may not be the Bishop who is the author of these
expressions (but the local clergyman), the Bishop endorses them by
inserting them in his Report, where he is guilty of the brutality of
* Or were they the ' Ranters/ a sort of Pantheists ?
94 Detailed and Expository
calling two Quaker ladie swho had been probably married in Quaker
meetings, according to the recognized Quaker forms 'the Company
' Keeper or pretended wife ' of their devoted husbands (R. 241) ; and of
saying of Adam Laurence, of West Chaloe, that ' he keepes a woman
* as his wife whom he was never married.'
The facts about East Knoyle need sifting. Calamy has as the
clergyman ejected from that living Samuel Clifford (III., 365) ; but
Seth Ward, under that local heading (R. 242) calls Mr. Gray, the
' late Rector there, ejected Nonconformist,' but it is significant that on
the very next page (R. 243) both Mr. Clifford and Mr. Gray are
reported together with Mr. (Compton) South, Mr. (Peter) Ince, and
Mr. (Joshua) Churchill as preaching at a Conventicle of 100 or 200
at Donhead St. Andrews.
(2) As to Numbers. The Conventicles which in all three counties
have the largest numbers attending them are undoubtedly the
Presbyterians :
In Wilts, ten are reported as of over 100 ; and of these three were
over 200, four over 300, one of over 400, and one is of 600 or 700.
In Berks, there were five over 100, equally distributed as to
hundreds.
In Dorset, though so few Conventicles are reported and concerned,
one is over 200, two are over 300, and one over 400.
The Quakers, too, have considerable gatherings. In Wilts they
had three over 100, one over 200, and one over 400.
In Berks, they had five over 100, and one over 200 ; while in
Dorset, four had over 100.
The Baptists, also, had one of over 200, and one of over 300, both
in Wilts.
The Bishop's candour is proved, as well as the fulness of his informa-
tion, by his admission that in several places where no Conventicle is
reported they had * frequenters ' living there /.*., inhabitants who were
Nonconformists both in principle and practice, who travelled into other
parishes to 'frequent' the Conventicles held in them. Such were
Hindon, Berwick St. John's, Odstock, Bulford, and Boyton.
The information given as to the chief supporters of many Con-
venticles (in the column headed 'Quality and Abettors'), is very inter-
esting, and applies almost equally to all the different counties. It
should be of great use to historians of local Nonconformity.
The case of Dr. John Pordage is singular, and would repay fuller
investigation. The Bishop refers to him in connection with a Con-
venticle at Reading (R. 240), at which he is the one teacher. It is in
the contemptuous phrase, ' one Pordage,' implying that he is too insig-
nificant a person for a Bishop to know anything about, yet he is
unquestionably the same person who is reported under the title of
<D r John Pordage' with Mr. Bromley, 'as suspected to be Conventicle -
' holders and Teachers also' at Bradfield (R. 240). Calamy knows
nothing of him, except that in his literary note on Christopher Fowler,
ejected from Reading (L, 294-95), he gives among his works 'Daemonium
' Meridianum ': a Relation of the Proceedings of the Commissioners of
Berks against John Pordage, late Rector of Bradfield. But Neal
Episcopal Returns 95
('Puritans,' II., 631), notes him as ejected from this living at Bradfield,
not by the Royalist Episcopalians after the Restoration, but by Oliver's
Commissioners in 1656 not for scandalous living, nor for inefficiency,
but for heresy, ' denying the Deity of Christ and the merits of His
4 precious blood, and several suchlike opinions.' The fact is that (like
Peter Sterry at Hackney, near London) he was rather mystical in his
views, using phraseology which puzzled and displeased the good
Calvinist Puritans who examined him. But in 1661 he was reinstated
by the Episcopalian authorities, his successor appointed by Parliament
being ejected to make his restoration possible. This was the <M r John
' Smith ' whom Calamy notices as ejected from Bradfield (Berks). We
must suppose, therefore, that in 1662, though the Doctor was a good
Royalist and Episcopalian, he found himself doctrinally unable to take
the oath required by the Act of Uniformity, declaring his unfeigned
assent and consent to everything contained in the Book of Common
Prayer. So that formally Calamy ought to have included him in his
list of sufferers on Bartholomew's Day. Dr. Walker, too, ought to
have included him in his list of the clergy who suffered at the hands of
Oliver and the Parliament. But the curious fate befalls him of being
ignored by both ; by Calamy, because Pordage's predecessor was a good
Puritan who was ejected to make room for him ; and by Dr. Walker,
because Pordao;e could not remain in the church after Bartholomew's
Day.
The last column of Seth Ward's Report is as full of interest as any
of the rest. The names of several Nonconformist ejected ministers
appear in connection with so many different places, that it would be quite
possible to construct a history of their itinerating circuits in these
counties. It would be almost amusing, were it not so exasperating, to
find him using the contemptuous formula, ' one So-and-So,' of men who
before Black Bartholomew had been distinguished ornaments of the
Established Church.
'One Bachel 1 " of Hampshire,' preaching at East Ilsley, is clearly the
same as the * M r Rich. Bachiler ' reported on the same page as preaching
at Newbury the Richard Batchelaur who had been ejected from
Camely, in Somerset, and had retired to his own estates in Ashmans-
worth and East Woodhay, in the north-western corner of Hants. It is
a strong testimony to the deep impression made by his ministry there,
that the Bishop of Bath and Wells reports a Conventicle as meeting in
the parish church. Lower down the same page (R. 239/>), * one Dent
* of Ramsbury, a Pention Scholemaster ' preaching at Lambourne, should
hardly have been so ignored, seeing he is doubtless c M r Henry Dent,'
who had been ejected from the Ramsbury living.
4 One Stubs,' again, reported as preaching at Reading, ' his dwelling
4 not knowne,' the Bishop must have known as the minister ejected
from Longhope, Gloucester, who had retired to Bristol (Cal. II. 239-
244), and whom he reports elsewhere as ' M r Stubbs of Bristoll,' and as
preaching at Leigh by Garsdon and Grittleton (R. 237/>), at Shereston
and Charlton (R. 238), and at Hornington (R. 244). So, surely, it was
a wilful ignorance which describes another of the refugees at Bristol,
who had been ejected from Buckland Newton, in Dorset (Cal. II. 120),
96 Detailed and Expository
as ' Weekes of Bristoll'; and Thomas Rutty, who had been ejected from
Milton, Wilts (Cal. III. 368), and had retired to Scene, or Seende, in
Melksham as ' M r Thomas Rutty of Sene,' preaching at Calne (R. 239
and R. 249) ; and reports John Frayling, who had been ejected from
Compton, Wilts, as one of the preachers at the Independent Conventicle
at Devizes, under the guise of 'John Frawling of Hedington,' because
he was a native of Hedington, and possibly had retired thither after
his ejectment.
In one case Seth Ward slips into an error, not very excusable. In
reporting the Presbyterian Conventicle at Turner's Puddle, he gives the
teacher as ' M r Westley, ejected from Preston ' (R. 247). Now, so far
from being ejected from Preston, Calamy shows (II., 164-175) that he
was ejected from Winterbourn Whitchurch (' M r Wesley of Whit-
* church ' he is called in his official examination). He withdrew to
Melcomb, but was not allowed to settle there, and at last, by the kind-
ness of a friend, settled in Preston. (For a time he was driven from
Preston, too, by the operation of the Oxford Act in 1665, but must
have returned thither in 1669.)
13. WINTON. This Diocese included the Counties of Hants and
Surrey ; and George Morley was Bishop. He had been translated
hither from Worcester in 1662, and remained at Winchester till his
death in 1687. He was devoted to the House of Stuart, having
attended Charles I. in his last incarceration in the Isle of Wight, and
attached himself to the pseudo-court of young Charles II. in Paris (vide
Evelyn's Diary in loc.\ and he was correspondingly bitter to all anti-
Royalists, and anti-Episcopalians. We need not be surprised, therefore,
to find that animus appear in parts of this Report.
(i) The Returns for Hampshire cover seven pages.
(i.) The names of the Householders who harboured Conventicles
are given (except in the Andover Deanery). Those at Ellingham and
Hursley are of exceptional interest, and naturally illustrate the remark
just made, (i) At Ellingham, the meeting-place was Moyles Court,
x the house of Mrs. Lisle,' who, sixteen years later, was the first victim of
Judge Jeffreys, on his Bloody Assize, and is here described, with
partizan cruelty, ' the Regicide's wife.' (2) At Hursley, the meeting-
place is the house of Mrs. Dorothy Cromwell, * wife to Richard
c Cromwell, the late Usurper.'
(ii.) Of the Sects reported, the Presbyterians and Quakers were the
most numerous. The Presbyterians had 15 Conventicles, and the
Quakers 1 3 ; to only 5 of Anabaptists and 3 of Independents.
At Milford and Hordle reference is made to a Sect called ' Free-
4 willers ' : a unique reference.
(iii.) The numbers reported, as a rule, were under 100 ; but the
Presbyterians, in five places, were more numerous. At Moyles Court,
they were 200 ; at Fordingbridge, they were more (sometimes above
300) ; at Gosport they numbered ' some hundreds.' At Crundall, they
were 'very numerous' ; and at Andover there were 'some 200.'
(iv.) The information given in the ' Quality ' column is of great
interest ; the social position of many individuals being furnished at
Basingstoke, Kingscleare, etc. At Baghurst, it is conceded that some
Episcopal Returns 97
of the Quakers have considerable Estates. At Crundall, the principal
supporters of the Presbyterian Conventicle are ' of good Estates &
* Quality.' The Presbyterian Conventicle at Gosport is made up of
' Tradesmen in Portsmouth,' and ' seamen & workmen in His Majesty's
* Dockyard,' a very interesting proof that the Monarchy was glad to
retain some of Oliver's grand men in the Navy, and the Naval Dock-
yards. (Pepys was quite frank in his acknowledgments of this.)
(v.) With regard to 'Heads & Teachers': in all the important
Presbyterian Conventicles they are ' ejected ministers ' ; in the Northern
border of Hants, from the adjacent counties of Berks and Wilts, as well
as from other parts of the county ; and in the South-Western Corner
from Dorset.
Among the Quakers, the Bishop reports some notable speakers:
Solomon Eagles (or Eccles) of London, and Joseph Cole of Reading.
The Bishop shows his political and prelatical animus most unequivo-
cally, by the opprobrious epithets he uses in designating some of the
ejected ministers. Samuel Tutchin (ejected from Odiham) is * a pestilent
* Fellow.' James Terry (ejected from Micklemarsh),and Walter Marshall
(from Hursley) are each ' a violent Nonconformist ' ; Isaac Chauncy,
ejected from Woodborough, Wilts, was ' presented at the Assizes as a Sedi-
* tious person ' ; and John Tucker, ejected from Horton, Dorset, and so an
intruder into his Diocese, is ' a Vagabond.' The story he reports of
Mr. Avery, intended to cover him with contempt, attests the lofty con-
ception he has of the calling of God to a man as contrasted with the
mere ordination of man. He has been (R. 263) preaching at Hursley,
and the Bishop's words about him are as follows : * Mr. Avery, Mrs.
' Cromwell's Chaplaine, being demanded by what authority he held that
'unlawfull Assembly, Answered that he was Authorized thereto by
'Jesus Christ' adding, as showing that his trust was in part at any
rate in social influence 'That his Lady (Mrs. Dorothy Cromwell)
' would beare them out in all their meetings.'
One unique feature in this Report for Hampshire is the number of
local or sectional answers given to this inquiry (the personal reply to
which in the case of Mr. Avery I have just cited) as to the authority
they adduce for meeting in these illegal Assemblies.
(i.) In the Andover Deanery (R. 261) 'The Authority they pretend
' is His Majesty's Connivence, and that they have some freinds that, if
< occasion be, will interpose betweene them and the Punnishment of
' the Lawes.'
(ii.) At Basingstoke (R. 261 ) ' Some of them say they thought
* they had the King's permission & toleration, because such meetings
' are allowed in London and other Places.'
(iii.) At Kingscleare (ibtd.)^ the owner of the meeting-place
' declares the reason of his being soe zealous that way is, because the
' King has a great kindness for the Presbyterian party.'
(iv.) At Fordingbridge (R. 2634), < They say His Ma tie allowes of
' their Meetings, or at least tolerates them.'
(v.) At Ellingham (ibld.\ ' they plead His Majesty's Connivance
<and Toleracon.'
98 Detailed and Expository
(vi.) At Milford (/7>/W.), 'The Authority they pretend is the
'Spirit.'
(vii.) At Southampton (R. 264), 'They all pretend Conscience and
* Toleracon, or at least Connivence from the King.'
It should be noted that one of the very few answers given to the
first Postscript inquiry of Sheldon is appended to this same report
(R. 264) : ' The same persons frequent seVall Conventicles, which the
' Quakers generally in all places doe.'
14. SURREY. The Surrey Report occupies five pages.
(i) The first section /.*., from the ' Southwarke ' Deanery is of
special importance, because even in those days 'the Borough of South-
c warke' was reckoned (with the Liberties of Westminster) as a part of
London. This section, too, is more thorough and detailed than
the others.
(i.) The situation of the Conventicles is particularly described
(containing some details of topographical value), as also the social
position of the owners of the meeting-places.
(ii.) The numbers reported as in attendance are all large generally
over 100 ; Nathaniel Vincent's, in Farthing Alley, is attended by 500
or 600 ; Wadsworth's and Chester's, in Globe Alley, by about 600
(Presbyterians and Independents) ; and there is a great Conventicle of
Baptists in Shad Thames of 1,000 !
(iii.) As to Quality, we see Morley's delight, when able to belittle
their social position. The one in Fishmonger's Alley (of ' Presby-
4 terians and Interpend ts ') is composed of ' Bakers meal men, and such-
c like people,' and the Presbyterian Conventicle in Mountague Close is
' Tradesmen for the most part '; but he is obliged to acknowledge of
M r . Lye's meeting, in Morgan Lane, that it is 'of pretty good
' Qualitie,' and that Nathaniel Vincent's has ' some people of good
'fashion,' though he adds with an evident relish 'the rest servants
' & streete walkers.'
Southwark, we know from abundant evidence, was a stronghold of
Puritanism, a natural consequence of the fact that their Clergy were
so decided in their Puritanism that every one of them left the Church on
Bartholomew's Day, 1662. Only one seems to have stayed, to be active
in his ministry among his old people ; at least only one is reported
among the ' Heads and Teachers ' viz., Mr. Beerman (or Bereman),
who had been ejected from St. Thomas', Southwark, and he is
described as ' a silkman.' Is this an illustration of the way in which
some were forced into trades to maintain themselves (as Thomas
Taylor from Cambs. was, to become a dealer in tobacco) ? [or was this a
kinsman of the ejected Minister ?]
If I am right in this identification it is only a parallel, in the way of
unfairness, to the description of Stephen Ford, a clergyman of Oxford-
shire. After ejectment from Chipping Norton, he had fled to London,
and had taken up a ministry in these neglected parts. Morley alludes to
him simply as ' a servant of Thankfull Owen,' as if he were another
Onesimus, and had run away from his service to take up preaching :
whereas the fact probably is that, being either domestic servant to
Episcopal Returns
Thankful Owen, or one of the College servants at St. John's College,
Oxford, of which Thankful Owen was President in the Commonwealth
days, his master thought so well of his gifts that he gave him help
in his private studies, and got him placed in the sequestered vicarage.
All the other Teachers reported were (like Stephen Ford) emigrant
refugees in the ancient Borough. Mr. Carter, Mr. Thomas Lye and
Mr. Wadsworth had come across London Bridge from the City ;
Carter from St. Michael's, Crooked Lane; Thomas Lye, from All
Hallows, Lombard Street ; and Wadsworth, from St. Lawrence,
Pounteney. Mr. Anthony Palmer had come up from Gloucestershire
(Bourton-on-the- Water) ; Mr. Nathaniel Vincent from Bucks (Langley
Marsh) ; and William Carslake (e.g., one ' Castlake ') from Werrington
on the Cornish borders of Devon.
(2) For all the rest of Surrey we have only three pages.
(i.) It is rather singular that three of the meeting-places were the
private houses of ejected ministers. One in Godalming : John Platt's
(Cal. ' Plot '), who had been ejected from West Horsley, North of
Guildford ; and two in Dorking : one James Fisher's, from Fetcham ;
and the other, John Wood's, from the adjoining county of Sussex, having
been ejected from North Chapel.
(ii.) The denominations, as here reported, are evenly distributed as
between Presbyterians, Baptists, and Quakers. The Independents are
separately credited with only one viz., at Dorking ; though I much
incline to think that John Plot's, at Godalming, was Independent too.
(iii.) The number of Conventicles reported is small, only 13 in all ;
but more than half of them number hundreds in attendance ; the
Presbyterian Conventicle at Dorking counting 300 ; the Quaker
meeting, at Godalming, 4 or 500 ; and John Plot's, in the same place,
7 or 800.
(iv.) Of the Abettors reported : the Smallpieces, among the Quakers
at Newdigate, were a respectable county family of yeomen ; and
amongst the Presbyterians of the same village, one is reported as the
widow of an ejected minister, whose name does not appear on (Palmer's)
Calamy's lists viz., George Steere, ejected from Newdigate, for that is the
most natural meaning to put upon the phrase 'late minister of Newdigate.'*
(v.) Of the 1 6 teachers mentioned, 12 are ejected ministers, 5 of
them belonging to Surrey. One of them, however, Mr. Batho, ejected
from Ewell, is reported as from London, whither he had fled as a
refugee ; and another, James Fisher, who had really been ejected from
Fetcham, is reported simply as the owner of the house at Dorking
where the Independent Conventicle was held.
15. WORCESTER. The Bishop who sent in this report is Robert
* The Steeres were a county family, Brayley and Britton (IV. 236) mentioning
Lee Steere, Esq., of Jayes, Newdigate, as one of the three chief landholders ; and
Rev. George Steere, M.A., is mentioned by the same county historians as appointed
to the rectory 1609-10, holding it nearly fifty years, and founding a Parish School
(IV. 292). Yet, as he was buried Jan. 13, 1662, it is more likely that he resigned in
1660, than that he was ejected in 1662 ; seeing also that he gave way to one
Bonwicke, who is given by Manning and Bray as rector for the year 1660. In 1647
he was member of the Dorking Classis [A. G.]
72
ioo Detailed and Expository
Skinner, who had been translated hither in 1663 from the See of Oxford,
where he had been Bishop before the Civil War, and who had been
little interfered with by the Parliament during the whole of the period
of the Commonwealth, having ordained many to the ministry in this
period without interference from the Authorities, political and civil.
His Diocese of Worcester consisted of the two adjoining Counties of
Warwick and Worcester ; and his Report is fairly full, covering some
seven pages. In it the counties are rather mixed, but Worcester
receives the largest attention ; the Returns for it covering over four
pages, and those for Warwick less than three. It is not deficient to the
extent of meagreness, but it is not clear : its obscurity being largely the
result of carelessness.
In Worcester several Conventicles are assigned to one Sect. But of
those which are described five are Baptists, four are Quakers, and there
is one each of Independents, Presbyterians and Papists.
In Warwick, three Quaker meetings are returned, two Baptist, one
Independent, and one Presbyterian. A remarkable fact in these Returns
is that of the 'Heads and Teachers' reported, only four are ejected
ministers viz., Richard Fincher ejected from St. Nicholas, Worcester
City; Richard Beeslow ('Baslow') from Bredon (Worcester); John
Gyles (alias Giles) from Lindridge of the same county ; and Samuel
Tickner ('Ticknen') from Alcester. True, Mr. Thomas Badland is
reported as a Nonconformist* (along with Mr. R. Fincher) ; but he is
not mentioned by Calamy, and all the other speakers are laymen with no
University education.
Another noticeable feature, common to it with Seth Ward's Return
and others, is the statement about many parishes that, though no Con-
venticle is held there, there are inhabitants in the Parish individuals (few
or many) who are Nonconformists described by the Bishop as ' factious '
or ' seditious,' ' Sectaries,' ' Papists,' Anabaptists, Independents and
Quakers. As to the Quality of the Conventiclers there are these ad-
missions : that
(1) at Worcester, there are 'some people of good sufficiency,'
' Some of good Accompt.'
(2) at Alusten (i.g., Alveston), some were 'y e chiefest persons, for
' State, in the Towne ' ; and
(3) at Brayles, of the Papists some were ' people of good Qualitie.'
One historic touch should be noted. Under the return for Alveston
(Alusten), (Worcester) there is this memo. : ' There went out of this
' towne seven score & odde persons against the King to Worcester.'
Another thing common to this with the Return for Sarum Diocese
is that there are many references to the Original Returns from which
this was compiled. Under Alveston, we have ' see the Returne itself
' for the names of some of the Cheife Sectaries.' Under Kington, referring
to the Anabaptists and Quakers we have, * see the names in y e Returne.'
Under Birlingham Inhabitants, in reference to ' some factious persons '
we have 'see the Returne for their names,' as also with regard to
* Calamy inserted Badland in his list ; though Palmer (iii. 245) excluded him,
confusing Baldwin with Badland, foolishly thinking that he knew better.
Episcopal Returns 101
the Quakers of Brayles; while the formula used in connection with
Kington, is repeated verbatim of Stratford-upon-Avon.
So far, then, as to the Province of Canterbury. Though there are
considerable differences in the Returns from the various Sees, there is
more or less of uniformity and fulness in them. Far otherwise shall we
find it in the case of the Northern Sees.
THE PROVINCE OF YORK.
The Dioceses in York Province were four York, Durham, Chester
and Carlisle and Returns come from them all ; but the only Report
which is full and detailed enough to be condensed in Tabular Form
is the first.
i. The Report for YORK DIOCESE was sent in by Archbishop Sterne,
who had held the See and the Northern Primacy for five years from
1664-5 when he was translated thither from Carlisle.
He had been in his early years chaplain to Archbishop Laud, attend-
ing him upon the Scaffold. So that we cannot expect anything very
sympathetic about Nonconformists.
The order of the Returns is rather inexplicable. The Diocese
included the whole of the Counties of York and Nottingham. But
Sterne first gives us a very fragmentary report for the sea-board of the
East and North Ridings, then a fairly thorough one for the County of
Nottingham, and then a much fuller report than was promised at the
outset from the North Riding and the West Riding.
For the sake of clearness, we take the Counties separately, and begin
with York County.
(i) York County. (i.) In the first fragment (R. 278-278^)
6 Conventicles are reported : 3 of Quakers and 3 undesignated. The
names of the Quaker householders doubtless could be traced.
The non-Quaker Conventicle at Bridlington is of special interest
since the ' Mr. Lucks ' at whose house it is held was the ejected minister
of the Town : whose licences applied for and issued three years later
are unusual and received special notice from the authorities ecclesiastical
and civil.
(ii.) The rest of the County is dealt with under the heading of
' Deaneries of Pontefract and other Deaneries in Yorkshire ' (R.
_
As in other cases, of course, so here, it is impossible to say whether
the Returns fairly represent the relative strength of the denominations
reported ; but the Quakers certainly bulk far more largely in the eyes of
the Archbishop than all the other denominations put together. Out
of 44 Conventicles reported, 24 are Quaker Meetings ; there are only
7 each of Presbyterians and Independents, with 4 of Baptists, and 2 of
Papists.
The Archbishop has special animus against them too. He speaks of
the Quakers of Balby, Doncaster, (R. 285) as c of y e inferior Gang ' ;
and in connection with the Quaker Conventicle at Hilston (R. 284),
field at the house of John Stor, who he is obliged to acknowledge, is 'an
102
Detailed mid Expository
4 able & rich person ' ; he shows his rancorous malice and vindictiveness
by the terms he employs in reference to the marriages celebrated there :
4 They do take one anoth r (as they call it) and so live in Fornicacion ' ;
while of John Hall ofWhitby he can bring himself to write, * who liveth
4 with a woman as in Wedlock & an excomunicate person ' ((R. 282).
As a rule, the Conventicles are not large. Two in the North
Riding viz., those at Coxwold and Kilbourn, are each of about 200
or 300; and two at < Nott.' (an abbreviation for Nottingham)* go into
hundreds; one of Presbyterians, of 400 or 500 ; and one of Independents,
of 200. Several Quaker meetings, too, run up to and exceed 100 ;
at Morley, they are ' very numerous ' (R. 285) ; at Malton (R. 285),
and Rusticke (R. 283) they have meetings of 300 ; and the Archbishop
reports ' one great assembly of Quakers on the moors near Sleights of
i ,000 ' (R. 285). At Batley, too, he is obliged to report a Conventicle,
to which 'as many come as to the Parish Church ' (R. 282).
As to the * Heads & Teachers,' only two are spoken of frankly as
Nonconformists viz., Henry Swift of Pennystone, and ' one Denton of
' Bolton' ; but * Mr. Clayton of Rotheram,' and c Mr. Benson (or Benton)
* of Thursco ' were the ministers ejected from those livings : and there
are some 19 others, who are referred to simply as * Mr. X ' or * one X ';
while one is referred to just by his personal name'; all of them without
any hint that they were ever in the ranks of the clergy of his Diocese
and Province.
Thirteen are spoken of as c Mr. X' viz. (i) Luke Clayton, ejected
from Rotherham ; (2) John Shaw from Hull ; (3) Thomas Burbeck
( c Mr. Birbeck ') from Ackworth ; (4) Edward Prince from Sheffield ;
(5) Richard Taylor from Longhope; (6) Matthew Bloom from
Sheffield; (7) Rowland Hancock from Bradfield; (8) Thomas Hard-
castle from Bramham ; (9) Robert Armitage from Holbeck (Leeds) ;
(10) Peter Nay lor from Houghton Chapel, Lanes ; (IT) Joshua Kirby
from Wakefield ; (12) William Hawdon from Broadsworth ; and
(13) Richard Thorp from Horton.
Five are alluded to even more contemptuously as ' one X ' viz. :
(i) Henry Root ejected from Sowerby ; (2) John Ryther ( c one Ryder')
from Ferriby ; (3) Christopher Nesse, from Leeds ; (4) Joseph Dawson,
from Thornton ; (5) Oliver Hey wood, from Coley Chapel.
The single instance in which he uses the personal name without
prefix of any kind is ' Marke Trigot,' who is Mark Trickett ejected
from Gate-Burton (Lincolnshire).
H (2) Nottingham County. According to the Archbishop's Re-
port, the Quakers appear to predominate in Notts, as they do in Yorks,
though not so overwhelmingly.
There are 9 Quaker Conventicles reported, to 7 Anabaptist, 5 Presby-
terian, 3 Independent, i Fifth Monarchist, i Papist, I Jews, and I
< Famylist.'
The numbers attending them are generally under 100; but two
Presbyterian Conventicles are reported, one as ot 100, and the other as
* in great numbers,' and two at Notts of 400 ; the Baptists of Rempston
* Is this Knottingley ? No ; it is doubtless ' Nottingham ' misplaced.
Episcopal Returns 103
have 200 in attendance, the Independents at Notts 200, and the In-
dependents and Baptists (together) at Flintham have ' Considerable '
numbers, and the Quakers of Notts number 100.
The Archbishop's description of the Quality of the Conventicles is
generally * meane ' or * poor/ but the confession is made that at Burton
Jovis (Joyce) they have 'some of the best sort,' and that the Presby-
terians at Mansfield have ' the better quality than the rest ' ; while at
Nottingham the Archdeacon reports ' the chiefe of these persons have
* beene in actual armes ag 1 the King.'
Again, as in Yorks, we find many ejected ministers referred to by
name without the slightest hint that they had ever been ornaments of
the Church of England only one Teacher is distinctly called a Non-
conformist, and he is referred to simply as < Rose,' i.e. Thomas Rose,
who had been ejected from Bluds worth, Notts ; but the most remarkable
thing is that those at Nottingham are unnamed, though described as
' such as are silenced for Nonconformity.'
There are twelve of the noble army of ( sufferers ' for conscience,
and only three of them came into Notts fromiother counties. These three
strangers or refugees are : two from Derbyshire viz., Robert Seddon
from Langley, and Robert Porter from Pentridge ; and one from
Leicestershire viz., William Smyth (als Smith) from Packington.
The other nine remained bravely in the county where they had
exercised their ministry: (i) John Clark, ejected from Codgrave ;
(2) John Leighton (< M r . Layton '), from Linley ; (3) Robert Smalley,
from Greesley ; (4) John Whitlock, and (5) William Reynolds, from
St. Mary's, Nottingham ; (6) John James, from Flintham ; (7) William
Cross, from Beeston ; (8) Joseph Trueman (' John Trewman '), from
Crumwell ; and (9) Samuel Coates (< Samuel Coles '), from West
Bridgford.
There is one extraordinary case of displacement in the report from
this Diocese. At the top of R. 285, and therefore under the heading
given on R. 2813 ' Deaneries of Pontefract and other Deaneries in
' Yorkshire ' sandwiched between such undoubted Yorkshire places as
Lissett and Doncaster, is one item * Nott.' with 7 Conventicles.
After conjectures innumerable as to what town in Yorkshire could
possibly be intended by this mystic c Nott.', each to be rejected as utterly
improbable, the suggestion was made by Rev. T. G. Crippen that it is
intended for < Nottingham.'' Its bare mention was sufficient to fix it at
once in the Editor's mind as the true identification. There follows, of
necessity, the curious problem why the report of a town so strong in
Nonconformity should be relegated to such a misleading place in the
Returns. What < animus ' and disingenuousness to omit all names from
the column of Teachers simply noting ' Their Teach rs are such as are
'silenced for Nonconformity,' when they included such distinguished
preachers as John Whitlock and William Reynolds, the inseparable
colleagues both ejected from St. Mary's, and John Barrett ejected from
St. Peters !
2. THE DIOCESE OF DURHAM. Here John Cosin was Bishop. He
was strong for Protestant Episcopacy though his compilation of a
104 Detailed and Expository
Book of Prayers for Private Devotion set the rumour going that he
was secretly a Papist,* a suspicion that was confirmed by the perversion
of his son to the Church of Rome. Still the fact that he disinherited
him for it is sufficient proof of his Protestant orthodoxy. He fled to
France on his deprivation by the Parliamentary Commissioners, and fre-
quently officiated all through the Commonwealth period in Sir Richard
Browne (the Ambassador's Chapel in Paris : and so became well known
to John Evelyn, who befriended him financially. He seems to
have been even more devoted to the Stuarts than to the Church ; forgot
his old friends, was prepared to vote against Chancellor Clarendon, and
seemed inclined to condone the infidelities of Charles II. His response
to Archbishop Sheldon's inquiries was a very perfunctory one. All
that he deigns to ascertain and to present in his Report of four
and a half pages is 'the number of persons that continue to keep
4 meeting at Conventicles of pretended Religious Worship contrary to
4 Law,' adding in some few cases the names of the householders in whose
house a Conventicle is kept.
3. CHESTER. TheBishop here had come to the See only about twelve
months when he sent in his Return. He was Dr. John Wilkins a man
of great talents, a broad mind, and genial personality. By his mathe-
matical and mechanical gifts he won the special admiration of John
Evelyn ; and by his eloquence as a preacher that of Pepys. By origin and
marriage he was closely allied to the Nonconformists ; as grandson of a
great Puritan, Mr. Dod, and brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell : (his wife
being Cromwell's sister). During the Commonwealth he had accepted a
moderate Presbyterianism,'but with the Restoration accepted the restored
Episcopacy, and was made Dean of Ripon, being elevated to his See in
1668. He thus became responsible for the Counties of Lancashire and
Cheshire, as well as the Western half of the North Riding of Yorkshire,
and fragments of Flint. For this wide area he sends in a Report, fairly
comprehensive, of 14 pages, but containing no information either of the
Householders who entertained the Conventicles, nor of the Speakers ^
much less does he give any particulars as to the numbers attending them,
their Quality, or their chief supporters. He simply and solely gives
the names of places where Conventicles were held, and the number of
Conventicles held in them or of individual Sectaries resident in the various-
places, in some few cases indicating the Sect to which they belonged.
This is exceedingly disappointing, as we know, from other sources,
how strong Nonconformity was (both Papist and Protestant) in many
parts of this See, and completer Returns would have had the utmost
value.
4. CARLISLE. The Diocese includes the greater part of Cumber-
land and the Northern half of Westmorland. The Report is carefully
framed ; but only a fraction of what we might have had, covering but a
single page. It is sent in by Edward Rainbow who had held the See
for five years a devoted Royalist and a learned scholar.
* Despite the fact that it was published in 1627 in pursuance of royal order, to
meet the reproach that books of devotion were used only by Papists. Its full title
was 'A Collection of Private Devotions, in the Practice of the Ancient Church,.
* called the Houres of Prayer.'
Episcopal Returns 105
The five Teachers he reports were all ejected ministers : and the
manner of his reference to the first two he names implies that fact,
describing George Larkham as 'sometime minister at Cockermouth ' ;
and saying of Nathaniel Burnand, whom he reports as Teacher of a
Conventicle at Brampton, that he was c sometime minister there, but is
* now a Farmer or Drover.' The other three he names without any
hint as to their previous career : ' Simon Atkinson,' who was ejected
from Lazonby in Cumberland (Cal. I. 389) ; * one Slee,' a contemptuous
allusion to Anthony Sleigh who had had a University training, but was
silenced by the Act of Uniformity and prevented entrance to the
ministry ; and < one Nicholson,' another similarly situated George
Nicholson who had been educated at Oxford under Theophilus Gale
and destined for the ministry, but found it impossible to accept the
conditions of the Act of Uniformity.
III. NUMBERS GIVEN IN THESE RETURNS.
From what precedes it will be seen that the numerable items con-
tained in these Reports are Conventicles, the Owners of houses or
buildings in which the Conventicles are held, the Teachers who
minister to the Conventicles, and the Number of the worshippers who
assemble in, or compose, the Conventicles. [These last I have called
' Conventiclers.']
It is possible, that is, by careful examination of these Returns to
count, in each county, the Conventicles reported, the Teachers who
ministered to them, the houses or buildings in which the Conventicles
are held, and the Conventiclers who are reported as frequenting them.
This I have done, and have presented the figures for the several
Denominations in each county.
But before giving them or dealing with the inferences to be gathered
from them, one or two observations need to be made.
1. In the Episcopal Returns the sects or denominations are four,
though in the Licence or Indulgence Documents they are only three.
The Quakers attracted the attention of the Episcopalian authorities
quite as much as Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists indeed
some would infer from the figures given in the Returns that they received
more than their fair share of that attention.
2. As to the Teachers, the figures I present greatly exaggerate the
number of individuals, because I reckon each teacher who ministers to a
Conventicle as one, so that when the same teacher ministers to more
Conventicles than one, it may be in different parts of the same county
or even in different counties he is counted over and over \ again.
Subsequent sifting of the Returns might show the number of such
duplicates, triplicates, etc., and the number of individual ministers
reported in each county might thus be more accurately ascertained.
That process I have not yet had the heart to tackle ; but I have made
a very rough deduction in the County totals.
3. With regard to the number of Conventiclers, moreover, we are
confronted with this serious difficulty which at first glance seems insur-
mountable, and threatens to take away 'the relative significance of the
106 Detailed and Expository
figures which these Returns supply. In many cases the * Numbers '
column is a blank. We are told that a Conventicle is held ; but no
attempt is made to report or estimate the numbers frequenting it. To
meet the difficulty frankly, I have called the number x : and in giving
the number of Conventiclers in a certain place or in a given county I
have given the cardinal figures which are the totals of the numbers actually
given plus ' so many *V as there were Conventicles the numbers attend-
ing which were not given in the Return. That x unfortunately may
represent a few units, or tens or scores or hundreds as the case may
be. We may give x an * average ' value so as to reduce the whole to
definite numbers. Yet even that is necessarily a very unreliable process ;
though it may be added that the wider the area dealt with, the more
likely is the result to be approximately true ; and when we deal with
the whole of England and Wales we may indulge the fancy that we are
not very wide of the mark.
To gain some approximate idea of the numbers, I have gone through
the following cumbersome and tedious process :
I have taken a copy of my Classified Summary, and in the left-hand
margin of every page in which occur any references to the Episcopal
Returns (/.*., wherever an R is to be found) I have ruled three columns
one for Teachers (headed ' T '), one for Houses or Householders (headed
<H '), and one for Numbers of Conventiclers (headed * Nos.'), and in these
columns have entered a ' i ' opposite each mention of a Teacher or
Householder in columns ' T ' and ' H '; and in the column ' Nos.' the
numbers of Conventiclers reported as attending any Conventicle
returned, or an x if no number is given. All these particulars are given
in the four denominational sections of each county ; and at the end of
each denominational section I have cast up the totals in each column ;
and finally, at the end of each county section, have tabulated these totals
in a columnar scheme, giving the number of Teachers, Houses, and
Conventiclers in each of the four Denominations ; and at foot, the total
number of Teachers, Houses, and Conventicles of all four Denomina-
tions in other words, of Nonconformists of all Sects in each county.
These figures I have transferred from my Classified Summary to the
Tables, presented in the following pages, with one important addition :
I have added a fourth column, in which I have placed the numbers of
Conventicles of each Denomination in each county (gathered by the
process of counting the numbers given in the account of each Town
or Parish).
These Tables therefore give : (i) in the first group of four columns
the numbers of Teachers (T), Houses (H), Conventicles (Cs.), and
Conventiclers (Crs.*) in each of the four Denominations in each county;
and (2) in the second group the total number of Teachers, Houses, Con-
venticles, and Conventiclers in each of the counties.
The counties are arranged in the six groups adopted in the Classified
Summary; and the order of the counties in each group is the same
geographical order as that adopted there.
It is from this comprehensive scheme of Tables that all the other
special Tables are drawn up.
* This in place of the ' Nos ' of ray first, three-columned, tabulation.
Episcopal Returns
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'Detailed and Expository
There are two ways in which we may review these tables, and sum-
marise the statistical conclusions to be drawn from them.
First, disregarding the division of Nonconformists into Sects, we may
gather the relative strength of Nonconformity as a whole in the country
generally and in the several counties ; and, second, we may gather
the numerical strength of each of the four principal denominations in the
country generally and in theseveral counties. First, then, we deal with
i. NONCONFORMITY AS A WHOLE.
In attempting the task, moreover, it will be well perhaps to begin
our Review on the widest scale, as the uncertainty besetting the true
value of x is thereby reduced to its minimum.
I therefore herewith append (a) a c Summary' Table, giving the totals
for the Groups of Counties with the grand totals thus gained for
the whole of England, and for England and Wales :
SUMMARY OF EPISCOPAL RETURNS, 1669.
Group.
T.
H.
Cs.
Crs.
England :
Northern...
I.
72
66
148
5,193+a;
North Midlands
II.
ISO
86
192
7.436 + 500*
South Midlands ...
III.
139
129
127
4,046+59*
Eastern Counties...
IV.
22C.
'45
"5
10,381+75*
South-Eastern Counties ...
V.
230
203 + x
2*57
21,760+ 114*
South- Western Counties...
VI.
271
214
239
18,834 + 45*
1,087
84.3 + x
1,178
67 6 co -4- IAAX
Wales
VII.
51
64
56
3,225 + 14*
Totals for England and Wales
...
1,138
907+*
i, 2 34
70,875 + 358*
j
For the whole of England and Wales, then, the totals are as follows :
Teachers 1,138, Conventicles 1,234, Houses 907 + *, and Conventiclers
70,875 + 358*. As the figures range from 7, 15, 20, 35, 50, 70, 100,
150, 200, 300, etc., an average of 90 might not be out of the way ;
358* would represent another 32,220, which would raise the grand total
of Conventiclers in the United Kingdom to over a hundred and three
thousand (103,095) ; or, reckoning laxly for the eight counties not
reported on at all, we should be safe in adding another sixteen or
seventeen thousand.
It would be a sober estimate if we were to say, then, that the Non-
conformist Conventiclers in England and Wales were at least 1 20,000
it may well have been between 122,000 and 123,000. Confining
ourselves, however, to the counties for which we have returns, we find
that for Wales the numbers are: 51 Teachers, 64 Houses, 56 Con-
venticles, and 3,225 + 14* Conventiclers; while for England we have
1,087 Teachers, 843 + * Houses, 1,178 Conventicles, and 67,650 + 344*
Conventiclers. Of the six groups of counties into which we have divided
England, the South-Eastern Group comes out as by far the strongest.
Episcopal Returns
Its Conventiclers are nearly twenty-two thousand (21,760), beside 114
Conventicles of unknown number probably accounting for nearly half
as many again, say ten thousand more, with a total of 257 Conventicles.
The Eastern Counties come next in these respects, but far behind;
giving but half the number of Conventiclers (10,381 + 75*) ; though in
other particulars it is not so far behind, having 215 Conventicles, held
in 145 Houses, and 225 Teachers to minister to them. Then comes
the North Midland Group, with its 7,436 Conventiclers + 50* : say
another four or five thousand, totalling 12,000, with 192 Conventicles,
held in 86 Houses, with 150 Teachers to minister to them.
Of course the high record of the North Midland Group would have
been much higher had we a fair report from Lincoln county (for which
we have no report at all).
It is certainly noteworthy that the South Midland Group shows up
so well, its three counties accounting for almost as many as the five of the
Northern Group, though we have no returns for four out of its seven
counties viz., from Hereford, Northants, Gloucester, and Oxford.
(b] Fairly to estimate the value of these figures we need, however, to
supplement this summary schedule by a more detailed one for each county,
which is given on the following pages. The numbers for Warwick
show its Nonconformist strength, and those for Bucks tell the same story.
Warwick's figures (No. 17) for Conventiclers is 1,749 + 28*, together
amounting to four thousand or more, while those of Bucks (No. 21) are
i, 482 + 3 1*, probably representing an almost equal figure; the latter
county having as many as 65 Conventicles in 63 Houses, with the
relatively very large number of 74 Teachers ministering to them.
Indeed, a closer study of the Schedule given below will reveal
other equally striking comparisons.
Somerset claims by far the largest number of Conventiclers, its defi-
nitely reported 12,315 being almost a third as many again as London's
9,960, the unnumbered Conventicles in each being nearly the same
Somerset 18* and London 17* ; while in all the other three particulars
the difference is more striking still, Somerset having 155 Conventicles
in 134 Houses with 168 Teachers ministering to them, while London's
numbers are but 53, 49, and 44 respectively.
TOTALS OF EPISCOPAL RETURNS, 1669.
Group.
County.
T.
H.
Cs.
Crs.
ENGLAND.
I. I.
Northumberland
s
2
i$
247
2.
Durham
i
12
IS
398+*
3-
Cumberland...
4
4
368
4-
Westmorland
3
170
5-
Yorks
62
48
88
3,340
6.
Lancashire ...
4
23
670
72
66
148
5>'93+*
i
n6 Detailed and Expository
Group.
County.
T.
H.
Cs.
Crs.
Brought forward
72
66
148
5,'93+*
II. 7-
Cheshire ...
o
i
43
220+38*
8.
Derby
'4
10
1.8
1,290
9-
Notts
3i
30
37
i, 995+*
10.
Lines
1 1.
Salop
15
7
'3
345
12.
Staffs
29
36
3'
1,640 + 7.*
13-
Leicester ...
61
2
5
1,946 + 4*
H-
Rutland
150
86
192
7,436450*
III. 15.
Hereford ...
.
1 6.
Worcester ...
12
12
15
815
17-
Warwick ...
53
54
47
1,749 + 28*
1 8.
Northants ...
19.
Gloucester...
20.
Oxford
21.
Bucks
74
63
65
1,482 + 31*
139
129
127
4,046 + 59*
IV. 22.
Hunts
23-
Beds
39
3
37
809 + 8*
2 4 .
Cambs
36
32
4 2
1,847 + 14*
25-
Herts
32
15
22
1,772 + 7*
26.
Norfolk
64
56
53
4,292 + 17*
27.
Suffolk
34
39
4 1
1,661 + 10*
28.
Essex
20
20
19*
225
H5
215
10,381 +75*
V. 29.
Berks
S 2
49
43
2,316 + 24*
30.
Middlesex ...
13
7
9
500 + 9*
31-
London
44
48
53
9,860+ 17*
32.
Kent
33
i6+x
48
1,367 + 31*
33-
Surrey
13
13
15
2,251 +2*
34-
Sussex
39
4 1
5
2,380+19*
35-
Hants
36
29
39
3,086+12*.
230
203 +x
257
21,760+ 114*
VI. 36.
Wilts
75
60
60
3,841 +25*
37-
Somerset ...
168
J 34
J 55
12,315 + 18*
38.
Dorset
9
8
1 1
1,125
39-
Devon
*9
1 1
! 3
1,553 + 2*
40.
Cornwall ...
271
214
239
18,834 + 45*
Total for England
1,087
843+*
1,174
67,650 + 344*
Episcopal Returns
117
Group.
County.
T.
H.
Cs.
Crs.
Brought forward
1,087
8 43 +*
1,178
67,650+344*
WALES.
VII. I.
Flint
2.
Denbigh ...
3-
Carnarvon
4-
Merioneth ... ...
5-
Montgomery
8
1 1
13
165 +6x
6.
Cardigan ...
7-
Radnor ...
8.
Brecon
9-
Pembroke
10.
Carmarthen
1 1.
Glamorgan
10
16
II
605 + 5*
12.
Monmouth
33
37
32
M55 + 3*
5i
64
56
3,225 + 14*
Total for England and Wales
1,138
9074-*
!> 2 34
7o,875 + 35 8 *
Looking at the four items of which we have counted the numbers,
the various counties assume the following order :
1. As to the number of Teachers reported.
(1) Somerset is far ahead of all other counties with 168. [Though
we have to remember that in this county the repetition of the same
name is most frequent at different places, owing doubtless to the system
of grouping both Ministers and Conventicles, so that the members of a
group of Ministers would divide their services to a group of Conventicles
by a more or less regular rotation.]
The next to Somerset counts less than half.
(2) Wilts with 75, and (3) Bucks with 74, take this second place.
(4) Norfolk, (5) Yorks, and (6) Leicester form a third group, with 64,
62, and 6 1 Teachers respectively. (7) Warwick and (8) Berks form
a fourth pair, with 53 and 52 ; and (9) London is the last which calls
for special mention with 44.
The low position of London on the list shows how imperfect, how
defective, the Bishop's Return is. We know how many of the ejected
from country livings had fled to London ; and how large a number of
the London clergy had been compelled by conscience to leave their
churches, as well as the great number of Conventiclers which were
gathering more or less openly in London and the suburbs. Yet
Humfrey Henchman can report only 53 Conventicles and 44 Teachers
as ministering to them !
2. Number of Houses reported in which Conventicles were held :
The same counties figure in the ' honours ' list in this particular as
figured in the last, save that Sussex takes the place of Leicester, and the
rest somewhat change their order.
n8
Detailed and Expository
(i) Somerset again takes the lead with 164. (2) Wilts and (3) Bucks
again take the second place, only Bucks leads Wilts by 3 ; Wilts
having 64, and Bucks 61. (4) Norfolk and (5) Warwick form the next
pair, with 56 and 54 respectively. (6) Berks and (7) London tie with
49 Houses each, though Yorks joins them as a group, with 48 ; and
(8) Sussex comes in for special mention with 41.
3. In the number of Conventic'es, there is not quite such a distance
between Somerset and the rest of the counties. But still :
(i) Somerset is far ahead of them all with 155. In this list
(2) Yorkshire comes second with
Then there is a gap ; and
(3) Bucks and (4) Wilts come together (to take the third place this
time), with 64 and 60 respectively. (5) London and (6) Norfolk
* tie ' in the next place with 53 each. (7) Leicester and (8) Sussex * tie'
with near the same number, 50 ; and (9) Kent and (10) Warwick are
the last pair which call for special mention, with 48 and 47 respec-
tively, though perhaps we ought to add: (n) Cambridgeshire and (12)
Sussex with 42 and 41.
4. With the number of Conventiclers I have dealt in part already :
(i.) In numbers definitely given, the list stands thus :
(i) Somerset, with 12,315. (2) London, with 9,960. (3) Norfolk,
with 4,292. (4) Wilts, with 3,841. (5) Yorks, with 3,340. (6) Hants,
with 3,086.
(ii.) In the matter of Conventicles whose numbers are not estimated
or reported, the counties stand thus :
(i) Cheshire, with 38.* (2) Bucks, with 31 ; and (3) Kent, with the
same. (4) Warwick, with 28. (5) Wilts, with 25. (6) Berks, with 24.
(7) Sussex, with 19. (8) Somerset, with 18 ; and (9) London, with 17.
(iii.) If we reckon 90 for a fair average value of *, in the 23 coun-
ties involved the first 1 2 would stand in the following order :
Somerset and London would easily head the list.
(i) Somerset, with nearly 14,000 Conventiclers (13,935). (2)
London, with 1 1,490 (which is a long, long way below the true number
of its Conventiclers). (3) Wilts comes next with 6,091, little more
than half. (4) Norfolk is very near to Wilts, with 5,822. (5) Berks
follows, with 4,476. (6) Bucks and (7) Warwick are very near, with
4,272 and 4,269. (8) K ent > (9) Hants, and (10) Sussex, come next,,
with 4,167, 4,166, and 4,090 respectively, fn) Cheshire follows with
3,640 ; and (12) Cambridge is twelfth with 3,107.
(iv.) If, however, we gave x the value of 50 only, the order would
be this :
(i) Somerset is still easily ahead of all the others with 13,215 ; and
(2) London second with 10,810. Then comes (3) Wilts, with less
than half of London's numbers, 5,091. (4) Norfolk comes next with
a great falling off 4,142. (6) Berks, with 3,416. (7) Sussex, with
3,330. (8) Warwick, with 3,149 ; and (9) Bucks, with 3,032.
(10) Cambridgeshire, on this scale, has 2,547. C 11 ) Surrey, 2,351.
(12) Suffolk, 2,161. (13) Lincolnshire, 2,146. (14) Hertfordshire,
2,122. (15) Cheshire, 2,120 ; and (16) Nottinghamshire, 2,045.
* Yet in definite figures it reports only 220 ; so it is near the bottom of our
numbered lists.
Episcopal Returns
119
One deep and abiding impression remains from this varied review.
Somerset was evidently saturated with Puritanism.
Of Dorset and Devon we < know nothing as we ought to know,'
because for these counties the Episcopal Returns are lamentably
defective. London, even on Humfrey Henchman's showing, which
was largely qualified by timidity or indifference in this campaign
against Nonconformity, is strong as compared with the rest of the
country, even as it was strongly Parliamentarian in the Civil War. So
is Yorkshire, while we see dimly how the Eastern Counties are still
largely leavened with the spirit of Cromwell and his Ironsides.
2. NUMERICAL STRENGTH OF EACH OF THE PRINCIPAL SECTS.
Passing now from the more general aspect of these Returns
as giving their testimony as to the position of Nonconformity as a
whole let us examine them with the object of estimating, if we can,
the relative strength of the four great * Sects ' which divided the atten-
tion of the officials of the Church of England : (i) The Presbyterians ;
(2) the Congregationalists or Independents ; (3) the Baptists or Ana-
baptists ; and (4) the Quakers.
Let us take the same general course which we pursued with Non-
conformity as a whole, beginning with the general results in each
denomination, and proceeding in each to more or less of detail.
[Remembering, of course, that in actual investigation we were com-
pelled first to deal with the details presented in each local report, and
work upwards from these to the more general conclusions.]
On the four points with which these Returns deal numerically, the
figures come out as follows for the whole of England and Wales, for
the four great denominations :
Teachers.
Houses.
Conventicles.
Conventiclers.
I. Presbyterians
845
367+*
500
41,998+ I22.T
II. Congregationalists'
299
181
203
14,093+57*
IH. Baptists ...
234
152
278
6,708 + 75*
IV. Quakers
165
205
318
10,731+99*
On the face of the above rabies, two things stand out indisputable :
(i) the Presbyterians have the greatest numerical strength by far, as
judged by any of the four standards afforded by the Returns : (2) the
Quakers, considering the specially spiritual character of their worship,
show a strength even more remarkable.
(i) In number of Conventiclers the Congregationalists take the
second place (though with only about a third the strength of the Presby-
terians), but the Quakers are not far behind them. True, if we consider
only the Conventicles of which the numbers are reported, the difference
is considerable, for the Congregational Conventicles number over
14,000 Conventiclers, and the Quakers not 11,000. When those
120
Detailed and Expository
Conventicles are included in our review, of which no numbers are
reported, the difference is much reduced.
(i.) If we give the average value of 90, the number of Conventiclers
are : Presbyterians, 52,998, practically 53,000 ; Congregationalists,
19,229; Baptists, 13,458; and Quakers, 19,641. And this puts the
Quakers in the second place, with a little over 400 more than the
Congregationalists, with the Baptists nearly 6,000 behind them.
(ii.) If, however, we give x the average value of 50, the figures
come out thus: Presbyterians, 48,098; Congregationalists, 16,947;
the Baptists, 10,458 ; and the Quakers, 15,681. In this reckoning the
Presbyterians, again, are first with their 48,000 odd ; the Congre-
gationalists are second with nearly 17,000; the Quakers come third
with less than 16,000 (15,681) ; and the Baptists last with about 10,500.
On any reckoning, then, as viewed through the eyes of the Bishop's
informants, the Presbyterians are by far the most powerful body of
Nonconformists, and the Baptists are the weakest, while the second and
third places are held doubtfully by the Congregationalists and Quakers.
(2) In number of Conventicles, while the Presbyterians lead by a
great majority, with exactly 500, the Quakers are distinctly second
with 318 ; the Baptists are third with 278 ; and the Congregationalists
are last with only 203. A singular position, which shows that the
average numbers attending Baptist Conventicles were much smaller
than those frequenting Congregational assemblies.
(3) In the number of Houses in which Conventicles are held, we
might expect to find that the same order prevails as in the number of
Conventicles. But it is not so. While the Presbyterians have the
premier place with 367 + x (say, 370), the Quakers have 205, which gives
them, as before, the second place ; but it is now the Congregationalists
who rank third with 181 houses, and the Baptists are last with 152.
(4) When we come to the number of Teachers we must not be
surprised to find the Quakers at the bottom of the list, as it was part of
their ecclesiastical order to have no order of preachers, teachers, or
priests. So that while the Presbyterians are reported to have about
850 ministers (845), Congregationalists about 300 (299), scarcely more
than a third of the Presbyterian number, and Baptists 224, the * speakers '
reported among the Quakers are only 165.
Advancing one more step from the general to the particular, let us
see how the several denominations are represented in the six groups of
counties in England, and in the Welsh counties as a seventh group.
I. THE PRESBYTERIANS. In Wales they scarcely appear at all :
the Bishops report one Teacher, as preaching to one Conventicle in one
house, and attended by an unknown number of Conventiclers.
In England, without any room for question, the South-Western
Counties are strongest in every particular (what we often call the < West
'Countree') ; and the South-Eastern Group, with London at its heart
and centre, comes next. The order of the other Groups varies with the
particulars you consider. In numbers of Conventiclers the North-
Midland comes third, and the South-Midland fourth; while in the
Episcopal Returns
121
number of Conventicles the North-Midland remains third, the Eastern
Counties are fourth. In the number of Teachers, the North-Midland
retains its place ; but (as in the number of Conventiclers) the South-
Midland recovers the fourth place ; while in the number of Houses the
North-Midland and the Eastern Counties are almost equal. In all
particulars the Northern Group is last.
I insert a schedule of the particulars :
T.
H.
Cs.
Crs.
ENGLAND :
Group I.
38
21
47
912
II
124?
32
82
4,682 + 1 8*
HI
80?
48
45
2,172 + 20*
iv
68?
3i 53
1,510+23*
v
145?
84 + *
IOI
I2,l67 + 34*
VI
389?
150 171
14.894+26*
All England ...
844?
366 + *
499
36,337+121*
WALES: Group VII.
i
1
i
+ *
England and Wales ...
845?
367+*
500
36>337 + 122*
i. The probable number of Conventiclers again varies with the
value assigned to x.
(i.) If it be 90, the numbers are :
(i) For the South- Western group 17,234, a distinct first. (2) For
the South-Eastern 15,227. (3) The third place goes to the North-
Midland with 6,302 [only a third (roughly) of No. r] . (4) The
fourth position is taken by the South-Midland group with scarcely
4,000 (3,972), (5) The fifth by the Eastern Counties with 3,590 ;
and (6) the last place falls to the Northern Counties with a little over
900 (912).
(ii.) If it be 50, the numbers follow the same order :
1. South- Western with 16,194. (2) South-Eastern with 13,867.
(3) The North-Midland with 5,582. (4) The South-Midland with
3,172. (5) The Eastern Counties with 2,660 ; and (6) the Northern
Counties with 912.
2. The number of Conventicles reverses the positions of the
Eastern Counties, and the South-Midland :
(i) South- Western leads with 171. (2) The South-Eastern is
second with 101. (3) The North-Midland comes third with 82.
(4) The Eastern Counties take a fourth place with 53. (5) The
Northern Counties follow with 47 ; and the South-Midland come last
with 45.
3. In number of Houses :
(i) The South- Western lead again with 150. (2) The South-
Eastern follow with 84 + *. (3) The South-Midland comes third with
122 Detailed and Expository
48. (4) The North-Midland and (5) the Eastern Counties are
almost a tie with 32 and 31 ; and as in every other particular (6) the
Northern Counties come last with only 21 Houses reported.
4. In number of Teachers reported, the order is that of number of
Conventicles :
(i) The South- Western have by far the greater number 389
(though that figure by no means represent the number of separate
individuals). (2) The South-Eastern comes second with 145 ; and the
(3) North-Midland with 124. Then follow (4) the South-Midland
with 80. (5) The Eastern Counties with 68 ; and, again, (6) the
Northern Counties last with 38 Teachers (not a tenth of those of the
South-West).
II. CONGREGATIONALISTS. The distribution here is strikingly
different from that of the Presbyterians.
Wales, instead of being almost a ' negligible quantity,' as with the
Presbyterians, takes a strong position among the County groups.
The premier place is taken not by the ' West Countree,' but by
the Eastern Counties, as becomes the home of Cromwell, the great
Independent, and his godly * Ironsides.'
In most respects, too, London and its South-Eastern contingent
takes a good second ; but in some respects Wales surpasses that < Home
Counties ' group, specially in Teachers and Houses ; and the South-
western group, so distinctly losing its proud pre-eminence, has to take a
lowlier place as fourth. The Northern group appears next, and gives
the last place to the South-Midland.
1. In number of Conventiclers the order is (i) the Eastern
Counties with 4,468 + 23*. (2) The South-Eastern (London) group
with 4,043+17*. Then comes (3) Wales with 2,785 + 7*. (4) The
South- Western group with 1,149 + 2* ; and the two Northerly groups
contest the lowest place: (5) the Northern Counties with 859 + *;
and (6) the North-Midland with 752 + 5*.
The differences become clearer when we assign probable values to *.
(i.) If it be 90 the numbers are :
(i) The Eastern Counties easily first with 6,538. (2) The South-
Eastern group with 5,573. (3) Wales with 3,415. (4) The South-
western, and (5) the North-Midland being comparatively near each
other with 1,329 and 1,202. (6) The Northern Counties next with
949 ; and the South-Midland ' easily ' last with 223.
(ii.) The assignment of 50 as the average value of * does not alter
that order :
(i) The Eastern Counties then leads with 5,618. (2) The South-
Eastern group comes second with 4,893. (3) Wales follows with
3,135. (4) The South-Western group comes next with 1,249. (S) The
North-Midland, with 1,002, runs it close with (6), the Northern
Counties, with scarcely 100 less viz., 909 ; and the South-Midland is
distinctly last, with 143.
2. In the number of Congregational Conventicles :
(i) The Eastern Counties stand first with 65 Groups V. and VII.
are almost a tie (2) the South-Eastern being second with 43 ; and
(3) Wales third with 42. In this respect, however, the Northern group
Episcopal Returns
123
reasserts herself, (4) reporting 20 Conventicles, to only 18 for (5)
the North-Midland group ; (6) the South- Western group having 1 1 ;
and (7) the South-Midland last again with only 4.
3. Of Houses held by Congregationalists for Conventicles to meet in :
(i) The Eastern Counties hold the first position with 60. (2) The
second place is taken by Wales with 47. (3) The South-Eastern group
is third with 33. (4) The South- Western have only 15. (5) The
Northern Counties and (6) the North-Midland each have 12 ; and
(7) the South-Midland group have only two houses reported in the whole.
4. Teachers reach far higher numbers :
(i) The Eastern Counties claim more than half of the number for
the whole of England with 127. (2) Wales, again, comes second with
55. (3) The South-Eastern group (with London) is close upon Wales
with 50. (4) The South- Western Counties furnish 28. (5) The
Northern Counties muster 20. (6) The North-Midland have 16 ; and
(7) the South-Midland have, again, an unchallengeable place as last
with only 3 Teachers.
I append these figures in tabular form :
T.
H.
Cs.
Crs.
ENGLAND :
Group I.
20
12
20
859+*
> II
16?
12
18
75* + 5*
, HI
3
2
4
43 + 2*
, iv
127?
60
65
4,468 + 2 3*
, v
50?
33
43
4,043 + 17*
, VI
28?
15
ii
1,149 + 2*
All England
244?
'34
161
11,314 + 50*
/WALES : Group VII.
55?
42
2,785 + 7*
England and Wales ...
299?
181
203
14,099 + 57*
III. BAPTISTS. The primacy, in this denomination, very clearly
shifts to the South-Eastern group ; and the Eastern Counties take
a second place in every particular but that of the number of Teachers
at a great distance behind them.
The South-Midland comes third, except in the matter of Teachers
and Houses, in which particulars they head the whole list, decidedly
surpassing the South-Eastern group.
The North-Eastern are not far behind the South-Eastern ; Wales
comes sixth ; the Northern Counties have hardly anything to show to
give them a place, even at the bottom of the list.
This remarkable disposition can be seen at a glance from the
following Table (p. 124),
i. In the numbers of Conventiclers reported, the South-Eastern
Group takes the first place even apart from the large number of Con-
124 Detailed and Expository
venticles reported of which no estimate is given of the numbers attending
them (London and Kent county, we shall see, account for the greater
proportion of these).
T.
H.
Cs.
Crs.
ENGLAND :
Group I.
5
Q2
,, II.
41?
15
34
812 + 5*
HI
50?
46
47
1,001 + i Sx
IV
51 - ?
20
40
1,579+11*
v
42
60
2,333 + 33*
VI. ...
27?
.26
30
631+9*
All England
221 ?
149
216
6,448 + 76*
WALES: Group V,II. ... 3
3
;
260
England and Wales ... 224 ?
152
2i 9
6,708 + 76*
The second place as clearly would go to the Eastern Counties, but
that the number of 'uncounted' Conventicles in the South-Eastern
group brings it very near and on the higher value of x gives it pre-
eminence. A similar result takes place as to the relative positions of the
North-Midland and the South- Western groups.
Let us look at the actual figures :
(i.) If x be taken as 90 the following are the results :
(i) The South-Eastern group (including London and Kent) are far
ahead of all other groups with 5,303. (2) The South-Midland group
comes second with 2, 621; and (3) The Eastern Counties third with 2,569.
(4) The South- Western comes fourth with 1,351. (5) The North-
Midland fifth with 1,262. (6) Wales is sixth with 260 ; and (7) the
Northern Counties with less than 100 (92).
(ii.) If x be taken as 50 the order is slightly altered. 'As before,
and in any case: (i) The South-Eastern group is first with nearly
4,000 (3,983). (2) The Eastern Counties comesecond with 2,129 ; and
(3) the South-Midland falls into the third place more than 200
behind (1901). (4) The North-Midland and (5) the South-Western
almost tie, with scarcely 30 between them : the former with 1,060, and
the latter with 1,031. 'The last two places remain as before : (6) Wales,
sixth with 260 ; and (7) the Northern Counties with 92.
2. In the number of Conventicles reported, the order is as follows :
(i) The South-Eastern, 60. (2) The South-Midland, 47. (3) The
Eastern Counties, 40. (4) The North-Midland, 34. (5) The South-
Western, 30. (6) The Northern Counties, with 5 ; and (7) Wales,
with 3.
3. In number of Houses, in which Conventicles were held. The
order changes in a rather remarkable way. (i) The first place is taken
by the South-Midland with 46 ; and (2) the South-Eastern group has
to take the second place with 42. Then comes (3) the South-Western
Episcopal Returns
125
with 26. (4) The Eastern Counties are fourth with 20. (5) The
Northern Counties come fifth with 15. (6) Wales is sixth with 3; and
(7) the Northern Counties are last or nowhere with not a single
house definitely reported though there must have been five at least, as
there were five Conventicles unless they were all held on common
land in the open air.
4. When we come to the number of Teachers, again, there is still
further change, (i) The South-Eastern group comes first with 52 ;
but followed hard by (2) the Eastern Counties with 51. (3) The South -
Midland group with 50 then comes third ; and (4) the North-Midland
group fourth with 41. (5) The South- Western is fifth with 27 as
before. (6) Wales is sixth with 3 ; and the Northern Counties last,
absolutely teacher/ess, as far as the episcopal authorities know ; though, as
a matter of fact, we may be quite sure that 5 Baptist Conventicles
would not be, Quaker-like, ' silent ' meetings, but must have had some
4 teachers ' to conduct their worship and speak to them < the Word.'
IV. QUAKERS. As far as definite numbers are concerned, the
Northern group would stand before all others, especially in the number
of Conventicles reported viz., 82. Even at that high number the
average of attendance comes out as over 40 ; but a huge Conventicle of
1,000 such as that at Sleights, reduces it at once to less than 30.
But in other respects, the Northern group falls far behind other
groups, especially in the number of Teachers reported.
There is such variation, however, that it would be better at once to
give a tabular view of the numerical totals :
T.
H.
Cs.
Crs.
ENGLAND :
Group I.
II
HI
iv
v
VI
H
30?
16?
50?
29?
21 ?
33
27
32
34
44
22
82
58
31
57
53
27
3,330
1,190 + 22*
830+ 19*
2,824+17*
3,217 + 31*
2,l6o + 8*
All England
WALES: Group VII.
160?
4
192
13
308
10
I 3>55 I +97*
1 80 + 6*
England and Wales...
164?
205
318
13,731 + 103*
i
From this it appears :
I. In number of Conventiclers the Northern group falls to the third,
if not to the fourth place, when we attempt to give some estimate of the
4 uncounted ' Conventicles, in addition to those whose numbers are given.
(i.) If we give * the value of 90 : (i) The South-Eastern group
(including London) is first with 6,007. ( 2 ) The Eastern Counties come
next with 4,354. (3) The North-Midland third with their fixed total
of 3,330.; and (4) the Northern Counties fall into the fourth place with
126 Detailed and Expository
:
3,170. (5) The South-Western group comes fifth with 2,880. (6) The
South-Midland is sixth with 2,540 ; and (7) Wales is last with 720.
(ii.) If, however, we value x at 50, ' the old order changeth,' thus :
(i) The South-Eastern group still takes the lead with 4,767. (2) The
Eastern Counties take the second place with 3,674 ; and (3) the
Northern Counties take one place higher in the list, as third with their
3,330. (4) The South-Western group becomes fourth with 2,560. (5)
The North-Midland is fifth with 2,290. (6) The South-Midland sixth
with 1,780 ; and (7) as before Wales is last with less than 500 (480).
2. Coming to the number of Conventicles : (i) The Northern group
far outstrips all the others with 82. (2) The second place is taken by
the North-Midland with 58 ; though it is almost equalled by (3) the
Eastern Counties with 57. (4) The South-Eastern group comes fourth
with 53. And then there is a great drop : (5) the South-Midland is
fifth with only 31. (6) The South-Western is sixth with 27 ; and
(7) Wales is last with only 10.
3. In the number of Houses : (i) The South-Eastern leads very dis-
tinctly with 44. (2) The second place falls to the Eastern Counties
with 34. (3) The Northern come third with 33. (4) The South-
Midland almost pairs it with 32. (5) The North-Midland is fifth
with 27. (6) The South-Western is sixth with 22 ; and (7) Wales is
last with only 13.
4. In the number of Teachers reported, we are on very uncertain
ground in this denomination which recognized no f order ' of teachers
or preachers at all ; though in practice, there ever have been a certain
number who have been recognized as endued by the Spirit with the
teaching and hortatory gift, exercised by them as the Spirit prompts ;
as well as ' travelling preachers, who were sent out, two and two, as
' Evangelists of the Truth.' According to the names reported in these
Returns, the Northern group falls, from the first to the last of the
English groups only Wales reporting fewer than the Northern Counties.
(i) The Eastern Counties stand first with 50. (2) The North-
Midland second with 31. (3) The South-Eastern third with 29.
(4) The South-Western next with 21. (5) The South-Midland comes
sixth with 1 6. (6) The Northern group reports only 14 ; and
(7) Wales is last again with but 4.
Let this suffice as to the distribution of the four denominations in the
seven county groups into which we have divided the United Kingdom
of England and Wales.
DISTRIBUTION IN THE SEVERAL COUNTIES OF EACH
DENOMINATION.
To many, however, the counties severally have each its special im-
portance. Let us see how the several counties stand as regards the
strength of each of these four great denominations.
I. PRESBYTERIAN. Their respective positions will best appear from
the following scheme :
Episcopal Returns
127
I
Group.
County.
T.
H.
Cs.
Crs.
ENGLAND.
I. I.
Northumberland ...
4
2
14
112
2.
Durham ...
I
8
9
227
3-
Cumberland
2
2
88
4-
Westmorland
5-
Yorkshire...
31
10
18
485
6.
Lancashire
1
4
II. 7-
Cheshire ...
I3
20+ 12*
8.
Derby
17?
3
13
1, 1 60
9-
Notts
16?
5
H
9OO
10.
Lines
II.
Salop
13 ?
5
7
230
12.
Staffs
34?
17
16
1,150 + 3*
13.
Leicester ...
44?
2
19
1,222 + 3*
I 4 .
Rutland
III. 15.
Hereford ...
16.
Worcester
5
4
5
375
17-
Warwick
41?
32
2 5
1,265 + 16*
18.
Northants...
I 9-
Gloucester
20.
Oxon
21.
Bucks
34?
12
'5
532 + 4*
IV. 22.
Hunts
_ _
23-
Beds
3
2
2*
24.
Cambs
4
3
I
35
25-
Herts
14?
4
10
350 + 3*
26.
Norfolk
5
4
520 + *
2 7 .
Suffolk
21 ?
19
19
605 + *
28.
Essex
19?
17
1 6*
V. 29.
Berks
2 7 ?
i7
17
1,660 + 5*
30.
Middlesex
12?
5
7
8*
31.
London
33- ?
28
32
5,610+ 10*
32.
Kent
7 - ?
2 +*
o
1 1 6 + 4*
33-
Surrey
9
7
7
1,461
34-
Sussex
30?
12
15
1,320 + 3*
35-
Hants
27?
13
1 5
2,000 + 4*
VI. 36.
Wilts
-757
25
24
2,490+ 10*
37-
Somerset ...
287?
I 12
129
10,285 + 1 S X
38.
Dorset
5
5
7
766
39-
Devon
8
ii
i,353 +*
40.
Cornwall ...
All England ...
844?
366 + *
499
36,337+121*
128 Detailed and Expository
Group.
County.
T.
H.
Cs.
Cr,
Brought forward
844?
366 + x
499
36,337+121*
WALKS.
VII. I.
Flint
2.
Denbigh ...
3-
Carnarvon
4-
Merioneth
5-
Montgomery
6.
Cardigan ...
7-
Radnor
8.
Brecon
9-
Pembroke ...
10.
Carmarthen
1 1.
Glamorgan
' I
I
i
X
12.
Monmouth
1
All Wales
I
I
i
X
England and Wales
845?
367 + *
500
36,337 + I22 *
In this Review I shall specially mention only the counties which, in
each of the four particulars already referred to, take a high place. For
the figures of the others I refer the student to the scheme itself.
i. The number of Presbyterian Conventiclers.
As any estimate which does not include some account of the
unnumbered Conventicles must be very fallacious, I give two lists as
before according to the value assigned to x.
(i) If we take x as 90. The notable results are as follows :
(i) Somerset heads the list with 11,635. (2) London is second,
but with only a little more than half 6,510. (3) Wilts follows
at a long interval with 3,390. (4) Warwick comes next with
2 >75- (5) Hants is fifth with 2,360. (6) Berks is sixth with
2,1 10. (7) Then (with a gap of over 500) comes Sussex with
1,590. (8) Leicester comes next with 1,492. (9) Surrey next
with 1,461. (10) Devon is tenth with 1,443. (n) Essex is
almost even with Devon, with 1,440; and (12) Stafford is very close
to Essex, with 1,420. After Stafford there is a great gap of 260 ; and
(13) Derby comes next with 1,160; and (14) Cheshire follows on
with 1,100.
The rest each under 1,000 arrange themselves in this order :
(15) Notts, 900.
(16) Bucks, 892.
(17) Dorset, 766.
(18) Middlesex, 720.
(19) Suffolk, 695.
(20) Herts, 620.
(21) Norfolk, 6 10.
(22) Yorks, 485.
(23) Kent, 476.
(24) Worcester, 375.
(25) Salop, 230.
(26) Durham, 227.
(27) Beds, 1 80.
(28) Northumber-
land, 112.
(29) Glamorgan, 90.
(30) Cumberland, 88.
(3-1) Cambridge, 35.
Episcopal Returns 129
(ii.) If we take x as 50 the list is as follows :
(i) Somerset, as before, leads with 11,035. (2) London comes second
with 6, no. (3) Wilts comes next with less than 3,000 (2,990).
(4) Hants is fourth with 2,200. (5) Warwick is fifth with 2,065.
(6) Berks is not far behind Warwick with 1,910. (7) Surrey and (8)
Sussex follow near together with 1,475 and 1,461. (9) Devon is ninth
with 1,403. (10) Leicester next with 1,372; and (u) Staffordshire
follows with 1,300. (12) Derbyshire is the only other county to reach
four figures, with her 1,160.
Below a thousand are :
(13) Notts, 900. (20) Norfolk, 500. (27) Northumber-
(14) Essex, 800. (21) Yorks, 485. land, 112.
(15) Dorset, 766. (22) Middlesex, 400. (28) Beds, 100.
(16) Bucks, 732. (23) Worcester, 375. (29) Cumberland, 88.
(17) Suffolk, 655. (24) Kent, 316. (30) Glamorgan, 50.
(1 8) Cheshire, 620. (25) Salop, 230. (31) Cambridge, 35.
(19) Herts, 500. (26) Durham, 227.
2. In the number of Conventicles the difference between Somerset
and all the other counties is still more extraordinary.
(i) Somerset has 129 ; and (2) London comes next with only 32.
(3) Warwick is third with 25. (4) Wilts fourth with 24. (5) Leices-
tershire comes next with 19 ; and (6) Suffolk tied with them. (7) York-
shire is seventh with 18. (8) Essex and (9) Berks each have 17.
(10) Staffordshire is tenth with 16. (n) Bucks, (12) Sussex, and (13)
Hants have each 15. (14) Northumberland and (15) Nottinghamshire
each score 14. (16) Cheshire has 13; (17) Devon, n ; (18) Herts, 10 ;
(19) Durham, 9 ; (20) Kent has 8 ; (21) Middlesex, (22) Surrey, and
(23) Dorset have each 7 ; (24) Worcester has 5 ; (25) Lancashire and
(26) Norfolk have 4 ; (27) Cumberland and (28) Bedfordshire 2 ;
(29) Cambridge and (30) Glamorgan i.
3. In the number of Houses the totals in each county are on much
the same scale as the Conventicles.
(i) Somerset is first with 112. (2) Warwick comes second with 32.
(3) London is third with 28. (4) Wilts is fourth with 25. (5) Suffolk
comes next with 19. (6) Staffs and (7) Berks take the next place with
17. (8) Hants is eighth with 13. (9) Bucks and (10) Sussex come next
with 12. (n) Yorkshire follows with 10. (12) Durham and (13)
Devon each have 8. (14) Surrey has 7. (15) Notts, (16) Salop, (17)
Norfolk, (18) Middlesex, and (19) Dorset each have 5. (20) Worcester
and (21) Herts have 4 each. (22) Derby and (23) Cambs have each 3.
(24) Kent has 2 + x. (25) Northumberland has 2, and (26) Lancashire
and (27) Glamorgan each have one House reported in which Conven-
ticles are held.
4. Coming to the number of Presbyterian Teachers, there is perhaps
need of reminder that the figures here given are of each Teacher or
Preacher reported as preaching at any of the places where Conventicles
are returned, though the same Teacher or Preacher may minister to
several Conventicles. Again, of course :
9
130 Detailed and Expository
(i) Somerset heads the list with 287. (2) Wilts follows with 70.
(3) Leicestershire comes third with 44. (4) Warwick fourth with 41.
(5) Staffs and (6) Bucks are fifth with 34 each ; and (7) London almost
ties them with 33. (8) Yorkshire comes seventh with 31. (9) Sussex
comes next with 30. (10) Berks, (n) Hants, and (12) Devon tie for
the next place with 27. (13) Suffolk has 21, and (14) Essex 19. (15)
Derby has 17 ; (16) Notts has 16 ; (17) Herts has 14 ; (i 8) Salop has
13 ; and (19) Middlesex 12. (20) Surrey has 9. (21) Norfolk and
(22) Kent have each 7. (23) Worcester and (24) Dorest report 5 each ;
and (25) Northumberland and (26) Cambridgeshire 4 each ; (27) Bed-
fordshire claims 3 ; and (28) Durham and (29) Glamorgan each i.
II. CONGREGATIONALISTS. The very modest numbers credited to
this Denomination were distributed as is shown in the accompanying
Schedule :
Group.
County.
T.
H.
Cs.
Crs.
ENGLAND.
I. I.
Northumberland ...
I
i
'35
2.
Durham ...
2
29 + *
3-
Cumberland
2
2
60
4-
Westmorland
5-
Yorks
17
9
12
635
6.
Lanes
3
3
II. 7.
Cheshire
5
60 + 4A-
8.
Derby
9-
Notts
5?
8
6
380 + *
10.
Lines
,
1 1.
Salop
3?
i
4
30
12.
Staffs
3
3
i
250
13-
Leicester ...
5?
2
32
14.
Rutland ...
III. 15.
Hereford ...
16.
Worcester ...
I
35
17-
Warwick ...
i
i
I
8
18.
Northants ..
19. j Gloucester
20.
Oxon
21.
Bucks
2
i
2
ZX
IV. 22.
Hunts
23-
Beds
II?
i
7
201 + 3*
24.
Cambs
34?
1 1
12
702 + 3*
25.
Herts
4
i
I
2OO
26.
Norfolk
57?
36
31
2,985 + II*
?* / "
Suffolk
16?
1 1
I I
380 + 3*
28.
Essex
5
3
3*
Carried forward ...
1 66
86
107
6,122 + 3I#
Episcopal Returns
Group.
County.
T.
H.
Cs.
Crs.
Brought forward
1 66
86
107
6,122 + 31*
V. 29.
Berks
4
6
5
45+4*
30-
Middlesex...
2
2
2
500 + *
31-
London ...
10?
9
IO
1,500 + 4*
32-
Kent
9?
4
8
1,013 + 3*
33-
Surrey
i
i
i
100
34-
Sussex
17?
8
9
450 + 2*
35-
Hants
7?
3
8
435 + 3*
VI. 36.
Wilts
5
6
2
65+*
37-
Somerset ...
18?
4
5
550 + *
38.
Dorset
4
3
3
334
39-
Devon
2
i
200
40.
Cornwall ...
.
All England
244?
!34
161
11,314+50*
WALES.
VII. i.
Flint
2.
Denbigh ...
3-
Carnarvon
4-
Merioneth
5-
Montgomery
8
8
10
90 + 4*
6.
Cardigan ...
7-
Radnor
8.
Brecon
9-
Pembroke ...
__
10.
Carmarthen
ii.
Glamorgan
9?
10
7
535 + 2*
12.
Monmouth
38?
29
25
2,160 + *
All Wales
55?
47
42
2,785 + 7*
England and Wales
299?
181
203
14,099 + 57*
I. In the numbers of Conventiclers.
(i.) If x is taken at 90 :
(i) Norfolk comes out as the premier county with 3,975. (2) The
Welsh county of Monmouth comes second with 2,250, more than 1,700
behind. (3) London is third with 1,860. (4) Kent follows with 1,283.
(5) Cambridge comes next with nearly 1,000 (972). (6) The Welsh
county of Glamorgan comes sixth with 715. (7) Hampshire follows
with 705. (8) Suffolk is next with 650. (9) Somerset is ninth with
640. (10) Yorkshire is tenth with 635, and (n) Sussex eleventh with
630. (12) Middlesex has 590. Then there is a gap of over 100, and
(13) Bedfordshire comes next with 471. (14) Notts follows close with
470. (15) Montgomery comes out with 450. (16) Cheshire has 420 ;
132 Detailed and Expository
and (17) Berks 405. Then follows (18) Dorset with 334 ; (19) Essex
is next with 270 ; (20) Staffs is twentieth in the list with 250 ; (21)
Herts comes next with 200 ; and (22) Devon with the same number.
(23) Bucks has 180; (24) Wilts, 155 ; (25) Northumberland, 135 ; (26)
Durham follows Northumberland with 119; (27) Surrey has 100 ;
(28) Cumberland but 60 ; (29) Worcester but 35; (30) Leicester only
32; (31) Salop, 30; and (32) Warwick is the last in the list with
only 8.
(ii) If x is taken as 50 the order slightly varies :
(i) Of course, Norfolk is still first with 3,535 ; and (2) Monmouth
second with 2,210 ; while (3) London keeps the third place with 1,700 ;
and (4) Kent is fourth with 1,163 5 (5) Cambridge fifth with 852. But
at this point variation begins. (6) Glamorgan comes sixth, as before,
with 635 ; but (7) Yorks ties Glamorgan. (8) Somerset is eighth with
600 ; (9) Hants is ninth with 585 ; (10) Middlesex is tenth with 550,
and (i i) Sussex has the same number; (12) Suffolk comes twelfth with
530. There is now a gap of exactly 100, and (13) Notts is next with
430; (14) Bedfordshire follows, but at a distance, with 351 ; (15) Dorset
with 334 ; (16) Montgomery with 290 ; (17) Cheshire has 260 ; (18)
Staffs 250 ; (19) Berks 245 ; (20) Herts exactly 20O, and (21) Devon
the same ; (22) Essex claims only 150; (23) Northumberland, 135 ;
(24) Wilts, 115 ; (25) Bucks and (26) Surrey have exactly 100 each ;
(27) Durham has 79 ; (28) Cumberland, 60 ; (29) Worcester, 35 ;
(30) Leicester has 32, and (31) Salop has 30 ; and (32) Warwick is last,
as before, with 8 Conventiclers.
2. In numbers of Conventicles reported the Congregationalist figures
are very small.
(i) Norfolk heads the list with 31. (2) Monmouth is second with
25. (3) Yorks and (4) Cambridgeshire dispute the third place with 12
each. (5) Suffolk comes next with 1 1. (6) London and (7) Montgomery
have both 10. (8) Sussex is eighth with 9. (9) Kent and (10) Hants
have each 8. (n) The English Bedfordshire and (12) the Welsh
Glamorgan have each 7. (13) Notts has 6. (14) Cheshire, (15) Berks,
and (16) Somerset have each 5. (17) Salop has 4. (18) Lancashire,
(19) Essex, and (20) Dorset have each 3 ; and no less than six counties
have each 2 Conventicles viz., (21) Durham, (22) Cumberland, (23)
Leicester, (24) Bucks, (25) Middlesex, and (26) Wilts ; and seven have i
viz., (27) Northumberland, (28) Staffs, (29) Worcester, (30) Warwick,
(31) Herts, (32) Surrey, and (33) Devon.
3. In number of Houses in which Conventicles were reported :
(i) Norfolk is still first with 36 ; (2) Monmouth still second with 29.
From this figure there is a great drop. As before (3) Cambridge comes
third with 1 1 ; but (4) Suffolk (not Yorks) is associated with Cambridge
with the same number. (5) Glamorgan comes fifth with 10. (6) Yorks
disputes the next place with (7) London, each with 9. (8) Notts, (9)
Sussex, and (10) Montgomery each have 8. (n) Berks and (12) Wilts
have 6 each ; (13) Kent and (14) Somerset each have 4. Four counties
contest the next place viz., (15) Lancashire, (16) Staffordshire, (17)
Hampshire, and (18) Dorset, with 3 each; (19) Middlesex and (20)
Devon have 2 each ; and six counties have only one House reported
Episcopal Returns
in each for Congregational Conventicles viz., (21) Salop, (22) Warwick,
(23) Bucks, (24) Bedfordshire, (25) Herts, and (26) Surrey.
4. Of Congregational Teachers, the numbers reported (in the
ambiguous way I have already referred to in many cases) are as follows :
(i) Norfolk, still first, with 57. (2) Monmouth second, with 38.
(3) Cambridge third, with 34. (4) Somerset fourth, with 18. (5) Yorks
and (6) Sussex have 17 each. (7) Suffolk has 16. (8) Bedfordshire
comes next with n. (9) London is ninth with 10. (10) Kent and
(n) Glamorgan have each 9 ; and (12) Montgomery 8. (13) Hants has
7. (14) Notts, (15) Leicester, (16) Essex, and (17) Wilts have each 5.
(18) Herts, (19) Berks, and (20) Dorset have each 4. (21) Salop and
(22) Staffs have each 3. (23) Cumberland, (24) Bucks, and (25) Middle-
sex each have 2 ; and four counties are reported with only I each viz.,
(25) Northumberland, (26) Warwick, (27) Surrey, and (28) Devon.
III. BAPTISTS. In no less than twenty-seven counties out of the
fifty-two we reckon in England and Wales, no Baptists were reported
at all. Of eight of these we must of course remember no Returns were
sent in. Still that leaves nineteen ; that is, eight of the English coun-
ties and eleven of the Welsh, of which the Episcopal authorities report
no Anabaptists at all. Indeed, in only one Welsh county do they
know any Baptists, viz., Monmouth ; and only two of the Northern
counties, viz., Durham and Lancashire.
Nor do they perceive any in Suffolk and Essex of the Eastern group,
nor one in any of the three Westernmost of our English counties,
counties so important to English Nonconformity as Dorset, Devon, and
Cornwall.
The distribution of numbers in the twenty-three counties in which
they are recognized is shown in the following table :
Group.
County.
T.
H.
Cs.
Crs.
ENGLAND.
I. I.
Northumberland
_
2.
Durham
I
5 2
3-
Cumberland ...
4-
Westmorland
5-
Yorks
6.
Lanes
4
40
II. 7.
Cheshire
j
3
3*
8.
Derby
4
2
2
30
9-
Notts
12?
7
6
300
10.
Lines...
u.
Salop ...
i
*5
12.
Staffs
5
4
35+*
IS-
Leicester
2 5 ?
18
422 + x
H.
Rutland
Carried forward
41
15
39
904 + 5*
134 Detailed and Expository
Group.
County.
T.
H.
Cs.
Crs.
Brought forward ...
4'
'5
39
904+5*
III. 15.
Hereford
16.
Worcester
7
5
6
55
17-
Warwick
17?
16
16
376 + 8*
18.
Northants
19.
Gloucester
20.
Oxon
21.
Bucks
36?
2 5
2 5
570+ 10*
IV. 22.
Hunts
23-
Beds
18?
5
272 + 2*
24.
Cambs
10?
7
ii
610 + 3*
*5-
Herts
13?
6
7
522 + 3*
26.
Norfolk
10?
7
7
175 + 3*
27-
Suffolk
28.
Essex
V. 29.
Berks
ii ?
ii
7
ii +6*
30-
Middlesex
31-
London
6
7
7
1,500 + 3*
32.
Kent
17?
5
20
236+ 13*
33-
Surrey
5- ?
3
3
140 + *
34-
Sussex
ii ?
H
19
370 + 9*
35-
Hants
2
2
4
76 + *
VI. 36.
Wilts
20?
18
*9
171 + 8*
37-
Somerset
7
8
ii
460 + *
38.
Dorset
39-
Devon
40.
Cornwall
All England
231?
149
216
6,448 + 76*
WALES.
VII i.
Flint
__
2.
Denbigh
3-
Carnarvon
4-
Merioneth
5-
Montgomery ...
6.
Cardigan
7-
Radnor
8.
Brecon
-
_ .,
9-
Pembroke
10.
Carmarthen ...
1 1.
Glamorgan ...
12.
Monmouth ...
3
3
3
260
All Wales ...
3
3
3
260
England and Wales
234?
152
219
6,708 + 76*
Episcopal Returns 135
1. Number of Conventiclers.
We will again give x average values.
(i.) If we assign 90 as its value, the list comes out as follows :
(i) London stands first with 1,770, but that is largely because one
Conventicle in Shad Thames is reported as attended by 1,000 the
spiritual ' ancestor ' of Spurgeon's Tabernacle. (2) Bucks is second
with 1,470. (3) Kent comes third with 1,406. (4) Sussex, fourth,
with i, 1 80 ; and (5) Warwick fifth with 1,096.
After this we come to very modest figures.
(6) Wilts is sixth with 891 ; (7) Cambridgeshire boasts of 880 ;
and (8) Herts is eighth with 792. With a drop of over 300, the next
is (9) Berks with 551 ; and (10) Somerset, within one of the same
number, with 550. (n) Leicestershire follows with 512; and (12)
Beds follows Leicester with 452. (13) Then comes Norfolk with
445. (14) Notts comes next, with a gap of nearly 150, with 300.
(15) Cheshire has 270. (16) Monmouth, 260 ; and (17) Surrey, 230 ;
(18) Hants follows (with a big interval of nearly 70), with 166.
(19) Staffordshire has 125. (20) Worcestershire, only 55. (21) Durham,
52. (22) Lancashire but 40. (23) Derby only 30 ; and (24) Salop is
last with 25.
(ii.) If we assign to x the value of 50, the order remains the same
for the first 3 in the list ; and its last 7, but the intermediate 14 slightly
change their places.
(i) London is first with 1,650. (2) Bucks is second with 1,070 ;
and (3) Kent is third with 886; (4) Sussex is fourth with 820; and
(5) Warwick is fifth with 776; while Hampshire is eighteenth with
126 ; Staffs is nineteenth with 85 ; Worcester is twentieth with 55 ;
Durham is twenty-first with 52 ; Lancashire is twenty-second with
40; Derby is twenty-third with 30; and Salop is last with 25.
But
(6) Cambridge is sixth with 760. (7) Herts is seventh with 672.
(8) Wilts is eighth with 571. (9) Somerset is next with 510, and
(10) Leicester is tenth with 472. With a drop of 100 (n) Beds
follows with 372. (12) Norfolk is twelfth with 325. (13) Berks
comes next with 311. (14) Notts is next with 300. (15) Monmouth
follows with her unchanged 260. (16) Surrey is next with 190 only ;
and (17) Cheshire is seventeenth with 150 (instead of fifteenth).
London, Buckinghamshire, and Kent, then, are the counties which
to the eyes of the Episcopal authorities are most ' troubled ' with Ana-
baptists. Though in Warwick, Herts, and Sussex, they are influential.
2. In the number of Conventicles reported the numbers strangely
vary :
(i) Bucks stand first with 25. (2) Kent comes second with 20.
(3) Sussex and (4) Wilts claim the third place with 19. (5) Leicester
comes next with 18 Conventicles. (6) Warwick follows with 16.
(7) Beds is next with 15. (8) Cambridgeshire and (9) Somerset both
report n. Four counties report 7, viz.: (10) Herts, (n) Norfolk,
(12) Berks, and (13) London. (14) Notts, and (15) Worcester each
return 6. (16) Lancashire, (17) Staffs, and (18) Hants, all have only 4.
136 Detailed and Expository
(19) Cheshire, (20) Surrey, and (21) Monmouth, can boast only of
3 each. (22) Derby reports only 2 ; and (23) Durham, and (24) Salop
contest the last place, as each having only one Baptist Conventicle.
3. In number of Houses in which Conventicles are reported :
(i) Bucks is again first with 25. (2) Wilts is second with 18.
(3) Warwick is third with 16. (4) Sussex fourth with 14. (5) Berks
is fifth with ii. (6) Somerset is sixth with 8. (7) Notts, (8) Cam-
bridgeshire, (9) Norfolk, and (10) London, claim the seventh place
with 7 each, (n) Herts has 6. (12) Staffs, (13) Worcester, and
(14) Kent, each have -5. (15) Surrey, and (16) Monmouth have
only 3; while (17) Derby, and (18) Hants have only 2; and (19)
Cheshire is reported with only i.
4. In the number of Teachers some striking differences appear :
(i) As before Bucks comes out first with 36. But (2) Leicester,
which has no houses reported at all, is second in number of Teachers with
2 5- (S) Wilts comes third with 20. (4) Beds fourth with 18.
(5) Warwick and (6) Kent come next, each with 17. (7) Herts follows
with 13. (8) Notts is eighth with 12. (9) Berks and (10) Sussex
each have 11. (n) Cambridge and (12) Norfolk, each have 10.
(13) Worcester and (14) Somerset, each have 7. (15) London comes
next with 6. (16) Surrey, 5. (17) Derby, 4. (18) Monmouth, 3;
and (19) Hants, is last with 2.
To Episcopal eyes and ears, therefore, Buckinghamshire is altogether
strongest in Baptists ; though Kent, London, and Warwick are as strong
or even stronger, and Shropshire, Durham, and Hants are weaker than
any other counties which report any Baptists at all.
IV. QUAKERS. Of the couniies of which we have Episcopal
Returns, only three report no Quakers ; Northumberland in the extreme
north, and Essex and Middlesex, close to London.
Of the thirty-two which are reported, twelve give definite numbers
of Conventiclers as well as of Conventicles, but the other twenty report
Conventicles, with no estimate of the numbers attending them.
Among the former is Yorkshire, which, apart from any doubtful
quantities, and even when the highest values are given to them, stands
distinctly first with 2,200.
Among the latter, as far as definite numbers are concerned, London
would stand next, though nearly 1,000 behind Yorks ; Wilts and
Somerset coming third and fourth ; and Suffolk following, though far
behind.
When we give x any definite value, and when we look at the
other numerable items of information, we find that order quite upset.
It will be better, therefore, to present the table of the figures, and
point out the order when each item is separately considered.
Episcopal Returns
137
Group.
County.
T.
H.
Cs.
Crs.
ENGLAND.
I. I.
Northumberland
2.
Durham
4
3
90
3-
Cumberland ...
6
22O
4-
Westmorland
3
170
5-
Yorks
H
29
58
2,220
6.
Lanes
12
630
II. 7.
Cheshire
22
140+ 1$X
8.
Derby
5
3
IOO
9-
Notts ...
7?
10
1 1
415
10.
Lines ...
1 1.
Salop
i
i
60
12.
Staffs
i
1 1
10
205 + 3*
13-
Leicester
22?
ii
270
I 4 .
Rutland
III. I 5 .
Hereford
_
_
1 6.
Worcester
3
3
35
17.
Warwick
2
4
5
100 + 4*
1 8.
Northants
'9-
Gloucester
20.
Oxon ...
21.
Bucks
I 4 ?
2 5
23
380+15*
IV. 22.
Hunts
_
_
__
_
23.
Beds
18?
2
13
336 + *
24.
Cambs
12?
II
18
500 + 8*
25.
Herts
8?
4
4
700 + *
26.
Norfolk
7?
8
ii
612 + zx
27.
Suffolk
5?
9
it
676+ 5*
28.
Essex
V. 29.
Berks
17?
J 5
H
600 + 9*
30.
Middlesex
31.
London
4
4
1,250 + *
32.
Kent
8?
5
12
2+ II*
33.
Surrey
2
4
550+5*
34.
Sussex
i
7
7
240 + *
35-
Hants
3
ii
12
575 + 4*
VI. 36.
Wilts
7
ii
15
1,115 + 6*
37-
Somerset
14?
10
IO
I,O2O + *
38.
Dorset
I
25
39-
Devon
i
I
*
40.
Cornwall
All England
160?
192
308
13*571+97*
- -
i 3 8
Detailed and Expository
Group.
County.
T.
H.
Cs.
Crs.
Brought forward ...
160?
192
308
13,571+97*
WALES.
VII. i.
Flint
2.
Denbigh
3
Carnarvon
4. i Merioneth
5. | Montgomery ...
3
3
75 + 2*
6.
Cardigan
7-
Radnor
8. | Brecon
9. ' Pembroke
10. ! Carmarthen ...
1 1. i Glamorgan
2
5
3
70 + 2*
12.
Monmouth ...
2
5
4
35 + 2*
All Wales
4
13
10
1 80 + 6*
England and Wales
164?
205
3i8
13,751 + 103*
i. First, then, as to the number of Quaker Conventlclers.
(i.) If 90 be the value given to x, the various counties come out in
the following order :
(i) Yorkshire leads with its indubitable 2,22O. (2) Cheshire comes
second with 1,850; and (3) Bucks third with 1,730. (4) Wilts will be
fourth with 1,655. (S) Berks next with 1,410. (6) London sixth with
1,340. (7) Cambridgeshire seventh with 1,220. (8) Suffolk follows
with 1,126. (9) Somerset next with 1,110. (10) Kent has 992.
(n) Hants, 935. (12) Norfolk follows at an interval of more than 40,
with 792 ; but (13) Herts is very close to Norfolk with 790. Then
comes a gap of 100 ; and (14) Sussex appears with 690. (15) Surrey
follows with 640. (16) Lancashire is near Surrey with 630. But the
next (17), Staffs, has but 470; with (18) Warwick, with 460; and
(19) Beds, with 426. (20) Notts comes next with 415. (21) Worcester
is twenty-first with 350. (22) Leicestershire has 270. Two of the
Welsh counties come next : (23) Montgomery, with 255 ; and (24)
Glamorgan with 250. (25) Cumberland comes next with 220 ; and
then the third Welsh county (26) Monmouth, with 215. (27) West-
morland is reported for 170. (28) Derby for 100. (29) Durham for
90; and (30) Devon for the same. (31) Salop has only 60 ; and Dorset
is last with only 25.
(ii.) If we give x the value of 50, the order is :
(i) Yorkshire first, 2,220. (2) Wilts second, 1,415. (3) London
third, 1,300. (4) Bucks is fourth, 1,130. (5) Cheshire fifth, 1,090.
(6) Somerset next with 1,070. (7) Berks quite close with 1,050.
Then (8) Suffolk, 926. (9) Cambridge, 900. (10) Hampshire is tenth
Episcopal Returns 139
with 775. (u) Herts follows with 750. (12) Norfolk, with 712.
(13) Lancashire comes next with 630 (nearly 100 less). (14) Surrey
next, with 600. (15) Kent has 552. (16) Sussex follows with 490.
(17) Notts, after a great interval (130) comes next with 415. (18)
Beds has 386. (19) Staffs, 355. (20) Worcester, 350. (21) Warwick
is twenty-first with 300. (22) Leicester, 270. (23) Cumberland, 220.
(24) Montgomery and (25) Glamorgan, follow one another with 175
and 170 ; but (26) Westmorland ties Glamorgan, and the third Welsh
county (27) Monmouth, follows suit with 135. (28) Derbyshire holds
the same position as in the previous list with her 100. (29) Durham,
with 90. (30) Salop, with her 60. (31) Devon, with 50 ; and (31)
Dorset, again, is last with her 25.
2. In number of Conventicles :
(i) The pre-eminence of Yorkshire is still more pronounced. She
has 58 ; and the next county (2) Bucks has 35 less, only 23. (3) Cheshire
is almost even, with 22. (4) Cambridge comes next with 18. (5) Wilts
has 15. (6) Berks, 14 ; and (7) Beds, 13. (8) Lancashire, (9) Kent,
and (10) Hants have 12 each, (n) Notts, (12) Leicester, (13) Norfolk,
and (14) Suffolk, have n each. (15) Staffs, and (16) Somerset, 10 each.
(17) Sussex has 7. (18) Cumberland, 6. (19) Warwick has 5*
(20) Herts, (21) Kent, and (22) Monmouth, have each 4. Six counties
boast 3 Conventicles each, viz. : (23) Durham, (24) Westmorland,
(25) Derby, (26) Worcester, (27) Montgomery, and (28) Glamorgan ;
and three have each I, viz. : (29) Salop, (30) Dorset, and (31) Devon.
3. In number of Houses:
(i) Yorks has 29. (2) Bucks, 25. (3) Berks, 15. Four counties
contest the fourth place with n each : (4) Staffs, (5) Cambs, (6) Hants,
and (7) Wilts. (8) Notts and (9) Somerset, have 10 each. (10) Suffolk
has 9. (n) Norfolk, 8. (12) Sussex, 7. Then come four counties
with 5 each, viz. : (13) Derby, (14) Kent, (15) Glamorgan, and (16) Mon-
mouth. (17) Durham, (18) Warwick, (19) Herts, and (20) London,
have 4 each. (21) Worcester and (22) Montgomery, have each 3.
(23) Beds and (24) Surrey, each have 2 ; and (25) Salop and (26) Devon,
only one apiece.
4. Finally, in Teachers, according to the numbers given which, ot
course, are of scarcely any significance the order of the counties is :
(i) Leicester, 22. (2) Beds, 18. (3) Berks, 17. (4) Yorks, (5) Bucks,
and (6) Somerset, 14 each. (7) Cambridge, 12. (8) Herts, and (9) Kent, 8.
(9) Notts, (10) Norfolk, and (n) Wilts, 7 each. (12) Suffolk, 5.
(13) Hants, 3. (14) Warwick, (15) Glamorgan, and (16) Monmouth,
2 each ; and (17) Staffs, and (18) Sussex, i Teacher apiece.
140 Detailed and Expository
CHAPTER IV
THE EPISCOPAL RETURNS FOR 1676
THE Returns for 1676 preserved in Vol. 639 are even fewer than those
for 1665. We have two complete and detailed viz., those from
Canterbury and Salisbury ; and summaries of the total numbers from
two other Dioceses viz., York and Winchester. And this is
absolutely everything for 1676, which is an integral part of the MS.
Were we dependent, therefore, upon the Archives preserved in
Lambeth Library in this Vol. 639, we should be left to mere specula-
tion (as we were with the 1665 Returns) to determine the question
whether or no these four Returns were the only ones sent up to
Canterbury in response to Sheldon's Enquiries in 1676. But fortunately
we are not. Even the MS. volume helps us to a decided negative.
For, though clearly no part of the original MS., and therefore not
reproduced by me in Vol. I., I found inserted in it, just before the
Canterbury Returns, on a large, loose leaf, a carefully drawn up Table,
headed 'Religious Census, 1676. Account of the Province of
'Canterbury.' It is arranged in eight columns, the first giving the
names of the 22 Dioceses in the Province (18 in England and 4 in
Wales) ; the next three columns giving the numbers of Conformists,
Nonconformists, and Papists respectively in each ; and the other four
columns giving the proportions of (i) Nonconformists to Conformists ;
(2) Papists to Conformists ; (3) Both Nonconformists and Papists to
Conformists ; and (4) Papists to Nonconformists in each of the 22
Dioceses.
It is drawn up in another handwriting, and evidently compiled at a
later date than the body of the Episcopal Returns in the midst of which
it is inserted. Indeed the document bears a separate signature : j-J-R.
Clearly, then, Returns were sent in from every one of the Dioceses,
though only four have been preserved in this MS. volume, and of the
four only two are complete and detailed.
Still more significant, too, is the note written at the foot of the
page : < MS. Salt apud Stafford.'
This note, however, would be quite cryptic did we not know
though the knowledge seems confined to a very small number of
workers in this field of research that in the William Salt Public
Reference Library, in Stafford, are preserved in a thick folio volume the
whole of the Returns for 1676, with all the minute detail given in the
two we have reproduced in Vol. I., from the Dioceses of Canterbury
and Sarum, of the total population, the numbers of Papists, and the
numbers of ' other Sectaries,' in every parish of each Deanery or Arch-
deaconry in every Diocese in England and Wales.
On ascertaining these facts, I debated long whether I should make
these 'Original Documents' more complete, by asking permission to
reproduce the MS. volume in the Salt Library, and place its contents
side by side with those I have reproduced from Lambeth and the
Episcopal Returns 141
Record Office. Considerations of economy, however, both of time and
money, finally decided me not to attempt it.
I will confess that my interest in this work centred so much
more in the personalities of the pioneers of this great movement than in
the numbers whom it gathered, that I could not face the toil involved
in reproducing Tables which give no names (save those of the clergy
who are responsible for the figures sent in for their individual parishes),
and deal with figures only.
Still, of course, numbers have their value ; and Sheldon had a very
definite object in view when he put his clergy to the difficult task of
collecting the numbers scheduled, in part in the Returns I have printed
in Vol. L, and in detail for the whole Kingdom in the MS. volume,
preserved in the Salt Library.
That object was to ascertain the numerical strength of the Non-
conformists in the various parishes and districts in England and Wales ;
his hope and confidence being that the figures when gathered and
summarized would justify him in representing them to the King and
his advisers as so feeble a folk that they might safely neglect them in
any further action they might take for the strengthening of the State
Church, and securing the loyal adherence of its members. And I doubt
not that he would point to the figures he secured as a triumphant vin-
dication of his past policy and present position.
As showing the broad conclusions he would draw, I here reproduce
the Abstract (p. 142).
The fifth column shows the proportion of Nonconformists to Con-
formists in each Diocese. From this Sheldon could point to the facts
that even in the cases most favourable to Nonconformity, Protestant
Nonconformists were only as I to 9 in Canterbury, as I to 12 in
London, and as I to 1 5 in Rochester ; that in Winchester they were
but as i to 19 ; in Chichester as I to 20 ; that in Norwich, Lincoln,
and Ely, they were but as I to 2 1 ; and in Bath and Wells, only i in
24. He could point to the facts that in Sarum they were only as i to
25 ; in Gloucester, i to 26 ; in Worcester and St. David's, they were
only as i to 28 ; in Coventry and Lichfield and Bristol, but as i to 30 ;
in Exeter, only as i to 38 ; and in Peterborough, as i to 43 ; while in
the rest they were only a tiny fraction of the numbers of Conformists :
in LlandafF, only ^ ; in Hereford, ^ ; in St. Asaph, -fa ; in Oxford, X T ;
and in Bangor, only T \^.
So that the strength of Nonconformity was least in the Welsh
Diocese of Bangor, and in the English Diocese of Oxford, while it was
greatest in the Dioceses of Rochester, London, and Canterbury (Sheldon's
own Diocese). Curiously enough, then, according to the Anglicans'
own showing, the Nonconformists were strongest in Kent and London,
the parts of England nearest the centres of supreme authority in Church
and State.
Yet even there, they could argue, they were so weak that a few years
of resolute government and persistent execution of the Penal Statutes
against them would certainly reduce them to insignificance and
impotence.
1 42 Detailed and Expository
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Episcopal Returns 143
The implication, of course, was that if fourteen years of Penal
Legislation had reduced the Nonconformists to such a pitiable plight,
* patient continuance in ' such ' well-doing ' would before long ex-
terminate them altogether.
In such a tabulation of figures, and in such arguments based upon
them, however, there were two sophisms at least which much weakened
their force.
The Abstract contrasted Protestant Nonconformists with Con-
formists, while the Enquiries of Sheldon did not speak of Conformists
at all. Sheldon asked for the numbers of Papists, the numbers of other
persistent Sectaries, and the numbers (not of Conformists, but) of the
total population of each parish according to common repute. It is
clear that ' J.R.,' in drawing up his Abstract, arrived at the number of
< Conformists,' not by estimating the number of godly communicants,
or even of regular frequenters of the Parish Church, but by the simple
arithmetical process of adding the Recusants together, Papist and
Protestant, and then subtracting that total from the total population of
the parish.*
It is quite in accordance with the State Church's usual mode of
reckoning to count as members of her fold all parishioners who are not
definitely Recusant ; and it is abundantly evident that the ecclesiastical
authorities of this period were far more concerned to reach and punish
any parishioner who refused to attend the Parish Church and to
' communicate ' there, though it were from the highest motives, and
purely from ' scruples of conscience,' than to deal with and ' discipline '
those who absented themselves from carelessness, indifference, or rank
ungodliness.
So true is this, indeed, that the student of the Visitation Records of
this period will very seldom go astray, if he reckons as conscientious
Nonconformists those who are ' presented * in the ecclesiastical courts
for * not coming to Church,' or for ' refusing to come to their own
'parish Church,' 'to hear divine service and sermon,' or c to receive the
c Holy Communion.'
Candour must admit that this simple negation of Recusancy
(whether Papist or Protestant) does not constitute a Conformity to the
Anglican Church Establishment that has in it much spiritual significance
or moral worth. A great preponderance in numbers of men or women
estimated as Conformists by such methods as these does not prove any
preponderance whatever in a particular parish or district of religious
force or influence. Statistics gained along such lines were a very poor
test of the relative strength or weakness of Nonconformity in the
Kingdom.
There is a second point, moreover, which statistics of this kind
ignore altogether. Such Returns merely count heads, without any
attempt to estimate the force and quality of the brains within them, or
* It is an odd accident (surely) that for Canterbury Diocese the number in the
' Conformists ' column has been transferred, without any deduction at all, from the
first column of the Summa Totaksi.e., the total number of inhabitants ! The same is
true also of the figures here given for Winchester.
Detailed and Expository
of the heart and character of the men and women who carry them. In
things spiritual as well as things military, one real leader may be worth
more than a whole host of ' followers.' One great teacher, one moving
preacher, may outweigh in spiritual power scores or hundreds of humble
listeners though perfectly sincere, just as truly as a great tactician or
general of genius and magnetic power may count for more in a military
campaign than hundreds of the rank and file arrayed against him.
So that as we think of the men of spiritual might, men of scholarship
and eloquence, of sanctity and heroism like the ejected of 1662, their
comrades and disciples who each count only as * one ' in this ' enumera-
< tion ' or < census ' of the Nonconformist host, we cannot but turn away
from such a tabulation as practically worth very little. Yet here it is ;
and certain other facts which it brings out are worthy of separate notice.
The numbers of Nonconformists reported in these Returns we may be
sure are not exaggerated. The various parochial officials admit that
in 1676 there were well on to 100,000 of the inhabitants of England
and Wales pronounced and convinced Nonconformists the exact total
given in this Schedule being 93,154. Of that 93,000 odd more than a
fifth were in the Diocese of London 20,893. ^ n numbers, Lincoln
Diocese comes next with nearly half that number viz., 10,001.
Norwich and Winchester come next, each with nearly 8,000 to their
credit, Norwich with 7,934, and Winchester with 7,904. Canterbury
now follows with over 6,000 (6,287), and the two Dioceses in the
4 West Countree' are not far behind ; Bath and Wells with 5,856, and
Exeter with 5,406 ; and the Midland Diocese of Lichfield with Coven-
try is near them with over 5,000 (viz., 5,042) ; while Sarum comes in
with over 4,000 viz., 4,075. Chichester reports 2,452 ; Gloucester
and St. David's have each over 2,300, (Gloucester 2,363, and St.
David's 2,368) ; and Bristol nearly matches them with 2,200. Peter-
borough has to confess to over 2,000 (2,081), Rochester to over 1,700
(1,752) ; Ely to over 1,400 (1,416), Worcester to 1,325, and Oxford
to 1,122 : and the 3 Welsh Dioceses of Llandaff, St. Asaph, and
Bangor complete the list with the smallest tale of Nonconformists :
Llandaff boasting of only 719 ; St. Asaph of but 635 ; and Bangor with
not 250 ; (viz., 247).
So much we have felt it necessary rbecause illuminating to say
about this interpolated Abstract or Summary of the 1676 Returns as a
whole.
Now to turn to the two Diocesan Returns which we have in
639, and which I have reproduced in detail in Vol. I. They come
from Sheldon of Canterbury and Ward of Sarum, the two on the
whole Episcopal bench who were most eager for the suppression of
Nonconformity.
i. From the very first Gilbert Sheldon had been at the heart of the
movement against the Nonconformists which in 1662 culminated in the
Act of Uniformity, although at that time Juxon was Archbishop of
Canterbury, and Sheldon was only Bishop of London and Master of the
Savoy ; and since his elevation to the See of Canterbury, and Primacy
of the Established Church (in 1663) he had been foremost in stiffening
Parliament in the policy of persecution.
Episcopal Returns 145
It was he who had secured the passage of the first Conventicle Act
in 1664 ; as well as of the Five Mile Act in 1665 ; and (as we have
pointed out elsewhere) it was in preparation for the re-enactment of the
Conventicle Act (with astutely contrived additions), which was actually
effected in 1670, that he secured the Conventicle Returns of 1669.
Two years later, it is true, while Parliament was in Recess, Sheldon's
Royal master legally the Supreme Governor of the Church and De-
fender of the Faith had quietly undone all his ten years' labour by the
Declaration of Indulgence which suspended the Penal Statutes he and
his associates had managed to get upon the Statute Books. With the
reassembling of Parliament in 1673 Sheldon marshalled his forces in both
Houses to retake the positions they had lost : and they showed to Charles
so resolute a determination to refuse supplies till the Statutes were rein-
stated, that they speedily brought him to his knees. Spite his bold
avowal that he would stand by his Indulgence, three days' resistance was
enough to compel the King to withdraw his Declaration and, with his
own Royal hand, to break the Great Seal attached to it. Sheldon's
object was once more regained. The penal legislation was declared to
be in full force ; and Sheldon gave to his clergy the strictest injunctions
that they should see to it that the Civil Magistrates should second the
Ecclesiastical authorities in the most rigorous repression of all Con-
venticles and all unauthorized teaching.
It is quite possible that in the wider work which occupied Sheldon
(as Archbishop) in the political as well as in the ecclesiastical world, his
more specific duties as Bishop might somewhat suffer. He would not be
able as he certainly did not seem inclined as did Gunning in Sussex,
and Carleton in Bristol to see personally to the enforcement within
the parishes of Eastern Kent of those measures which he had success-
fully pressed both upon Parliament, upon his brother-Bishops, and upon
his clergy. That may in part account for the apparent failure in his
Diocese as compared with the splendid success of the Bishop of Sarum
in his.
Yet he was aided in Canterbury by a man as strong against the Non-
conformists as Seth Ward, and one who, by his virulence against them,
was making good his way to higher preferments. I refer to Samuel
Parker, whom Sheldon had made one of his chaplains in 1665, at the
same time stimulating his seal by giving him the Archdeaconry of
Canterbury.
We have visible proof of his activity in this business, for the Returns
for Canterbury, reprinted on pp. 20-26 of Vol. I., were drawn up by
him, and bear his signature 'Sam Parker, Arch: Diac. Cantuar.'
At the commencement of James II. 's reign he was elevated to
the See of Oxford ; and it was over his appointment by Royal Man-
damus to the Presidency of Magdalen College that the struggle broke
out, which brought matters to a head in the contest between the Roman
Catholic King and a Protestant nation, issuing in the flight of James II.
and the enthronement of William of Orange.
II. Seth Ward to whom we owe the second of these Returns
(reprinted on pp. 127-136 of Vol. I.) was not a whit behind Sheldon in
10
146 Detailed and Expository
anti-sectarian zeal ; and, if his figures have any value, he was far more
successful in the suppression of Nonconformity. He had begun with
vigour at the Restoration, and as Bishop of Exeter had given proof of
his keenness as a persecutor, and his efficiency as a Bishop by the fulness
of the Returns he sent up to Canterbury in 1665. Those Returns, as
we have already seen, are by far the most valuable of all that are preserved
in Lambeth for that year.
The same accuracy and fulness of detail characterize the Returns he
sent in for Sarum, only two years after his translation, in 1669: and
here, in 1676, we find the same characteristics.
The document is headed : ' 1676, May io th . An Account of the
' Number & Proportions of Popish Recusants, Obstinate Separatists,
'Conformists Inhabitants in Wiltshire and Berks under the Jurisdic-
tion Imediate of the BP of Sarum. By Seth Ward.' To the
tabulated details of every Parish within those limits, giving the numbers
of ' Pop.-Recusants,' 'Sectaries' and 'Inhabitants,' in three several
columns, he prefixes a Table of Totals for the several Deaneries and
Archdeaconries within those limits, and on a separate folio, 'An
' Abstract of the Numbers and Proportions ' in the Diocese as a whole.
A comparison of this last with the line referring to ' Salisbury ' in the
' Religious Census ' Abstract, shows very close agreement, though the
slight divergence is enough to prove that the larger Table is by a
different hand.
There is one fact, however, which might easily escape observation,
which most completely deprives these figures of their superficial signi-
ficance. For some reason or other, in the '76 Returns, the whole of
Dorset is omitted : and several other items in R. 248^-R. 250 in the
'69 Returns have no counterpart in those of 1676. Yet Dorset alone
accounts for from 1,350 to 1,400 : and the other items account for from
1,875 to 2,200 together amounting to from 3,125 to nearly 3,600.
The Enquiries to which Sheldon had asked for tabulated replies are
prefixed verbatim to Parker's Returns. They are given on R.
' DIOCCESS : CANT. THE ENQUIRIES.
' I st . What number of persons are by comon Accompt & estima-
'tion Inhabiting within such (each) Parish subject unto this Juris-
' diction ?
<2 dl y. What number of Popish Recusants or persons suspected for
4 such Recusancy are there Resident amongst the Inhabitants aforesaid ?
'3 dl y. What number of other Dissenters are there in each Parish (of
' whatsoever) which either obstinately refuse or wholly absent themselves
' from the Comunion of the Church of England at such times as by Law
' they are required ?'
In the tabulated answers to these Enquiries, Parker simply places at
the head of each column Q 1 , Q 2 , Q 3 : and Protestant Nonconformists
are thereby virtually described as Sheldon had described them in his
questions viz., as 'Dissenters other than Popish Recusants'; an
Episcopal Returns 14.7
interesting proof, by the way, that as early as 1676 (not 15 years
after the passing of the Act of Uniformity) those who did not wholly
conform to the forms of the Church of England, were already being
described and generally referred to under the positive term ' Dissenters/
as frequently as by the merely negative term * Nonconformists.'
The opprobrious phrases which follow in Sheldon's Enquiries and
which constitute so needlessly offensive an equivalent of * Protestant
* Recusants ' ' which either obstinately refuse, or wholly absent them-
' selves from the Communion of the Church of England at such times as
4 by Law they are required ' are not ostentatiously endorsed and put to
the front by Parker as they are by Ward. Seth Ward uses no such
respectful word as Dissenters, but he calls them 'Obstinate Separatists'
or ' Sectaries' : * Obstinate Separatists' in the Heading of his Returns,
* Sectaries' at the head of his second column. There is a further
difference between the two most noticeable and, I venture to add,
quite characteristic.
Archdeacon Parker appends certain observations which are evidently
intended as palliative explanations of any increase of Nonconformists
within his jurisdiction since the Returns presented in 1669.
Bishop Ward has no apology to offer because he has no such
increase in his Diocese to attempt to explain away.
Parker's explanations are very interesting, being given in no less than
nine particulars. ' Wee finde,' he says, ' these things observable.' They
are given verbatim on R. 169/>.
The most notable points are : (i) The retrospective blame cast upon
the Indulgence of 1672 'Many left the Church upon the late Indul-
' gence, who before did frequent it ' ; (2) the credit claimed for the issue
of his Chief's Inquisition : ' The sending forth of these Inquiries has
' caused many to frequent the Church ' ; (3) the large number of French
Protestant Refugees, settled in the north-eastern corner of the county
4 They are Walloons chiefely who make up y e great number of "Dis-
' " senters " in Cant. Sandwich and Dover ' ; and (4) the light cast upon
the accepted classification of Dissenters in that day viz.: i. 'A new
' sort of Hereticks " called after the name of one Muggleton, a London
'" Taylor, in number about 30,"' 2. Presbyterians, 3. Anabaptists,
4. Brownists Independents; 5. Quakers (these four 'of about equall
' numbers ') and a few ' Self-Willers.' The Totals given in Parker's
Abstract (R. 169 : p. 26) correspond exactly with the line for Canter-
bury in the 'Religious Census' paper; only the Archdeacon's Total
population for the Diocese (59,596) is transferred to the Census Abstract
as the number of Conformists rather a bad slip.
In Seth Ward's case, however, there is no such mistake. His
Abstract is given in R. 253 ; and in it the number of Inhabitants is given
separately as 108,294; while the number of Conformists, 103,671,
appears correctly in the first column of the Abstract. But there is a
variance, though only in the way of addition. Seth Ward gives two
other Totals, besides those of the Papists (correctly transferred to the
Abstract Census as 548) : namely, 4,623 Dissenters, and 4,075 Separatists.
Evidently, ' Dissenters ' include Papists as well as Protestant Noncon-
IO 2
148 Detailed and Expository
formists. These latter he calls 'Separatists'; and it is these (4,075)
who appear in the third column as the number of Nonconformists.*
The only other documents belonging to this 1676 enquiry, which
are preserved in Vol. 639, are two Summaries (of totals) ; the one
from York (R. 297, p. 177) ; and the other from Winton, pp. 147 and
148 (R. 270).
During the whole of our period (1662-1676), the Sees in these two
Dioceses were occupied by the same two prelates. Winchester by
George Morley (the devoted Royalist), and York by Richard Sterne,
Bishop of the Diocese and Metropolitan of the Northern Province.
Morley had been translated from Worcester to Winchester the very
year which saw the passing of the Act of Uniformity (1662). Though
stedfast in his loyalty to both King and Church, he was not a very
eager ecclesiastic, and did not show any very hot persecuting zeal.
It is singular that in the Winchester Returns this 1676 document
precedes the 1669 Return, though in the other three cases (as was most
natural) it follows it.
* It is this paper which my critic in the Spectator lighted on as the ' one par-
' ticularly interesting document ' in the whole volume the one, at any rate, on which
alone he was moved to make any observation. He simply copies the figures of 'the
' population,' 108,294 ; Dissenters, 4,643 ; Separatists, 4,075 ; and Popish Recusants,
548 ; and adds the sarcastic observation : ' The figures do not indeed quite tally, but
' this is the wont of historical figures.' He does not seem to have noticed that the
total of ' Dissenters ' (4,623) exactly ' tallies ' with the numbers of ' Separatists ' (or
Protestant Dissenters), 4,075, and Popish Recusants (or Roman Catholic Dis-
senters), 548, added together; and that the numbers of 'Popish' (548), ' Separatists'
(4.075), and ' Conformists' (103,671) added together or, if he please to look at it in
that way of 'Dissenters' (4,623) and 'Conformists' (103,671) added together do
exactly tally with the numbers of inhabitants (108,294). So that his sarcasm is
wasted, because pointless.
There was no need either for his analytic speculation as to what the ' names '
stand for in the synopsis given in R. 2526 (pp. 127 and 128). The first column, in
which the names he comments on are found, is distinctly headed 'Decanatus,' so
that no intelligent student of the book could fail to see that the numbers given after
the name Malmesbury on p. 128 are the totals arrived at by adding together the
figures given in the three columns under the heading ' Decanatus Malmesbury ' on
pp. 132 and 133; the figures for Malmesbury, 'the town, 1 being given on R. 257
(p. 133) as yielding oo Popish Recusants, only 05 Separatists, and a total population
of 2,050.
The reviewer's further conundrum as to Norton Bradley is not so easily solved :
' It may be observed that Norton Bradley is given as having 340 Separatists out of
440 inhabitants. There is nothing like this anywhere else. Is it an error?' I
venture, however, to submit the following : Is ' Norton Bradley ' a clerical error for
'North Bradley'? Adams, in his 'Index Villaris,' gives 'Bradley North' as in
Whorlwelsdown Hundred, and a Vicarage in Pattern Deanery, rated at ii: and, on
R. 242 (in 1669) Seth Ward reports one Conventicle of Anabaptists meeting 'at a
' Barne ' ' every Sunday & Wednesday, ' numbering 200 or 300 tradesmen and
yeomen, and furnished with three or four Teachers. Is it beyond the range of possi-
bility that the Baptists in North Bradley had grown in the seven years since 1669
from 300 to 340 ? That this was not an isolated case, moreover, is clear from a pre-
sentment made as early as 1664, in quite another part of the kingdom.
The following is the complaint made of Winteringham (in the north-eastern point
of Lincolnshire) :
' Thomas Ogle Churchwarden either Refuseth or at Least neglecteth to pay his
Easter offerings. Not a Quarter of the Parish are present in Service time, and not
half of them at any time. Holy dayes are despised ; not three of the husbandmen
ever appear at Church at once ; and but few of the Cottagers, servants, or poorest
sort. On Sundayes at Eleaven a Clock seldom soe many present as to Chime, and
sometimes the minister hath been forced to Returne for want of Company, &c.'
Rpitcopal Returns 149
Morley follows Ward in using the comparatively mild term
' Dissenters ' to cover both classes of ' Recusants,' Popish and Protestant,
and contents himself with calling the latter Separatists. In the Summary
reproduced in R. 270 (Vol. I., 147), we are confronted with this some-
what puzzling circumstance. The total number of Separatists given
for 1676 is exactly the figure reached by adding together all the
numbers given in the 1669 Returns viz., 7,904 if only we take the
larger number where alternative numbers are given. [The smaller
total would be 7,045 ; the larger is exactly 7,904.] The inference I
was at first inclined to draw was that I was wrong in placing this
document among the 1676 Returns. It bears no date, and I assigned
it to 1676, simply because no Summary or Abstract is given of any
other of the 1669 Returns ; and because its title or heading follows so
closely the form of the Abstract sent in by Seth Ward, which is
distinctly dated ' 1676, May loth.'
This Winton Summary is headed :
' Winton Dioc. : An Abstract of the Number & Proportion of the
' Inhabitants, Conformists & Dissenters, in the Diocesse of Winton, etc.'
And Seth Ward's elaborate 1676 Return is headed :
' An Account of the Number & Proportions of Popish Recusants,
'obstinate Separatists Conformists (&) Inhabitants in Wiltshire and
' Berks under the Jurisdiction Imediate of the Bp of Sarum.'
Yet in the 'Religious Census of 1676,' abstracted from the Salt
MS., the total for Winchester under the ' Nonconformists ' column is
exactly the same viz., 7,904, as are also the number of Inhabitants
and the number of Popish Recusants the former, I5>937 5 an< ^
the latter, 968.
This, therefore, justifies my 'assignment' of the Summary Account
to 1676, but makes it evident that there can have been no recount of
Nonconformists in the seven years' interval between '69 and '76 ; a
striking sign of George Morley's ecclesiastical slackness, and indication
that he never responded to Sheldon's last demand at all.
Only, as in the case of Canterbury, J.R., in his ' Religious Census,'
transfers the number of ' Inhabitants ' in Morley's Abstract to the
' Conformist ' column, though Morley gives separately (in the line
below) the number of Conformists as 142,065. The same mistake,
too, is carried into his fifth column, which professes to give the
proportion of Nonconformists to Conformists viz., as one to 19 with
the remainder of 761. This is what Morley, with stricter accuracy,
gives as the proportion of Separatists to the whole of the Inhabitants.
The proportion should have been, as Morley actually gives it in the
next group of figures, as one to 17, with 7,697 remaining. It invalidates
the next two columns also, for Papists were to Conformists, not as one
to 155 with 823 remaining, but only as one to 146 with 737
remaining ; and both Nonconformists and Papists (or as Morley puts
it ' All Dissenters ') were to Nonconformists, not as one to 17 with 113
remaining (which was their proportion to the total population), but as
one to 1 6 with 113 remaining.
These divergences show that the Abstract or Religious Census needs
Detailed and Expository
to be carefully scrutinized, whenever the figures from other Dioceses
are forthcoming by which to test it.
The other document from York is also without a date. But there
is no question that it belongs to 1676. Its groups of numbers are
arranged under the three heads of Inhabitants (' Persons ' in the case of
York City), Popish Recusants, and other Dissenters, which are direct
replies to Sheldon's three Enquiries of that year.
It claims to give ' The Number of Persons ' (or Inhabitants),
'Popish Recusants, and other Dissenters' within the Dioceses and
' Jurisdiction of Yorke ' ; but is very defective. It does not give a com-
plete list of the Deaneries within York County (only those of New
Ainstie, Old Ainstie, Craven, Pontefract and Doncaster), much less all
of those within the Diocese ; one grave omission being the whole of
the County of Nottingham, in which Nonconformity was so strong.
Its figures, too, are far from accurate, as has been pointed out to me
by a correspondent (Mr. Chas. R. Simpson, of Oxford and Wood-
brook Settlement, Selly Oak). He draws attention to the figures given
for the Deanery of Old Ainstie : Inhabitants, 3,444 ; Popish Recusants,
33; and Dissenters, 228 [not 220]; and comments on them thus :
'Now Leeds is in this Deanery, and its inhabitants over 16 were
* 12,000. So that the total (3,444) cannot be correct. On looking at
c the MSS.' (my correspondent has transcribed the Returns for York-
shire and Nottinghamshire, which are to be found complete in the
Tanner MSS. in the Bodleian Library) ' I found how the mistake
' occurred.'
The Leeds figures had been put down correctly, but in the wrong
columns. So that it had been added up as 1,200 instead of as 12,000,
and the total inhabitants should have been 14,244 instead of 3,444.
This same correspondent has also given me the totals for the other
seven Deaneries omitted from the Abstract given on R. 297 :
Persons over Sixteen.
Papists.
Dissenters.
Bulmer
9,051
210
164
Rydal
8,090
152
253
Cleveland
12,166
662
520
Holderness
6,289
214
315
Harthill
H73
162
1,666
Pickering ...
3,997
28
122
Buckrose ...
2,357
4
67
and the Totals for the whole County come out as
Inhabitants, 159,160; Popish Recusants, 2,006; and Dissenters,
5,974-
It is noteworthy that in the Deanery of New Ainstie the number
of Papists is more than twice as great as that of Protestant Dissenters,
and that there is a decided preponderance of a similar character in
the Deaneries of Bulmer and Cleveland. The most striking fact, from
Episcopal Returns 151
our point of view, is the large number of c Dissenters ' returned in the
Deanery of Harthill viz., 1,666, for it heads the list in all the
Deaneries of the County, being nearly 400 more than in the Deanery
of Pontefract, though the total population of the Deanery of Pontefract
is well on to being three times as great as that of the Deanery of
Harthill (39,282 as compared with 14,703).
There is evidently almost endless work to be done in the way of
testing the numbers given in this Summary, and making it complete, as
well as making a Summary or Abstract Census for the Province of
York, similar to that which I found in Vol. 639 (Lambeth Library),
and have reproduced in this volume.
I must leave the task to one who has more love for statistics, and a
larger belief in their value for the purposes of Nonconformist history
than I possess.
SECTION II
THE INDULGENCE DOCUMENTS
CHAPTER I
WHAT BROUGHT THEM INTO BEING: 'THE
DECLARATION OF INDULGENCE '
WE have already pointed out (Part I, chap, ii.) that the Persecution of
Nonconformists was in no sense the work of Charles II., that by natural
disposition he was averse to it, and that it was really the work of Parlia-
ment under the strong lead of the Earl of Clarendon, prompted and
inspired by Sheldon and the High Anglican party.
We pointed out at the same time that the Indulgence (of 1672-73)
was Charles's work first and foremost, even if it were too much to say
that it was his alone. It is true that Neal ascribes it to the King's
Council rather than to the King himself; putting it thus (Vol. III.,
p. 177) * The Cabal made the third advance towards Popery and
4 absolute power, by advising the King to suspend the penal laws against
4 all sorts of Nonconformists.' I cannot help thinking that in the
strength of his anti-Papal polemic he credits them with too much.
Though Clifford and Arlington may have actively seconded the sugges-
tion of the King, because, as Roman Catholics themselves, they saw in
it a hopeful means to the larger end of giving the Papacy a freer hand,
Buckingham, in his easy indifference to all religious considerations,
was quite ready to humour his Royal master. Lauderdale seemed
quite willing to pose in England as the champion of the liberties of
those whom he relentlessly persecuted in Scotland ; and Shaftesbury
in a most mysterious fashion took a line of singular aloofness in the
matter throughout the brief period during which it was in force.
The only explanation at all satisfactory of Ashley's curious conduct
is that, though of the whole Cabal he was the most convinced believer
in the liberty of the subject in all that could touch the individual con-
science, he had so little sympathy with this method of securing it that
he would do as little as possible that might suggest to anyone that he
endorsed it. In other words, he had no confidence that a Royal
Indulgence which really ' flouted ' Acts deliberately passed by the
representatives of the people could stand its ground, when once the
nation had discovered the political significance of what the King
had done.
So that in the King's determination somewhat suddenly formed at
152
I
\e Indulgence Documents 153
last to try the effect of Indulgence, which he had promised to Noncon-
formists again and again ever since his Restoration the Cabal as a
whole distinctly supported him, although I can find no proof that they
suggested the experiment, or advised him to try it.
The persecution of the Nonconformists throughout this period was
Prelatic and Parliamentary, not Royal; their relief and Indulgence
for these eleven months was distinctly Royal, not Parliamentary or
popular.
The document itself is more consonant with our contention than
with Neal's suggestion. In the preamble which expresses so pointedly
the reason of his taking the step, and the objects he hopes to secure by
it, he does not even mention his Council. He assumes all the responsi-
bility, as he claims all the authority, himself:
< CHARLES REX
4 Our care and endeavours for the preservation of the rights and
interests of the Church, have been sufficiently manifested to the world
by the whole course of our government since our happy restauration, and
by the many and frequent ways of coercion that we have used for
reducing all erring or dissenting persons, and for composing the unhappy
differences in matters of religion, which we found among our subjects
upon our return ; but it being evident by the sad experience of twelve
years, that there is very little fruit of all those forcible courses, we think
ourselves obliged to make use of that supreme power in ecclesiastical
matters, which is not only inherent in us, but hath been declared and
recognized to be so, by several statutes of parliament ; and therefore we
do now accordingly issue this our declaration, as well for the quieting
the minds of our good subjects in these points, for inviting strangers in this
conjuncture to come and live under us, and for the better encourage-
ment of all to a cheerful following of their trade and callings, from
whence we hope, by the blessing of God, to have many good and happy
advantages to our government ; as also for preventing for the future the
danger that might otherwise arise from private meetings and seditious
conventicles.'
The retrospective paragraph with which the preamble opens calls the
world to witness that (however averse to such courses himself) he has
taken the advice of others, and given a thorough trial of the policy of
persecution, only to prove its inefficiency. ' It being evident by the sad
* experience of twelve years that there is very little fruit of all those
' forcible courses' the * many and frequent ways of coercion ' which
had been employed in the four Penal Statutes (the Act of Uniformity,
First Conventicle Act, Five Mile Act, and Second Conventicle Act) ;
and that so far from benefiting < the Church ' (as by law established)
these 'forcible courses' have injured it, estranging many from it, who
before had been willing to frequent its services and make the best of
them ; and multiplying and strengthening private meetings or * Con-
venticles ' instead of repressing and ending them.
Indirectly and implicitly, too, it acknowledges that the policy of
persecution has created civic resentment and political disquiet ; has
154 Detailed and Expository
discouraged * foreigners ' Protestant exiles from other countries who
would fain have come to England to find rest from the persecution they
suffered from the Papal Church in their own and has dislocated trade
and commerce at home, because so many of the foremost tradesmen
and merchants are Puritan in their faith and sympathy, and so have
been forced into the ranks of Dissent and Nonconformity.
An anecdote of the time illustrates the point. < How can I do
'business with a man to-day,' said one of the Aldermen of London,
when complaint was made to him that he was not actively c working '
the Penal Statutes against Nonconformists, * when I may fine him or
* clap him in prison to-morrow ?'
With admirable astuteness, also, Charles recognizes the fact that
these Nonconformist services will be held whether Parliament recog-
nizes their legality or pronounces them illegal ; and urges that, if they
are to be held at all, it is far better to provide that they shall be public,
like the services of the Established Church. Moreover, services held
with closed doors, and at the risk of penalties, would be more likely to
become ' seditious conventicles,' because the worshippers met under the
sense of injury and injustice.
Beyond all this, it is clear that the King acted purely in his own
name in order that the liberty Nonconformists so much desired might
be had solely as an act of Royal favour, and if accepted might bind the
recipients by personal loyalty to him, and constrain them to the accept-
ance of his policy both at home and abroad. Incidentally, too, great
light is here thrown on the anxiety he had shown to have the clause
declaring the Royal Supremacy in matters ecclesiastical made part and
parcel of the recent Act (the Second Conventicle Act). Although at
the time he disavowed any intention to interfere with the course that
Parliament was taking, there can be little question that even then he
was contemplating the course planned in this Declaration which he
published only two years later.
That the Indulgence was thus to be viewed as the personal action
of the King rather than as his Royal endorsement of the action of the
Cabal is also the view of the High Anglican CardwelL*
* In commenting on ' the Declaration of Indulgence ' in his ' Documentary
Annals ' (Vol. II., pp. 282-284), he expresses his own view as follows :
' Lord Clarendon having gone into banishment at the end of the year 1667, and
his administration being succeeded by that of the Cabal, the King was now at liberty
to pursue his own projects, not only without restraint, but even with the aid of coun-
sellors more fertile in expedient and more regardless about consequences than he
himself was. And this was the darkest and most intricate period of a reign which
may justly be called throughout the greater portion of it " the mystery of iniquity."
Within the compass of a few years the King resolved to be independent of parlia-
ments, entered into a war to which the nation generally was averse, declared his
treasury insolvent, united himself with France, and became the pensioner of the
French monarch, formed a secret compact to surrender the liberties and religion of
his own kingdoms, and issued a Declaration which directly dispensed with the ob-
servance of the law, and indirectly claimed the exercise of absolute power. The
Declaration issued on the isth day of March, 1672, is an instance, among many, of
the dishonest and tortuous policy by which the King endeavoured to accomplish his
purposes. It seems to have been intended for the benefit of the non-conformists : it
was really designed to relieve the Romanists. For the former he felt as much com-
passion as could belong to a temper easy and indulgent by nature, but rendered hard
The Indulgence Documents 155
Passing from the preamble to the several paragraphs of the Declara-
tion, we find the first dictated by the desire to keep the prelates quiet,
with their clergy and the Church party among the laity, by profuse
promises and assurances, just as the offer of liberty was intended to quiet
and secure the loyalty of the Nonconformists. It reads :
4 And in the first place, we declare our express resolution, meaning
and intention to be, that the Church of England be preserved, and
remain entire in its doctrine, discipline, and government, as now it
stands established by law ; and that this be taken to be, as it is, the
basis, rule and standard, of the general and public worship of God, and
that the orthodox conformable clergy do receive and enjoy the revenues
belonging thereunto ; and that no person, though of a different opinion
and persuasion, shall be exempt from paying his tithes or other dues
whatsoever. And further we declare, that no person shall be capable of
holding any benefice, living, or ecclesiastical dignity or preferment of
any kind in this our Kingdom of England, who is not exactly
conformable.'
There is the quiet assumption throughout it, suggested by a shrewd
observation of human nature, that if the emoluments, privileges, and
dignities of the Establishment are secured to the < orthodox ' and ' con-
4 formable ' there will be the less inclination to resent the liberty accorded
to the c unorthodox ' and ' nonconformist.' Though facts were not long
in discovering to the King that Prelates and Conformists were not so
and reckless by profligate and irreligious habits ; and as for his advisers, they had
no sympathy except for atheists and Romanists, and would naturally treat with con-
tempt a class of men who looked upon their principles with abhorrence. Neverthe-
less it was only by conciliating or by bribing the Nonconformists that he could hope
to obtain more favourable conditions for the Romanists ; and to this object he was
so far pledged that he incurred the greatest hazard, and had recourse to the most
unconstitutional methods in order to accomplish it.
'The parliament which had been prorogued since the 22nd day of April, 1671,
was at last allowed to assemble on the i5th of February, 1673, and was addressed by
the King with reference to his Declaration in the following manner: "Some few
days before I declared the war I put forth my Declaration for indulgence to dis-
senters. . . . There is one part of it that is subject to misconstruction, which is
that concerning the papists, as if more liberty were granted to them than to the other
recusants, when it is plain there is less. ... In the whole course of this indulgence
I do not intend that it shall any way prejudice the Church ; but I will support its
rights, and it, in full power. Having said this, I shall take it, very, very ill to
receive contradiction in what I have done : and I will deal plainly with you. I am
resolved to stick to my Declaration. ' ' Nevertheless the Commons proceeded to vote
that " penal statutes in matters ecclesiastical cannot be suspended but by an act of
parliament," and as stated in reply to the King's defence of his proceedings, " that
no such power was ever claimed or exercised by any of his predecessors." They
shewed at the same time a rea liness to grant relief to protestant dissenters, but a
determination to oppose themselves to the additional dangers arising from the duke's
open adoption of popery, and the King's secret attachment to it.
' It is now known from the Stuart papers (" Life of James II.," Vol. I., p. 442)
that the King had decided in the year 1669 to bring in the Romish faith, and had
arranged with his brother to "go about it as wise men and good catholics ought to
do." The Test Act was passed in the session 1678, and the country party, to which
the nation was afterwards so much indebted, was established at the same period.
The King assured the two houses that his suspension of penal laws " should not be
drawn either into consequence or example," and the lord Chancellor (Shaftsbury)
stated with his majesty's permission, that the Declaration under the great Seal had
been cancelled in his presence.'
156 Detailed and Expository
easily ' quieted ' and soothed into acquiescence, as were the Noncon-
formists and Dissenters.
In the next paragraph we have the more negative part of the
Declaration, a necessary preliminary in order to clear the ground for its
more positive part :
4 We do in the next place declare our will and pleasure to be, that
the execution of all and all manner of penal laws in matters eccle-
siastical, against whatsoever sort of non-conformists or recusants, be
immediately suspended. And all judges, judges of assize and gaol-
delivery, sheriffs, justices of peace, mayors, bailiffs, and other officers
whatsoever, whether ecclesiastical or civil, are to take notice of it, and
pay due obedience thereunto.'
This no doubt is the part of the Declaration which created in all
Parliamentarians the greatest concern, and not alone the Prelates and
the High Church Party. The fabric of Penal Legislation which it had
taken ten years to build up is shattered into fragments at the touch of
the King's hand. Had the Declaration ended here, the view which has
often been taken of it would have been true. By the suspension of all
Penal Statutes, it might seem to proclaim to all and sundry absolute
liberty to worship God and to teach or preach, after any form which
conscience might dictate, and in any place which fancy or convenience
might suggest. Even J. R. Green, whom usually it is safe to follow,
uses phraseology which would produce that impression on the incautious
reader. In alluding to the Declaration of Indulgence, he says (p. 626) :
* By virtue of his ecclesiastical powers the King ordered " that all
' " manner of penal laws on matters ecclesiastical against whatsoever
c " sort of Nonconformists or recusants should be from that day sus-
4 " pended," and gave liberty of worship to all dissidents save Catholics,
c who were allowed to practise their religion only in private houses.'
Evelyn, also a contemporary (and generally a discriminating ob-
server), makes the same mistake. In his 'Diary' (under date Mar. I,
167^) he writes: 'To this succeeded the King's declaration for an
4 universall tolleration, Papists and swarms of Sectaries now boldly
' showing themselves in their publiq meetings.'
So to put the matter is a grave mistake. The two following para-
graphs show that the King intended, and provided, that c dissidents '
were to have no more liberty than before to worship in any fashion
other than that prescribed by the Common Prayer Book or in any place
other than the Parish Church, except by express Royal permission,
authority, or licence.
The very next paragraph puts it positively that he, the King, is
willing to 'allow ' (/.*., license) a sufficient number of places in all parts
of England for those who desire it of him (among those * who do not
4 conform to the Church of England ') ; and the second paragraph puts
it negatively that only in places that are * allowed,' and by c persons '
directly ' approved ' by the King that is, by licences issued in his name
to the owner of the place and to the teacher or preacher who conducts
the service can ' nonconformist ' worship be permitted at all ; while
the last paragraph puts the matter very plainly utterly precluding the
The Indulgence Documents 157
construction so unguardedly put upon it by J. R. Green and J. Evelyn
that any one presuming to abuse this liberty, and to act after the lax
fashion suggested by the language of these writers, by meeting in any
place for which a Royal licence has not been issued, shall be dealt with
' with all imaginable severity.'
The paragraph inserted between the two former and the last was
intended as a farther ' sop ' to the Protestant prelacy (inserted no doubt
by the urgent pressure of Lauderdale, expressly restricting the liberty
here offered to Protestants. No licences for public worship were to be
granted to Roman Catholics. They were to be allowed only but
this they were allowed as both Protestant and Papist had been allowed
hitherto to gather for worship ' in their private houses ' if there were
not more than four present over and above the members of the household
resident therein.
Here are the four paragraphs in the order in which they stand in the
actual document :
'And that there may be no pretence for any of our subjects to
continue their illegal meetings and conventicles, we do declare, that we
shall from time to time allow a sufficient number of places, as they shall
be desired, in all parts of this our Kingdom, for the use of such as do
jiot conform to the Church of England, to meet and assemble in in order
to their public worship and devotion ; which places shall be open and
free to all persons.
4 But to prevent such disorders and inconveniences as may happen by
this our indulgence, if not duly regulated, and that they may be the
better protected by the civil magistrate, our express will and pleasure
is, that none of our subjects do presume to meet in any place, until such
places are allowed, and the teacher of that congregation be approved
by us.
'And lest any should apprehend that this restriction should make
our said allowance and approbation difficult to be obtained, we do
further declare, that this our indulgence, as to the allowance of the
public places of worship, and approbation of the teachers, shall extend
to all sorts of non-conformists and recusants, except the recusants of the
Roman Catholic religion, to whom we shall in nowise allow public
places of worship, but only indulge them their share in the common
exemption from the penal laws, and the exercise of their worship in
their private houses only.
' And if, after this our clemency and indulgence, any of our subjects
shall pretend to abuse this liberty, and shall preach seditiously, or to the
derogation of the doctrine, discipline, or government, of the established
Church, or shall meet in places not allowed by us, we do hereby give
them warning, and declare, we will proceed against them with all
imaginable severity ; and we will let them see we can be as severe to
punish such offenders when so justly provoked, as we are indulgent to
truly tender consciences.
< Given at our court at Whitehall, this 1 5th day of March, in
the four and twentieth year of our reign.'
So that so far from giving < liberty of worship to all dissidents,' the
158 Detailed and Expository
number of places in which dissidents might worship was limited to what
were sufficient for those nonconformists who desired it limited, too, by
the absolute discretion or arbitrary decision of the King (and his imme-
diate advisers). For evidently what was a 'sufficient ' number of places
in any one parish or district, was to be determined not by the Noncon-
formists in it but by the King.
The determination, too, of what ' places ' should be ' allowed/ and
what ' teachers ' should be ' approved ' lay wholly with him. He
reserved it as a matter solely within his own discretion to decide whether
any particular building should or should not be a ' place ' ' allowed ' for
Nonconformist worship ; quite as absolutely, indeed, as to whether any
particular person were ' fit and proper,' safe and salutary to 4 approve ' as
' teacher ' in these licensed places.
It is true that by the terms of the Declaration the methods by which
this Indulgence was to be administered were left entirely open. It would
have been quite consistent with the Declaration had the King made it a
matter in which the initiative was to be taken only by himself, as it is
in the case of the grant of any title or order, as a Royal recognition of
special merit in the subject or of special affection or favour in the Prince.
From the first, however, it is clear that he intended the initiative to be
taken by his Nonconformist subjects ; for speaking of * the sufficient
' number of places ' which he was prepared to allow, he uses the phrase
4 as they shall be desired,' suggesting that the normal lines along which
he wished to act were those of an expressed ' desire ' on the part of the
Nonconformist ministers and inhabitants in any parish, town, or district.
It is plain, in fact, that the King purposed awaiting the expression of
such desire before he would move at all.
Wherever no ' desire ' for ' allowance ' or ' approval ' was expressed
and brought before his notice, public ' worship,' by Nonconformists in
forms other than those prescribed by the Common Prayer Book or in
any other ' place ' than the Parish Church remained as illegal as it
was before ; though, by the terms of the third clause of the Declaration,
active persecution of Nonconformists by Penal Statute would have
automatically ceased ; and such worship, in itself, and in a sense (that
is, under certain prescribed conditions), was not illegal as it was before.
One important thing to realize, then, if we would understand the
spirit and methods of the Indulgence, is that the liberty offered by it,
wherever, and by whomsoever it was secured, was secured a? an act of
grace and favour shown by the King in person to the individual subject
or subjects to whom his licences were given.
In no sense was a new legal ' status ' conferred on Nonconformists
as such. It was simply that to the Nonconformists who applied for a
licence, the licence was granted when the applicant was considered a fit
and proper person to receive it, as a personal favour from the King.
And the acceptance of it naturally bound the recipient, if only by
the ties of ordinary gratitude, to a more than ordinary loyalty and
obedience.
There is no doubt, indeed, that this was the main object of the
Declaration. It was no sudden discovery of the harshness and injustice,
The Indulgence Documents 159
or even of the practical inutility, of persecution by Penal Statute that
moved the King. It was that Nonconformists (especially in London
and its suburbs) were growing restive under this bitter and spiteful
persecution. The political situation was critical. Charles had made up
his mind to declare war against the Dutch, as part of the policy adopted
by him in 1670 in the disgraceful Treaty of Dover. He knew well that
the Nonconformists had a friendly feeling towards them ; because, of
all the Continental powers, the Dutch were the one nation which in
their zealous Protestantism had always showed the Nonconformists the
greatest practical sympathy, and had always been readiest to give them
friendly asylum when driven into exile by the persecuting Anglican.
And he foresaw very clearly that declaration of war against the
Dutch might increase the disaffection of Nonconformists, and tempt
them to courses which might create serious danger of internal weakness.
So that Charles's hope and definite purpose were that if only they would
accept his Indulgence, they would feel bound to abstain from any
courses which would harass him in his home measures, or weaken his
policy abroad. These circumstances necessarily determined the centre
from which, and the mode in which, the Royal Indulgence was worked.
As the licences were granted by the King in person, and by the
King alone, they had of course to be issued from the Royal Court ; and
being given only in response to an express desire duly notified to the
Court by the would-be licensee, the whole business of the Indulgence
was bound to be transacted from a single local centre, where alone
applications for licences could be received, and whence alone the
licences which were granted could be issued. That centre was
Whitehall.
The bearing of this, however, upon the Licence documents which
are here published, is so multifarious, interesting, and significant that the
consideration of it must be relegated to a separate chapter.
NOTE.
Frank Bate, in his recently published work on ' The Declaration of
'Indulgence, 1672' (chap, v., pp. 79-80), clearly gives us all that can be
known of the events which by such rapid strides led to the actual issue of the
Declaration. He gives the main particulars furnished by Sir Joseph William-
son's Diary, including a list of the members of Council who were present at
the final meeting, who gave a unanimous adhesion to the scheme. He thus
shows that those jointly responsible for it were: (i) the King, his brother
the Duke of York, and his son the Duke of Monmouth ; (2) all five members
of the Cabal ; (3) Earls Craven and Holies (both of whom, we shall see,
used their personal influence to secure licences for ministers they knew), the
Earls of Bath, Bridgewater, and Anglesey ; as well as (4) Secretary Trevor,
Lord Newport, Sir John Duncomb, the Vice-Chamberlain, and the Master
of Ordnance. He is inclined, too, to credit Clifford and Shaftesbury with
being the main movers in the matter, though Bucks and Arlington heartily
agreed, and Lauderdale did not oppose.
160 Detailed and Expository
CHAPTER II
HOW THE INDULGENCE WAS BROUGHT INTO
WORKING ORDER
SOME of the documents contained in 320 show very clearly, though
indirectly, that a great deal of work was needed outside the Council, and
special Committee Meetings, before the Indulgence declared on March I $
could be brought into working order. They show, too, that the two
men who did most of this unofficial but highly practical work, were men
hitherto practically * nullities ' to the sober English historian. Indeed,
the one who did almost all is so little known that the < Dictionary of
National Biography' has not even admitted his name into its voluminous
pages I mean Dr. Nicholas Butler. The other, Colonel Thomas
Blood, is known well enough ; but only for his deeds of lawless daring,
so that he has been almost uniformly treated as a ' mere highwayman,'
after the type of Dick Turpin, or as a wild revolutionary, to be held by
all sober citizens as deserving only opprobrium and contempt. To
place them before the student of this period with something like historic
fairness and accuracy of detail, has not been an easy task. The first
had to be recovered from scattered allusions in contemporary docu-
ments, which show him to have been a man of singular abilities and of
very mixed character, presenting a psychologic problem not easy to
solve. And the second original research has shown to be possessed of
aims and ideals which were largely lofty and unselfish, and leads the
candid student to regard him as a Reformer spoiled in the making, a
knight errant of civil and religious liberty, by ruthless oppression turned
into an Ishmael, until an erratic outburst of Royal favour restored him
to his more natural role of a protector of the weak and a champion of
the oppressed.
It appears that quite recently an American writer along independent
lines, and without any correspondence with the Editor, has arrived at
conclusions remarkably similar: so that there is some hope that Thomas
Blood may be reinstated in his rightful place in history, and his character
be vindicated from the aspersions which have wellnigh destroyed it.
I proceed, therefore, in each case first to sketch the man's career,
and then (from these documents), to point out the part he took in this
important task of giving the Indulgence practical efficiency and smooth
working.
NICHOLAS BUTLER.
The ' D r Butler ' of these Indulgence Documents up to the age of
forty-two was plain Mr. Butler, or 'Nicholas Butler Gent.' From
June 17, 1671, to September 30, 1680, he was M.D. of Cambridge, and
so ' D r Butler.' From September 30, 1680, he was Fellow of the Royal
College of Physicians; and from March, i68j, he was Sir Nicholas
The Indulgence Documents 161
Butler Kn l . He was born in 1626 or 1627.* Of his parentage and
place of birth, I have as yet no certain knowledge.
But on June 9, 1616, a Nicholas Butler was married at St. Vedast's,
in Foster Lane, to Margarett Ellett (Harleian Society's Reprint of
Register of St. Vedast's). Quite possibly this was our Nicholas Butler's
father. In which case our Nicholas will have been born twelve
years after their wedding, and was probably a native of the City of
London.
Twelve years after that, again, in other words, when our Nicholas
was twelve years old, a Nicholas Butler is registered (Foster's * Marriage
4 Licences ') as licensed to marry Margarett Jones, of the * Citty of West-
' minster.' Was that the second marriage of our Nicholas's father and
namesake ?
Twelve years later, again, he says of himself, that ' he was in a
'manner wholly taken off thoughts of self.' If that is a sincere piece
of his personal history it would mean that in 1652, when he was
twenty-four years of age, he was practically c converted.'
Was this (i) by the influence of Arthur Barham, who began his
ministry at St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, about this time, having been pre-
sented to the living by Sir John Langham ? It may have been, if
he was then living where we know he was living some ten years later,
viz., in Little St. Helen's, Bishopsgate. Or was it (2) on his marriage
to ' Dorothy,' who after a few years proved faithless, so that our Nicholas
Butler sought and obtained divorce from her 'causa adulterii'Pf
One thing is clear that in the Commonwealth period, probably
some time between 1650 (when he would have attained twenty-two
years of age) and 1658 or 1659, he was married to a lady whose Christian
name was Dorothy, but whose maiden surname is yet to be dis-
covered.
Another thing is plain also from the terms of the Petition he
addressed to the King in 1672, viz., that about the year 1660 he was
divorced from this wife, Dorothy. \
So far our information about c Nicholas Butler Gent. ' is very frag-
mentary, and much of it nebulous and conjectural. From the year
1664 onwards, however, we begin to deal with facts which have
definite documentary attestation.
In this year he received from Archbishop Sheldon a licence to
practise the art of medicine. By the courtesy of Mr. Jenkins, Librarian
of Lambeth Palace Library, I have secured a transcript of this Licence
as contained in Sheldon's Register, fol. 2Q2a,
* See his letter to Sir Joseph Williamson, written March 19, 1671-72, in which
he says (though indirectly) that he was forty-four years of age. The sentence is :
' Since I was 24 years, which now is 20 moe [more], I have beene in a manner wholly
' taken off thoughts of selfe, etc.' (S.P. Dom. Car. II., 304, 47). His epitaph allows
of any date between June 8, 7626, and June 7, 1627.
t Vide his Petition to the King for pardon for having ' married again, ' sent in
December, 1672.
Its preamble reads : ' The humble Petition of Nicholas Butler, Doctor in Physic
' Humbly Sheweth That your Petitioner having immediately after Your Ma ties Res-
1 tauration sued out a Divorce causa adulterii against Dorothy Butler his then
' wife, &c.'
II
1 62 Detailed and Expository
[Licence to Nicholas Butler.^
The following is a literal translation of the Latin original :
'On the 8th of October A.D. 1664 (through the same venerable
personage) [/.*., Sir* Richard Chaworth, Knight, Doctor of" Laws,
Vicar-General in "spirituals"] a Licence was granted to Nicholas
Butler " professor in medicine " to practise the art of medicine, he
having first subscribed the three articles mentioned in the Canon, and
after this method : viz 1 the first and third articles without qualification,
and of the second article the two former members of the same ; the oath
of the Supremacy of the King's Majesty having also been taken by him ;
the licence to last during his (the King's) good pleasure.'f
The * three articles ' are the articles first promulgated by Whitgift
and revived by Bancroft when he drew up the Book of Canons (141 in
number), which were passed by both Houses of Convocation and ratified
by the King's letters patent under his great seal in 1603 (i James I.),
which every one had to subscribe, before he could receive office by
authority of the Bishops or Archbishops of the Church of England i.e.,
before any clergyman could be ordained to the ministry, any person could
be licensed to teach school or to practise ' physick.' But the second
c member ' of the second article, by its nature can apply only to clergy in
their public ministry as teachers and preachers.
'The three articles * are as follows (Neal's ' History of the Puritans,'
Vol. L, p. 414) :
4 (i) That the King's majesty is the supreme head and governor of
this realm, as well in all spiritual and ecclesiastical, as temporal causes ;
(2) that the Book of Common Prayer &c. contains nothing contrary to
the word of God, and that he will use it and no other ; (3) that he
alloweth the thirty-nine articles of 1562, to be all and everyone of them
agreeable to the word of God.'
The thing to note specially in connection with this licence to practise
physick is that by applying for it and accepting it from the Archbishop,
and by signing those three articles, Nicholas Butler declared himself a
faithful and conformable member of the Church of England, as by law
established ; and negatively it is proved incontestably that he was not, at
this time at any rate, a Nonconformist, whether Protestant (as a
Puritan) or Papist (as a Roman Catholic Recusant).
What we do not (as yet) know, is how and where he ' qualified ' so
as to become a ' professor in medicine.'
On May 4, 1665, we find that Margaret, daughter of Nicholas
Butler, was buried in St. Paul's, Covent Garden. Margaret was the
Christian name of the second wife of Nicholas Butler sen r . So that this
Margaret was probably a sister of our Nicholas Butler.
* Richard Chaworth of Richmond, Surrey, was knighted at Whitehall, Dec. 18, 1663.
t The Latin text is as follows : ' Octavo die mensis Octobris Anno Dni 1664 per
eundem venerabilem virum concessa fuit Licentia Nicholao Butler in medicinis pro-
fessori ad practicand artem medicinae subscriptis prius per eum tribus articulis in
Canone menconatis et in hunc modum viz* primo et tertio articulis integris et secundi
articuli duobus prioribus membris proestitoque per eum juramento supremitatis
Regiae Majestatis et ad beneplacitum duratur.' (The 'venerabilis vir ' is ' dominus
Richardus Chaworth miles legum Doctor, Vicarius in spiritualibus generalis.')
The Indulgence Documents 163
This is the year, of course, in which London was visited by the
Great Plague. Margaret Butler may have been one of its earliest victims ;
though its presence in the city was not positively recognized till the end
of June or the beginning of July. When its presence was recognized,
however, Nicholas Butler behaved with signal courage and benevolence.
He was one of the few qualified doctors who stayed in the plague-stricken
city all through this awful visitation, risking his own life to save that of his
panic-stricken fellow-citizens. What Dr. Chippendale says in his book-
let, entitled ' A Medical Roll of Honour : Physicians and Surgeons who
< remained in London during the Great Plague,' is worth quotation :
* When the Great Plague of 1665 occurred in London there was a
general stampede of all who could leave the City. The exodus included
those to whom the distressed inhabitants naturally turned for help,
namely, the clergy and the doctors; and the panic-stricken inhabitants
were left largely in the hands of irregular practitioners in both profes-
sions.' [A curious description, by the way, of Nonconformist ministers !]
* The medical refugees included men of high reputation and great
wealth, among them one at least whose name is a household word in the
annals of medicine. All the officers of the College of Physicians, led by
their President, fled ; to find, on their return, that their college had been
broken into and the college coffers emptied. How many medical men
remained at their posts is not accurately known. There were not many.
Apparently not more than twenty-five. Not a large number to minister
to the medical needs of a population estimated at 240,000 and in a time
of pestilence. No list has been preserved of this small band of heroes.
A study of contemporary literature, however, and an examination of
valuable MSS. in the Guildhall Library, most kindly transcribed by
M r Edward M. Borrajo, the City Librarian, has enabled the compilation
of the following list, which, however, cannot pretend to be more than
an approach to completeness :
4 1. Physicians. (i) Allen Thomas, M.D. ; (2) D r Thomas
Wharton ; (3) Sir Thomas Witherley ; (4) D r Nicholas Davy ;
(5) D r Edward Deantry.
'II. Surgeons. (i) John Fife; (2) Thomas Gray; (3) Edward
Hannam ; (4) Edward Higgs.'
Nicholas Butler is one whose name should appear upon this honour-
able roll, for he not only remained throughout the Plague to give his
medical help to those who so sorely needed it, on the ordinary terms of
remuneration then current for those who were licensed (as properly
qualified) to practise the art of medicine; but he gave his services
gratis, and not only prescribed, but dispensed and distributed medicines,
to many hundreds daily of those too poor to pay him any fee what-
ever. This we know on the testimony of many citizens, who were
qualified by personal knowledge of him and his work to certify the
facts, as well as on the personal certificate of the Mayor of the City of
London in that year. These citizens were all parishioners of St. Helen's,
Bishopsgate, where we know Nicholas Butler himself was residing some
four or five years later, and where he was probably residing in this
fateful year, 1665.
The part the Mayor himself played, too, was so simply heroic that
1 64 Detailed and Expository
it deserves special record, and is of" peculiar interest to us, as qualifying
him to give first-hand testimony to Nicholas Butler's work at this time.
Cox (' Annals of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate,' p. 324), says of him : ' Sir
' John Lawrence kept his Mayoralty at his house in Great St. Helen's,
' and continued in the Metropolis during the whole of the time of the
' Great Plague. He sat constantly as a magistrate, heard complaints and
'redressed them, enforced the wisest regulations then known respecting
* the prevention of the pestilent contagion, and saw them executed him-
4 self; appointed physicians and surgeons for the relief of the diseased
' poor ; and particularly requested the College of Physicians to publish
* directions for chief remedies for the poor in all circumstances of the dis-
* temper. This was done by a consultation of the whole College, and
4 copies given gratis to all who desired it. The day after the disease was
* known with certainty to be the plague, above 40,000 servants were dis-
' missed and turned into the streets to perish ; for no one would receive
' them into their houses, and the villages near London drove them away
4 with pitchforks and firearms. Sir John Lawrence supported them all,
' as well as the needy who were sick, at first by expending his own fortune
' till subscriptions could be solicited and received from all parts of the
' nation.'
It is he (Sir John Lawrence), who gives the weight of his high
authority to the testimony of seven citizens of London (three of whom
lived in St. Helen's parish), concerning the skilled and gratuitous
services of Nicholas Butler.
That testimony is preserved in the Public Record Office as S. P. Dom.
Car. II. 273, 66 I., and reads as follows :
'Wee whose names are subscribed Inhabitants of the Citty of
London, doe hereby Certifie, That Nicholas Butler, gentleman, prac-
ticoner in physick, did reside in the parish of St. Helen's London in the
year 1665 all the tyme of the visitation ; when almost all other Physicians
retired into the Countrey : And, during that great mortality, did admit
a free access of all sorts of persons to him, both for themselves and
others sick of the plague ; to whom he did freely administer physick &
medicines without receiving any reward or compensation for the same.
By which meanes, we doe upon credible grounds believe that great
numbers of people were restored & recovered from that dangerous
contagion.
'Dated i8 th February, 1669.
[Autograph signatures] :
4 HEN. WHITTINGHM . JOHN JOLLIFFE. WM CARBONNEL.
'JAMES ALLEN. BENIAMIN ALBYN. JACOB GOSSELIN.
' THOMAS ALDWORTH.'
And immediately following is the certificate of the Lord Mayor :
' I doe Certifie that in the year 1665 being the tyme of my Mayoralty,
the matters above certified were then reported and affirmed to me for
The Indulgence Documents 165
truth by some of the persons above named ; to whom I then did, and
still doe give full credit.
* Feb. the 21 st , 1669.
' JN LAWRENCE.'*
The first three and the fifth of the signatories, we know, were
resident in the parish of St. Helen's as well as Sir John Lawrence him-
self. As above hinted (by Cox), the last resided in a mansion within
Great St. Helen's, which was built under the supervision of Inigo Jones,
the front of which remains to the present day much the same as during
his Mayoralty.
Henry Whittingham, who died 1673, remembered his poorer fellow-
parishioners in his will in these terms : ' I give and bequeathe unto the
* poor of the parish of St. Helen's where I do dwell & have long lived
* the sum of 25 &c.'
James Allen was a native of the parish, who (as the Parish Register
testifies) was baptized in St. Helen's Church in 1689,38 'son of Richard
' Allen, Merchant Taylor, and Jane his wife.' His first marriage (to
Mary) must have been celebrated elsewhere, but the baptism of his
eldest son is recorded in the Parish Register in 1644, as 'James Allen,
'son of James Allen (haberdasher) & Mary his wife.' His marriage to
his second wife was celebrated in St. Helen's in 1657, anc ^ ^ s recorded
in this unusual form :
'James Allen of St. Helen's widower and Joan Barker widow, pub-
'lished in the Leadenhall Market II, 14, and 16 . . . married by
' M r Barham our minister.'
He continued to live in the parish till his death, which took place
December, 1682, and he was buried in the churchyard. The burial is
entered in the Parish Register, 1682, December 4 : ' James Allen in the
' Churchyard on the North side of M r Pember's tomb.'
Thomas Aldworth is referred to in the Parish Records as Deputy
Thomas Aldworth, inhabited a leasehold house in St. Helen's parish,
and died in 1670 or 1671 ; as we find ' M rs Aldworth, widow of Deputy
' Aldworth, asking a renewal of her husband's lease for life' in 1671.
In the Parish Register he is described as ' Thomas Aldworth plumber,'
one son being buried in 1656, and another who survived him being
buried in 1681 'by his father.'
Of Benjamin Albyn there are two mentions in the Parish Register :
one of the burial in 1661 of ' M r Albyn's child,' 'by the pew doore';
* We have collateral information, showing the respectability of three of the
above-named in a Hearth Roll for London for 1663 (Hf)- In Bishopsgate Ward :
' ST. HELLEN'S PARISH.
s. d.
' S r John Lawrence ... ... ... 26 ... 3 18 o
' Henry Whittingham ... ... ... 14 ...220
1 Thomas Aldworth ... ... ... 8 ... i 4 o'
A house rated on 26 Hearths must have been ' a noble mansion ' ; one like Henry
Whittingham's, rated on 14, was a ' mansion-house ' ; and one like Thomas Aid-
worth's, with 8, was a ' goodly dwelling-house.'
1 66 Detailed and Expository
and the other of the burial of Mr. Albyn himself, on May 27, 1676,
* Beniamin Albin in M r Kerwin's Vault.'
Jacob Gosselin, I learn from Rev. A. Gordon, was a clergyman who
distinguished himself as one of the prosecutors of Reeve and Muggleton
for blasphemy.
Supported by the testimony of such respectable and responsible
citizens, we may then accept as true his own account, contained in the
preamble of a Petition he presented to the King in this same year, 1669
(towards its close*), which reads as follows :
To the King's most Excell' Ma tie .
'The humble Petition of Nicholas Butler Gent
' Sheweth
' That your Pet r hath been for divers yeares a practitioner of Physick
licenced thereunto by y e Lord Arch-BPP of Canterbury. That all along
y e time of ye late dreadfull Pestilence he constantly kept his abode in y e
Citty of London, and (beside other patients of better quality) for some
Months together gave Physick gratis, to betwixt two and three hundred
of y e meaner sort in a day, very few (God so blessed his Endeavours)
Miscarrying under his hands as by the annexed Certificate may more
fully appeared
It is natural to suppose that at this time he would form the acquaint-
ance and even the friendship of several of the Nonconformist ministers
resident in London. For the regular clergy acted as did the qualified
physicians and surgeons, and the < irregular practitioners ' heroically
stepped in to take their place and supply their lack of spiritual service.
In the striking words of Cox (' Annals of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate ') :
4 Under these dreadful circumstances the citizens were deserted by
their parochial ministers : but the Nonconformist ministers, considering
it their indispensable duty, though contrary to law, repaired to the
deserted pulpits, where the ministers were often compelled to clamber
over the pews to get at the pulpits.'
The following were notable among this noble band Mr. Thomas
Vincent (ejected from Milk Street) ; John Jackson (of St. Benet's, Paul's
Wharf) ; Mr. John Chester, who had been driven from Witherley, in
Leicestershire, and was living in Southwark ; young James Janeway, of
Rotherhithe ; Robert Franklyn (from Westhall, Suffolk) ; John Turner
(now living in Fetter Lane, who had come into the City from Sunbury,
in Middlesex) ; and Mr. Grimes, whose true name was Robert
Chambers, who had been associated with Blood in his attempt upon the
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland and Dublin Castle, and had adopted the
alias of Grimes to shelter him in his retreat to the City of London.
Of the four years following this spell of special and self-denying
work amongst the plague- stricken, we have no special information. He
was residing in Little St. Helen's . and pursuing his profession as a
4 practitioner in physick.' But he is not satisfied with the emoluments
* Preserved in the Record Office as S.P. Dom. Car. II. 273, 66, and described in
the side-fold as ' The Peticon of Nicholas Butler, Gent/
The Indulgence Documents 167
of an ordinary 'practitioner,' and towards the close of 1669 or tne
beginning of 1670 (N. S.), he petitions the King for the Degree of
M.D. by Royal Letters, in recognition of his special services at the time
of the plague. The preamble of that petition and the certificates which
accompanied I have already cited verbatim. The petition proper
reads as follows :
' The premisses consider'd the Pet r humbly prayes your Ma tie will
be pleas'd in token of your Ma ties gracious acceptance of that his Service,
and as a marke of yo r princely favour to Hono r him with your Mandamus
to y e Universitie of Cambridge for y e Degree of Doctor in Physick.
And your Pet r (as in Duty bound) shall ever pray &c.'
Nicholas Butler must have had some ' friend ' at Court, and, judging
by subsequent events, we should imagine that it must have been Joseph
Williamson, right-hand man of Sir Harry Bennett, who had just been
made Lord Arlington, and member of the inner Ministry or Cabal.
The strings are pulled successfully by his friends, and on March 15,
1669-70, a Royal Letter is sent by Arlington to the V ice-Chancellor of
Cambridge. It is preserved in S. P. Dom. E. B. 356, 2, and reads :
'CR
'M R BUTLER
' Trusty &c. Being well informed that our Trusty &c Nicholas
Butler Gent, hath for diverse yeares practised Physick in this Our City
of London w th great credit & success ; & legally Licensed thereunto; &
pticularly in y e time of y e late dreadfull pestilence w th great freedome
giving access to all & pticularly to many hundreds of y e meaner sorte
in a day gained reall esteeme & gave many Singular proofs of his know-
ledge & abilities that way. Wee have thought good in token of Our
Gracious acceptance of that his service, & as a marke of Our Royali
favour, hereby to Recomend him to you for y e degree of a Doctor in
Physick ; Willing & requiring you upon receipt of these Our Lres, all
dispensacons necessary being first granted, to conferre on him the said
Nicholas Butler, the sd degree of D r of Physick, w th out obliging him to
y e performance of any previous or subsequent exercises for y e same, &
w th exemption from all fees & paym ts for or in consideration of y e sd
degree ; Any law, Canon, Statute or Custome of that Our University, or
anything else to y e contrary notw th standing And soe &c
' Given &c Mar 15, 1669.
' By &c ARLINGTON
< To y e Vice Chancel^ of Camb:
' to bee comunicated to y e Convocation.'
The degree was granted as required ' per literas regias,' June 17, 1670.
But the degree of M.D. does not satisfy him. He follows up the
petition which had been so successful by another, asking 'Royali Letters'
to practise physic throughout England. It is preserved in S. P. Dom.
Car. II. 276, 241.
It is endorsed on the side-fold : ' The Peticon of Nicholas Butler.'
1 68 Detailed and Expository
' To the King's most Excell*
* The humble Peticon of Nicholas Butler Doctor in Physick
1 Sheweth
4 That whereas your Ma tie was graciously pleased in Consideration of
his abode in London during the late dreadfull Pestilence and his constant
administering of Physicke to all sorts of People who applied to him in
great numbers for it to give yo r Royall Letters bearing date the fifteenth
of March 1669-70 to the University of Cambridge for the Degree of
Doctor of Physicke
' Your Pet r most humbly prayes that yo r Ma tie will be pleased to
give him yo r License under your Signe Manuall for practiseing Physicke
throughout England
' And yo r Pet r shall ever pray &c.'
Whether the Royal Licence was given or not, does not appear by
any documents preserved in the Record Office. Why he needed it
when he had the Archiepiscopal licence to practise the art of medicine,
which would apply to the whole Province of Canterbury (if not to the
whole of England), I do not understand. Save that the publication of
such a licence in the Gazette might bring him more into public notice.
It is clear that he was of a restless and ambitious spirit, and it was
too evidently ' restless ambition/ as much as any sincere desire to further
the cause of the King, which led him into the important work we find
him doing later in the years 1671 and 1672 in connection with
the King's Indulgence to Nonconformists, and its actual working.
It may enable us to estimate his conduct more justly, perhaps, if we
first follow his career subsequent to this episode, which to us, of course,
is of central and vital interest.
One incident which belongs to the period of his active connection
with the working of the Indulgence, but which had no relation with
it, has yet a vital bearing on his personal career and domestic life.
I refer to a Petition he addressed to the King for pardon for marrying a
second wife during the life of his first. He had married again, as we have
seen already, because his first wife was divorced from him for infidelity.
We learn from it that his first wife's name was ' Dorothy ' and that
his second wife was a widow, by name Mistress Jane Stephens.
The Petition is drawn up in the handwriting of Francis Benson, Sir
Joseph Williamson's chief clerk. It is calendared S. P. Dom. Car. II.
317, 117 ; and is endorsed on the side-fold by Sir Joseph himself, c Dr.
* Butler.' It reads :
* To the King's most Excellent Ma tie ,
' The humble Petition of Nicholas Butler Doctor in Physick
Humbly Sheweth
4 That your Petitioner having immediately after Your Ma ties happy
Restauration sued out a Divorce causa adulterii against Dorothy Butler
his then wife and having till this present time remained in that Con-
dition (he being satisfied in Conscience that by the Word of God it
was lawful for him to marry againe during the life of his former wife,
and also finding several examples formerly, as well as in the case of the
Lord Ross) hath upon sober deliberation consummated a marriage with
The Indulgence Documents 169
Jane Stephens Widdow, but finding that by the defect of the Laws
that he may meet with some disturbance as well as from Courts
Spirituall as Temporall
4 Your Petitioner therefore most humbly beggs that your Maty WO uld
be pleased to grant him your Pardon for his soe doing under your Create
Scale of England
* And your Petitioner as in duty bound shall ever pray,' etc.
This Petition was apparently accompanied by, or enclosed in, a letter
addressed direct to the ' Earle of Arlington.'
The terms of the letter suggest that this step had been suggested to
him either by the Earl of Arlington, or (more probably) by Sir Joseph
Williamson.
It seems that in the course of the transactions connected with the
Royal Indulgence which were rapidly raising him in the confidence
of the Whitehall authorities and making him a ' persona grata ' to the
King himself, some one had set rumours in circulation that he was not
legally married to his present wife, because a former wife (though
divorced from him) was still living. And these whispered slanders were
threatening his social status and that of his wife.
Brought to the ears of Arlington and mentioned by him to the King,
it would not be difficult to persuade the Merry Monarch (who was lax
himself as regards the amenities and moralities of married life) to promise
his pardon if the matter were brought before him in a judiciously worded
Petition duly introduced by his favourite Arlington.
So Dr. Nicholas Butler takes this course, forwarding his Petition to
the King in a covering letter to the Earl.
This letter is preserved as S. P. Dom. Car. II. 318 (207) ; en-
dorsed 'Dec. 1672 R.,' and addressed : 'For y e right Hon ble the Earle
' of Arlington.'
One very remarkable circumstance is that this is the only letter pre-
served, either in the Record Office or in the MS. Department of the British
Museum Library, which bears his signature in full ' Nicholas Butler.'
All others, which are signed at all, are signed only with the initial of
his Christian name ' N,' but in such a curious form that it looks more
like < J Butler ' (and so was taken by me to be the initial of the Christian
name 'John'). The form of the Letter is more like a very magnified
edition of the small letter ' n ' but with its second stroke not curved 2^
but straight and the second stroke of the ' N ' utilized as the firs:
stroke of the < B 'thus In nearly all the letters connected with
Charles's Indulgence, however, he signs in cypher : the cypher being a
crossed scrawl -^^^ which bears only the remotest resemblance to the
initial of his Christian name.
This letter of appeal to the Earl reads as follows :
'Decemb. y e u th 72
< Right Hon We
' I most humbly beg your pardon for this trouble as I must his
Majesties for what I have done ; & had I not received your honors
170 Detailed and Expository
promise y l my pardon should bee had I should not (have) adventured
I hope tis but veniall sin & soe ought not to meet with much difficulty.
I never promised anything to my selfe beyond this, though beefore I
had y e great happiness to know your honor I made it busines as I had
opportunity to serve my King.
* I leave my case with your honor & goodnes and rest as abundantly
obliged
* My lord, your honors for ever to pray for you,
4 NICHOLAS BUTLER.'
The plan pursued is eminently successful. The Petition which had
been drawn up in Arlington's office probably at Sir Joseph Williamson's
dictation, and certainly in the handwriting of his chief clerk (Francis
Benson) was no sooner presented to the King than it was granted,
and the Pardon was ordered or warranted by a formal instruction, sent
the same day (Dec. n, 1672) to the Attorney-General.
It is entered in S. P. Dom. E. B. 34, 211, in the following form :
<C. R.
DR. BUTLER. Our Will & Pleasure is &c to pass our Great
Scale of England containing Our gratious Pardon unto Nicholas Butler
Doctor in Physick for & concerning the marrying of Jane Stephens
during the life of Dorothy Butler his former wife heretofore causd
adulterii divorced by him, & of all Paines & Penalties, Convicons & For-
feitures whatsoever by reason thereof. With the restitution of Goods
& Chattells & all other Forfeitures. And also that you insert in the
same, a Special c non Obstante' to the Statute of i Jas. in that case
provided or to any other Statute to the Contrary & w ch shall be
requisite in this behalf with such other beneficiall Words & Clauses as
may render Our said Pardon most avayleable & effectuall unto him for
his soe doing & continuing soe
< For w* & c .
* Given &c 1 1 day of December '72.
* To OUR ATTURNEY
' GENERAL.'
Without doubt the actual Pardon would be forwarded to him with-
out delay ; and he would be able to mix with the fashionable society to
which his connections with Whitehall would naturally introduce
himself and his wife free from any anxiety from ill-natured and jealous
rivals.
How long he had been married to Jane Stephens does not appear
distinctly from any of these documents though it was twelve years
since he had been divorced from his first wife. His letter to Lord
Arlington certainly suggests that it could not have been long before.
There is one clause of his will which, read superficially, seems rather in-
consistent with what is implied in these documents. A second clause
in it seems to imply that his first wife was living at the time he made
his will and probably survived him. There is also an allusion in one of
The Indulgence Documents 171
his letters to Sir Joseph Williamson which gives us a ' limit ' as to the
date of the second marriage.
The first clause in his will which at first blush is confusing as to
dates reads as follows : c And whereas at my marryage with my now
' wife Dame Jane Butler I did enter into one recognizance or statute in
' nature of a Statute Staple taken and acknowledged before S r Francis
' North Kn l then Lord Cheife Justice of the Court of Cornon Pleas bear-
' ing date the 12 day of June 1676 by the name of Nicholas Butler then
4 Doctor of Phisick to Christopher Plucknell of Fulham gent Thomas
i Hassall and Tho. Lamb Citizens of London in the full sume of 2400
' of good English money payable as therein is menconed which was soe
' done by me for securing the performance of certaine articles made and
4 entered into by me with my said now wife or with some of her Relations
4 and Friends before our intermarriage.' The mention of the date 1676
as the date of the < recognizance ' or i Statute Staple ' entered into ' at '
his marriage with his now wife Dame Jane Butler, seems to fix this his
second marriage as having taken place in 1676 four years after his
Petition for the King's forgiveness and the issue of the King's Pardon
for his having * consummated ' it.
Yet surely the word < at ' must be interpreted very laxly as meaning
simply ' in connection with ' the * Recognizance ' having really been
entered into at the very least seven or eight years after it as he puts it
4 for the securing the performance of certain articles made and entered
' into by me with my said now wife, &c., before our intermarriage '
which must mean the Marriage Settlement which was made by him
as is usual just before the actual wedding. Though the 'recognizance'
therefore was dated June 12, 1676; the ' intermarryage ' with Jane
Stephens was long antecedent to this : and might have taken place at
any time between 1660 (the probable date of the divorce) and 1672 the
date of the issue of the King's Pardon.
The second clause in the will I referred to above is the very brief
one : * I give and devise unto Valentine Morley and Dorothy his wife
' each of them 55.' as supplemented by the first clause of the Codicil
' Item. My further will and mind is that if Dorothy Morley wife of
' Valentine Morley doe not accept of the yearly sume of ^3. 6. 8. in full
4 from my son and daughter Chauncey by vertue of their marryage
' Settlement,' &c.
The suggestion I make is that Valentine Morley is the man who had
seduced his wife Dorothy from her conjugal fidelity, and who (after
Nicholas Butler's divorce of her) had married her ; and that under threat
of making trouble over Nicholas Butler's second marriage while she was
still living, Nicholas Butler had made her an allowance to keep her
quiet that allowance being continued to her for life by arrangement with
his son-in-law, Mr. Chauncey.
The allusion in a letter of his to Sir Joseph Williamson, occurs
in the letter calendared as 320 (5). He is soliciting c liberty' (I
suppose release from imprisonment) for 'one Thomas King' and
explains that ' hee is a house carpenter married our chambormaid
* 3 years agoe,' etc. The phrase c our chambormaid ' certainly implies
IJ2 Detailed and Expository
that his present menage with his second wife at its head has lasted for
more than 3 years at the time of his writing. The letter is dated
March 27/72 ; ' 3 years ' would take us back to March, 1669. So that
at the very latest we may infer he had married the second time in 1668
and probably earlier. From the ' testamentary ' allusions, moreover, it
is a fairly sure inference that when he married a second time he married
' money ' ; and that M rs . Jane Stephens had a fair competence of her
own. This is borne out by the terms of her own will made seven years
after her husband's death.
However long or short a time they had been married, the
first sure trace of any children as the fruit of this second marriage is
given from two to three years after the ' Indulgence ' had been with-
drawn, and any active work in connection with it had ceased. We
know that Nicholas Butler was living in St. Helen's in 1665. He had
evidently been living there ever since. There is documentary proof
that he was living in Little St. Helen's in 1672. And in 1675-76 the
St. Helen's Parish Register records : ' 1675. Jan. 16. a female Child of
' D r . Butler bap.' By the way, it is a singular circumstance that the
child's ' Christian ' name is not given, the only name specially connected
with a * baptism ' or ' christening.' We can, however, with some con-
fidence, supply this lack of information. She must have been 'Jane,'
who at the age of 1 8 was married to Henry Chauncy, barrister. Foster
gives us this record. ' 1692 Dec. 16. Henry Chauncy of Middle
' Temple, Bachelor, 26 & Madam Jane Butler of Edmonton Middlesex,
'Spinster 18 consent of father Sir Nicholas Butler K l at St. Andrew
' Undershaft.'
If her baptism had been deferred three weeks or a month she would
have been born in December, 1674 : and so in December, 1692, might
fairly be described as ' 1 8.'
His friends at Court had evidently not dropped him : nor had he
failed to remind them of his continued existence and expectation of help
from the King, through them. I imagine that the King had refused to
give him Royal Letters for a roving licence 'to practise physicke through-
' out the Kingdome ' : and in his disappointment he had asked Sir Joseph
Williamson to help him. Sir Joseph moves for him and this time by
ivriting in his behalf to the President of the Royal College of Physicians.
The letter is preserved as S. P. Dom. E. B. 43, 102. It is copied
under the heading ' S r George Ent,' and reads :
' Whitehall 4 July 1676.
'S r , Will you please to remember a suite I made to you, and
through your hands to y e College in favour of my friend M r Butler for
a Lycence to practice Physicke within the Libertyes of y r Charter.
' This is the way I choose my friends should take in all occasions
rather then by any superior Interposition which in the little station I am
in I shall ever discountenance. I beg leave to renew my suite and that
I may have the assistance of y r authority in favour of my friend who will
attend you with this
< I am &c.
'J. W.'
The Indulgence Documents 173
Sir William had evidently either written Dr, Ent* or had called at
the Royal College of Physicians, sometime before : and thinks that by
personally presenting Sir Joseph's letter Dr. Nicholas Butler will be more
likely to gain his point.
We have no proof that the licence was granted. Probably they
were slow to issue 'licences,' except along the regular lines of * exercises'
presented or examinations held of the candidate for the privilege. And
the King had been unwilling to intervene by the 'Superior Inter-
' position ' of ' Royall Letters ' containing a ' Mandamus ' to the ' Royal
' College of Physicians ' as he had already done in 1670 to the University
of Cambridge.
For the next four years I have come upon no notice of Dr.
Butler. But in 1680 we have record of the baptism of another
daughter in St. Helen's Parish Church. The entry in the Parish
Register is :
' 1680. Sep. 28 Elizabeth da: of D r . Nicholas Butler & Jane his
' wife.'
Only two days later, we find the College of Physicians doing him
honour. We should like to know to what the move was due the con-
tinual ' dunning ' of the President and Fellows by his friend Sir Joseph
Williamson or a message at length secured from the King.
However it was brought about, the fact is thus recorded in Munk's
Roll of the Royal College of Physicians Vol. L, 409, under date 1680.
' Nicholas Butler M.D. A doctor of medicine of Cambridge (per Literas
' Regias) of iyth June 1670 : was admitted an Honorary Fellow of the
'College of Physicians 30 Sept r . 1680.'
One would have supposed that now that Dr. Butler had secured all
the prestige accruing to a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, he
would have largely increased his practice, and would be making a
fortune by the successful practice of his profession. It may, of course,
have been with this practical end in view that he sought and secured the
further honour of Knighthood. To many a successful physician a
'Knighthood' has proved a 'crowning mercy' in the direction of
securing him a more remunerative 'clientele' among the nobility and
aristocracy.
Subsequent events, however, and the curious description of his
status under which the honour of Knighthood is conferred upon him,
rather show that it was because he was contemplating the abandonment
of the ' healing art ' and entrance on the more remunerative role of a
civil servant of the Crown.
The honour is registered in Shaw's ' Knights Bachelors,' Vol. II.,
257. '1681-2 Mar. 2. Nicholas Butler of London merchant at
' Whitehall.'
His designation as ' merchant,' for a long time made me doubt the
* There is an interesting reference to Sir George Ent in Pepys' Diary. Under
date Jan. 22, 1665-66, he writes : ' The first meeting of Gresham College, since
' the plague. Dr. Goddard did fill us with talk, in defence of his and his fellow
4 physicians going out of town, in plague-time the . . . But what, among other fine
1 discourse pleased me most, was Sir G. Ent (F.R.S. and President of the College
' of Physicians) about Respiration &c. '
174 Detailed and Expository
identity of this Nicholas Butler with ours who, when licensed 'to
' practise the art of medicine,' was described as ' gent.' ; and when
admitted to an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians
was described as 'a doctor of medicine of Cambridge (per Literas
4 Regias).' But the discovery of two autograph letters written by Sir
Nicholas Butler in the MS. collections of the British Museum with
his < unmistakeable ' signature proved that what seemed so improbable
was the fact. It showed unmistakably that with the prospect opening
of a lucrative office under the government of Charles, Dr. Nicholas Butler
was ready at one stroke to 'shed' all the glories and honours of his
medical profession and pose as a London ' merchant.'
Possibly while carrying on the healing art he had carried on a
business as a ' chymist ' or as a wholesale and retail dealer in drugs, so
that this new description of ' merchant ' would not be wholly untrue to
the facts. Still it does not raise him in our estimation to find that con-
siderations of pecuniary and social gain should so easily lead him to
abandon the profession of a lifetime.
So it evidently was. He is still residing in Little St. Helen's
when he goes up to Whitehall, and is presented by his friend Arlington
to receive the honour of Knighthood from the King.
For on the birth of his last child and youngest daughter ' Angell,'
we find she is baptized in St. Helen's Parish Church.
'1682. Ap. ii. Angell da: of Sir Nicholas Butler Knt. & Jane
' his wife,' is the entry in the Parish Register which proudly records the
honour conferred on the father only five weeks before, as well as the last
addition to his family.
This same year, 1682, and in this same month of April, we find that
he is appointed to the lucrative post of a Commissioner of Customs. At
this time the Customs were < farmed ' as were the ' Taxes ' : and there
is little doubt that at this period there was a great deal of practical
peculation in both, nay in all, departments of Government.
As early as April 14 (three days after the ' christening ' of ' Angell ')
we have documentary evidence of his being already installed in the
active duties of his new office.
In the Kenyan MSS. under this date < 1682. April 14,' we find Sir
Nicholas Butler as one of the Commissioners of Customs, on the nomi-
nation of the Commissioners of the Treasury, appointing a ' waiter and
* searcher for the Isle of Wight.'
Nor does Sir Nicholas fail to improve his opportunities of securing
the personal favour of, and even intimacy with, the King and his
brother the Duke of York. We have proof, indeed, that by the next
year, 1683, he is in a position of confidence and influence with them,
and of consideration with all the members of the Court. In a letter
written by Sir Christopher Musgrave and Richard Traherne to Lord
Dartmouth (preserved in the Dartmouth MSS. Vol. III., p. 121), under
date August 27, 1683, the writers refer to Sir Nicholas in terms
implying all this. Lord Dartmouth's financial affairs had become very
involved, and in his absence from home on public naval service he had
The Indulgence Documents 175
committed them to the care of these two friends to do what they could
to reduce them to order and to solvency.
Lord Dartmouth is Admiral aboard the Grafton, and his friends are
writing to him to report progress. And they write thus : { Sir Nicholas
* Butler told us that he had spoken with the King and the Duke in
4 your favour, who have promised to make you easy in your fortune;
* upon which we asked him if that would be done before your return, he
4 believed not. So that your Lordship hath no greater assurance (as
' we conceive) than you had at parting.'
On October n, this same year, 1683, we find (Patents): 'The
< King Giveth unto S r John Worden & S? Nicholas Butler Knight
1 all sumes of mony reced from his Majesty or by his direction by Roger
' Whitley Esq. for Postage of Letters which ought to have gone free of
' Postage to have and Receive without account.'
And the following year we find a Patent appointing him (re-
appointing him, with four others) a Customs Commissioner, with a
salary of 1,200 a year :
< 36. Car. II.
' DUDLEY NORTH, \ to be commissioners for the manageing
* ANDREW NEWPORT, and causeing to be levyed and collected
* S R RICHARD TEMPLE, L the Customes, Subsidies, and other
4 S R GEORGE DOWNING, dutyes during pleasure. Sallary .1,200
' & NICHOLAS BUTLER, J by the yeare to every Commissioner.'
Ten months later, too, we find him giving counsel to Sir Richard
Temple, as a brother-Commissioner. The letter is preserved among
the Stowe MSS., in the MS. Department of the British Museum
Library (Vol. 554, f. 53). The body of the letter is apparently
written by his clerk, but it is signed with Sir Nicholas's unmistakable
signature.
It is written from London (LN), dated May 30, 1684, and
addressed : c To S r Richard Temple, Baronett, Kn 1 of the Bath, and
* one of the hono ble Com rs of his Ma ties Customes In Exon.'
It reads :
< 1684.
4 1 have yo rs of the thirtieth of the last month from Exon. As for
sending yo r Reporte of Southampton and Cows, if you bee not like to
return speedily you will doe well to send itt. But certainly it is for the
King and your owne Advantage to have it read and determined when
you are heere. As for your returne by Weymouth if you will take a
ffriends Advice I would Advise you to the Contrary for M r . Miller has
obtained his Habeas Corpus to be removed up hither to London, you
will be able to doe him more service (if there bee roome for it) by your
not goeing thither than if you did. You cannot now expect anything
from the Boord relating to Sanford, and I think you much derogate
from yo r selfe, when you seeme to think you ought to Act nothing but
as you receive direction from the Boord. The Kings Comission is your
176 Detailed and Expository
only direction unlesse you receive any further from the Lords of the
Treasury. There is noething appeares to me as yet relating to the state
of Penhalurick* but as you have in yo r letter sett forth to mee, therefore
in relation both to him and Mr. Miller it would doe well that you were
heere as soon as you could. There will bee a Peace abroade. But
Edinburgh must fall into the ffrench hands whether Peace or Warr.
<Iam S r
* Your Loving friend & humble Serv 1 ,
' LN 30 May 1684.'
Only a month later he is actively pressing the claims of a ' M r .
'Bankes' who, according to Sir Nicholas's putting of the case, has
suffered violence and injustice at the hands of the French.
Three letters of Lord Preston's give ample proof of the importance
attached by him to the position and influence of Sir Nicholas Butler.
[Lord Preston was at this time British Ambassador in Paris.]
They are all preserved in the House of Lords MSS.
1. The first is dated July 12, 1684. It is sent from Paris to his
cousin Jn Galme of Clifford's Inn. He writes :
' I pray you be pleased to present my most humble service to Sir
Nicholas Butler & to let him know that I received his letter of the
26th June last yesterday. . . . Therefore Sir N. B. and Mr. Banks
would do well to take care that his Majesty may be thoroughly
informed of the violence & injustice of the proceedings, & be pleased to
assure them that if any further orders come to me I shall take care to
execute them vigorously here.'
2. The second is addressed by Lord Preston direct to Sir N. Butler.
It is dated from Paris June 17, 1684, and he says :
* I did yesterday receive yours of the 2nd Inst. s.v. in which you are
pleased to recommend to me the affairs of Mr. Bankes. I had before
received his Majestys commands in it from my Lord of Sunderland, & I
have already prepared a memorial (a copy of which I have sent to my
Lord by this post) to be presented to his most Christian Majesty upon
that subject. You may be assured sir, that I shall not fail to endeavour
to obtain speedy satisfaction for Mr. Banks.'
3. The third was written nearly five months later. It is also
addressed to 'Sir N. Butler,' written from Paris. Nov. 4, 1684.
He says :
' I shall not fail to do all that lieth in my power in the affairs of M r .
Bankes, for besides the commands of the King, & the justice of the
cause, your recommendation of it must work much with me. I intend
to go the next week to Fontainebleau where I shall press the ministers
upon it ; & I shall endeavour to obtain as speedy an answer as I can.'
* Penhallurick is north of Stithyans and west of Gwennap, in the Falmouth dis-
trict of Cornwall, in Kirrier Hundred.
The Indulgence Documents 177
Was this Mr. Banks (Bankes) the son of Sir John Bankes (an
opulent merchant, with puritan sympathies) ? In August, 1676, some
eight years before this trouble, Evelyn tells us in his Diary under date
August 25 (1676), that he ' Din'd with Sir John Banks at his house in
' Lincoln's Inn Fields, on recommending Mr. Upman to be tutor to
4 his sonn going into France,' (adding ' This Sir John Banks was a
' merchant of small beginning, but had amass' d ioo,ooo/. J ). This
allusion may point to the commencement by the son of trade con-
nections with France ; and the troubles so indefinitely alluded to in
these letters may have concerned some high-handed interference of
French custom-house officers with merchandise of Sir John Banks's
son.
These letters bring us near the close of this section of Sir Nicholas
Butler's career, in which by his Knighthood and appointment to a
Commissioner of Customs, he was lifted into all the importance,
influence and perils of official life. Charles II. himself seems to have
received him well ; but the Duke of York had evidently taken even
greater notice of him. Indeed he seems to have seen in Sir Nicholas
traits of character which inclined him to judge he could take him into
more intimate confidence and use him in his service.
Indeed, I can scarcely resist the inference that he must have given
the Duke of York to understand that his Anglicanism was not < stiff'
enough to prevent him working with Papists, or serving the Duke with
devotion.
This, at any rate, is what happened when in the following year
Charles II. died, and the Duke of York succeeded to the throne as
James II.
Sir Nicholas Butler did not lose but gained influence, and seems to
have favoured rather than opposed all James's schemes for toleration of
non-Anglicans, and the elevation of Roman Catholics to places of
honour and trust. In May, 1686, four Roman Catholics were sworn
of the Privy Council, and a passage of great heat between himself and
the Earl of Rochester may well have arisen out of Sir Nicholas's
attitude of sympathy with James's policy. We are not informed of
the nature or occasion of the dispute. We only see its close in a very
undignified withdrawal from it by an abject apology and submission.
We have to bear in mind, of course, that the Earl of Rochester was
Lawrence Hyde, second son of the Earl of Clarendon, who inherited and
maintained a stout devotion to the Protestantism of the Church of
England ; had been created Earl of Rochester, December, 1682 ; had
been made President of the Council in 1684 ; and in 1684-85 was appointed
High Treasurer of the Exchequer. In the strong division of opinion
created by James II.'s growing bigotry, however, the Earl of
Rochester did not waver in his opposition to Roman Catholicism, and
in December of this year (1686) had the White Staff taken from him.
What then so likely as that in Sir Nicholas Butler's growing com-
pliance with James's policy and devotion to the King he should come to
high words with Rochester.
Sir Nicholas evidently could not defend his action, whatever it was,
12
178 Detailed and Expository
and in fear that he might lose with his colleagues more than he could
gain from the King, he wrote the letter which is preserved in the addi-
tional MSS., Vol. 15,894, in the British Museum Library MS. Depart-
ment. It is endorsed ' Petition to your LoPP.
'S-- Nicholas Butler, July ith, 1686.'
Written by his clerk, it is signed by Sir Nicholas. It must have
been composed under great agitation of mind : for while endorsed or
addressed ' Petition to your LoPP,' and headed ' The Humble Submission
' of S r Nicholas Butler Kn 1 ,' it is really a letter. It runs :
'To the R l Hon ble Laurence Earle of Rochester Lord High
' Treasurer of England.
' The Humble Submission of S r Nicholas Butler Knt.
' My Lord,
' I am very Sencible that I am Justly fallen under your Lordships
displeasure for my Undecent & ill behaviour towards your LordP when
I with the rest of the Comission rs wayted upon you last at the Treasury,
for which I am most heartily sorry. And humbly begg your LordP 5
pardon. And as my crime was publickly comitted (if your LordP
think fitt) I will as publickly make my submission And begg your
Pardon the first tyme I shall have the happinesse to wayte on your
LordP with the rest of the Comission r5 at y e Treasury Chamber. And
doe assure your LordP that for the future you shall have noe reason to
complaine of anything in the like nature.
' Yo r LordP 5 Most humble and most obedient Servant,
'July the ist, 1686.'
As events turned out, Sir Nicholas need not have been in such haste
to humiliate himself before the Earl, for the Earl's star was very rapidly
declining, and Sir Nicholas's was in the ascendant. Before the year 1686
was out, Rochester was degraded ; removed from his high office of ' Lord
' High Treasurer,' and in the course of the year following, Sir Nicholas
was admitted to the Privy Council.
Things were moving very swiftly now towards the restoration of
Roman Catholicism.
On April 4, James published his 'gracious declaration to all his
'loving subjects for Liberty of consciences,' which was only an excuse
for installing Papists in positions of trust and honour. And in October
more drastic steps were taken in this retrograde direction.
Preserved amongst the ' Montague House MSS.' is a letter from
John Smithsby to Mr. Antonie, dated October 21, 1687, in which he
writes :
' His Majesty since his return from his Progress hath removed most
' of the Aldermen of the City of London, and most of the Assis-
' tants of the several Companies, most of [those] which are brought in
'their places were formerly turned out for Nonconformity. Duke
The Indulgence Documents 179
* Hamilton and Sir Nicholas Butler were sworn t'other day of the Privy
< Council.' The Duke of Hamilton was a pronounced Papist. That
Sir Nicholas should have < gone in ' with him is incredible, if he had not
been more Papist than anything else.
On November 9, we come upon a rumour, which proved unfounded,
that Sir Nicholas was to be made a Peer. It is in a letter, preserved
in the House of Lords MSS., written by Dr. W. Denton to Sir R.
Verney. Dr. Denton writes : ' I hear that Baron Wem is to be your
4 Lord Lieutenant, and that Sir Nicholas Butler shall be Baron
* Edmonton and Viscount Boon.'
Though the rumour proved unfounded, however, it serves to give us
a point of light on his domestic history. Up to 1682 we know he
continued to live in Little St. Helen's, Bishopsgate. This reference to
Edmonton as the place from which he would name his Peerage, if he
obtained it, shows that he had probably resided there some time. We
know that Edmonton was his home from this time to his death in 1700,
and that his widow continued to reside there till her own.
Two days after the date of this letter, Father Edward Petre, the
King's private Confessor, was sworn of the Privy Council. So that
the year 1687 closes with Sir Nicholas established in the confidence of
James II., and working in harmony with the Popish party. A
casual reference to him in Bishop Burnet's c Life and Times ' confirms
this view of his position. The allusion occurs in a passage,* quoted
from ' The Life of King James II.,' in which it is said of the Earl of
Sunderland, ' He would often try the ford by his secret agents, as sir
4 Nicholas Butler, M r . Lob, even Father Petre himself, that he might
4 seem only not to oppose those dangerous methods which had their true
* origin from him alone.'
In the month of November (1687) 'The Earle of Sunderland pro-
* cures a Pardon & dispensation to Sir Nicholas Butler K nt for acting
* contrary to, or omitting to do what is enjoined by several Statutes ' ;
andHn February of the following year 1687-88, 'A Constitution of Sir
' Nicholas Butler Kn l ' is issued * to be a Commissioner of Customs with a
4 Clause of Dispensation usually inserted in Commissions of the Peace,'
while in October of the same year, a special Pardon is granted to
Sir Nicholas Butler. fAll these are extracted from the * Lords'
< Journals,' XIV., 394.]"
It is a little puzzling to know why the Pardon and dispensation are
needed by him, as well as a reappointment to the office of Commissioner
of the Customs which he had held so long. Except it be this, that in
1682 he was appointed as an orthodox Anglican, and had subscribed the
4 Three Articles ' as a conformable member of the Church of England
as by law established, but that when sworn ' member ' of the Privy
Council, he had declared himself willing to receive * fresh light ' on the
subject of religion from the Priests of the Roman Catholic Church, and
had asked to be reappointed Commissioner of Customs as one who was
now loath to subscribe, as required by the Oxford Act, and claimed
dispensation under James's Declaration of Indulgence.
* Vol. III., p. 249, note *.
122
i8o Detailed and Expository
If so, it certainly could not have been as a Protestant Noncon-
formist, but as one who was more than half persuaded to become a
Papist. And this, at least, is clear that he was pledging himself more and
more deeply to James and his cause, in face of the growing feeling in
favour of the Prince of Orange.
When William actually landed, and made such rapid progress, it is
clear Sir Nicholas knows scarcely what to do, and when James's cause
has become practically hopeless, he seems to have been seized with
panic- fear, lest by his reconstituted office he should be treated as an
enemy, and at the end of November he throws up all the offices he
holds by special favour of James.
For in a news-letter of November 29, 1688, preserved in the
Fleming MSS., and repeated in the Kenyon MSS., the facts are
laconically announced : * Prince of Orange at Crewkerne D r . Oates
'dead Sir Nicholas Butler has laid down his places' (or 'all his
< places ').
With the final flight of James II. from Whitehall on December 23,
1688, and the establishment of William and the English Court around
him in January, 1689, Sir Nicholas with startling suddenness abandons
the cause of James, and tries to begin again. As we learn from a letter
in the Leeds MSS., dated January 16, 1689, addressed by Sir Nicholas
to the Earl of Danby, he freely and eagerly tends his proffers of service
to the Prince.
In accordance with a very natural wish, on the part of William, to
detach from James's party all who showed any signs of wavering, and to
attach to himself as many influential English subjects as he can, he appears
rather to have encouraged than repulsed Sir Nicholas. Only a month
after the proclamation of William and Mary as King and Queen, we
find that William III. puts Sir Nicholas Butler, Knt. (of Edmonton), on
the first Commission of a Lieutenancy of London,* and he is appointed
as one of those whose presence was necessary to make a Court. This
shows that, while his case may have been thought to be a suspicious and
doubtful one, his social and previous official positions were thought by
Danby of sufficient importance to make it worth while to pledge him
by office to the new regime.
The plan seems to have been scarcely successful, or perhaps we
ought to say that Sir Nicholas was too deeply pledged to the Jacobite
party for them to allow him to shake himself free of them all at once,
or for him to have given up all hopes of James's return. In the course
of the next twelve months, at any rate, he seems to have found his
position so far from secure in England, or to have conceived that he
might be able so really to serve his old friends on the other side the
Channel, that he crossed to Holland, remaining there for the winter of
1689 and 1690; and did not return to England till May or June, 1690.
The exact dates and periods are conjectural, but the main facts are
* In the ' Lords' Journals,' under date May 2, 1690, is a paper headed ' Names of
'the Lieutenancy of London. No. i Commission of 19 Mar., 1688-89, Sir Nicholas
* Butler Q ' the ' Q ' signifying that he was one of those whose presence was neces-
sary to make a Quorum. This was William III.'s first Commission.
The Indulgence Documents 181
clearly enough implied in a letter from the Earl of Portland to King
William.
The Earl is the British Ambassador or Plenipotentiary at The
Hague ('La Haye'), and writes to the King in a letter calendared
<S. P. Dom. King William's Chest ' (Vol. VI., 124), signed; 4 Portland,'
and dated ' de la Haye, ce 1 5 Febvrier, '90.' . . . ' My L d Sunderland
' n'a pas este ici . . . S r Nic s Butler a demande a me voir men(e)crivant
' quil avoit a me parler des choses que je servis bien aise dentendre.
* ... mais il ne me dit rien sinon quil couliussoit* de retourner en
* Angleterre et quil vous servisoit fidelement pretendant estre ignorant
' de tout ce qui a estoit passe.'
What exactly had taken place in these months is difficult to say, but
there are hints in some of the Treasury Papers that it may have had to
do with his conduct as one of the Commissioners of Customs : that
complaints had been lodged against the Customs Board of James's reign,
and that Sir Nicholas was implicated in the conduct of which complaint
was made. Or it may have been that suspicions had been raised that
he was concerned in some of the plots which had been unearthed and
shattered for bringing James back. Here are the papers bearing on
the point :
The first is ' Cal. Treasury Papers' (Vol. VII., 20), 'Report of
'Richard Hutchinson, Esq., on an allegation by Chr. Fawthorpe.'
Jan. 1 8., 1689-90.
' His report is that he was not prosecuted about penal laws and tests
'nor by Sir Nicholas Butler particularly, but by order of the whole
< Board for on landing t certain parcels of tobacco on which he forfeited
'6oo/. . . . Dated 18 Jan. 1689.' [NOTE. ' The King will not
4 forgive it.']
The second is ' Cal. Treasury Papers ' (Vol. VIL, 41) : ' Memorial of
' M r John Lithered to the Lords of the Treasury, attacking the
' Commissioners of Customs with M r Hough who had been tampering
4 with persons who were criminals in that affair, as well as himself (M r
* Hough) ... as self-interested as M r Wells, the officer at Sandwich,
' or as Sir Nicholas Butler, when a Com r of Customs : and suspects
' there are some of the same kidney as the Honorable Board.' [Agent
at Dunkirk for the late King James.]
It was about this time that James had gone to Ireland with a fleet
and an army (aided by the French) to attempt to capture Ireland as a
base for the recovery of England; and it was in April, 1690, that
William took command of the English Army to oppose and crush
James. Mary he left with full powers as Queen of England. It was
apparently at this time, while William was absent in Ireland, that Sir
Nicholas ventured to return to England. Yet it was only to be arrested
immediately and imprisoned in Newgate ; and the documentary proof
of this is the interesting entry of a warrant under the seal of
' Maria Regina,' entered in ' S. P. Dom. Warrant Book ' (XXXV.,
p. 290) :
* ? From coulissier, ' to frequent the coulisse make secret arrangements.'
f Old form for ' unlanding,' an intensive form like ' unloosing.'
Detailed and Expository
' Abell Alley
to attend upon
S r Nicholas
Butler.
It is her Majty 5 Pleasure that Abell Alley be permitted
to attend upon S r Nicholas Butler a Prisoner in your
Custody provided that he be confined with him.
* Given at y e Court at Whitehall
ye 271*1 ) a y of June 1690.
' NOTTINGHAM.
* To Major Richardson
' Keeper of Newgate/
With the victory of the Boyne in July, James's cause was finally
destroyed, and suspects were released, among them Sir Nicholas Butler.
The date of that release I have not traced. He seems to have
settled down to a quiet life at Edmonton ; and the following year,
1692, his daughter Jane is married to Henry Chauncy, barrister of the
Middle Temple.
Foster has preserved the Licence :
' 1692, Dec. 1 6. Henry Chauncy of Middle Temple, Bachelor,
26 ; & Madam Jane Butler of Edmonton, Middlesex, Spinster, 18.
consent of (the) father Sir Nicholas Butler, Kn l , at St. Andrew Under-
shaft (Lombard St.).'
My inference that Sir Nicholas had been released and was living in
retirement in Edmonton is, however, rather rudely challenged by the
next document bearing upon his career.
It refers to the beginning of the year 1697-98, full four years after
his daughter's marriage ; but it is dated 1703.
It is preserved in the MSS. of the House of Lords, and numbered
1,900 :
' 15 Feb. I7of. List of persons who had licences in the reign of
William III. to return to England, upon the Act* of Dec. 1697 to
prevent correspondence with the late King James, the warrants being
countersigned by the late M r Secretary Vernon.f
4 169! J an - 2 5- Sir Nicholas Butler.'
This certainly seems to imply that Sir Nicholas Butler was in
France in 1697. How long he had been there does not appear. So
that he might have been at home ifor some time after his daughter's
marriage, and become implicated in some further Jacobite designs
requiring his presence in France. All this is pure conjecture, which
may be quite baseless.
After all the turmoil of the last ten years, and on the appearance of
international settlement by the Peace of Ryswick, Sir Nicholas appears
to have made up his mind to retire from public life, and make arrange-
* It had been preceded by a Proclamation, issued November 2, ' for apprehend-
' ing his Majesty's Subjects who should return from France without Licence. '
f Who replaced Mr. Secretary Trumbull on December 5.
The Indulgence Documents 183
ments for the future. And on July 5, 1699^ he made his will, as
follows :
4 [Somerset House : Noel. 125.]
< [1 Dni Nicholai Butler Militis.]
* I S r Nicholas Butler of Edmonton in the County of Middx
Kn* being in perfect health of body and of sound mind memory and
understanding (praised be Almighty God for the same) doe here make
my last Will and Testament humbly comending my soule to God and
my body to be decently buryed in such manner as I shall hereinafter
direct and whereas I have by Indenture bearing date the fourth day of
July in the present yeare 1699 limited setled and disposed of severall
Messuages Farmes Lands and Hereditaments therein menconed and
comprised upon such trusts ends intents and purposes as are therein
expressed and declared. My will and mind is that the said Settlement
soe made by me as afores d shall stand ratifyed and confirmed. And I
doe hereby establish and affirme the same (except one Farme of Child*
which I gave for ever to my daughter Chauncy) after my death. And
whereas at my marryage with my now wife Dame Jane Butler I did
enter into one recognizance or statute in nature of a Statute Staple taken
and acknowledged before S r Francis North Kn l then Lord Cheife
Justice of the Court of C onion Pleas bearing date the I2th day of June
1676 by the name of Nicholas Butler then Doctor in Phisicke to Chris-
topher Plucknell of Fulham gent Thomas Hassall and Tho Lamb
Citizens of London in the full sume of ^2400 of good English money
payable as therein is menconed which was soe done by me for securing
the performance of certaine articles made and entred into by me with
my said now wife or with some of her Relations and Friends before our
inter marryage. Now my will is that my said loving Wife shall in the
first place after my decease and after all my funerall charges and debts
paid and satisfyed receive and take to her owne proper use out of my
personall estate all such sume and sumes of money as are and ought to
be paid unto her by the said Articles.
c And my will and mind is that the said Articles shall in all partes
thereof be performed and made good to my s d wife. And after full
satisfaction made to my said wife and full payments of my debts.
' I give and devise unto Valentine Morley and Dorothy his wife
each of them 5/.
c And unto . . . Filkins and his Wife Jane each 5/.
'And unto Will: Stasmore and his Wife Mary each 5/.
' And I give unto my 3 Grandsons Henry Butler and Nicholas
Chauncy each of them ^20.
4 My mind and will is that my Children and their Husbands and my
Grandchildren which are by the Children of this said Wife have each of
them ^5 each for mourning.
* My mind and will is that I be decently buryed in the night
without any Eschutchions in the Chancell in parish Church of Edmonton
and none to be at my frunerall but my owne ffamily which I require to
be punctually performed.
* ? Child's Hill, Hampstead.
184 Detailed and Expository
* And I make my deare wife Dame Jane Butler my sole Executrix
of this my last Will and Testament revokeing hereby all former Wills.
July 5th j6 99>
<N: BUTLER.
* Signed & sealed & declared in presence of
* WILLIAM HOCKER
* JOSEPH CART
<MARMADUKE CONWAY
' [Codicil to Will.]
* Item my further will and mind is that if Dorothy Morley wife
of Valentine Morley doe not accept of the yearely sume of ^3 .6.8.
in full from my son and daughter Chauncey by vertue of their marryage
Settlement That then what I have charged upon my daughter Angell
Butler in a Deed of Settlement beareing date 4 July 1699 which is the
sume of 3 . 6 . 8 to be paid to Dorothy Morley shall not be paid to her,
but shall be paid to my son and daughter Chauncey and their Heires
during the life of the said Dorothy Morley. And as on the other side I
make my deare Wife Dame Jane Butler my whole and sole executrix
of this my last Will and Testament this 5th day of July 1699, whereas
there is an interlineing on the other side betwixt the I2th & I3th lyne
in my owne handwriting and my will to be strictly performed.
<N. BUTLER.
* Signed sealed & delivered in the presence of
' WILLIAM HOCKER
'JOSEPH CART
4 MARMADUKE CONWAY.'
The indentures and settlement referred to in the Will, it will be
observed, were made the day before the Will, so that these three
Instruments were evidently intended to be a final settlement of all his
temporal affairs.
If the preamble of the Will were true that at the time Sir Nicholas
was * in perfect health ' of body, he did not remain so long.
Not twelve months elapsed before it had been proved by ' Jane Butler
* relict & executrix' viz., on June 26: A.D. 1700.
Its exact date is given in his epitaph- as preserved by W. Robinson.
In his 'History of Edmonton,' published in 1819 (p. 107), he cites it as
* On a black marble slab in the pavement within the chancel ' :
' Here lyeth the Body of | S R NICHOLAS BURLER, of this parish
Knt. died June 8 th A.D. 1700 | in the 74th year of his Age
And also the Body of Dame Jane | his Wife, who deparated
this life | y e 27 th day of April 1707. Aged 67 years.'
Two palpable mistakes (probably misprints) ' Burler ' for ' Butler ',
and ' deparated ' for ' departed ' make the exact accuracy of Robinson's
transcript a little doubtful. The entry of Sir Nicholas's burial in the
Parish Register, and the date of the proving of the Will by his widow,
are both so naturally consistent with the date given for his death in the
epitaph, that we may safely accept it as accurate.
The Indulgence Documents 185
The entry of the Burial reads : '1700 | June | 13 S^ Nich: Butler,'
which is five days after the date of the death ; and the date of the
Probate is 'the 26 th of June 1700 at London ' not quite a fortnight
after the funeral.
Sir Nicholas Butler therefore ended his chequered course in the
retirement of his quiet home at Edmonton on Saturday, June 8, 1700,
having attained the age of over seventy-three.
We learn also from the slab that his widow survived him nearly
seven years, dying April 27, 1707, at the age of sixty-seven.
Unfortunately the slab is no longer visible, as it certainly was less
than a century ago. No trace of it was discoverable November 2,
1913, either on the floor of the Chancel, or on its walls. 'If extant,'
Mr. Gordon says, ' it is either under the modern tiling of part of the
Chancel, or under the wooden flooring of the Choir-benches.' So that
we cannot tell as we might, could we compare the two parts of the
inscription whether the slab was placed there by the widow, and her
epitaph added by a later hand, or the memorial to both was placed there
after Dame Butler's death. The former is the more natural supposi-
tion, as she showed her loyalty to her husband's memory in this simple
sentence in her will : ' I desire to be privately and decently buried by
' my said Husband S r Nicholas Butler.' In that case it is probable that
the second part of the inscription was added by order of their youngest
daughter, ' Angell Butler,' for we gather from Dame Butler's will that
Angel lived with her mother, unmarried, till her mother's death, as
she made her ' dear daughter Angell Butler ' her residuary legatee, and
sole executrix.
If the latter supposition is the truth, it is still most probable that
Miss Angel Butler made all the funeral arrangements, and placed the
memorial in the chancel ; for in her will, her mother mentions only her
elder sister Elizabeth, who had married a Mr. Sedgwick,* making no
reference by name to her eldest daughter and namesake, nor to any of
the children of her husband's first wife. But she does remember ' all
* her grandchildren,' giving ' to each of them a Gold mourning ring of
' the value of ten shillings, to be delivered to each of them by her
* Executrix . . . soon after her decease.' It produces the impression
upon us that Henry Chauncey and his wife had not paid the mother
much attention after Sir Nicholas's death.
The will was made by Dame Butler on June 8, 1 706, six years to
the day after her husband's death little less than a year before her
own. And it was proved in London by her daughter within a month
of the death.
Dame Butler's maiden name we do not know. Was it ' Boon ' (to
give the name to her husband's peerage as 'Viscount Boon,' if the
rumoured honour had really been conferred on him) ? Born in 1640,
she could not have married her first husband, Mr. Stephens, before 1657
or 1658. As we have seen (p. 172) that the earliest likely date of her
second marriage (with Nicholas Butler) was 1668, she may, of course,
have then been widowed some few years.
* To her she gives ' ten pounds in money, and the bed and boulster she lyes upon.'
1 86
Detailed and Expository
Putting together the testimony of the two wills, as well as of the
register of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, we learn that Sir Nicholas had
three daughters by his second wife (and most probably no sons) :
1. Jane (so named after her mother), born 1675-76 ; married to
Henry Chauncey, barrister.
2. Elizabeth, born 1680 ; married to Mr. Sedgwick.
3. Angell, born 1682 ; still unmarried at the time of her mother's
death.
As to the grandchildren, we learn the names of only two both boys
and from Sir Nicholas's will : (i) Henry Butler probably the son of a
son, not elsewhere named, probably by his first wife Dorothy. (2)
Nicholas Chauncey, doubtless the son of his eldest daughter Jane.
There is in Somerset House the record of the Admbn of a Nicholas
Butler ; but this most probably a nephew of Sir Nicholas, as he is
described as c late of H.M.S. Le Edgar^ bachelor,' and it was granted to
his sister, Charity Coleman ux. Henry Coleman. Both Nicholas and
Charity were probably children of a brother of Sir Nicholas.
Here we must close our account of his life, with profound regret
that no information is forthcoming about his birth, his family, his
education, and his early years in which alone we can expect to find
the key to his strange but fascinating career.
Such was the man whom Sir Joseph Williamson chose, on behalf ot
Lord Arlington, to sound the Nonconformists of the City of London, and
to discover the best means of recovering their lost confidence, so as if
possible to secure their silence, if not their support, in case the King and
Council decided on an alliance with France and war against the Dutch
and whom he afterwards consulted so largely in determining the final
form the Indulgence was to take and the lines along which it was
finally administered.
He had secured his M.D. (through the intervention of the King)
only about a year before he took up this work. The diploma had been
conferred on him in March, 1670, only a month after Parliament had
passed the Second Conventicle Act ; and we have observed elsewhere
how the extreme harshness and injustice with which it was worked very
soon produced a discontent, and in many districts a resentment which
the King saw with an uneasiness bordering on alarm. I have referred
to the vividness with which the facts were brought out in two pam-
phlets of the time, which had a wide circulation. The one. was entitled
' A True and Impartial Narrative of some Illegal and Arbitrary Pro-
4 ceedings ... in and near the Town of Bedford'; the other, bearing
a very similar title c A True and Faithful Narrative of the Unjust and
Illegal Sufferings of many Christians ... in Devon.' The latter had
been brought under the notice of the King himself ; and, through the
intervention of Colonel Blood, who just now was in high favour at
Court, the King had had a personal interview with the author of the
pamphlet,* John Hickes, of Saltash. The additional details given by
* As is shown more at large, farther on, in the article on John Hickes.
The Indulgence Documents 187
John Hickes in this interview had evidently seriously impressed the King,
and there is little doubt that Blood would deepen that impression by
what he was able to tell the King of his own experience and the
sufferings of many of his friends. All this convinced Charles that the
natural attitude of the Nonconformists under this relentless persecution
would make the foreign policy he contemplated full of special peril. It
would almost necessarily make the Nonconformists abettors of the enemy,
and more hostile than ever to his ally the Papist King of France. He
must, if possible, allay this resentment, and by some means change it
into gratitude and loyalty. How could that be done so effectually as
by showing his Nonconformist subjects that persecution was to him a
< strange ' work, which he did not like, and that he was meditating
seriously putting an end to it by abolishing or suspending all Penal
Statutes against them ?
Before he made the venture, however, he must get to know how far
they would accept such overtures, and respond to them. He naturally
turned to Arlington, his Home Secretary by secret means, if necessary
to ascertain the facts by getting at the real feeling of the leading Non-
conformists. This work Arlington, as usual, turned over to Joseph
Williamson (not yet knighted), his chief secretary. Looking about for
suitable agents for this work, Joseph Williamson seems to have lighted
on two men Dr. Nicholas Butler and Joseph Church. Dr. Butler,
with whom he had formed a close friendship already, was pledged, by
the favours he had received from the Archbishop, on the one side, and from
the King on the other, to act in the interests of both the Church and
the State ; but his free and frequent intercourse with active and earnest
Nonconformist ministers in the courageous and self-forgetful service
they had both rendered to the victims of the Plague throughout the
Visitation of 1665, would make it easy for him to sound the Noncon-
formist leaders. Of ' M r . Church,' Sir Joseph's second agent, I have
found it difficult to get any satisfactory information.
It is natural to suppose that Williamson would try to enlist one of the
Nonconformist ministers themselves, so as more readily to secure access
to Nonconformists for his colleague Dr. Butler. And in Calamy's list
of the Ejected there are two of the name Church Josiah and Joseph.
Josiah Church was an Essex minister, who had subscribed the Essex
Watchword in 1649, as Minister of Sea Church ; had subsequently
settled at Hackwell (or Hawkwell), and was ejected thence in 1662.
There is no trace of his ever retiring to or living in London. So
that there is no ground for suggesting that Josiah Church was
Williamson's second agent.
Joseph Church, on the other hand, was a London minister. He
succeeded a Mr. Wyrley (or Wirley) as Rector of St. Catherine-
Coleman, Fenchurch Street,* and thence he was ejected in 1662. All
that Calamy can tell us about him is : * A worthy man, and of good
* substance till the fire of London consumed it. Afterwards he had but
* Not (as Palmer has it, in trying to improve on Calamy) St. Catherine's, Cole-
man Street. The church in Coleman Street was dedicated to St. Stephen, not St.
Catherine.
Detailed and Expository
' little to subsist upon : and having many children, was in great straits.
' He had considerable offers if he would have conformed ; but he chose
' to remain a poor Nonconformist, rather than hazard the peace of his
4 conscience. Mr. Papillon* and his lady were great friends to him
* after his ejectment.' His church (St. Catherine-Coleman's) was
situated in Fenchurch Street, near its junction with Leadenhall Street ;
and so was well outside the area of the Great Fire. The fact which
Calamy mentions, therefore, shows us that he retired after his ejectment
westwards, and so was living in a more central part of the City. This
would make it easy for him to arrange tours of visitation with Dr.
Nicholas Butler, whose home was in Little St. Helen's. The financial
straits to which he was reduced, moreover, would make him the more
willing to undertake this little piece of work, especially as he could view
it as an opportunity of serving his Nonconformist brethren.
The information we possess on this point I mean, touching William-
son's employment of Dr. Nicholas Butler and Mr. Church on this delicate
but important business is derived from the notes which Williamson
was in the habit of making of the secret intelligence he obtained througli
his agents, informers, and spies. We should bear in mind, moreover,
that the leniency of the chief magistrates in London in the years 1669
and 1671 had attracted to the Metropolis many who were hard pressed
in the provinces as to a haven of comparative security ; so that a
considerable number of Nonconforming clergy, provincial as well as
metropolitan, were living in and about town, presenting an unusual oppor-
tunity for feeling the Nonconformist pulse throughout the kingdom.
Dr. Butler is busily engaged in this way in the months of November
and December of 1671. The first entry is under date November 2
when for the moment he was looking about for suitable agents in this
matter when Williamson notes that he met Dr. Butler at dinner, and
found him already familiar with the inner movements of the Presby-
terian party. This made him feel that Dr. Butler was the sort of man
he wanted ; and Williamson evidently at once set Dr. Butler to work
to get the fullest information he could. There is little doubt, too, that
Dr. Butler was very energetic in his movements and enquiries ; for only
nine days later (November nth) we read Williamson's memorandum
that : ' The meeting-house men have been viewed by the Doctor from
' house to house, and,' he learns, ' they are a stout, sturdy, dissatisfied
' people,' and ' fear they have still more heart and indignation towards
' the Government than some seem to tell us.' Dr. Butler, too, had
evidently come to the conclusion that timely indulgence would do much
* His friend Mr. Papillon was a wealthy City man. Evelyn refers to him in the
Commonwealth time : ' 1656 May 7. In the afternoon I met Alderman Robinson to
' treat with M r Papillion about the marriage of my cousin Geo. Turke with M" Fon-
' taine.' And (in the period we are treating of) Pepys refers to him under date
April 23, 1669 (about two years before Sir Joseph Williamson's employment of
Dr. Nicholas Butler) : ' I heard M r Papillon make his defence to the King against
' some complaints of the Farmers of Excise ' (so that he was probably one of the Com-
missioners of Customs, as Dr. Nicholas Butler, when knighted, afterwards became) ;
' but it was so weak, and done only by his own seeking that it was more to his injury
' than profit and made his case the worse (being ill-managed, and in a cause against
'the King).'
The Indulgence Documents 189
to conciliate and win them back to loyalty to the Throne. Williamson's
suggestive jottings are : ' Concludes whether not better for the King
4 now himself to offer what is capable to content them. Less will do it
4 now than hereafter, when stresses are greater with the King.' Shrewdly
adding : < This was the King his father's case. If you care to capitulate
4 with the fanatics, they will never agree to reason.'
Dr. Butler seems to have greater difficulty because less sympathy
with the Independents than with the Presbyterians. For on November
1 6, under the heading <B.' (Butler), we find his report that 'They
c deceive the Independent party by making them believe that they shall
' have their pardons under the Great Seal without any kind of stipulation
4 of loyalty, &c., on their part. So Lockyer,* so Rogers.t . . . Not
* above 6 or 7 all over England. Rogers took the oath before outlawed.
4 All such promises to be made only to the King, and only to his person
{ with some witnesses. Secretary Trevor he has found " is theirs." He
' was, before the Chancellor ' (Clarendon) ' was cast out.' [This
4 Secretary Trevor' was the Editor of 'Entry Book No. 27,' wherein
some fifty licences under the Act of Indulgence are entered which do not
appear in Williamson's * Entry Book No. 3 8 A.'] * These people played
4 the game into certain hands. If these people shall now have the
i principal instruments about the King. What will be the end ? They
* blew up Oliver, R. Cromwell, the Rump, & all. So Rogers was.
c Jekell such a one.' By the end of November we find that Dr. Butler
had come into touch with the notorious Colonel Blood.
At any rate, on December 4, he notes that < Blood publicly claims
4 D r B. as his intimate.' It seems doubtful, however, whether he had
done more than interview him, to see how far he can trust Blood or
make use of him in his dealings with the Nonconformists. We know
from other sources that Blood had interested himself in some Noncon-
formists already, notably so in his old acquaintance of Dublin days, John
Hickes of Devon (for whom, we have seen, he had secured a personal
interview with the King, with the happiest results) ; but so cautious and
secretive a man as Dr. Butler would be only feeling his way with him
at a time when Blood would recklessly claim his friendship, and so try to
pledge him to connivance and co-operation. Indeed, Williamson under
the same date reports that c Ennys ' (/.<?., James Innes sen r ), had already
4 told D r Butler that only 2 or 3 ' presumably among the Dissenters
4 support Blood,' that is, care to avow any connection with him, or to
make any use of him.
It is clear, however, that Blood is trying to force Dr. Butler into this
course; for the following day (Tuesday, December 5) he called upon
Dr. Butler in Little St. Helen's, seeking to detach him from his patrons,
* Lockyer, no doubt, is the Nicholas Lockyer, of whom Palmer's Calamy (1, 102)
tells us that he was ejected from St. Benet Sherehog. Born in Somerset, he had been
educated at New Inn Hall, Oxford ; made Chaplain to Oliver Cromwell as Protector ;
in 1658 appointed Provost of Eton College, as well as Rector of St. Benet Shere-
hog and preacher at St. Pancras (Soper Lane), which were adjacent to one another in
Pancras Lane. His provostship he lost soon after the Restoration, and from the rest
he was ejected in 1662. He was a wealthy man.
f Doubtless John Rogers, the Fifth Monarchy man, only his biographer knows
nothing of him after 1665.
Detailed and Expository
Arlington and Clifford, and to enlist him for the strong Protestant party
in the Government, Lauderdale, Ashley, and Buckingham, for under
date * Dec. 7, Thursday,' Williamson notes : ' That on Tuesday Bl.
4 came to D r B & Church at Butler's lodgings * magnifying Lord
'Lauderdale (who was James Innes's patron), saying they understood
4 one another and he * (Lord Lauderdale) * was the great man.' Dr. Butler,
however, was in touch with two Scotchmen who were in town, who
claimed to be kept acquainted with the course things were taking in Scot-
land, as well as with the tactics of Lauderdale ; and their information was
that Lauderdale was not heading an opposing party, and left his friends
free to take what course they thought best. Williamson's jottings are :
* D r B. says he knows from the two Scotchmen this day that Lord
' Lauderdale left them to do what they would. D r James Stewart's son
4 is one of the two. Neither are ministers.' His information, indeed,
leads him to think little of the usefulness of Blood, for he adds : ' Bl. is
* quite lost amongst the phanaticks '; which is much the same as saying
that the more spiritually minded of the Dissenters the Independents
and the Baptists fight shy of him and place no confidence in him.
Yet Blood is most certainly trying to press Dr. Butler on the point,
as : 4 He had appointed ' so Williamson writes * two several people to
call of him at D r B's house,' that is, to call for him at Dr. Butler's house,
so as to give the impression that he (Blood) was almost always there.
Under date December 13 [Wednesday ED.], there is a reference
which is not easy to understand. He writes : < D r Butler's meeting had
' gone in the (this) next(?) day, if at their assembly on Monday they had not
< heard that Sir John Robinson ' (the Lieutenant of the Tower) < had
' made that search.' The only meaning which can be given to the first
phrase, on the supposition that the ' D r Butler' spoken of was our
Dr. Nicholas Butler, is that it was the one particular congregation in
which he (Dr. Butler), had confessed to having an interest, and which,
perhaps, he had even sometimes attended. In that case it might well
be the meeting held in Edward Bushell's house in Little St. Helen's,
to which Peter Sterry preached. At any rate, in May 16 of the
following year Sterry had himself secured a licence [E. (117)] for it.
There is little doubt, however, that it was Dr. Samuel Annesley's, in
Spitalfields, to the abortive search of which by a messenger of Sir John
Robinson (Governor of the Tower), Sir Joseph had already made refer-
ence. Under that same date, December 13, there is a note, which
seems to imply that Dr. Butler had gone a long way with Blood, for he
writes : * D r B. maintained him (Blood) long'; but the facts which looked
that way, probably meant simply that he held Blood in leash for some
time to see how far he could trust and use him. And there follows
a detailed account of the Presbyterian Conference held Monday,
December n, with most interesting thumb-nail sketches of the Presby-
terian leaders in London which is referred to elsewhere. In this same
day's jottings is a sentence, which very vividly shows in what an atmo-
sphere of mutual suspicion these secret agents, informers, and spies, per-
force spent much of their life and intercourse with each other. 'Ennys'
* This was in Little St. Helen's.
The Indulgence Documents 191
(James Innes sen r ) is a man much cultivated by Dr. Butler's patrons^
for he had the ear of Lauderdale, and was personally favoured by the
King (though a recognized Nonconformist).* Yet 'Ennys and he'
(Dr. Butler), Williamson notes : c told one another at their reconciliation'
that 'each other's friends had warned them to beware of one another';
and Williamson adds of the man he uses so much, ' Ennys a great rogue.'
It was only three months after this almost to a day for the
Declaration of Indulgence was published March 15, 1671-72, that the
King cast the die and issued that Declaration, by which, claiming
supremacy in matters ecclesiastical, he suspended all the penal laws ' in
' matters ecclesiastical against whatsoever sort of non-conformists or
c recusants '; and three or four days later, the series of letters commence
from Dr. Butler to Sir Joseph Williamson, which are preserved as an
integral part of the ' Licence Documents ' in Vols. 320 and 321. Before
passing to these, however, it is only just to him to observe that the refer-
ences in Williamson's notes just quoted (p. 1 89), under date November 1 1,
suggest, if they do not prove that Dr. Butler had an influential part in
the negotiations and conferences which finally led to the action taken
by the King in Council. That word 'concludes' followed by the ques-
tion, ' whether ' it would ' not be better for the King now himself to
4 offer what is capable to content them,' by implication surely involves
what I have ventured to state, that Arlington and Clifford had com-
missioned him to canvass the Nonconformist leaders, not simply to give
his employers information as to the feelings and attitude of this impor-
tant section of the King's subjects, but to base thereon some counsel or
suggestion as to the course it would be wisest to pursue, to allay the Non-
formists' discontent and secure their loyal devotion to the King.
The issue of the Declaration exactly embodied Dr. Butler's sug-
gestion, being an unsolicited act of grace on the part of the King, an
4 offer ' made on his own initiative, and under the pressure of no Petition
or Demand on the part of the Dissenters ; so that I cannot think it attrib-
uting too much influence to him, to say that Dr. Nicholas Butler
played an important part in bringing the King to take this step.
The earlier parts of the correspondence which follows confirms this
conclusion, in the tone of * responsibility ' for the Declaration which
marks them. On the one hand, personal satisfaction is expressed at
the cordiality of the welcome accorded it in Addresses presented by the
Nonconformists, both in oral and written form ; and on the other, he
gives voice to a personal disappointment and alarm to which when the
Act is worked grudgingly instead of freely, and the promise to allow
public buildings to be used for Nonconformist worship is unfulfilled.
More than this: one letter, chronologically anterior to the series
preserved in 320 and 321, proves directly that he had been consulted
seriously on the mode in which the Indulgence was to be worked, and
the actual form the Licences issued should take.
It is preserved in S. P. Dom. Car. II. 304 (47), and was written by Dr.
* He was one and the same (despite the disguise of the strange spelling of his
name) as Rev. James Innes. Ejected from St. Breock's in Cornwall, but long since
resident in Westminster,
1 92 Detailed and Expository
Butler to Sir Joseph Williamson only four days after the publication of the
Declaration. It is endorsed in Sir Joseph's own handwriting : ' R. 20,
'Mar. at noon. Indulgence'; and addressed 'ffor S r Joseph Williamson,
'Tuesday eleven o'clock.'* But it does not take the form of an
ordinary letter. The paper has first a list or schedule of seven points
(evidently points to be observed in administering the Indulgence just
declared).
' i . That there bee some reasonable time given to the
countries for taking licences.
' 2. That where noe publick meeting house is y l a private
one bee allowed, but yet as publick, if they have not fixed
it at present y l time bee given for it.
' 3. That they bee licenced to preach in any licenced
place.
'4. That they be licenced on perticuler occations to
preach in private families as for fasting or thanksgiveing.
'5. That all Nonconformist which have not a people, but
preach occasionally may be licenced, being obliged to set the
doors open, whenever they shall soe preach.
' 6. That soe far as with safty may bee, a connivance
bee had to those whose wild principles suffers them not to
accept this act of soe great grace.
'7. That the way of obtaining the licence bee not made
burdensome nor troublesome.'
The letter follows below it :
Neg.'
[J. W.]
' Quaker
5 mono:
'I have sent the above sooner then agreed, y* they may bee
comunicated to theese two honor ble persons f that since the longitude
was not found, an early timeing of it, y l it may be helped in its latitude.
If they can add anything further y* will oblige, I think they cannot do
our King better servis. If the first perticular bee declared, then may be
added yt noe Nonconformist shall dare to preach after such time without
licence, and that all bee freely invited to take licence, as well thoese
without a people as with, & y l from time to time it shall be free for any
to take out a licence, and y 1 such which have not a congregation shall
give their habitation or usuall place of aboed ; & when they shall at any
time have a people, then bee obliged to give in the place.
'By this means, all will have a dependency upon his Majesty; all
the ministers must be gratifyed or at least not Disobliged, if you will
have a continued content if you have the ministers you have all. If to
this great act of grace were added a way for y e people to come at justice
in Law cases in a short time, I think it would bee beyond y e power of
the devill & bad men to give his Majesty any disturbance in his King-
domes. If I mistake not theese things will abundantly please, and
* This Tuesday was March 19, 1671-72,
f Was it the two Secretaries of State, Lord Arlington and Sir John Trevor, or the
two members of the Cabal who took most interest in the Indulgence, Arlington and
Clifford ?
The Indulgence Documents 193
through some perverse laws (lovers may have leave to speak). Since I
was 24 years which now is 20 moe, I have been in a maner wholy
taken of thoughts of selfe, and have beene willing to busy my troubled
thoughts in ye consideration how I might serve god in my generation.
Yet I know not why I should not have the same liberty Lord Ross
enjoyeth. But I beg your pardon for this digression, & for what other
things may bee amiss, assuring you if anything bee which pleaseth not,
'tis error in judgement, not in will
* S r I am ever your unfeignedly
'fcw-
' Haue a care of taking a second ring.
The declaration for war is much liked.
Your punctuall houre for tomorrow &
bee you soe :'
From a subsequent letter of Dr. Butler's to Sir Joseph [320 (5),
dated March 27], it seems that when on Friday, March 15, the King
and Arlington actually issued the Declaration of Indulgence, they had
generally arranged to give attendance at W hitehall for business accruing
under the Indulgence once a week on Fridays, and had instructed
Dr. Butler to draft a scheme of particulars as to the way the Indulgence
would be most wisely worked to secure the end they had in view, which
might be brought before them for consideration at their first 'Indul-
gence ' meeting a week later, viz., Friday, March 22.
Dr. Butler had evidently set about the work at once, and having the
draft complete by Tuesday he thought it wise to send the draft to Sir
Joseph, to place privately in the hands of Arlington and Trevor or Clifford,
' these two honorable persons,' so as to be prepared to recommend them
(or otherwise) to the King at the Council on Friday.
The reason given ' for sending the recommendations sooner than
'agreed,' is expressed in metaphors not easy of interpretation. The refer-
ence to 'the longitude' of the indulgence not being found, probably means
that as the ' term ' of grace or opportunity offered the number of days
or months within which application must be made if a licence is to be
granted had not been decided upon, an early presentation of the pro-
positions would be likely to hasten the date of their adoption, and help
the latitude or breadth of their application. It is specially worthy of
note that this document abundantly proves the point already urged,
viz., that with the authors of this Indulgence, and most assuredly with
Dr. Butler, the motive of it was much more one of policy than principle.
It was not religious liberty that was aimed at so much as an increase of
loyalty and devotion to Charles ; and so in every particular the licences
were framed as an act of Royal grace and favour to the individual, so that
' all will have a dependency upon his Majesty ' and as they realize the
sweetness of relief from persecution, they may feel themselves bound in
common gratitude to their benefactor, to pledge themselves to loyal
fidelity to the Throne.
The suggestions drafted by Dr. Butler were all approved except the
fifth, which licensed occasional preachers (/.*., those who had no
194 Detailed and Expository
flocks) binding them * to set the doors open ' of the house or meeting-
place in which they preached. In this case, the negative was wider
and more liberal than the affirmative, since every man who had a
4 general licence ' was licensed not to preach in his own house (as
apparently is here suggested, provided that when he did so he left his
doors open), but to preach in any licensed place. He could not therefore
preach in his own house, unless he secured a licence for it as an
4 allowed ' meeting-place, and in that case it was open for all who cared
to come, and for any licensed teacher to teach in. Though that was
denied him, a larger liberty was accorded to him, viz., to preach in
any allowed place where he might be asked or permitted to do so by the
owner.
The first suggestion was carried out, but its provision was extended
far beyond Dr. Butler's suggestion. Evidently the first idea was that a
day should be fixed before which anyone who desired a licence must
send in his application, and Dr. Butler was anxious that the day should
be made a distant one, so that ample time might be allowed for the news
of the Indulgence to reach the more secluded parts of the provinces ('the
country es,' or 'counties'), and for country Nonconformists to have time
to make up their minds whether they would care to avail themselves of
the Indulgence or no. As a fact, no time-limit was fixed at all ; and as
long as the Indulgence lasted it was open for anyone, whether they ' had
' a people ' or not /.*., whether they were pastors of congregations or
Nonconformist teachers without charges, to apply for a licence, and,
if ' approved,' to get one.
The second point is notable, as presupposing that the number of
meeting-houses or chapels already erected and regularly used for Non-
conformist worship was considerable, and that it would be chiefly for
these that licences would be asked when it was desired to license a
meeting-place. No doubt there were many in and about London, and
many more in Yorkshire and Lancashire ;* but of the hundreds for which
licences were sought and obtained, by far the greater proportion were
private houses.
The third item simply described the scope of a * general ' licence.
The fourth item it is not at all easy to understand. Whose fancy
or wishes was it supposed to meet ? We see from the letter [320 (5)],
which I have already cited (written eight days after this), that Dr.
Butler's point was granted. The first sentence in the letter makes
much of it : ' The words for y 1 perticular is agreed as I gave it, viz. y 4
* they bee licenced upon exterordinary family occations, to keepe a day
* of fast or thanksgiving in a private family with a moderate number.'
[The clause as drafted above is not verbally identical with this : in
some respects being more definite, and in others rather laxer. ' That
' they be licensed on perticular occations to preach in private families as
' for fasting or thanksgiving.'] The one point in which this seemed a
strange (and rather perilous) departure from the whole scheme of the
Indulgence, was this, that by special licence Nonconformist services
might be held with prayer and worship, and preaching in private houses
* As many as fourteen meeting-houses in Lancashire were licensed.
The Indulgence Documents 195
with closed doors. Of course, one of the points strongly insisted on in
the Declaration was that all of these licensed Nonconformist services
must be public ; held with open doors, so that any passer-by, and any
official of Church or State, might freely enter, to see what was done
and to hear whatever was said, as the best safeguard that could be
devised against anything seditious, dangerous, or heretical. Yet here
that safeguard was to be remitted on particular occasions. The inten-
tion of it may have been simple and innocent enough ; that in case of
sickness little services of sympathy and intercession, or a funeral service
in the case of death, might be conducted by a Nonconformist minister in
the house; or that in connection with a wedding, or the baptism of a
child, a religious service might be held with friends or relatives, with-
out throwing open the doors to the public. Still, there was the danger
that in that special privacy, under * pretence of religion, 7 a seditious
gathering might be held.
Or was it (as I have sometimes thought) an astute device for circum-
venting the clause of the Declaration, which made the Indulgence for
public services apply only to Protestants, by giving the Roman Catholics
a chance under pretext of some * perticular occation ' to hold a Papist
service ' with a moderate number ' a very elastic phrase ! in the
seclusion of a private house ? *
The sixth point showed the length to which Dr. Butler was prepared
to go, or rather the latitude he would give to the Royal Indulgence. He
knew that Quakers would never ask a licence, and he thought it prob-
able that the Fifth Monarchy men would scarcely do so either, as well
as some of the more c fanatical ' Baptists and Independents.
With regard to the letter which follows these * Seven Points ' : the
first part has been incidentally dealt with in my comments on the items
of the scheme presented. Only it may be further noted, that in his
suggestion, that to the first particular it might * be added y fc noe
' Nonconformist shall dare to preach after such time without a licence.'
Dr. Butler is echoing the last clause of the Declaration : and this also,
that in the actual working of the Indulgence, no time-limit being laid
down, from first to last, any Nonconformist who had not secured and
could not shew a licence was liable to be < proceeded against with all
< imaginable severity,' who ' dared ' or ' presumed ' either to preach him-
self or to allow Nonconformist services to be held in his house. No
steps seem to have been taken to abbreviate the Law's delay, or to lessen
its costliness. The sentence touching ' perverse laws ' I cannot interpret
as it stands.
The concluding clauses have a special interest in their bearing on
Dr. Butler's personal career. We learn his age when he wrote it, and
hence the date of his birth. As to the crisis which he professes to have
passed through when he reached his twenty-fourth year, any comment
must be conjectural. But two things are worth noting. The year
1652, to which this crisis belonged, was the year in which the Puritan,
Arthur Barham, was presented by Sir John Langham to the living of
* Rev. A. Gordon suggests that this clause simply proposed licences ad hoc for
special occasions, though neither teacher nor place was otherwise licensed.
196 Detailed and Expository
St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, a sphere in which he exercised a powerful
ministry till his ejection in 1662. We know that Nicholas Butler was
living in the parish in 1665. If, then, he was living there, as early as
these Commonwealth times, it may well have been that * his being in a
' manner wholly taken off all thoughts of self was due to the powerful
preaching of the Puritan vicar, though it must be added that the facts
of his after career show that any critical change which he dates from
that time was a very superficial one. For him to profess that for ten
years past he had been living a ' selfless ' life, looks very much like
4 cant ' and < hypocrisy.'
If he had really learned to live a selfless ' life, troubling himself
only about serving God in the service of others, that noble stage of his
life-history must have reached its * grand climacteric' in 1665, a d
expended itself in his heroic ministry to the poor victims of the Great
Plague. For, as early as 1669 he was working this 'unselfish ministry '
for all it was worth to secure a degree from Cambridge, and a licence
as a physician. The only principle which can give the changing
phases of his after career any coherence or consistency is that after 1665
he was wholly taken up with thoughts of self, and that he was willing
to do anything or undo anything, to say anything or unsay it, which
would procure his advancement in society or in the body politic. It is a
hard thing to say, but facts seem to call for it, that, after 1665, he seems
to have been sure that he was serving ' god ' in his generation only
when he was serving self, gaining wealth and < kudos ' by eager pro-
fessions that all he cared for was to serve the King, the Church, and
the State.
That sentence about his ' liberty ' and * Lord Ross' shows that thus
early in the year (March) he was troubled by comments and whispered
slanders about his second marriage, and was brooding over the way
in which he could put his case in a petition to the King. The case of
Lord Ross is referred to in a very vivid and illuminating fashion by
Evelyn in his Diary. Under date March 22, 1670, he writes :
' I went to Westminster, where in the house of Lords I saw his
Majesty sit on his throne, but without his robes, all the Peeres sitting
with their hatts on ; the business of the day being the divorce of my
lord Rosse. Such an occasion and sight had not been scene in England
since the time of Hen. VIII.' The footnote runs :
'When there was a project, 1669, ^ or g ett i n g a divorce for the
King, to facilitate it, there was brought into the House of Lords a bill
for dissolving the marriage of Lord Rosse, on account of adultery, and to
give him leave to marry again. This bill, after great debates, passed by
the plurality of only two votes, and that by the great industry of the
Lord's friends, as well as the Duke's enemies, who carried it on chiefly
in hopes it might be a precedent, and inducement for the King to enter
the more easily into their late proposals ; nor were they a little
encouraged therein, when they saw the King countenance and drive on
the bill in Lord Rosse's favour. Of 18 Bishops that were in the
Hcuse, only two voted for the bill' [Dr. Cosin, Bishop of Durham, and
The Indulgence Documents 197
Dr. Wilkins, Bishop of Chester], ' of which one voted through age, and
one was reputed a Socinian.'
To Sir Joseph's own second marriage, too, he must be alluding
when he appends that postscript warning: 'Have a care of taking a
* second ring.' Was it because Sir Joseph was already showing too
eager attentions to Lady O'Brien, whom he actually married on her
husband's death in 1678 ?
It was early days to comment on the reception of the news of the
declaration of war. It was only on the i6th of March that war was
declared against the Dutch, and he is writing but three days later. The
last sentence bespeaks no doubt a good point in his character, which
must have very much helped his advancement, though it says little for
the clearness of his composition. ' Your punctuall houre for tomorrow '
means, of course, that he would keep his appointment with Sir Joseph
to the minute : < bee you soe ' is his bungling way of pressing Sir
Joseph to do the same.
Whether they met on the 2Oth or not as arranged we have no
documentary evidence. Yet either then or on the following day,
' suggestions were made to modify or add to his y-points ' ; and he was
afraid that Sir Joseph might offer the King a draft, * mutilated' or
' amended,' in directions which he did not approve, and for which he
did not wish to be held responsible. So on the morning of Friday the
22nd (the date on which the King, Arlington, and Clifford, were to
meet at Whitehall on this Indulgence business), he wrote Sir Joseph the
following note :
320 (3)
It is endorsed in Sir Joseph's handwriting :
' 22 Mar. 167^
' D^. B.
4 Indulgence.'
It is addressed :
' For Sir Joseph Williamson,' and reads :
< March y e 22 th , 7 \.
<Sr,
'I humbly desire his majesty and thoese two honourable persons
may see the whole I writ, and noe more ; since I was with you I had
severall with mee & as confident I am as y* I am alive all will bee well
for y e glory of god, the good of his majesty & people & still hope &
doubt not y e church of England will still flourish if they bee but
prudent, pardon this trouble & I shall ever bee, as you have abundantly
obliged mee
<Sr.
4 Your most faithfull
4 most unfeigned frend
'to love honour & serve you
* I shall not continue
thus to trouble you
forgive this.'
198 Detailed and Expository
_ . .
The council was duly held that same afternoon ; but evidently they
could not come to complete agreement in their conclusions.
Already there were some who wanted to restrict the issue of licences
to those who < had a people,' so lessening the number of the licences
issued. There might be this added reason, that those who had yielded
to the pressure of the prosecution under the recent penal legislation, and
had left their flocks, many of them finding refuge in London, would by
this restriction be permanently silenced, and so the poison of their influ-
ence be lessened. So he writes the very next day, to press his point,
that unattached ministers should be allowed a general licence, if they so
desired. He does it, too, in terms which in their growing freedom and
humour show that he feels surer of his ground with Sir Joseph, and is
becoming, or that he fancies he is becoming, more intimate and
influential with him.
Here it is :
320 (4)
It is endorsed again in Sir Joseph's own handwriting :
'23 Mar. i6yj R.
<Dr. B.
4 Indulgence/
Addressed : < For S r Joseph Williamson,' and reads :
< March y e 23 th 7 J
' My dear S r Joseph,
4 1 have not neither shall ever desire to have any besid(e)s your
selfe to comunicate with, therefore for a little time, till this great
matter bee fixed you must take y e trouble instead of y 1 one which I may
yeild is not soe consistent as it ought to bee. I offer yt all non-
conformists which have not a people if they desire it may have licence
to preach in any licenced place. I have three reasons to enforce it
which I think when I tell them will seeme good & soe prove. I have
spread his majesties pleasure amoung the severall perswasions, which will
bee I doubt not effectually answered soe soone as possibly can bee, & for
licences they will readily come after there address is made.
'I am,
' Yours whilst my owne,
'4%-*
4 1 am not free
(according to the quakers)
to write my reasons.'
Dr. Butler's anxiety to preserve secrecy in these negotiations, and his
incognito does not give us a very favourable impression. Who c that
< one ' may be whom he treats with a neuter gender, as though he were ' a
4 thing' instead of a person, insinuating that he was not < soe consistent '
as he ought to be, we should extremely like to know. Was it * Blood ' ?
or was it ' Church ' ? of whom we have not a word in all these
Indulgence documents, although Dr. B. was closely associated with
him in all the preliminary negotiations.
The Indulgence Documents 199
He is evidently in pretty constant intercourse with Whitehall, for
he notes in his next letter what proves the large success attending his
draft-suggestions. The fourth point is now agreed upon. What
critical comments seemed necessary have been already passed upon it
(P- 193)-
The second part of the letter takes a ' begging ' form ; sure proof
that Dr. Butler is beginning to feel assured of his ground with Sir
Joseph.
The postscript shows that he wishes to keep his visits to White-
hall, and his activity in this matter as private and secret as may be.
The <N ' was his cryptic signature in his correspondence with Sir Joseph,
or rather the cypher -^fc^.
Who was the * ould friend ' who had better keep aloof ? Is it * yt
c one which,' in his previous letter, ' he yeilds is not soe consistent as it
' ought to bee ?' i.*., either < Mr. Church,' or Colonel Blood ? In
that case, is not ' our frend ' who with him was to ' waite ' upon Sir
Joseph ' on the other side the water ' the other of the two ? May I
suggest that it was * M r . Church ' who had better not ( meddle ' any
more with the affair ? and that Colonel Blood went with him to see Sir
Joseph in Southwark ?
This next letter is 320 (5), and, singularly enough, is not endorsed.
Was it that because of its peculiarly confidential character he did not
intend it to be docketed with the other letters ?
It reads :
* Mar. 27 : 72
<ss
' The words for yt perticuler is agreed as I gave it, viz 1 y l they
bee licenced upon exterordinary family occations, to keepe a day of fast
or thanksgiving in a private family with a moderate number.
' Thursday morn, they meet generall(y) to subscribe, &, suppose,
friday waite upon lAA's soe forwards.
'Soe I am necessitated to beg one favor, liberty for one Thomas
King, hee is a house carpenter married our chambormaid 3 years agoe.
by her hath 2 children which all live upon his labour. I was her father
at manage. I know you cannot be leather to bee troubled then I am
to doe it, but you shall have my word I shall scarce doe y e like againe.
I suppose hee meanes S r John Robinson's * man is master of y e vessel
4 1 most unfeignedly
< your true lover
' 1 doubt not but this
day will bee well kept.'
321 (5 I.)
4 Let your meeting N t bee kept private & let it not bee mentioned
to our friend, if there should bee further occation which should
* Sir John Robinson was Governor of the Tower.
f N. is Dr. Butler's cryptic symbol for himself.
2OO Detailed and Expository
necessitate a meeting againe then our true & ould frend shall bee
tould, but as I hinted 'twill bee advantage that hee meddl(e) not, when
our friend & I waite upon you remember 'tis the other side y e water, is
S r Robert Carr a Chymist. I like Chymist acquaintance
4 burne this.'
One would like to know how Dr. Butler came to know Sir Robert
Carr. Both Evelyn and Pepys allude to him, and their notes suggest the
true solution of the problem.
In 1664 Evelyn, on May 5th, notes that Sir Robert Carr was
courting Arlington's sister (Arlington was then only Sir Henry Bennett,
but already Secretary of State). In 1667 Pepys (under date July 29)
refers to the fact that it was at Sir Robert Carr's house that Sir H.
Bellasses and Tom Porter had been spending the evening, when,
"nflamed with wine, they picked a quarrel and fought a duel, severely
wounding each other (though they had been life-long friends). Pepys
explaining that at Sir Robert's Carr's ' it seems all people doe drink
* high.' In 16685 too (under date April 25), Pepys mentions him as
speaking hardly of Lord Sandwich. But the most interesting allusion is
the one made by Evelyn this very month of March, 1672.
It was the 1 2th of the month, when Shaftsbury was deprived of the
post of Lord High Treasurer. The King was inclined to give it to
Clifford, and in the end did so, but Arlington wanted the King to put
the Treasurership in commission, that the honours and emoluments
might be divided, and that Arlington's brother-in-law, Sir Robert Carr,
Bart., might be made one of the Commissioners of the Treasury.
Arlington engaged the good services of the Duke of York to further his
project. But it did not succeed, and in consequence there was always
a coolness between the two after Clifford had received the appoint-
ment as Lord High Treasurer. It was no doubt through Sir Joseph
Williamson that Dr. Butler had been brought into Sir Robert Carr's
company.
That sentence, c I like Chymist acquaintance,' is very natural to one
who like Dr. Butler was ' doctor of physic,' and was probably also a
dealer in drugs and medical preparations. In such professional and
commercial connection he would of necessity form many ' Chymist
4 acquaintance.'
The last clause, ' burne this,' confirms my conjecture as to Sir
Joseph's reason for not * endorsing ' this letter. He meant perhaps^ to
observe Dr. Butler's request ; but spite its not being endorsed for
' docketting,' it had got folded and tied up with Dr. B's other letters for
preservation and reference.
The paper which follows is a note addressed to Lord Arlington on
the morning of the next Council at Whitehall. Friday, March 29.
Dr. Butler is anxious that Lord Arlington should know authentically
how well the movement had begun. The previous day the King had
granted the Nonconformists of London two audiences for the oral pre-
sentation of their thanks for the Declaration. From Sir Joseph William-
son's Diary we learn that the King received 3, if not 4, Congrega-
The Indulgence Documents 201
tionalists in the morning, and 4 Presbyterians in the afternoon ; both
in the Chief Secretary's Rooms at Whitehall. The entry, of course,
is very condensed and bald. It runs as follows :
* Thursday 28.
* Nonconformist Ministers thanked y e King
* in y e morning Dr. Owen
Griffith
Palmer
Sim
* in y e afternoone Manton
Bates
Jacombe
Seyman
4 both in Lord Arlington's Lodgings.'
The above were the leaders of the two parties in London.
(i) <Dr. Owen' was Dr. John Owen, ex- V ice-Chancellor of Oxford,
now resident in Charterhouse Yard ; < Griffith' was George Griffith, who
had been minister of the Charterhouse and lecturer at St. Bartholomew's
Exchange and was now minister in Addle Street ; 'Palmer' was Anthony
Palmer, who had been ejected from Bourton-on-the- Water, but had
come up to London in 1664, and preached both in Broad Street and on
London Bridge. All these were decided Congregational ists. ' Sim '
must be Wm. Simms, Kingston- on-Thames, or could it be Dr. Singleton
of Queenhithe ? The latter was a Congregationalist. [W. Simms was
a Presbyterian who had been ejected from Leicester, but had retired to
Wimbledon; while there was reported in '69 as preaching at Ewell;
and this year '72 was licensed as a Presbyterian teacher in Kingston-
on-Thames.]
Of the Presbyterian deputation, ' Manton ' was Dr. Thomas Manton,
who ministered still to many of his old parishioners in Covent Garden ;
< Bates ' was Dr. William Bates, unattached to any definite * place ' or
* people,' but the silver-tongued preacher, who had been ejected from
St. Dunstan's, Fleet Street ; < Jacombe ' is Dr. Thomas Jacomb,
who had been ejected from St. Martin's, Ludgate Hill, and who was
now chaplain to the Dowager Countess of Exeter, living with her in
Little Britain ; and < Seyman ' was Dr. Lazarus Seaman, of Hammer-
smith.
The first three of this Presbyterian quartette were known to
Williamson as the leaders of the < Dons ' men who had more influence
with the gentry, had taken the Oxford oath, and assumed pre-eminence
among the Presbyterians of the Metropolis ; and were opposed by the
4 Ducklings ' men such as Annesley, Vincent, Watson and Janeway
who had not forsworn the endeavour to effect changes in Church and
State, were reckoned of less account socially, but did not fear the water,
and ' who thought that they made up ' for their lack of social influence
c by their popularity and interest of the middling people' (Williamson's
notes, Dec. 13, 1671).
Sir Joseph does not say in this bald entry how they were received by
202 Detailed and Expository
-- , ._.--
the King, or how he took their Thanks. But Dr. Butler had evidently
interviewed them afterwards, and found that Charles had been very
courteous and generous to them, expressing himself as well pleased with
their loyal gratitude ; while they were delighted with the King's recep-
tion quite effusive in their rekindled loyalty to him. He had gone at
once to Sir Joseph Williamson to tell him how well all had turned out ;
and Dr. Butler was anxious, wrote to Lord Arlington to tell him that
he had seen Sir Joseph ; and to urge upon him the most liberal inter-
pretation of the Indulgence and the most generous issue of licences
under it. Here follows the note itself.
It is reproduced in Vol. I. as 320 (6), and is Endorsed (in Sir Joseph's
handwriting. ED.) .
'29 Mar. 1672
' Dr. B. My Ld.
'Indulgence.'
It is addressed : ' For y e Right Hon ble L rd . Arlington ' ; and reads :
'Mar: y e 29 th 1672
' Right Hon ble
'I did last night acquaint S r Joseph Williamson, with what'
abundance of Kindnes y e dissenters received his majesties acceptance of
a verball thankes. I only further offer y l there is noe thing can bind
them in Loyalty more to his Majesty then to let their Licences bee
large & free from intanglements. A little love obligeth more than great
severity.
' I beg your honors pardon for this bouldness.
' Your Honors most humble
' most faithfull servant,
The project is now well launched. The Licence forms were all
settled (the actual drafts are preserved in 320) and printed by the follow-
ing day, March 30, and on Monday, April I. Many were filled in and
ready for signature next day, April 2.
This date Tuesday, April 2, 1672 is memorable in the annals of
Nonconformity, as the day on which the first Licences were issued
under the Declaration of Indulgence. Sir Joseph Williamson specially
notes it in his Diary :
'April.
' Tuesday 2.
' Mr. Jenkins takes out his Licences to preach
the first that was taken out.
' Tiverton ) ,.
Exeter " * lcences to Congreg 11 way sent down.'
As a matter of fact, the half-dozen Sir Joseph notes were only
prints inter pares. For no less than seventy-five licences are entered
in E. as issued that same day, and no less than forty-two of them
for London. 'Mr. Jenkins* was William Jenkins, who had been
The Indulgence Documents 203
ejected from Christ Church, Newgate Street, and was now a Presby-
terian minister of Home Alley, Aldersgate Street. To both Tiverton
and Exeter a pair of licences was sent : for Tiverton, a Licence for
Theophilus Polewheile as Teacher, and one for the house of Peter Bere ;
and in the case of Exeter, a licence for Lewis Stuckley as Teacher, and
another for Nicholas Savery's house as the meeting-place for him to
preach in.
The next letter in the series belongs to the day following this first
issue of licences viz., April 3.* It is addressed (like most of the
series) to Sir Joseph.
Before citing this letter, however, we must note that 320 (25) is
really one of Dr. Butler's memoranda. It is not in his hand-writing,
but it must have been *put in' by him. It is an application for six
licences ; and appended to the Entry of each of them on E. (3) and E. (4),
we have the note ' Desired by D r . Butler, &c.' They are for Edward
West (person and house) in Ropemakers' Alley, Little Moorfields;
D r . Samuel Annesley (person and house) in. Spittlefields ; and for John
Milward and Robert Chambers (general licences).
The letter I now cite shews Dr. Butler's eagerness to make the
project succeed :
* Under this date we have an interesting entry in Sir Joseph's Diary which calls
for explanation :
' 3 Wednesday.
'Madockes
Vincent
4 Licences 2 preach-
Sharp
Blackey
Cawton
to Sims. '
[The curious abbreviation of ' to ' to the numeral ' 2 ' is worth noting, as belonging
to an order of abbreviation rather characteristic of that day, which in the names of
the months gave ' 7 ber ,' 8 ber ,' 'g 1 *',' ' io ber ,' for September, October, November, and
December.] The licences to the first five names are all entered as dated the previous
day (April 2), so that their mention thus, followed by the words 'to Sims,' would
naturally mean that Sims doubtless the W. Sims who himself was licensed for
Kingston-on-Thames was staying the week in town, called for them at Whitehall,
and that by Sir Joseph's instruction they were handed over to him ('to Sims').
From the notes in the Entry Book, however, it would appear that it was only his
own two licences which were handed 'to Sims' (see notes on E. (3), 'delivered
M r Sims himselfe'), and the rest were handed ' to y* partyes Themselves' (see note
just above).
The first two on the list, ' Madockes ' and ' Vincent/ were both of Bartholomew
Lane (City). ' Madockes ' is William Maddocks ; and ' Vincent' is Thomas Vincent
(not his younger brother, Nathaniel), whose meeting-place is Mr. Broome's house in
Hand's Alley, Bishopsgate Street Without. Of their application we have no record.
The application for the other three is preserved in 320 (24). Unsigned and undated,
it is yet evident that the applications from these Londoners were considered of
special importance, as the endorsement is in Sir Joseph's hand ; and he has ap-
pended to the entry of five of them on p. 3 of E. the note, Delivered These above
to y e partyes Themselves Ap. 3: 72 ' (the date of this entry in his Diary). ' Sharp,'
we see, is Thomas Sharpe, of King's Head Court, Beech Lane, Cripplegate ;
4 Blackey ' is Nicholas Blakey, of Blackfriars ; and ' Cawton ' is Thomas Cawton, of
St. Ann's, Westminster.
The sixth (a meeting-place for Mr. Blakey) was not forthcoming, and Mr. Blakey
seems to have returned to Whitehall for it, under the aegis of Colonel Blood ; for so
I interpret the note appended to the entry by Sir Joseph on E, (4) : ' desired by
' M r Blakey, who was brought by M r Blood.'
204 Detailed and Expository
---- " -- - ------- .-_... . mj-r^- .. -. r. -.I.. T-. _ _____ ._- __ . ________ _ . -. -----
320 (31).
Endorsed: 4 R. 3 Apr. 1672
4 D' . B.
4 Indulgence.'
Addressed : ' For Sir Joseph Williamson.
4 Apr: y e 3 rd 1672
4 Deare S r .,
4 I desire by this bearer you please to send mee a coppy of licences,
& appoint when I may not faile to waite upon you this night or tomor-
row night in order to take licences for some frinds & to communicate
some thing farther : out of sight out of mind. Where is y r p(ro)tection.
I will not be knowne to s;et licence for any therefore I pray secrecy.
'lam
4 ever your most unfeigned
' frend to love honor & serve you
The copy of licences (of each of the three kinds) I presume he wanted
to show * enquirers,' that they might see the particulars which were
required duly to fill them in. The last sentences show that he was
anxious that his friends in the Establishment should have no inkling of
what he had been doing hitherto, and specially anxious that none of
them should know that he was actively engaged in making the Declara-
tion a success.
But of his energy in this direction the next letter [320 (33)] gives
ample evidence,
It is Endorsed by Sir Joseph himself.
4 4 Ap. 1672.
<Dr. B.
4 Harrison : Essex.
4 Marshall: Yorkesh;'
is Addressed : ' For S r Joseph Williamson,' and reads :
e 4 t, 72
4 My dear S r Joseph
4 pray by this bearer send thoese licenses & y e originall of thoese
two addresses, & by this post, I will god willing, send coppies into
severall parts & returne y e originalls.
4 Oh ! y 1 some thing could bee done as to civills would set, though
not a triple, yet a double Crowne upon his Majesties head, pray send
mee a licence also for John Harrisson presbiterian licence for his house
Pedmash in Essex, hee is M r West father-in-law, as alsoe for M r Martiall
for an house in Topliffe in Yorkshire presbiterian.
4 1 will promote Addresses by all friends.
god bles(s) his Majesty for his act which undoubtedly will prove an
healing to his nation. You know
4 1 am
4 Protection. < Yours most unfeignedly
I will not say
The Indulgence Documents 205
'tis forgetfulness but many busines(s)
but may bee I am charitable beyond reason.
I am free to pay y e porter and hope you beelieve
I doe not expect to be repaid by any.'
[On the back.]
' When you have leisure to spend halfe an houre with noe leave I
may shew you some thing worth y e view, burne this.'
' Thoese licenses ' he asks Sir Joseph to send by bearer must be the
six he * put in ' for in 320 (25), and this letter shows that beside these
four London 'clients,' he now has two further clients in the 'countries'
or provinces : John Harrison, of Pedmash in Essex, and Christopher
Marshal (1), of Morley and Topliffe in Yorkshire (West Riding).
The odd thing is, however, that both are entered as already issued,
'Ap. 2.' They must have been applied for by some one else : but not
having been secured (*.*., taken away from Whitehall) he is asked, no
doubt, to use his influence to get them. They were made out at once,
and handed to his messenger with the other six. Hence Sir Joseph
Williamson's notes in the Entry Book, appended to each of these eight
' entries, ' Desired by D r Butler and sent him, Ap. 4 th .'
The two addresses referred to in this letter are, I imagine, the
addresses sent from Tiverton and Exeter ; ; n response to which the four
licences I referred to just now had been sent down.
Dr. Butler apparently wanted the originals of them that he might
have them before him while sketching a model preamble to send to those
who were at all inclined to give this proof of the loyalty and gratitude to
the King, which had been evoked in the hearts of Nonconformists by his
Declaration of Indulgence. The 'protection' he had 'queried' in his
previous letter he refers to again in the postscript to this ; and meant
evidently the protection from the prying criticism of his Anglican
friends which ' secrecy ' alone could secure him.
He seems to think that Sir Joseph had ' forgotten ' his pledge, and
had inadvertently referred to him by name. In that last sentence of the
postscript, urging his generosity to the ' porters,' and his own ' cleanness
' of palm,' I can hardly refrain the fear that he ' protests too much.'
This same day the 4th of April (two days after the first batch of
Licences were issued) Dr. Nicholas Butler wrote a letter indicating his
willingness to act as Agent for those in the provinces.
It is cited by Dr. B. Nightingale in the Introduction to his ' The
Ejected of 1662 in Cumberland & Westmorland, their Predecessors &
Successors,' p. 57. He extracted it from Jerom Murch's 'Presbyterian
and General Baptist Churches in the West of England' (p. 378). It is
headed :
' Letter from Mr. Butler of London to a Dissenter in the County,'
and Mr. Murch says that ' in all probability this Dissenter lived in
' Lancashire.'
' Lond. Ap. 4 th '72
' I am not unmindful of friends, and therefore thought good to offere
my service to you and any of your brethren, in order to procuring
206 Detailed and Expository
licenses. [They] shall cost nothing. Our London ministers have
returned thankes, and most have already taken out their licences. Its
expected that someth: by way of addresse be sent from those in the
countrey. 2 examples I have sent you, coppyed by my men from the
original! : the places must be mentioned and so licensed, the name of
the minister and his Persuasion, and so he wid [would] not only be
licensed to this place, but to all places whatever we have licensed. If
you please you may direct your letter to mee in little St. Hellens in
Bishopsgate Street
'lam
<Sr
* Your loving friend
'NICHOLAS BUTLER.'
This letter shows how promptly and eagerly he is fulfilling his pro-
mise to Sir Joseph. It is written the very same day.
The next letter in the Whitehall series was written four days later.
It has somehow got misplaced in the volumes of State Papers. It is
bound up in 321, as 197 A in that Volume because of the erroneous date
prefixed to it. Dr. Butler has by a slip of the pen written ' Feb. y e 8 th
72.' (O.S.) ; and this has been interpreted as meaning, in N.S., Feb. 8,
1673, and so is placed in 321.
It is accordingly calendared 321 (19?A); but its proper date is given
in the Endorsement :
'8 Ap. 1672,
<D r B.
It is addressed : * For Sir Joseph Williamson.
4 5 licences
Slater
Pedger
Winke
Marshall
Swinhow.'
. y e 8th 72
' Indeed you bee a naughty man to send mee foure of six unsigned
pray returne them mended. I pray licence for
4 1. M r Samuell Slater M r of Arts, for his house in Walthamstow
a generall licence
2. for M r Elias pedger M r of Arts of London
3. the same for M r Peeter Winke M r of Arts of London
& forget not him in my last
4. M r George Swinhow his house in Weedred in the parish of
Ammersham in Bucks, all presbiterian
5. M r Christopher Martiall is congregationall which I mistooke, &
you may alter, if you please
4 1 have an address, which I think best to deliver you and not to send.
The Indulgence Documents 207
I would speak with you at your leisure as to M r Chambre. I thank you
for your long looked for,
4 and am most certainly
4 Yours in sincerity
'
* I have ordered my boy to
your leisure all theese are as done
by our friend W his friend unknowne
4 1 must send for two more,
both out of Essex, to be signed.
I have sent you the letter to ly by you.'
The * four out of six ' which had been sent unsigned must have
been four out of the six London licences applied for in 320 (25). As to
which they were we have no indication. Was one of them Chambre's
about which he says he would like to speak privately ? or were they the
four (two pairs) for Dr. Annesley and Mr. West ?
As he speaks of Christopher Martial having been misnamed Presby-
terian it was his own (Dr. Butler's) mistake he must have sent it back
with this letter by ' his boy,' to be altered while the boy waits Sir Joseph's
leisure.
The reference to ' Mr. Chambre ' is of special interest.
There is little wonder that Dr. Butler wants a quiet word with Sir
Joseph about him. He is the Robert Chambers who had lost his preferment
in Dublin, in 1662, and, like so many more who felt the cruel injustice
of the Act of Uniformity, had given Colonel Blood his active sympathy
in the plot which Blood headed in 1663 to surprise Dublin Castle, seize
the person of the Duke of Ormonde, and right the wrongs of the perse-
cuted Puritan Protestants.* When the scheme failed, he escaped, as did
his friend Blood ; and appears to have come direct to London for
asylum. Under the alias of * Mr. Grime,' or Grimes, he had lived in
seclusion but not in inaction. In 1665 he was one of the noble band of
Nonconformist ministers who braved all the perils of the Great Plague
to supply the lack of service to the sick and dying of the Church of
England clergy when they fled from the city to preserve their own
precious lives. In 1669 ne was one f tnose reported by the Bishop of
London under the name of ' Mr. Grimes ' as holding a Conventicle in
Home Alley in Aldersgate Street [R. 220]; and now, in 1672, in
response to Dr. Butler's application on his behalf, he obtained a licence
c to be a Presbyterian Teacher in any place licenced & allowed 2. Apr.
4 1672,' under the name of ^Robert Chambre.' The licence was sent to
Dr. Butler April 4, and conveyed by him to his mysterious friend [E. (5)].
The next document is another note to Sir Joseph, dated April 12,
1672. He sends it, not by a servant, or his 'boy,' but by one whom
he calls the mutual friend of Sir Joseph and himself, < our friend '
; Capt.
' Chambers a minister presb.,' with three others similarly described.
208
Detailed and Expository
although he was an ejected minister, and one who in 1669 was reported
as holding a large Conventicle in Wapping and is spoken of by the
Bishop in anything but complimentary terms Mr. Edward Veal. It
is very short, but the exact meaning of the allusions in it is not very
easy to determine.
It is calendared 320 (61), and is endorsed : ' Middlesex* by Benson.
It is addressed : < For his honored friend S r Joseph Williamson.
' Th(ese) psent.'
and reads :
'Apr: ye i2 th 1672
< Deare S r
' If it bee not over great a trouble I desire you will bee pleased
to send by this bearer (our good friend M r Veale) the licences I desired
or at least let me know when I may send for them.
4 1 am,
* Ever yours
These must be the licences he had mentioned in 321 (19?A) four
days before (viz., for Samuel Slater, of Walthamstow ; Elias Pledger,
of Whitechapel (for Margetting) ; Peter Vinke,* of London ; Geo.
Swinhow, of Amersham ; and Chr. Marshall, of Topcliffe, York).
Now it so happens that licences for the first four had been issued the
previous day (April n, 1672) [E. (10)] ; and Christopher Marshall's had
been issued in the very first batch of licences issued on April 2, 1672
[E. (4)]. So that they were all ready for Mr. Veale to take away with him.
Though they were ready, however, it is clear from the terms of the
next document that Mr. Veale did not bring them away, and they were
still lying ' dormant ' at Whitehall five days later, when Dr. Butler
writes to Sir Joseph, complaining that they have not reached him.
It would appear that, whether Mr. Veale first offered to take them
away or not, Sir Joseph had promised to send them to Dr. Butler, and
so save Mr. Veale the trouble ; and it seems more likely that Mr. Veale
did not offer this courtesy, as in the note addressed to Sir Joseph on Mr.
Wilmott's memorandum, he asks him to send them to their mutual
friend < D^ Butler.'
This, and much more, comes out in the following letter by Dr.
Butler [320(110)].
It is endorsed : < Yorkeshire, Kent, Bucks, London, Middlesex,
Somerset ' ;
is addressed : 4 For Sir Joseph Williamson ' ; and is one of the most
carefully and legibly written of the whole series.
It runs :
<Lon: Apr: y e 17 th : 72.
< Dearest S r ,
4 Would you say this were a trouble, I would not comit y e like
error. I expected licences according to your prnis to our frend Mr. V.
I am as freely ready to give as you can rec e gr(ace) of allowance upon
* In the licence-entry spelt ' Winke.'
The Indulgence Documents 209
y e account of the multiplicity of busines. if you can or will, pray send
licences as followeth & if it bee the least inconvenience to you I will
trouble you noe farther than to tell you allwaies that I am
' Yours in most sincerity
* Samuel Slater M.A. his house at Walthamstow Pres:
Nich: Thorowgood his house in Canterbury pres: MA
Edward Veales his meeting house in Waping pres: BD
Tho: Burdsall MA: Licence generall. pres:
Matt: Sylvester MA Licen: gen: pres: of London
Thomas Harocks his house in Battersey MA presb:
Elias Pledger MA Licen: gen pres: of London
George Swinhow of Woodred parish Amersham his house in
Bucks:
Oliver Heywood MA pres his house in y e parish of Halifax
Yorkshire.
Francis Sale MA pres: his house in Leeds.
Tho. Sharpe MA pres: his house in Leeds.
Not inserted
or y e School house there for y e too last teach rs are helpers of
Each other.'
[In margin, written along side of paper]
' 1 beg theese may bee sent by this bearer & pray thee soe.
for 'tis lawfull sometimes to bee troublesome.
I am weary myself of this worke, but cannot deny W.'*
Of the nineteen or twenty licences asked for, and which he hopes
his messenger will be able to bring away with him, eleven had been
ready for some time five of them since the nth of April, and six since
the 1 3th. The others were fresh applications, two for Battersea
(Thomas Harrocks's) and six for Yorkshire [Halifax (2) and Leeds (4)].
There was no reason, therefore, why Dr. Butler's messenger should
not have taken away all the former eleven. Even yet, we shall see,
that was not done. With the fresh applications there was no attempt
to deal at once. They were not issued till April 20, though they are
all entered as issued on that date.
His protestation, < if it bee the least inconvenience to you I will
< trouble you noe farther,' if it meant anything beyond the civility that
he would not press Sir Joseph to do anything that day, had no practical
worth ; for two days later he is begging licences again.
April 17 (the date of [320 (110)]) was a Wednesday. 320 (152
or 153), which is the next letter bearing Dr. Butler's cryptic signature
fyz?*^ is dated ' Frid. morn'.'
It is endorsed : * London, Midd.,' and runs :
* Frid. morn '
< My dear S r Joseph,
4 Send mee this one time & ille vow and swear I'll send for noe
more, for any man's pleasure. I have sent y e blanck fill. y e porter
* ' W must mean ' Mr. West,' Edward West, of Ropemakers' Alley, Moorfields.
2io Detailed and Expository
waits your leisure. I will be very vext noe moe. let ould ... get
licences for these for me. Yet still & ever shall I bee
4 Yours as much as you will
4 or can wish
'
4 Pray let patron signe these
I could make you laugh but I will not
good now if you have any goodness in you
send me all I send for.'
It must be confessed that Dr. Butler is a little impatient. He has
allowed only two days to pass since he applied. But the Whitehall
officials apparently are not inclined to put themselves out to meet his
wishes. His messenger has to go away without the fresh licences asked
on the iyth (for Surrey and Yorks). They are not made out until the
following day Saturday, April 20. [I imagine it is these he refers to
in the postscript.] And for any new ones he will surely have to wait
those referred to in the sentence, * let ould . . . get licences for these
4 for me.' What 4 these ' are, the letter gives no indication. But Ben-
son's endorsement 4 London, Middlesex ' would lead us to suppose
that a list accompanied the letter of places in these districts, which has
disappeared. The next letter, which is undoubtedly from Dr. Butler's
hand, is 320 (170). But 320 (163) an application from William
Hooke (the friend of John Davenport of New Haven and the ex-master
of the Savoy) for a licence for himself and John Langstone his assistant
to preach at Richard Loton's house 4 in Spittle yard at present and the
4 next year at his howse in Angell Alley in Whitechappell ' seems to
have been put in by Dr. Butler ; for the note (applying to the erasure
of the last clause), 4 I have crossed what I thought not practicable,'
seems to be in Dr. Butler's hand.
But here is an undoubted production of the Doctor's hand :
320 (170)
Addressed : 4 for S r Joseph Williamson '
4 Apr. 22 th 72
4 A posset take you my dear friend, cannot you bee a sufferer, but
you must make me a fellow feeler, because you give licences for noe
thing, must I bee thus troubled Why coe you not beg my pardon
what ? have you lost goodnes & good manners all at once fy, fy. in
truth I must ring* you not because you root* but beecause you do
not well however whether in jest or earnest you must conclude I am
& ever shall bee
4 Dear S^
4 Yours most unfeignedly
4 in all faithfulnes.
* The allusion must be to Dr. B.'s reproach of Sir Joseph Williamson that he
does not ' grub ' about in the pockets of licence-seekers for money in the shape of
fees, as swine Toot' about in the mire for filthy food if their snouts are not 'ring'ed.
The Indulgence Documents 211
* there bee five beehind
for which you bee a naughty man.
I can heare all have them i mediately,
but if you take mee for your frend I
wil have you to make bould
pray fill up y e blanck with for his
house at Walthamstow.'
The body of this letter shows that a point has been raised by Sir
Joseph as to the conditions on which Dr. Butler is obtaining these
licences similar to that which, about a month later, was raised in so
awkward a form about Colonel Blood.
Dr. Butler at the outset protested that in this matter he was quite
willing to serve God for naught, and that it was mainly, wholly, the
interests of the King and the Church which he was working for in
taking up this Indulgence. Here he frankly avows, or at least very
clearly implies, that he does not mean to get these licences for nothing ;
hinting that in his opinion there should be some fee officially charged, to
be paid at Whitehall by the applicant whether in person or by proxy :
in the latter case, the agent being allowed to charge a little extra as his
personal perquisite. Sir Joseph evidently does not agree. The allu-
sions in the postscript are not all equally clear. The last sentence can
scarcely mean anything but that he had found the licence for Samuel
Slater imperfect, or Samuel Slater himself had discovered it. The
* meeting-place ' was not filled in, and he wished it filled in * for his
* house at Walthamstow.' The first sentence of it means that there
are still five licences which he has applied for, but has not yet received.
What they are it is not easy to ascertain.
Having let off this steam of ' familiar* wit, he begins again. The
very next day (April 23) he writes him, as though he had never written
before.
He begs for licences by an unnamed * bearer ' and for ' persons &
4 places ' unnamed, and asks him to accord a private interview to Mr.
Edward West, of Little Moorfields.
320 (185)
It is endorsed by Sir Joseph : ' Indulgence.
'23 Apr. 1672. R.
<Dr. B.'
It is addressed : < These for S r Joseph Williamson ' : and reads :
< Apr. y e 23 th 72
4 Most honored & dear S r ,
' 1 humbly pray y* you would give licences to y e bearer heareof
for such persons & places as hee shall offer to you, & bee pleased to take
noe notice to the bearer of mee for hee knoweth not from whoese
hands this cometh & alsoe bee pleased to favor M r West as mee with
an opportunity for one half hower to waite upon you at your time &
142
212 Detailed and Expository
place, which if you please you may intimate by a line by this bearer to
bee delivered to y e party hee comes from, but not superscribe it comes
from M r W:
'S',
' I am in all manner of faithfullnes
c Yours to love honour & serve you
The next letter is addressed to Lord Arlington, and concerns an
important question in the working of the Indulgence (touching the
details of its application) viz., whether licences should be granted for
large Buildings and Public Halls.
Evidently the High Church Party were using their influence at
headquarters to prevent it. Anything which gave the Nonconformist
services prominence and good public standing they feared would injure
the Church of England ; and they had in many cases already secured
the official refusal to made such application. Dr. Butler had not been
asked to obtain licences for any such buildings, but Colonel Blood had.
Colonel Blood had made application for several, evidently considering
that no possible objection could be taken to issuing licences for them,
wherever those responsible for the maintenance of such buildings were
willing that they should be used for this purpose.
His application, and a number of similar applications on the part
of others, had met with a curt refusal, rousing considerable resentment
in many quarters. Blood was evidently nettled, and in a letter to Lord
Arlington on public affairs (touching the Dutch fleet), had urged that
such refusals were bad tactics as well as unfair. That was on the 24th
of April (S. P. Dom. Car. II. 306, 63A).* It is more than probable that
he had seen Dr. Butler about it after writing, if not before ; and D r
Butler fully concurred with his judgment, though in his own letter to
Lord Arlington he makes no illusion to Blood, and bases his remonstrance
on what he has personally heard on all sides.
The letter is dated April 26, 1672, the iday on which Sir Joseph
endorses Blood's letter as received, and is reproduced in Vol. I. as :
320 (196)
It is endorsed by Sir Joseph Williamson : < Ye Indulgence
< 26 Apr. 72. R.
< D r Butler,
<y e use of Halls.'
It is addressed : ' For y e Right Hon ble Earle of Arlington ' ; and
reads :
' London, Apr: y e 26 th 1672
< Right Hon^e
4 1 should not bee faithful should I conceale y e dayly growth of
Jelousies, Protestant dissenters conclude this there (sic) liberty soe
graciously soe freely granted by his Majesty will bee short lived in
regard 'tis soe stiffled in y e birth, publick places was declared should bee
* Vide account of Blood (pp. 234, 235),
The Indulgence Documents 213
allow'd now refused, & they licenced to noe more than what thoese of
y e Romish perswasion freely enjoy, they say why not Halls Schooles
or chappells not endowed, they beeing by declaration only debarred
church benefices, let others supply unendowed chappells with preach-
ing ministers, dissenters desires off them presently ceaceth, otherwise
they conclude wheare God hath his church y e Devill must have his
chappell, it beeing his great worke to keepe y e Gospell from beeing
preached.
* Every day allmost affords tidings (as I can show some) from
y e countries of y e many frequent and fervent blessing of god & y e King,
tis great pitty y l anything (by lessening his Maj: soe mercifull grant)
should bee done to hinder soe good soe advantageous a worke as y e
getting y e harts of the people which now as y e hart of one man begin
to say long may your majesty live & rule over us. these are weighty
reasons (I humbly conceive) rather of choice to allow them theese
publick places.
* but I have troubled your honor too much already, yet I had your
encouragement for it, but I am loath to abuse my liberty, therefore
only further beg to bee accounted
4 Right Hon ble
4 Your honors
4 Most unworthy yet most
11 servant
The same day he writes to the Under Secretary in the same vein
as he has written to the Chief Secretary of State.
320 (197)
Endorsed :
4 25. Apr. 72 R.
'D'B.
* Halls to N-Conformists.'
Addressed : * For S r Joseph Williamson.'
'Aprill 26 th 72
* Most honored & dear S r ,
4 had I scene you I should further discoursed this point, I am
confident you beelieve I intirely love you, without self ends of anything
from you or by you. I am sorry to heare it said, who is y e author of
this Stop of halls etc. : my ears are daily beared with theese complaints
loath I was to trouble you but rubs are easiest removed at first, a plain
frend is not to bee despised noe one is privy to my writing but I did
see a necessity of it. Our friend G is well had hee knowne of my
writing hee would kindly remembered (sic) to you. I constantly let
him know all my actings if not before, yet after
4 1 am,
4 ever without all doubt
4 Your truly loveing & endeared frend
214 Detailed and Expository
The counsel tendered by both him and Blood was not accepted.
Though some large mansions and public halls, which were the legal
property of trustees, were * allowed,' a greater number were refused ;
and the refusal was unhesitating and without exception in the case of
all ecclesiastical property property belonging to the dignitaries or
clergy of the Church of England.
The number of such cases was much larger than would perhaps be
supposed ; and the details connected with each case are full of interest.
The reader will find them discussed in Chapter VI. of this Second
Section.
This was, however, a side issue, and is not allowed by Dr. Butler
as it was apparently by Colonel Blood to check his efforts to make
the Indulgence a success.
The very same day on which he had penned this double remon-
strance, he writes again to Sir Joseph Williamson, though quite late in
the evening.
The letter is reproduced as :
320 (198)
It is endorsed by Sir Joseph's clerk, Fr. Benson :
< Dr Butler
'R 27 Ap. 72 '
It is unaddressed, but was evidently meant for Sir Joseph ; and
reads :
'Apr: y e 26 th 72
' Most honoured & deare S r
' These came this evening to my hand by which you may see
my readiness to promote what may bee most acceptable to his majesty
theese beeing y e effects of writing downe and if theese please I will
not offer to obtaine for any but upon such account I most humbly beg
y l this bearer may bring y e licences fully according to y e petitions.
'I am
4 most deare S r
' Your most unfeigned frend
* loveing to love, honor, & serve you
The < these ' in the first sentence of the above must be two Petitions
(from Eccles and Winwick) which accompanied the letter, and are
reproduced in Vol. I. as 320 (198 I.) and 320 (198 II.).
Their preambles are practically identical, being evidently variants
of a model form drawn up, and sent to the intending petitioners by
Dr. Butler, when writing down to suggest this course. The following
note to Mr. Benson, Sir Joseph's head clerk, must have been penned the
same night or following morning :
320 (199)
It is addressed : ' For M r Francis Benson/
and reads :
The Indulgence Documents 215
' There were two peticcons sent by mee to S r Joseph : y e one
from Eccles y e other from Winwick in Lancashire.* y e persons names
I have forgot, but hope this may direct you to find them other wais
I must bee forced to send to Lancr: for the names againe which would
reflect much upon my credit. I should bee truely thankefull to you for
y e finding of them.
* I am,
<Sr
' Yours
It should not escape notice that, in writing to the subordinate, Dr.
Butler does not feel the need for secrecy, which he observes when
writing to Sir Joseph. He signs not in cypher but under his usual
' sign-manual * ; but still with that confusing method of making the
second stroke of the ' N ' do duty for the first stroke of the ' B ' thereby
making the signature appear more like J. Butler than N.Butler.
In the course of the next three or four days two other Petitions
reached his hand ; the first from Wrentham, Essex, dated April 29
[320 (204)], and the second from Lewes, Sussex, dated April 30
[320 (209)].
The letter which follows asks attention to these Petitions :
320 (210)
Endorsed: '30. Apr. 1672. R
'D'B.
* Licences
'Milward's house
< Rent
< Rathbone '
Addressed : ' For S r Joseph Williamson.'
* Apr y e y e 3O th 72
4 Most honored & deare S r
' 1 most humbly beg licences for thoese two peticions according
as therein desired. I alsoe pray a licence for y e house of M r Georg
Milward at Farincomb in Somersetshire for M r John Milward to preach
in whoe already hath a licence in generall. there is yet alsoe two
beehind of y e ould ones I formerly desired which were for Kent.
Rathbone was one of them, the other I have forgotten. I intreat you,
deare S r , to let mee have theese. I get nothing by this but expense of
money & time. I am, for ever,
< Dear S r ,
* Yours in all truth
John Milward's personal licence had been * desired ' by Dr. Butler
as early as the jist of March or 1st April. The memorandum of
* Both townes there ' : marginal note by J. W.
2 1 6 Detailed and Expository
application is preserved in 320 (25). It had been made out (in the first
batch issued) April 2, and sent to Dr. Butler April 4 [vide Sir J. W.'s
Notes on E. (4)]. The licence he now asks for George Milward's
house is granted at once, as well as a second licence for himself there,
although (as already licensed to preach in 'any allowed place') it was
quite unnecessary. Both are entered on E. (67) as issued the very next
day (May i). Rathbone (or Rathband)'s licence was applied for first
April 17 [(Benson's Official List) 320 (115)]. The application was
repeated [320 (162)]. In each case it was to preach in ' Richard Day's
house.' This doubtless is the name Dr. Butler had forgotten. Both
licences were made out and entered [E. (34)] on '20 Apr. 72.' for
Presbyterians in Horsmonden.
The next letter of Dr. Butler's which we come to is 321 (65).
This letter is neither signed with Dr. Butler's cypher nor ' addressed.'
Still, there is no reason for hesitation in assigning it to Dr. Nicholas
Butler the handwriting is so manifestly his ; and Benson has endorsed
it : ' D r Butler, 9 May 72. Essex.'
* Pray send mee the licence for Constantine according to y e peti-
cion, and theese following
'A licence for y e house of M r Harris called Chennills in Margeting
Essex, Elias Pledger is to bee teacher but hath already a generall
licence soe needs noe more.
'John Oakes of Little Baddow in Essex M:A: presbi: for him selfe
& his owne house
' Christopher Wrage M:A: presbi: for him selfe & his house called
Foxtons hall in Litle Waltham Essex
'John Reeve M.A. Presb: for him selfe and y e house in Chelmsford
Essex know by the signe of y e King's head '
In the above ' Constantine' is Robert Constantine, M.A., 'formerly
' minister of Oldham '; and ' ye peticion ' is a Petition which is preserved
as 321 (22), 'To the Kings most Excellent Mai tie ,' from 'a number of
' Inhabitants of the Parish of Oldham,' to permit him to preach in ' A
'Barne belonging to Robert Wylde of Heaside.' The licences were
ready having been made out the previous day, May 8, 1672
[E. (86)].
Mr. Harris's house at Stenvills (here ' Chennils '), had been applied
for the previous day (May 8) by William Mascall, of Romford
[321 (27)].
Elias Pledger's licence had been applied for by Dr. Butler as early as
April 8 [321 (197 A), and on another memorandum [320 (49)], Elias
Pledger had long before that been described by Sir Joseph Williamson or
his clerk, Fr. Benson, as ' usually living ' at Whitechapel, and had
been granted a general licence April n, 1672 [E. (10)].
The applications for John Oakes (person and house), and Christopher
Wrag (person and a friend's house), are new applications.
John Reeve had already secured licences for himself to preach in
his own house at Springfield (near Colchester), probably on the applica-
The Indulgence Documents 217
tion of John Burgis. Issued on April 30 [E. (45)], it had been taken
away by John Burgis on May i [320 (244)] .*
But Dr. Butler now applies for another licence to preach in
Chelmsford itself, 'at the signe of the King's Head' (was it an inn ?).t
All these are secured at once, and are entered [on E. (94)] as issued on
the very day of this application, May 9, 1672.
The next letter of Dr. Butler's, in order of numbering, is 321 (19?A),
but that we have seen reason to place much earlier, because it was palpably
by a slip of the pen that Dr. Butler dated it February 8, 1672 which
has been interpreted by the Editor as February 8, 1673 whereas Sir
Joseph's endorsement, April 8, 1672, is clearly an accurate correction.
So that it ought to have been placed in Vol. 320, somewhere between 33
and 61. [As 34 is dated April 6, it might well immediately follow that.]
The next and last of this most interesting series of letters is
321 (333).
It is endorsed : < the houses not fild up in this note.'
The lines containing the names are by a different hand. The note
is undoubtedly Dr. Butler's, and is remarkable as being signed with his full
surname, not the familiar cypher *^^*^. The whole document reads:
' M r Samuel Statham a Presbyterian of Loughborough in Leicester-shire.'
4 The house of M rs Mary Statham widow of Loughborough in
Leicester-shire for Presbyterians to meet in,' etc.
< M r Benson
4 Pray doe mee the favour as to send mee licences as above
desired by this gentleman & you will much oblige
<Sr
< Your obliged frend
* Pray let me know by him
what news from ye fleet.'
This note, it will be again observed, is clearly and fully signed
-> doubtless because it is addressed to the subordinate, and
not to Sir J. W., the responsible public official. The date is not
appended. But the licences asked for were granted and entered
June 10, 1672 [E. (153)]. This shows that the note must have been
written within a month of that last quoted. The enquiry in the P.S.
for ' news from y e fleet,' moreover, shows that it must have been less
than three weeks ; for on May 28 the great battle was fought in South-
wold Bay, in its issues, equal and indecisive.
The whole correspondence of the Doctor preserved in these two
volumes therefore ranges in date between March 19 and June 10, and
covers less than three months of this eventful year.
* This document is defective. Two licences were issued ; and John Burgis speaks
of only one. The name of the preacher also is omitted (viz., the same John Reeve
for whose house a separate licence was issued), John Burgis's silence on the point
implying, to the unwary, that he, John Burgis, was to be the preacher.
f In the entry it is simply called ' the howse of John Reeve in Chelmesford,
' Essex.'
2 1 8 Detailed and Expository
Of course, it has to be borne in mind that all the similar notes or
memoranda relating to the applications for licences or their receipt after
the middle of June, were not preserved. So that we cannot say that
Dr. Butler gave up this licence-agent work with this date. He
evidently was genuinely interested in the whole Indulgence project,
though it would involve too great a draft on our credulity to believe
that there was no thought of self in it. Too palpably he was hoping
thereby to convince both the King and his brother that he was devoted
to the cause of their personal popularity, and would do anything to
promote the welfare of the Stuart dynasty.
COLONEL BLOOD.*
He was an Irishman by birth, but a strong Protestant, and a Puritan
by religious education. He was born in 1628 on his paternal estate at
Dun boy ne, county Meath, about ten or twelve miles north-west of
Dublin. Until his marriage to a Lancashire lass in 1650, we know
little or nothing about him ; but we may well recall the facts of British
history belonging to that period of his life, which would be graven deep
in his memory, and which must have had great influence in moulding
his sympathies and character.
He was twelve years old when the Long Parliament assembled at
Westminster, and began its memorable work by impeaching Strafford
for his attempts to introduce personal government, and for several
instances of personal oppression, in Ireland, following it up by com-
pelling Charles to assent to his execution, as well as to that of Laud.
He was thirteen, when the whole of Protestant Ireland was
thrown into consternation by the frightful massacre of Ulster, and no
doubt the horrors of that brutal butchery were deeply imprinted on his
mind.
As a lad of fourteen he would hear that Charles had raised the Royal
Standard on Nottingham Castle, and afterwards how the country was
plunged into the long miseries of a four years' Civil War. None of the
military forces at that time in Ireland owned any direct allegiance to
the Parliament, as opposed to the King. Ulster was being garrisoned
(or protected) by the Scotch under Munro, and Ormonde's army
around Dublin was hot for the King.
The 'Life and Adventures' does not hesitate to identify Blood's
father with the Royalist cause, suggesting that young Blood, when he
entered the army, joined Ormonde's forces. The view of Kaye and
others, however, is much more probable, that Blood's father was a
* I had prepared a much fuller account of this remarkable man, citing verbatim
all the original documents which are my warranty for the statements made. This
would have made the monograph of a length altogether disproportionate to the im-
portance of Blood's connection with our theme. I therefore present only a condensed
summary of it.
The Indulgence Documents 219
Puritan, and was in secret sympathy with the popular cause, so that
young Blood's military service would from the first be in the army of the
Parliament.
Not long after the Civil War had begun, Charles astutely struck a
truce and afterwards made a Treaty with the Irish rebels. This set
Ormonde free to transport his troops to Wales ; later marching them
into Cheshire to the assistance of the King, with Monck as one of
his officers.
It was this that brought the Parliamentary army for the first time
near to Ireland. Fairfax, marching a strong detachment from Lincoln,
met this Irish contingent, and inflicted a crushing defeat on them at
Nantwich, amongst other officers taking Monck prisoner ; and not six
months later, reinforced by ' the Association troops organized by
c Cromwell,' inflicted a still more crushing defeat on the Royalists at
Marston Moor. Surely Blood was not then too young (he was now
sixteen) to have joined the Parliamentary army !
But Mr. Kaye does not introduce him to his military service till two
years later, by the purchase for him by his father of a lieutenancy in
Fairfax's troop. The year 1646, however, is an unfortunate date for
Kaye to have selected, for by that time the Civil War was practically
over, with the fall of Bristol and the surrender of Oxford. True,
another two years later still, the war broke out afresh, with the march
of the Scotch into England on Charles's invitation.
Blood was then (1648) just twenty; and it is a very probable sug-
gestion Kaye makes in his little romance, that it was in the short and
sharp campaign in the southern half of Lancashire, that being quartered
with other of the Parliamentary troops in Holcroft Hall, he first saw,
and fell in love with, his future wife.
Cromwell had reduced Wales, and, dashing north through Cheshire,
joined hands with Lambert, in time to inflict a ruinous defeat on
Hamilton's Scotch army at Preston, in Lancashire. So brilliantly did
young Blood distinguish himself in this encounter that the vigilant eye
of Cromwell noted the dashing young lieutenant ; and when after the
death of the King at Whitehall, January 29, 1648-49, Cromwell was
appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, he took Blood with him there.
At that time all the partisans of the English monarchy in Ireland were
arrayed in full force against Oliver the navy under Prince Rupert, and
the army under Ormonde. But Jones, who had held Dublin against
great odds for the last two years, at this critical moment destroyed
Ormonde's army at Rathmines (August 2, 1650), and made the way
clear for Cromwell to make Dublin his headquarters.
Blood accompanied the force which Cromwell took with him when
he and Jones advanced against Drogheda, and Kaye makes Blood the
choice of both Cromwell and Jones to lead the third desperate assault,
which captured the citadel, though it had been deemed impregnable,
alike by its natural position and by its skilfully planned fortification.
For these distinguished services Thomas Blood was honoured with a
colonelcy (though we have no hint as to the occasions on which he had
been elevated from his lieutenancy to the intermediate ranks), and he
22O Detailed and Expository
remained in Ireland till by the capture of Kilkenny and Clonmel
Cromwell had completed the conquest of Ireland. When the army
was released on the return of Oliver to England in May, 1650, Blood
went over to Lancashire to claim his fiancee, Mary Holcroft, obtained
the consent of her father, Squire Holcroft of Holcroft Hall, and was
married in the parish church of Culcheth, June 21, 1650.*
Returning to Ireland, the young wedded pair settled in the vicinity
of Dublin, enjoying the revenues of a fair estate ; Oliver having rewarded
Thomas Blood's faithful and distinguished services, as he did others of
his Irish army, by conferring on him part of the sequestered estates of
the Royalist landowners. When Henry Cromwell, too, undertook the
government of Ireland, he thought so well of Thomas Blood that he
made him Justice of the Peace.
The four or five years preceding the Restoration, then, we may call
the halcyon days of Blood's career, though the whole of the first ten
years of his married life in Ireland were happy and peaceful. Probably
three of his children were born in Ireland. There seem to have been
six of them : four sons Thomas, his namesake, the eldest ; Holcroft
(his mother's maiden surname), William, and Charles ; and two daugh-
ters Mary, his wife's namesake, and Elizabeth.
With the Restoration of Charles II. in 1660, this domestic happi-
ness was destined to become a thing of the past. The loyal Irish
gentry clamoured for the restoration of their sequestered estates, and
Charles was obliged, in part, to accede to their demands, though he dis-
liked the work of ejecting from their landed property men who had
welcomed, or at any rate had acquiesced in, his return, quite as much as
he disliked the work of ejecting loyal ministers from their livings.
Still, it had to be done ; and among those who lost their lands was
Thomas Blood. We may be sure, too, that Ormonde on his return to
power in Ireland as Lord-Lieutenant, would at once cancel Blood's
commission as Justice of the Peace. These circumstances were not
likely to foster in him a spirit of devotion to the new regime ; and
when Blood saw the Roman Catholics openly favoured, all the Puritan
Protestant clergy removed, and only the highest Anglican clergy
acknowledged, we are not surprised to learn that Blood assumed an
attitude of restless discontent which rapidly ripened into revolt against
the new order.
Many of the dispossessed ex-soldiery of Cromwell's army, and many
of the ejected ministers (of Puritan and evangelical convictions) shared
his discontent, and more or less definitely were formed into a brother-
hood pledged to attempt any project that would unsettle this new
settlement, and restore to the despoiled some, at least, of their ancient
rights.
This was the case not only in Ireland, but for different though allied
reasons, in Scotland, and in many parts of England ; and through the
next ten years or more we find Blood a moving spirit in this disaffected
party, ready to organize any enterprise which was likely to disturb the
* For this fact and date we have first-hand documentary evidence in the entry of
the marriage in the parish register of Culcheth.
The Indulgence Documents 221
security of the restored Royalists, or seemed to promise in any, even the
most remote or indirect way, spoil of material treasure by which they
might reimburse their material losses.
It is in this light that we ought to view Blood's many romantic,
almost quixotic, enterprises. They were not the wanton crimes of a
wicked, cruel, unprincipled adventurer, rebel, highwayman, and robber,
but the daring deeds of one never afraid to risk his life in any object that
either commanded his sympathy or held out the hope of solid gain ; and
they were all in the interests of the Protestant against the Papist, of the
Puritan as against the Prelatist, and of the people as against the aristocracy
or plutocracy.
The first of these enterprises was a well-considered scheme, planned
soon after the passing of the English Act of Uniformity in 1662,* which
miscarried only through the treachery of some women concerned in it
to capture Dublin Castle, secure the person of Ormonde as Lord-
Lieutenant, and so acquire a position from which they could make their
own terms with the authorities in England. That was in May, 1663.
The plot was prematurely treacherously disclosed to the Lord-Lieu-
tenant, and he was able to secure the persons of some twenty-four of the
ringleaders. But Blood with some of his friends escaped. Robert Chambers
and Mr. Cormack, both Puritan ministers, were associated with him,
and the former found asylum in London under the alias of Mr. Grimes.
Exasperated by their escape, Ormonde published a proclamation,
declaring Blood and his associates rebels and traitors against the Crown,
and pronouncing them outlawed, in case of their non-surrender within
twenty-four hours.
Under that ban of outlawry, Thomas Blood lived for the next eight
years, ever eluding the vigilance of all the King's officers and all the
King's men, whether in Ireland, or Scotland, or England, keeping them
all in a constant state of nervous apprehension, and yet as constantly
gaining some little irritating advantage in his guerilla warfare against the
Royalist authorities, though rarely succeeding in his immediate object.
For a time, according to the < Life and Adventures,' his hiding-places
were in Dublin and its neighbourhood, amongst his old friends and the
native Irish in the mountains [of Meath and Kildare and Wicklow] .
R. H. (in his remarks) also alleges that not long after he managed to
slip over to Holland, gaining the confidence of the De Ruyter family [a
proof, surely, that he was not the unmitigated rascal which he has
generally been supposed to be]. On recrossing the Channel, he
appears to have remained in England ; and in the autumn of this same
year 1663, is credited with giving active help to another daring project
whose centre was in Yorkshire, though its secret organizing committee
sat in London. It aimed at nothing less than a general rising in
England on the part mainly of the disbanded Cromwellian soldiers.
The informers tried to persuade the authorities that many Noncon-
formist ministers were involved in it ; and several ejected ministers
were arrested on the merest suspicion, though no evidence to convict
* Was it not largely the sense of injustice produced by the similar ejectments in
Ireland, all effected, illegally, in or by 1661, which led to the movement in Dublin ?
222 Detailed and Expository
them could ever be obtained. It evidently had no active sympathisers
in any of the Nonconformists of position, and the scheme fizzled out
when a few hundred were surprised at their rendezvous.
Yet Blood is informed against, as being often present at their secret
council in London. During these times of fitful residence in England
he passed under the alias of Mr. Allen, a medical man. The year 1664
was not over before the Irish authorities were startled with rumours that
he was back again in Ireland fomenting fresh trouble there. The only
foundation for this scare, however, was their nervous fear. The scare
was repeated in November of the following year (vide letter from the
Earl of Orrery to Sec. Arlington [S. P. Dom. Car. II., 319, 318]).
The following year, the year of the great plague in London (if the
paper is rightly dated by the calendarist of the Record Office), we find
him with infinite daring addressing a petition to the King, to secure to
him property due to his wife on the decease of her father. Was he pre-
suming on the contentious point that an outlawry in Ireland had no
force for England ? or was not the paper displaced by the calendarist by
at least seven years, really belonging to 1672 ? like another which shows
him interceding for the liberation of three imprisoned Conventiclers
(two in Norfolk, and one in Westminster) ?
What seems more probable is the statement, in a State paper of later
date, that he actually chose this year of civic panic to plan a scheme
somewhat similar to the one he had planned two years before in Dublin,
to seize the Tower of London.* In 1666 we have some glimmering
of doubtful information that he was back again in Ireland with his
wife and family in the neighbourhood of Dublin ; possibly with other
comrades planning some new plot. Whether there was any truth in
that, however, it seems certain that when he heard of the rising of the
Covenanters against their oppressors in the Western Lowlands, Thomas
Blood did not hesitate a moment, but got away to Scotland, cast in his
lot with them, and was engaged with them in their last desperate battle
(and crushing defeat) upon the Pentland Hills. Again he seemed to
have a charmed life. Though so many fell, he escaped, and by the
beginning of 1667 na ^ slipped away through Westmorland to South
Lancashire, and was securely living in disguise in the neighbourhood of
his wife's old home at Culcheth.
To the informer, who conveys this fruitless information to Lord
Arlington at Whitehall, we are indebted for the following vivid word-
picture of Blood's personal appearance : ' He is of full body, indifferent
' tall, broad shoulders, and stoops in the shoulders, big-boned, of blackish
' brown hair, not very long, and sometimes wears a periwig coal-black ;
< full-faced, with many pock-holes, grey eyes ; commonly in plain clothes,
* and a countryman's riding coat of a grey colour.'
Again, the Dublin authorities are scared with rumours that he is in
Ireland plotting serious mischief against Ormonde, and that he is lying
in hiding in the Coombe in Dublin (his headquarters in the attempt of
four years before). Of course, it is just possible that it was so, but it
* If he did, the governor was too vigilant to give Blood any chance of carrying
his scheme into effect.
The Indulgence Documents 223
more probably was a false report, set afloat purposely to put the
authorities off the scent as to his real whereabouts.
What is certain is that in July he was in England, and carried
through with brilliant success one of the most daring exploits of his
adventurous life. This was the rescue of a friend, who was being taken
under military escort to York for trial, which would certainly have
ended in his execution. This friend was Mason, who had taken part
with him in the Yorkshire Rising of October, 1663, and in the winter
of 1666 had joined Blood and many more English sympathisers to give
chivalrous help to the poor Covenanters of Lowland Scotland. In this
latter venture, when Blood escaped, Mason was taken. He had been
incarcerated first in the Tower of London, but it had been decided to
send him to York Castle for his trial. Blood gained intelligence of the
facts, learned the exact route the escort would take, took with him
some eight or nine comrades (doubtless discharged Cromwellian soldiers,
as safe seats, and as careless of their lives in any good cause, as himself),
lay in ambush near Darrington, on the great North road from London
to York, surprised the escort by dashing on their rear from a side lane,
and though they made a good fight of it for the space of half an hour
(according to the personal narrative sent to Whitehall by their captain),
completely outclassed and overpowered them, and carried Mason off in
triumph. Nor were they captured, though the ' hue and cry ' was raised
against them.
The King at once published a Proclamation, offering 100 to anyone
who would secure Blood's person or that of any of his companions, so
outlawing him as distinctly in England as Ormonde had outlawed him
in Ireland in 1663. The Proclamation was barren of result.
It is true an informer volunteered them the comforting news that
Blood was dead. It is clear ' the wish was father to the thought.'
Other birds of like feather with ' Fryer,' the man who gave this in-
formation, knew otherwise. For in the beginning of 1668, Levinz (a
man who was being taken down to York Castle with Mason, at the
time that Blood rescued him, and had then turned ' King's evidence '),
asked for a warrant (which was promptly given him) to arrest any one
or all of fifteen persons named by him or to search their houses for arms.
Thomas Blood was one of those named. Warrants were issued
March 2, 1667-68.
The warrants were useless. It needed a man of more pluck and
resource than Levinz to track and capture Thomas Blood. For the
next two years and more he was living quietly in the Western portion
of Kent, under the alias of Allen or Ayliffe. Still he kept himself in
touch with the metropolis, which had acquired for Thomas Blood
an added interest since the Duke of Ormonde had been relieved of the
Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland, and had come to live in London.
In October, 1670, the Prince of Orange had come over to see his
uncle the King ; and on December 6, the City gave a magnificent
banquet in his honour. Ormonde was living then in Clarendon House,
the mansion built by his friend Clarendon (his intimacy with
Clarendon was largely responsible for his withdrawal from Ireland), and
he had been one of the guests in the Guildhall.
224 Detailed and Expository
Thomas Blood had always looked on Ormonde as the incarnation of
all the evil principles in the government of Ireland, which had wrought
such cruel havoc amongst the Puritan Protestants there, and had been
long awaiting his opportunity to turn his previous failures to humiliate
and injure Ormonde into success. Such opportunity he thought he had
now found. He got information of the time and of the route by which
Ormonde would be returning from the City to Clarendon House. It
would probably be along Fleet Street, the Strand to Charing Cross, and
along Pall Mall to St. James's Street, and thence by St. James's Street
to the late Chancellor's mansion, which looked right down St. James's
Street on to St. James's Palace. With a few trusty and trusted friends
he waylaid the Duke's coach, disabled the servants attending him,
seized the Duke's person, and tied him on a horse behind one of his
companions. Vowing that he would take him to Tyburn, and hang
him there like the common felon he was, he was conducting him
in procession thither, when the Duke managed to unhorse his guard,
and some of his servants having been roused to Blood's pursuit, and
their master's rescue, came up just in time to make it dangerous for
Blood to pursue the matter further. So Blood and his companions
clapped spurs to their good horses, dispersed into the safety of the night,
and left the Duke in all his frightened disarray to be escorted to his
lordly lodgings by his servants.
Probably Blood was quite content to have thoroughly frightened
Ormonde, for it is more than doubtful whether, had he got him to
Tyburn, he would have really hanged him. This fresh exploit would,
of course, make the authorities keener than ever to obtain possession
of his person. With his usual skill, he evaded all pursuit, and none
could track or lay hands upon him. There is every reason to believe
that he returned from this adventure to his safe seclusion in Western
Kent, though many of the Government spies fancied that he had
returned to Lancashire only a month after Ormonde had so luckily
escaped pn January, 1670-71].
While they were gravely befooling the Whitehall authorities with
the fascinating fancy that they were on his track and would soon have
him safely in their toils, he was quietly arranging the details of a scheme
which was to startle not London alone, but the whole of England by its
nearly successful audacity. It was nothing less than to seize and carry
off the Crown Jewels which were kept in an inner chamber of the
Tower of London. On May 8, 1671, disguised as a priest, and with
the aid of his eldest son and namesake, with one or two more, he
managed to gag and to render senseless the aged custodian of the Jewels,
and had got clear of the building with the Regalia safely in possession,
when the custodian's son-in-law unexpectedly appeared upon the scene
and roused other officials in the Tower just in time to overpower the
little party, arrest and secure them, and recover the treasure which was
on the point of being carried off.
Thus after eight years of immunity, Colonel Blood was secured at
last. The natural conclusion of every one who heard the news was
that with all promptitude, and without mercy, the outlaw would suffer
The Indulgence Documents 22$
the extreme penalty of rebellion, high treason, and robbery with
violence.
In those days it was often thought that to spare a criminal, pro-
vided he could be enlisted in the King's service, was a wiser thing, and
would pay better in the end, than to execute him out of hand. It must
have been with some such idea that the authorities simply incarcerated
him (with his son and another of his companions, Perrot, or Parrot) in
the cells of that Tower of London which had been the scene of this
last exploit; for they seemed to be in no haste at all to proceed to
extremities with him. The King seems to have been rather fascinated
by the brilliance of his daring than angered by the thought that this
man had nearly filched from him his crown. Only three days after
his capture, Charles had him brought from the Tower to Whitehall,
and examined him in the presence of his brother the Duke of York and
the Duke of Buckingham. He could be brought to Whitehall, and
sent back to the Tower by water, so quietly and secretly that the
public would know nothing about it ; so that no popular excitement
need be created, and no popular demonstration made.
In this interview, his demeanour was so fearless and free that the
King and his courtiers were favourably impressed, and he left the Royal
presence with the conviction that he was sure of the pardon of his
prince. The details of the interview, whether as narrated with a touch
of melodrama by Hume, or as we may gather them from the State
papers, must not detain us here. We may stay to note that he confessed
to an intention not long before to waylay the King himself and shoot
him when bathing in the Thames above Battersea ; and alleged as his
reason a statement which goes far to establish his Puritan connections
and sympathies that 'the cause of this resolution was the severity
4 exercised over the consciences of the godly, in restraining the liberty of
c their religious assemblies ' ; and that, with astute flattery of the person
of Charles, he assured him that he was restrained himself, and was
constrained to divert his associates from their purpose by ' an awe of
' majesty,' reminding us of David's care to spare the life of Saul when
Saul was helpless in his hands. As further confirming the view we have
taken of this remarkable man, a newsletter sent to Bristol, conveying
intelligence of the event, describes 'old (i.e., the elder) Blood as a
4 professor in the late times ' ; that is, one who in the Commonwealth
period claimed to be one of the godly party. Clearly his Puritan
sympathies (and even profession) were a matter of common talk, even in
face of all the obloquy cast upon him in connection with his daring
enterprises in Dublin, Yorkshire, Scotland, and London.
With regard to the attempt to steal the Regalia, it seems that Blood
told the King he had no ulterior political purpose in his action ; it was
not dictated by any personal hatred of the King, but simply * to make
' their own advantage by the Jewels.' He considered himself aggrieved
by the confiscation of his Irish estates, and would reimburse himself (and
his friends) to some substantial extent by the sale of their booty.
R. H. concludes his account of the interview at Whitehall by
saying that at its close the King asked him this single question, ' What
15
226 Detailed and Expository
' if he should grant him his life ?' to which Mr. Blood is said to have
replied, 'That he would endeavour to deserve it.'
The pardon was not readily given. There would be many doing
their utmost to dissuade the King from granting it. A week later
Thomas Blood wrote a letter to the King (which has been preserved in
the Record Office) * from the Tower, laying the blame of the design
upon two of the Treasurers for the Navy, roundly charging them with
heavily bribing him to undertake the enterprise. Such charges could
not have been baseless, for Blood was too astute not to realize that
if without foundation only to make them would certainly seal his fate.
Evidently the matter was not readily cleared up, for it was not till
more than two months after, that the King's first inclinations were con-
firmed, and Blood's pardon was issued. During these months of close
confinement, the health of his son and of himself began to suffer, and at
the end of June they both petitioned Lord Arlington for some relief,
and that his wife might be allowed to come and minister to them ;
Mary Blood sending in a petition herself to like effect. Whether
this boon was granted or no, there is no documentary evidence to show.
We have the evidence of a letter from the Governor of the Tower
to Williamson, that Lord Arlington took the Warrants for the release of
Blood and Perrot, his associate, on Thursday, July 13; though Blood's
son was left still for a time in closer confinement than before.
Thomas Blood, then, passed out from the Tower into freedom on
that Thursday evening, July 13, 1671, or the following Friday morn-
ing, discharged from all fear of penalty for his last bold attempt. It was
not for another fortnight, not till August I, 1671, that he received the
King's pardon for all and any crimes of which he may have been guilty
since the Recall and Restoration of Charles to the Throne [ c of all
4 Treasons, Misprisions of Treason, Murder, homicide, Felonyes,
* assaults, batteryes, & other offences whatsoever at any time since the
'29 th day of May, 1660, comitted by himselfe alone, or together with
' any other person or persons &c.' The date mentioned May 29, 1 660,
was Charles II. 's birthday, the day chosen for making a ' Triumphant
* Entry into the City of London '].
From August I, 1671, to the day of his death, August 24, 1680, the
man who for the past eight years had lived as a hunted fugitive walks
the streets of the city and the liberties of Westminster a free man.
More wonderful than that, he passes from the rigours of close confine-
ment in the Tower to the ease and influence of a trusted habitue of the
Court and of Whitehall.
Having once made up his mind to pardon Blood, the King is
resolute to confide in and honour him ; and Buckingham seconds the
King in this ' abandon ' of grace and favour. Nor can anyone allege a
single fact to show that Thomas Blood, having once accepted the
King's pardon, was other than unswerving in his loyalty, or faithful in
his devotion to the interests of the King. Hume puts it strongly : t
* S. P. Dom. Car. II. 293. 12. Of course, the question is a legitimate one
whether the latter is a genuine one, and was ever delivered to the King,
t Vol. VII., 482.
The Indulgence Documents 227
' Charles carried his kindness to Blood still further : He granted him an
' estate of five hundred pounds a year in Ireland ; he encouraged his
i attendance about his person ; he showed him great countenance ; and
' many applied to him for promoting their pretensions at Court.'
Carte (in his 'History of Ormonde,' II. 420-23) puts it more
strongly still : ' He was admitted into all the privacy and intimacy of
* the Court. No man was more assiduous than he in both the Secre-
4 taries' Offices. ... He was perpetually in the Royal apartments, and
4 affected particularly to be in the same room where the Duke of Ormonde
4 was, to the indignation of all others, though neglected and overlooked by
* his Grace.'
Whatever our final judgment of his character may be, it is clear that
he stepped from the Tower to a position in the Court and at Whitehall
in which he was courted by many and feared by all.
Two of the first* writers of the day cannot forbear to notice him,
though naturally from different points of view. John Evelyn, the
Loyalist, was invited to meet him at dinner by Sir Thomas Clifford, the
Papist Commissioner of the Treasury (who by the end of the following
year (1672) was made Lord High Treasurer), with several distinguished
Frenchmen, whom Evelyn had known in Paris, while Charles was
there an exiled Prince; and Evelyn was naturally much disgusted to
have such an adventurer brought between himself and such gentility ;
and Andrew Marvell, the 'patriot' Member of Parliament, who was
distinctly republican and anti-prelatical in his sympathies, uses the
incident of his adventure in the Tower as occasion to discharge the
shafts of his satire against the priestly order in a Latin ode, celebrating
the mercy Blood showed in sparing the custodian's life as the one fatal
inconsistency between his conduct and his disguise; suggesting that
had he been true to his role as priest, he would have despatched the old
man and secured the Crown.
And even Lord Holies was not ashamed to try to bribe him out of
the country by the offer of the governorship of one of the convict
settlements.
One circumstance that is much to his credit, and invests him with
special interest and importance to us, is that from the first he consistently
used his newly acquired influence to further the cause of the persecuted
Nonconformists.
One of the first things he was able to do if not the very first was
to secure an audience with the King for John Hickes, the ejected
minister of Saltash, who after the Five Mile Act had gone to live in
Kingsbridge, and became the ' heart and soul ' of a little colony of Non-
conforming ministers there. The details of the case are given in the
account of John Hickes in the last section of Chapter IV. Suffice it,
here, to say that the Second Conventicle Act had been applied in the
neighbourhood of Kingsbridge with almost savage energy and by un-
scrupulous men whose main object was to secure their share of the fines
levied on convicted Conventiclers. John Hickes had published an
Account of these proceedings, some copies of which had been circulated
in London, and one put into the hands of the King. Warrant of
152
228 Detailed and Expository
arrest had been issued against him ; but he had adroitly extricated him-
self from the officers sent to seize his person, and ridden up to London
to plead his cause in person to the King himself. He had been a student
in Dublin at the time that Thomas Blood was a Justice of the Peace in
the neighbourhood of the City, and had got to know him as a person
of some importance in that district in those early days. He had probably
heard scraps at least of Blood's remarkable career, and all the world was
ringing with his latest attempt in the Tower, his capture, imprisonment,
release, pardon, and elevation to the favour and confidence of the King.
By the advice, or at least with the concurrence, of friends, he sought out
Thomas Blood in Westminster, put his case before him ; and promptly
secured his mediation. That mediation was successful. The King
granted John Hickes an audience, by the introduction and in the pre-
sence of Thomas Blood.
The King's indignation was stirred against his too zealous officers in
Devon, acquitted Hickes of the unscrupulous charges against him, gave
him full pardon for any breaches of the penal statutes against Noncon-
formists of which he might have been found guilty, and freely remitted
4 the King's third ' of the fines which had been extorted from him and
his friends in the neighbourhood of Kingsbridge. So that Thomas
Blood sent John Hickes back to his friends in Devon a happy man,
with the King's pardon in his pocket, and inward confidence of early
mitigation, if not the complete repeal, of the penal statutes against
Nonconformity.
To this period, too, there is little doubt, must be attributed his
intervention on behalf of three Conventiclers, who had long lain in prison.
Two of them (Edmond Sconce of Hilderston or Hindolveston, and
Nicholas Breeston of Briston) were both of Norfolk, and the third,
Jonathan Jennings, was of London. The document presenting their
case is preserved as S. P. Dom. Car. II. 140, 93 ; and that he was suc-
cessful in his intervention for them is made fairly clear by (Sir) Joseph
Williamson's endorsement : * 3 Conventiclers to be discharged M r
Blood.' He had so much influence, indeed, at this time that he was
able to thwart the persecuting purpose of so powerful a prelate as Seth
Ward, now Bishop of Salisbury. [The completeness of the reports he
had sent in to Archbishop Sheldon, in 1665, of the ejected ministers in
his then Diocese of Exeter, and only two years before this (in 1669), ^
the ' Conventicles ' held in his present Diocese of Sarum, have already
commanded our notice as proof of his energy and ability as a per-
secuting prelate.]
Seth Ward's biographer (Dr. Walter Pope) quite candidly states the
facts. On the strength of John Hickes's case, and the King's arrest of
further proceedings in the Diocese in Exeter, Thomas Blood brought a
verbal message from the King to Bishop Ward not to molest the Non-
conformists in his Diocese of Sarum. Dr. Pope goes on to say that the
Bishop < was not willing to take instructions from such a one, and went
< to wait upon his Majesty, and humbly represented to him that there were
'only two troublesome Non-Conformists in his Diocese, whom he doubted
' not, with his Majesty's permission, but that he should bring to their
The Indulgence Documents 229
< duty'; and adds : 'Then naming them, the King at once gave evidence
< of the influence Blood had gained over him by saying, " These are the
<u very men you must not meddle with"; to which he obeyed, letting the
4 persecution against them fall.' Nor was his influence limited to this
country. Political and Puritan exiles he persuaded to return, guaran-
teeing for them the pardon and freedom the King had accorded to him-
self. < He persuaded Desborough, Kelsey, and other disaffected persons
< to return from Holland, and surrender to his Majesty,' says R. H., c and
* it was publicklyitaken notice of that M r Blood was dayly with the said
c Persons at M r White's Coffee House behind the Royal Exchange, where
< they met in a Room by themselves.' Further, he is employed through
them to feel the pulse of the City as to foreign affairs ; to get at the
feeling of City men as to the alliance with France, and the contemplated
rupture with Holland.
It is clear that he found an ally ready to work with him in James
Innes, who had been minister at St. Breock in the same county (Corn-
wall) to which John Hickes belonged, but on his ejectment had not
lingered in the neighbourhood of his old living as John Hickes had done,
but had come up at once to London, and had been living in Westminster
through the nine years that had elapsed since. Innes had found a per-
sonal friend at Court in the person of Lauderdale, one of the Cabal
ministry ; and through him he had been admitted to the favour of the
King. Innes (called 'Ennys' or 'Ennis' by Joseph Williamson in his
* Notes ') had been active in a secret sort of way before Blood got his
liberty, enabling Richard Cromwell (whose sympathies were strongly
with the Nonconformists) to evade the officers of the law and Court,
and getting him safely out of their reach.* It is therefore more than
possible that Innes had something indirectly to do with the grace ac-
corded to Blood ; at any rate, a few weeks after Blood's release we find
him in conference with Blood, heartily sympathizing in his desire to
secure liberty to the Nonconformists.
The effects of the pitiless persecution of the Nonconformists which
followed the Second Conventicle Act in London and in the country
had produced a strong revulsion of feeling in the minds of many, was
rapidly strengthening Charles's inclination to try the effects of Indulgence
instead of rigour, and by the late autumn was creating quite a stir of
hope in the minds of the Nonconformists in the Metropolis. Many of
them gained confidence enough to resume their worship in Conventicles
which had long been closed, and negotiations were recommended by
agents of the Court, through employes of Lord Arlington, with their
leaders. The Presbyterians were divided into two parties : those who
had been actually ejected in London taking a more moderate line,
and in 1665 taking the Oxford Oath were nicknamed 'The Dons';
and the less compliant, who had refused to bind themselves not to
attempt any change in Church or State, and who were for stronger
* Williamson notes under date September 21, 1671 : ' Ennys is a shrewd fellow :
' corresponds with the Dutch as he and Blood did. Has shuffled away Richard
' while Blood was in hold. 3 The form ' Ennis' is an old, but authentic, alternative
of ' Innes. '
230 Detailed and Expository
claims and more immediate action, were called 4 The Ducklings.' The
Independents and Baptists sided rather with the latter than the former,
and judged that the King would respond to decisive demands far more
readily than to cautious proposals. It is in the month of October that
we first find these negotiations actively going forward.
Blood takes part in them rather more casually, perhaps, than his
associates, because he has so many other matters in hand ; while
Dr. Nicholas Butler was employed wholly on this business, holding
strongly the view that the Church of England would gain rather
than lose by kindlier treatment of the Nonconformists. And with
him was closely associated a ' M r Church ' probably Joseph Church,
who had been ejected from St. Catherine-Coleman's, Fenchurch Street.
Early in November (Nov. 2) Williamson notes : ' Only Ennys' inti-
mate acquaintance are gone into their meeting.' [Were these his
brothers-in-law, Thomas Vincent in Bishopsgate Street, and Nathaniel
Vincent in Southwark, with the band of eager men who worked with
him South of London Bridge ?] 'Blood's not at all yet' as though he
had his special set. [Perrot, who was one of his comrades in his attempt
upon the Crown jewels, was possibly the Baptist Robert Parrot, who
was hanged in 1685 for his part in the Monmouth Rebellion. Were
the Baptists specially trying to work through him ? or was it the Inde-
pendents, and the Fifth Monarchy men ?] Nine days later, Williamson
expresses the ' fear that Blood makes matters better towards the King
' than they are,' and adds, < Blood disgusts his two friends by disappoint-
* ing them.' Surely these are Dr. Butler and Mr. Church who are
much more assiduous than Blood ever could be in anything. < They
' think him too high, and values himself too much.'
The whole question is made more difficult and delicate by the
private ambitions of the several members of the Cabal. Buckingham
had his strong views, which certainly were not favourable to the Roman
Catholics as were those of Clifford and Arlington, though they all were
favouring this policy of leniency to the Nonconformists. Blood entered
on his new career distinctly as a protege of Buckingham ; but William-
son wanted to annex him as an agent for Arlington and Clifford ; and
for a time Blood is evidently complaisant enough to him and his patrons.
Innes, naturally enough, is working for Lauderdale ; and is trying hard
to engage Blood to strengthen Lauderdale's influence in London.
Lauderdale was strong for an exclusive Protestantism, but his cruel per-
secution of the Presbyterians in Scotland made him a bete noire to the
London Nonconformists. It was therefore a very unhappy move on the
part of Blood when he began to ' cry up ' Lauderdale. The complaint
also grows that he is spending too freely and does not pay his debts, and
is overweening in his boastfulness. We know that he had been victor
in a bout with the Bishop of Sarum ; and now he seems to be courted by
Ward's chief, Archbishop Sheldon, as Blood goes about boasting that he
dines once or twice a week with the Archbishop of Canterbury ; while
he mixes freely with the extremists (' phantasies,' Williamson calls them,
or fanatics meaning, I suppose, Baptists, Fifth Monarchists, and
Independents [?]). If 'jack of all trades and master of none,' the friend
The Indulgence Documents 231
of all parties <is trusted by none. By the end of the year, evidently,
Williamson is inclined to drop him, and trust more entirely to Dr. Butler
and Mr. Church, as the Nonconformists had lost their confidence in
Blood. So that Blood begins to be a little anxious ; and feels it wise to
call on the Governor of the Tower, and assure him that all his many-
sided activities and conferences were in the interests of the King, and
prompted by his devotion to his Royal Master ; and to write to Lord
Arlington (Dec. 28, 1671) of a matter touching an agent in Holland to
show how vigilant he is about foreign as well as home affairs.
In this unsatisfactory way does the year 1671 end. Though what
Blood had done in connection with the Nonconformists had been
wholly for them and not against them ; it is clear that his concern for
them was by no means his chief concern, much less his only one.
Though his religious connections were certainly Protestant and anti-
Papist, and Puritan or Nonconformist, and not Prelatical or Episcopal,
they were not specially deep or spiritual. They were rather the sort of
Puritanism which distinguished the rank and file of the Parliamentarian
Oliverian armies a Puritanism of the Old Testament type, which
justified and revelled in deeds of military daring and was brave and
active to the point of a reckless carelessness of life. The more cautious,
scholarly, and spiritual of the Nonconformist leaders would not be, and
were not drawn to Thomas Blood. Any connection with him they
feared would compromise their cause. So that though such men as
Hickes would do what they could to get him trusted, they did not
succeed ; and all active connection on Blood's part with the events
which moved so rapidly in favour of toleration, and in the end issued
in the Declaration of Indulgence, ceased with the year 1671. In the
movements and conferences which marked the first ten weeks of 1672,
Blood's name does not once appear : the only traces he has left in that
period on the State Papers being of quite a secular character (connected
with the Navy).
Nor when the Declaration had been issued by the unanimous con-
sent of the Council, and the Indulgence was in full swing, did he take
any prominent part in its administration. He was apparently willing to
do what he could without too much sacrifice of time or exertion ; but
even then was not very eager to do anything gratuitously, taking up
any case brought to him with the expectation of some pecuniary re-
muneration, even when he had made no clear bargain with his appli-
cants. Only twelve of the memoranda in Vols. 320 and 321 bear his
name, or are in his easily recognized, slipshod handwriting.
If I am right in attributing 320 (261) to Thomas Blood, it ought to
be put much earlier in the volume somewhere between (64) and (70) ;
for his application in it is for two Southampton ministers : Henry Cox
and Gyles Say ; the former to preach in John ' Puckuridge ' (i.e.,
Puckeridge)'s house in Romsey, the latter in his own house in South-
ampton. Now licences were granted for the former, Henry Cox, in
April 13, 1672 [E. (19)]; so that Blood's application must have been
as early as that, if not earlier still. Licences for the latter, Gyles Say,
were not issued till May 2, 1672 *.<?., nearly three weeks later ; and if
232 Detailed and Expository
this application was made just before, the paper is placed in its proper
position. In that case, however, this application for Henry Cox is
much belated and utterly unnecessary.
I am by no means clear, however, that 320 (261) is to be attributed
to Thomas Blood ; and it would be safer, perhaps, to drop it out of this
list. In that case, the first application to be attributed without question
to Thomas Blood is 320 (142) ; and it is not without interest to find
that if is for Anabaptists, the * extremists J or ' fanatics ' of Kent, London,
and Berks. It was 'given in by Mr. Blood, 18 Apr. 72'; for Richard
Gun to preach in two houses in Cranbrook, Kent ; for a Mr. Martin's
house in White's Alley, Coleman Street, London ; and for two Baptist
ministers of Maidenhead Mr. W. Ruthey and Mr. E. Gillett, to preach
in two houses in Cookham, Mr. Jeffrey's, and Mr. Josie's.
Licences were granted promptly for all of these, save two ; being
issued two days after Thomas Blood's application viz., on April 20, 1672.
The two exceptions were the houses of Mr. Josie in Cookham, and
Mr. Martin, in White's Alley, Coleman Street, London. For the
former, no reason is alleged, but no licence is entered in the Entry
Books for it ; the application for the latter is marked ' not appr. 5 , and
so we know that it was refused though applied for by Blood. Was this
' Mr. Martin ' a member of Mr. Venner's Fifth Monarchy Church ?
* 20 (151) must have been put in, either the same day as 320 (142),
April 1 8, 1672, or the day following, April 19. This number (151) covers
(or applies to) two pieces of paper in different handwritings neither
of them Blood's. The first is annotated by Mr. F. Benson 'given in
' by M r Blood.' As there is no such note appended to the second
memorandum, we can deal with the former alone as that in which
Thomas Blood interested himself. The application is for Mr. Wells, a
Presbyterian, to preach in Mr. Weston's house in Sheepe Street, Ban-
bury, Oxon. We are enabled to follow its fortunes.
It was written by Mr. Wells himself and sent up to his nephew in
London, as is clear from the address written on the back of it (now
erased, but still quite legible) : ' To my very loveing Nephew M r William
'Welles Hosier at the signe of the Talbot in Watling Street neere
'Broad Street.' This Mr. Wells (Samuel Wells, M.A.) (Cal. III., 120)
had been ejected from Banbury ; had been compelled in 1665 (by the
Five Mile Act) to retire to Deddington, but had now returned to
Banbury.
His nephew evidently applied to Blood to secure the licences for him.
Blood's application is promptly attended to, and the licences were both
granted on one or two days later viz., on April 20, 1672 [E. (35) and
E. (36)]. In quite characteristic fashion, however, he does not com-
plete his task by fetching the licences from Whitehall, and giving them
to Mr. Wells's nephew. That he leaves to another, the distinguished
Presbyterian minister and close friend of Philip Henry, Richard Steele
[320 (242)].
Two memoranda follow one another in 320, which may probably
have been presented at an interval of a fortnight or more viz., 320 (268)
and 320 (269). The former is signed : 'Tho: Blood'; the second is
unmistakably in Blood's handwriting.
The Indulgence Documents 233
320 (268), fn date, really comes between 320 (261) and 320 (142) ;
so that if 320 (261) is not Blood's, 320 (268) would be the first memo-
randum put in by him, and 320 (142) would be the second.
The former, 320 (268), is an application for 19 licences: 4 for
Northumberland, 3 for Lancashire, 9 for Essex, i for Middlesex, and
2 for Kent.
The four Northumbrian ones are all for Newcastle and all four for
ministers, without naming any place for them. Three are described as
Presbyterians : Henry Lever, Richard Gilpin, and Mr. Pingell (or John
Pringle) ; the fourth is ' Congregationall ' Mr. Durrant (i.e., William
Durant).
These Northumbrian licences are made out promptly, and are entered
in E. (23) and E. (24), as issued April 16, 1672. They are made
out, not for the persons only (i.e., as a * general teacher' licensed
to preach in any place ' allowed ' or * licensed '), but for the persons to
preach in a particular place, the place being entered as being separately
licensed and John Pringle (' M r Pingell ') is entered as an Independent,
not a Presbyterian. The four persons have only three places assigned
them : one place having two licences made out for it, one as a Presby-
terian meeting-place, the other as an Independent or Congregational
one. All three places are important public buildings in Newcastle :
two of them Episcopal Chapels, (i) 'the Chapell at the Bridge end
' joining to Magdalen Hospital!,' being licensed for Henry Lever ;
(2) ' the Chapell in Trinity howse,' being licensed for William Durant.
The third is a municipal building, ' the Moothall in y e Castle Garth,'
and is licensed as a Presbyterian meeting-place for Richard Gilpin, and
as an Independent meeting-place for John Pringle.
Though the entries are dated showing surely that they were not
only made out but signed both by the King and by Arlington in the
margin, where we usually have a brief summary (of name, person, or
place, and denomination), Benson has written the fateful words, 'not
'approved nor given out.' It would seem that Blood had been instructed
by his clients as to the ' places ' they ' desired,' although in the applica-
tion memorandum he had only given their name and residence ; so that
the ' places ' would be filled in by verbal instructions from Blood in the
Office : and then, at the last moment, when the licences were all ready
but no one had called at Whitehall for them, objection was made by
' the authorities ' on the urgent pressure of the Church party and all
eight licences were withdrawn.
The three for Lancashire were all for Toxteth ('Toxtel') Park : one
personal licence for Thomas Crompton, a second for his house, and a
third for a 'Meeting house' there. Blood would be interested in these,
which belonged to the South- Western corner of the county in the
immediate neighbourhood of Liverpool as in the district where he had
found his wife, and as a fugitive had found safe asylum more than once.
These were not attended to for some time indeed, not until Gilbert
Aspinwall, a Lancastrian barrister, now resident in London, had made
a second and elaborately formal application for the licences, and then no
licence was granted for Thomas Crompton's house.
234 Detailed and Expository
The Essex nine have such special features that I pass first to the one
for Middlesex and the two for Kent.
The Middlesex one is for a Presbyterian meeting-house in Kings-
land ; and this, we learn from a second application which he has to
make much later, is the house of a Mr. David King there (? called
* King's house ') [321 (55)]. It is not very promptly attended to. It
is in fact the last of this batch to be issued, the licence being dated
May 13, 1672.*
The licences for Kent are for Mr. James Simmonds, a Presbyterian,
and the house (which we learn from 320 (267) is Mrs. Porter's, and called
Court Lodge) in Lamberhurst (* Lamberhurt '), in the South- Western
border of the county (possibly therefore in the district in which for the
last few years he had found a shelter in the disguise of a physician, and
under the alias of Mr. Allen, or Ayloff). These, again, had no atten-
tion for a fortnight at least.
Licences were not made out till May I, 1672.
And now we come to the batch of nine for Essex, which gather
round them a delightfully intricate network of difficulties and controversy.
On this memorandum Blood makes application for :
M r Kitly (Keightly) for his person and howse (we learn from the
following mem. [320 (269)] ) of Abary Hatch.
M r Willis for his own howse at Burntwood (alias Brentwood). [The
clause ' Mr. Wills person licenced' was mistaken as it was ill-
spelt. Mr. Willis's person was licensed at the same time as his
house, May 2, 1672.]
M r (Thomas) Gilson for his person & howse at the same place,
* Burntwood ' : as well as for the houses of George Locksmith and
William Maskall at Romford, and that of John Maskall at
Morris.
These were none of them attended to till the beginning of May.
The delay may have been due to the violent * cheek ' given to applicants
for licences, and to the agents through whom their applications were
made, when, as in these four Northumbrian instances, the applications
were for < Public Halls.'
It is clear that many were taking these refusals very ill. And Blood
is quick to raise his remonstrance against it. There may have been a
touch of personal pique in his feeling, as the eight instances at Newcastle
were cases in point ; indeed the cases had been made the more pointed as
the licences had actually been issued, and, after issue and entry, had been
revoked. On Wednesday, the 24th of April only eight days after
these eight licences had been entered having occasion to write to Lord
Arlington on another matter viz., the movements of the Dutch Fleet
he says,t ' I perceive y* y e forbiding licences for y e Halls to Non-
4 conformists gives to(o) much occasion to persons y l are disafected to
' his maieties indulgence to raise ielousies. I humbly conceive it had
4 bene a strengthening of his Maiesties Declaration y l so many corpora-
* This case is more fully gone into in Cap. IV., sect, i., under the name Wills or
Wells.
f S. P. Dom. Car. II. 306, 63A.
The Indulgence Documents 235
' tion besides y e ministers had so actually seconded it. But I shall leve
* it to y r Lord? 5 consideration.' This letter of Blood's (as shown by its
endorsement) was not received till two days later viz. April 26 ; and
it is a significant coincidence that on that day Dr. Nicholas Butler writes
both to Lord Arlington and his chief Secretary on the same subject
and in the same strain [320 (196) and 320 (197)]. In the first, to Lord
Arlington, he uses just the word 'jelousies' which Blood had employed :
4 1 should not bee faithful should I conceale y e dayly growth of Jelousies.
c Protestant dissenters conclude this there (sic) liberty soe graciously soe
* freely granted by his Majesty will bee shortlived in regard tis soe
c stiffled in y e birth : publick places was declared should bee allowed,
' now refused, &c., &c.' ; and in the second, to Sir Joseph Williamson,
he writes : * I am sorry to heare it said, whoe is y e author of this Stop
' of halls &c : my ears are daily beared with theese complaints &c.'
The complaints of the public generally, however, seem not to have
had any great effect, nor even the remonstrances of these advisers and
intermediaries of the Whitehall authorities, Dr. Butler and Thomas
Blood. In a separate chapter I have dealt with the whole question of
large Buildings and Public Halls,* and there the reader will see that the
facts and the numbers applied for, granted and refused, are of very
various significance.
Thomas Blood is not pleased to find his applications neglected, and
it appears that his Essex friends pressed him with enquiries which he
could not answer, for he applies again about the end of April. This
second time his memorandum is wholly occupied with applications from
Essex [320 (269)]. It repeats the previous applications for nine licences
(making the application for Mr. Willis, of Burntwood, as distinctly as
for his house), and he heads the list with a new application for Samuel
Deaken, of Romford (making it clear that his previous application for
George Locksmith's house was for Samuel Deaken to preach there) ;
another for ' M r Wiston, Presbiterion minister' (who must be the
Edward Whiston who had been ejected from Little Laver [Cal. II. 205]) ;
and two for Mr. Erly, of ' Cogles ' (? Coggeshall), both person and house.
This time they are all promptly issued, as the entries show in E. (72)
and E. (73).
With the exception of the first two mentioned (Samuel Deaken, of
Romford, and his friend Locksmith's house there) they are all entered as
issued May 2, 1672 (the first two being dated May i). Yet Thomas
Blood does not trouble himself about them. [He has so many irons in
the fire that this licence-business is by no means of first importance
with him, and he had probably forgotten all about them, or thought that
the applicants themselves might look after them, and go to fetch them ;
or at any rate distinctly ask him or some other friend to go to Whitehall
for them.]
And on May 8 a week later (less a day) we find that Mr.
William Mascall, surgeon, of Romford [one of the applicants whose
name appears both on 320 (268) and 320 (269)], had come up to
London specially to make (or 'put in') a separate application, on
* Cap. VI. of this Section.
236 Detailed and Expository
- _ _
321 (27), for his friend Thomas Gilson, of Burntwood (former Rector of
Little Baddow). MascalPs application is for licences for Gilson to
preach at his own house, and at three other houses in different villages
in the district ; and has a note appended to it : ' To be called ffor by
William Mascall of Romford.'
He is not able to go to London for some time, and meanwhile
Thomas Blood is exerting himself afresh. It is not more than three or
four days later (May n or 12) that Blood is at Whitehall, leaving
another application-memorandum, calendared as 321 (55).
The Mr. William Wells, Hosier, of Watling Street who got
Blood to apply for licences for his uncle (Samuel Wells, of Banbury)
is plying him again, as also a Mr. Sharpe, who is interested in two
applicants in Kent (at Wittersham and Goudhurst). He seems also to
have been appealed to by two ejected ministers : the one Richard
Chantry, of ' Smisby, in Derby ' (i.e., Smithsby, in Derbyshire), and the
other George Larkham ('Larkom'), of Bridekirke, in Cumberland.
More, and perhaps more insistently than any of these, the four
Newcastle ministers for whom he had applied nearly a month before,
and had applied in vain convinced probably that it is useless to press
their applications for Public Buildings have sent him word to apply at
once for 'general licenses,'' and the last four lines in the memorandum are
for them. The licences thus applied for are granted, being all but one
entered, as issued May 13, 1672.
The exception is George Larkom's, which had been issued five days
earlier (May 8, 1672) the very day on which W. Mascall left his appli-
cation at Whitehall. But for this there had been put in a separate
application 321 (51), written on a scrap of paper, on which the Preamble
of some Proclamation or other had been begun, but never finished :
'Whereas by vertue of an Act of Parliament in the I4th yeare of our
* Reigne Our Court of Admiralty is empowred to proceed upon Suites
4 for Prize-Goods . . .' ; the memorandum itself reading, < George
* Larkham in his owne howse at Hameshill in the parish of Bridekirke.'
George Larkham, apparently, had tired of waiting for his licences,
either ignorant of the fact that he would have to fetch them himself or
get some one to call for him, and so had asked Blood to try where his
previous friend (as he thought) had failed. And Blood puts in an appli-
cation, though he might have had the licences for asking, since they had
been ready now four days past.
As all the other licences are dated May 13, it is more than probable
that this mem. 321 (55) was put in May n or 12.
On some day subsequent to May 1 3 though it is possible it was
late on the I3th itself Blood calls at Whitehall, and takes away four
licences for he hands in a Receipt for them [321 (136)] : two for
persons, and two for places. The two place-licences are two for which
he had just applied, on 321 (55), at Mr. Sharpe's desire for R. Tufton's
house at Wittersham, and Sam Turke's house in Goudhurst both in
Kent, which are entered as issued May 13, 1672 [E. (lll)and E. (110)].
The personal ones are those for Mr. W. MascalPs friend, Thomas
Gilson, and Gilson 's colleague and friend Keightly (Kitly), which Blood
The Indulgence Documents 237
had applied for first, or 320 (268), as early as April 16 ; and which,
with all the others applied for then, as well as the whole batch of Essex
licences applied for in 320 (269), had been granted, and their entries in
E. (72) and E. (73), dated May 2, 1672.
And now a curious thing happens. With these two personal
licences in his pocket, or his cabinet drawers and we know not how
many more of the large batch of Essex licences, issued twelve days
before, and ready ever since to be taken away on the very day after he
had got these personal licences, viz., May 14, 1672 Blood writes a letter
to Mr. W. Mascall, which has been preserved in duplicate at the Record
Office as 321 (143) and 321 (144). The fact that the Whitehall
authorities got and kept possession of it shows two things. First, that
Mr. Mascall did not like what it involved and implied, so took it to
Whitehall to show Sir Joseph Williamson ; and second, that Sir Joseph
asked Mr. Mascall to leave it with them. The importance of it in the
eyes of Sir Joseph Williamson is further decisively proved by the fact
that Benson makes a copy of it by Sir Joseph's instructions.
It is short and quite worthy citing entire, as it presents (in a form
full of personal interest and value) the problem of the conditions on
which applicants could obtain licences.
It is addressed : < For M r William Maskall Chirurgion at his howse
Romford these '
and runs :
'Sir,
4 1 have sent you here inclosed those Licencis you gave mee a note
for if you need any other convenient placis to be Licenced you may
have them, there is noe charge for them only it is agreed that 55.
apeece for the personall licences should be gotten and y e dorekeepers and
underclarkes should afterwards be remembered by a token of love this
is all at present from
Yo<" frind,
4 THO: BLOOD.
4 May 14: 72.'
4 My kind respects to all our frinds.'
Now we know that, besides the two which he had already in his
possession, there was only one other personal licence applied for by
Blood in the first memorandum [320 (268)] which dealt with any Essex
licences viz., that for Mr. Willis, of Burntwood ; though, in addition
to these, he had applied for three more about a fortnight later, in 320
(269) viz., those for Samuel Deaken, Mr. Edward Whiston, and
Mr. Erly.
Those had all been issued by May 2. Yet Blood did not take any
of them away (at any rate he has left behind him no acknowledgment
of having received any) for a fortnight later, and then only these two,
for Mr. Gilson and Mr. Keightly.
But these two are just those in which his correspondent, Mr.
William Mascall, is most interested; and for one of them, Mr. Gilson's,
238 Detailed and Expository
he (Wm. Mascall) had personally applied on the 8th of May. So that
Blood is distinctly holding back two personal licences, which he knows
his Essex friends most ardently ' desired.'
The licences for places he despatches. What licences they are is a
little doubtful. He does not name them, but describes them in these
terms : ' those licenses you gave me a note for.'
Are they the places named in 321 (27) or those named in 320
(269) ? Those mentioned in 321 (27) are only the four which Mr.
Mascall ' desired ' as places for Mr. Gilson to preach in (his own house
in Brentwood), Mr. Reeve's house in Childerditch, Mr. Harris's at
Margaretting, and Mr. Harroode's at Little Baddow. But it cannot
have been these, as that for Mr. Reeve's house in Childerditch was not
issued till July 16, 1672 (two months later), and the last (Mr. Harrod's)
seems never to have been issued at all. (There is no entry of it in E.).
That for Mr. Gilson's house had been made out six days already,
when Mr. Mascall left his paper, and it certainly is a singular thing that
the officials did not give them to him. The remaining licence for the
house of Mr. Harris of Margaretting was made out at once for it is
dated in the entry book, May 9, 1672 [E. (94)] the very next day
after Mr. Mascall applied for it.
It seems much more likely, therefore, that the places Mr. Mascall
gave Mr. Blood a note for, are those named in 320 (269). These were :
Mr. William Mascall's own house, and Mr. George Locksmith's, at
Romford ; Mr. John Mascall's at Morrice ; Mr. Keightly's house at
Abary Hatch ; Mr. Erly's at Cogles (Coggeshall ?) ; and both Mr. Willis's
and Mr. Gilson's at Brentwood (< Burntwood ').
The last line of the memorandum, claiming Mr. Gilson's person and
house, written on the back, is in Blood's hand, showing pretty clearly
(if the rest of the memorandum is in another hand), that Blood added
this request for Mr. Gilson, at the time he gave it in.
If this is a correct interpretation of the facts, it certainly makes it
particularly ' unhandsome ' in Blood to keep Gilson's back.
The facts, on any reading of these difficult points, are thus far clear.
Though sending Mr. William Mascall a large batch of licences for
4 places ' in Essex, the receipts for which are not preserved, but which
certainly included licences for the houses of Mr. Keightly and Mr.
Gilson, he does not send the two personal licences for ' M r Kitlye ' and
' M r Gilson,' the receipts for which are preserved. It is not easy to
trace the fate of all the other personal licences, asked for on the same
memorandum viz., Mr. S. Deaken's, Mr. Whiston's, Mr. Erly's, and
Mr. Willis's.
Mr. Deaken's was issued May i, and was fetched the following day by
John Hickes [320 (281)] . Mr. Whiston's does not appear to have been
granted, there being no entry of it either in E. or in B. All the others
were issued May 2, though there are no memoranda extant to show
when they were taken away.
What followed the despatch of this letter, with the place licences en-
closed, is told in detail in the account of William Mascall.
Suffice it to say, that Mascall conveyed the licences to the Essex
The Indulgence Documents 239
friends for whom they are made out ; but that both of his ministerial
friends, Mr. Gilson and Mr. Keightiy, were nettled as well as dis-
appointed that their 'personal' licences have not been sent with their
place-licences.
Mr. Gilson, especially, had evidently debated the circumstance very
fully with his friend William Mascall ; trying to find some explanation
for it which would not impugn the kindliness and honesty of Thomas
Blood. But no sooner had Mascall left him, than suspicions which
had suggested themselves in the course of their talk, stiffened into con-
victions he could not shake off. He therefore wrote at once to Mr.
Mascall, telling him he felt sure that Blood had been acting an un-
handsome and an illegal part to him and his friend Keightiy : that he
had received their personal licences at the same time that he had received
the place-licences ; but had kept them back to get his fees (of five shil-
lings a piece) on them.
Mascall evidently is inclined to accept Gilson's view ; but instead of
writing to Blood about it (as Gilson suggests), decided to go to London
and represent matters at headquarters. Accordingly he went to White-
hall, taking both letters with him (Blood's and Gilson's), showing them
to Sir Joseph, and at his request leaving them with him.
There can be little doubt that Thomas Blood would be required by
Sir Joseph Williamson to give up these personal licences, or to send them
on without delay to Mr. Gilson and Mr. Keightiy, and without any
money payment. And surely there is as little doubt that these good
ministers would see that Sir Joseph's clerks, etc., should get some
honorarium, if they found it ' the usual thing.'
The next document bearing Blood's name is another memorandum
of Receipt. It is calendared 321 (194).
But there are two scraps, each an application, numbered 321 (191)
and 321 (193), which are both in Blood's handwriting.
i. The first is endorsed ' Glocester,' and is an application for a
house in^Marshfield, county Gloucester, for a| Presbyterian meeting-house.
Curiously enough the owner's name is ' Gloster.'
* The house of John Gloster Esq. of Marshfeeld in y e County of
' Gloster Presbiterian.'
Marshfield is at the extreme south-east corner of the county, some
five miles north of Bath.
The licence was issued (promptly, I fancy) on May 16, 1672. Only
the name is strangely changed to ' Gostlett ' (two other licences being
issued for the name Goslett, John and Thomas).
2. The second is a torn fragment containing application for
licences for two other houses, which are also issued the same day, May 16.
But they are for the Midland County Stafford, in the small village of
Longdon, quite near to Lichfield :
' The house of Christian Hood in Longdon
' The house of Edward Brughton in Longdon.'
In 321 (194) the licences acknowledged are all for the North ; four
240 Detailed and Expository
i .... .... . .. , , , .. . ._ , . .. , .. . -i i. .,.., ._. . . , ^.. , . , .
for Bradford, Yorks, two personal viz., those for George Ward and
John Hall and two for places viz., George Ward's house and the house
of John Balme ; and one for (Toxteth Park) Lancashire viz., one for
James * Brisco ' (/'.*., James Briscoe). Though the memorandum is not
dated, it was probably left at the same time as 321 (191) and 321 (193)
on May 15 or 16; as all the licences were issued May 16 [E. (126)
andE. (127)].
Some difficulty arose in connection with the last. Mr. Blood men-
tioned no * place ' in connection with James ' Brisco.' Very naturally,
therefore, the licence was made out as for a ' general teacher ' (' to be a
4 teacher, and to teach in any place licensed and allowed '), and is entered
on E. (124) with the date May 16, 1672. [The Bradford licences are
entered for the same date.] But though Thomas Blood signs this
receipt for James Briscoe, and must, therefore, have taken it away from
Whitehall, the actual licence is still preserved in the Public Record Office
as 321 (165), as though it had been never called for. It is every way
complete, signed above by the King, at the foot by Arlington, and dated
May 1 6, 1672, It must, therefore, have been rejected by the applicant,
and taken back by Blood to Whitehall, with the request that it might
be altered into a particular licence, allowing him to preach in the
meeting-house already licensed eight days before (May 8) as a Presby-
terian meeting-place (for Thomas Crompton to preach in) ; also on
Blood's application [320 (268)].
Of course, the licence could not be altered. The printed part of the
licence for < a teacher in a certain place ' was different from that for ' a
* teacher in general.' So that a new one had to be made out : which
evidently was done, though not for nearly a fortnight later, as we see on
E. (142), where a * Licence ' is entered to ' James Briscoe to be a Congr.
' Teacher in the Meeting howse in Toxtell Parke, Lancastr. 29 May.'
Only two other licence-documents have been preserved bearing
Blood's name. They are 321 (210) and 321 (328).
Both are applications. The first bears date May 19, 1672 viz., 321
(210). He applies on it for only three licences : two for Reading, Berk-
shire viz., for Mr. Christopher Fowler (which he spells * Fowlard ') to
preach in the house of Griffith ' Bubly ' (should have been * Bully ')
and one for Leytonstone, in Essex, for the house of Alderman Andrews
there. It is an utter failure.
The first part is attended to promptly enough. A licence was made
out for 'Christopher Fowler of the Presbyterien perswasion to be a
4 Teacher of the Congregation allowed to meet in a Roome or Roomes
c in the house of Griffith Bubby in Redding in our County of Berks';
but a similar fate befalls it to that which befell James Briscoe's ; only
further enquiry at Whitehall (? on the part of Thomas Blood) prevented
the matter being carried so far. Though c made out ' (/.*., the blanks
in the printed form filled in by Mr. Benson), it was never signed nor
dated, and it remains among the State Papers 321 (257) an imperfect
document a licence never issued and therefore never taken away.
There is a mistake in the name of the house owner, * Bubby ' (instead
of Bully) ; and that might have accounted for its being < held up ' at
The Indulgence Documents 24.1
Whitehall ; but we have ample proofs that it was not completed for a
more distinct reason than that.
On the one hand, Griffith Bully's licence for his house in Reading
was granted. It is entered on E. (135) as issued May 25. John
Hickes had applied for it before Thomas Blood on 321 (122).
And, on the other hand, Christopher Fowler himself withdraws his
application for Reading (through Blood), by going up to Whitehall and
leaving an application 321 (265) for a licence to preach at his own
house < in the village of Kennington in the parish of Lambeth * ; and
his application at once has its result in a licence, entered on E. (137)
4 to be a Presbyterian teacher in his house in Kennington, in the Parish of
4 Lambeth, Surrey, and another for the house of Christ. Fowler there.'
I say, at once, though it is not dated, because all the rest of those
entered on the same page are dated May 25, 1672. Another defect is
that there is no separate licence entered for his house.
Blood had already put in an application for 'Allderman Daniell
Andrew's hows at Laitonstone in Essex for a presbiterion meeting place,'
as desired by Mr. Wells of Watling Street, London. But this^ second
application on May 19, 1672, was altogether unnecessary. Two applica-
tions had been made on his behalf by James Innes, junr. [321 (21)]
and [321 (118)], the first of them certainly before Blood's first applica-
tion ; and two licences are entered in E. as granted to him : the
first entered on E. (Ill) dated May 13, 1672 only the name is wrongly
given as 'Daniel Andrey,' and the second on E. (114), dated May
1 6, 1672, which last was actually taken away by James Innes, junr., the
day before Blood made his second application viz., on May 18, 1672
[321 (206)]. So that in this case, too, Blood's efforts were not very
happy or successful.
The last of Blood's memoranda is 321 (328) : an application for
two licences for Yorkshire, and one for Sussex.
The Yorkshire licences are for Thurnscoe 4 Thursco ' Blood calls
it for a ' Mr. Will Benton,' a Presbyterian who had been ejected from
the living, to preach in his own house there, though excluded from his
old pulpit. Though the memorandum is undated, it probably belonged
to the month of June. The application was promptly attended to : and
the licences issued June 10, 1672 [E. (162)].
The Sussex licence is 'for the Presbitter to mete and preach 'In the
' loft over the Markett place in Pettworth which they Hire.' The response
to this is not nearly so prompt ; and it is by no means clear that it had any
response at all. Two houses in Petworth are licensed ; and both are de-
scribed as private property : (i) Jeoffrey Dautrie's, licensed July 22 [E.
(201)] (the entry by a curious slip places Petworth in Essex) ; and (2)
Henry Phillips' s, which was licensed August 10. In my first classifica-
tion I followed the lead of the Whitehall officials, and identified the
former with the meeting-place applied for by Blood.* I am distinctly
* For in I. an imperfect Index of Licences granted, drawn up by direction of
Sir Joseph, but never completed the last of the entries under Yorkeshire (Presby-
terian) is PetwortH 'A Roome over the Markett howse in Petworth belonging to
'Jeoffrey Dofty. Yorke, 25 July.'
16
2^2 Detailed and Expository
of opinion now, that the identification of the Index (I) is a mistaken
one, and that Blood's ' loft over the Markett Place ' is to be identified
with neither ; and that being, in a sense, a Public Hall (though
hired by the Presbyterians), his application is refused. If that be so,
Thomas Blood's career as a licence-agent ends as it began : by a futile
application for a Public Hall. His first application was before April 16,
for three Public Buildings in Newcastle, Northumberland ; and his last
is in June for a Public Building in Petworth, Sussex. And both are
failures. Still it stands distinctly to his credit, that though the authori-
ties are still swayed by a bigoted exclusiveness, against which he wrote
to Lord Arlington in protest, he does not hesitate to put in another
application for a Public Building.
The next document calling for special notice is one that chrono-
logically comes between the last examined and the last but one. 321
(210) is dated May 19. 321 (328) probably belongs to the month of
June. The document I proceed to quote is dated May 23.
It shows him as much more effective in larger enterprizes (enter-
prizes needing keenness of outlook and promptitude of action) than in
the detailed clerkly work which is needed for effectual licence-agency.
And we ought to emphasize the fact that it evinces a watchful regard
for the welfare of persecuted Nonconformists. It has come to Blood's
knowledge, either as the result of active personal enquiry, or by the
report to him of those who have learned the facts, that many of those who
have been incarcerated for their Nonconformity by the operation of the
second Conventicle Act, are still languishing in prison, spite c the suspen-
' sion of all penal statutes against such as do no conform to the Church of
' England ' published in the Declaration of Indulgence ; men who, if at
liberty, would without doubt wish to avail themselves of the In-
dulgence. And he writes to Lord Arlington asking him to see to it that
their pardons be issued at once. It is evident, too, that his request is
granted, as the endorsement in Sir Joseph Williamson's handwriting
runs < M r Blood, May 23. 72. Prisoners in Graft Goales to be
* pardoned.'
It is numbered [303 (103)] and is addressed : < For the Right
4 honor ble the Erie of Arlington these.'
It reads :
' My Lord,
* According unto y r LordP 3 direction I Inquered after y e order of
Councell for y e relese of prisoners and find it to be no larger than upon
letters sent to y e Sherrifs of each county for an accompt of what
quakers were prisoners upon y e accoumpt of conscience and no other
crime, that y e Atturney generall should draw up a pardon for to
contain them all, to which have bene added some others since, by order
of Councell, but I cannot find any other Order of Councell that relates
to prisoners, so y 1 many are like to remaine still in prison y l are of other
perswasions than quakers. And understanding that y r LordP by y
Kings apoyntment hath by warrant releced some that petitioned hi
The Indulgence Documents 243
Maiesty I humbly offer to y r LordP whither it be not y e best way
to peticon his Maiesty for these prisoners incerted in this inclosed, that
they may be releced by spetiall warrant conditionall that they be in for
no other crimes then such as are mentioned in y e sayd list of prisoners,
but if y r Lord p thinke it not a convenient way, I humbly desire y r
LordP 5 directions, these are prisoners recomended unto my care, and I
would willingly have my reputation kepte up that I may be the better
inabled to sarve his Maiesty.
' If yo r Lord p think fit to signify your pleshure herein by M r
Bridgman or any other way, it shall be obsarved by
4 Yo r Lord p most obliged servant
< May 23. 72.' < THO BLOOD
[The Mr. Bridgman, mentioned in the last sentence, is probably the
Clerk of the Council, who is twice referred to by Evelyn in his Diary :
the first time in 1676 (under date Aug. 15) ; and the second time
in noticing his death on May n, 1699.
The list of Prisoners is added in a separate document, calendared as
303 (103 I.) :
< Edward Ebdon*) CUT?
John Benn tt fpnsnorsm Southgate Lxon on excommunication
Tho. Egbearej jprisnors in Stoke Canon in Devon on excomu-
Elizabeth Gine j nication
Samuel Hart ). p ^. , , , c .,.
Henry Forlyii ^pnsnors in y e Kings bench for non \ conventiclmg
Alexander Edwards
Walter TrincombU
William Lob**
John Dierft
Charles Coek
Will. Steevens
pirsoners in Bodmin Cornwall upon excom-
unication
* I.e., Edward Ebdine, licensed May 22/72 as Congreg 11 to preach at Dame
Drake's house, Topsham, Devon. Rec d by Rich d Prowse, May 25/72 [E. (129)].
f There was an Edw. Bennett, ejected from W. Morden, Dorset (Cal. II., 139-
140), and a John Bennett E. fr. Whitwick (Leic r ) [Cal. III., 524], but was in London
till 1672.
{ Licensed for Asburton, Devon (end of Oct r ), 1672 \al. 'Egbeale'; also C.]
[E. (266)].
Stoke-Canon, 4^ mm. north-east of Exeter, belongs almost wholly to the Dean
and Chapter of Exeter Cathedral. The Bishop must have had his own special prison
there.
|| A John Forly's ho: in Totness, Devon, was lic d Ap. 30/72 [E. (46)], and taken
away by John Hickes. (Was Henry F. a bro. in London 1)
If A Nathaniel Tincombe is reported in 1665 as ej d fr. Lascelles and living at
Fowey [R. 308 and 413] ; and Theophilus Tincombe was lic d (t r and ho:) at Lost-
withiel, May 29/72 [E. (148)].
* Richard Lob's house in Knewyn (called ' Treworder House ') was lic d Ap. 16/72
[applns. 320 (99 and 100) ; He. entries E. (24 and 25)] ; and another house of his,
called ' Falmouth House ' in Mylor, was lic d the same date Stephen Lobb was lic d
to preach at both.
ft John Dier (Dyor) was lic d (on appl. of John Hickes [321 (53, 54)]) to pr. at
Martock, May 13/72 [E. (103)], and later at E. Chinnock (Som s ) [E. (285)].
1 6 2
244 Detailed and Expository
prisoner in the comon Goal at Exofi for pmunire
Samson Lark*
Will: Facyt
John Adams*
Roger Rowe
Francis Hart
4 Tho. Gower prisoner in Durham Goalie on excomunication
4 These are all presbiterians, Independents, and Annabaptists.'
From the identifications given in the notes it will be seen that the first
two pairs were probably Congregationalists of Devon (generally speaking)
in the Exeter district Topsham being on the estuary of the Exe, and
Ashburton in the valley of the Yeo, an affluent of the Dart ; that the
third pair were Baptists of Totness, Devon : that the Bodmin prisoners
were Presbyterians of Cornwall ; that Sampson Lark was a Baptist of
Dorset (Lyme) and Will Facy a Baptist of Tiverton, Devon ; and the
rest probably belonged to Somerset and Wilts.
A second appendix to Blood's letter was a list, identical in its
4 personel ' with the above only arranged somewhat differently. It is
calendared [303 (103 II)] ; and endorsed : < M^ Blood's paper.'
' Alexander Edwards-\
William Lob
John Dier [prisoners in Bodmin in Cornwall upon ex-
Charles Cock comunication
Will. Steevens J
Edward Ebdonjprisnor in Southgate in Exon upon excomunica-
John Bennet J tion
Samuel Hart ) .
Henry Forly J \
T?r'u S. T?^
Elizabeth Pine
Samuel Lark
Will Jacyil
Roger Rowe
Francis Hart
' Mr. Tho. Gower, prisoner in Durham Gaole upon excomuni-
cation there is a certificate from Sir Gilbert Garrat y e for y* only hee
is a prisoner.
' These desier by y e King's warrant to be discharged.'
This is the last document which shows any active interest on the
part of Biood, in the working of the Indulgence of 1672. At the close
of the year he was deeply engaged in trying to get possession of his
confiscated Estates : appealing to the Earl of Arlington to get the King
to issue a writ of error, and so secure a reversal of his outlawry. This
* Sampson Lark was a Baptist of Lime Regis (Lyme Town Records).
f William Facy was lic d as a Baptist teacher at Tiverton in Martin Dunsford's
house, May 25/72 [E. (141)].
| A ' M r Adams ' was reported in 1669 as teaching at conv. in West Monkton
(Soms) [R. 143].
A Tho: Rowe was lic d (both t r and ho:) for Wimborne, May 8/72 [E. (76) and
E. (77)]; and John Rowe's house in Shobrooke, DV, Ap. 21/72 [E. (103)]; John
Rowe is rep d in 1669 as teachs conv. at Barwick-Bassett in Wilts [R. 250].
II Facy.
T ~. , f XT r
Km & s bench for Nonconformit y
n Stoke canon in Devon for excomunication
.in y e Comon gole in Exon excomunication
The Indulgence Documents 245
was done, and after other intermediate legal processes, the King's
Warrant was issued May 27, 1673, an( ^ received in Dublin June 10,
1673. ' For Thomas Blood to have a writt of Error for reversing the
* Judgment against him for high Treason.' The actual document is
preserved in the MS. department of the British Museum (Stowe Col-
lection, Vol. 202, p. 81). Blood went to Dublin to see the matter
through, taking the King's warrant with him. He stayed in Ireland
long enough to discover a hoard of stolen plate valued at 1,500, which
he petitions the King may be handed over to him as c treasure trove ' in
the King's gift. We do not know whether he actually secured it. The
only other glimpse of him we have in the State Papers, is through
a Report he sends to Sir Joseph Williamson of the proceedings in
Parliament against the shattered remnants of the Cabal ministry. On
the passing of the Test Act both Clifford and Arlington had resigned.
Clifford died soon after by his own hand ; Buckingham and Lauderdale
were impeached; but an attempt made to impeach Arlington failed, and
he was astute enough to secure a snug berth at Court as Lord
Chamberlain.
Though with the withdrawal of the Declaration (Feb. 1673) and of
the licences granted under it in 1675, the hopes of help from Blood were
all blasted, and in their bitter disappointment, the Nonconformists, and
especially the Presbyterians, poured the vials of their wrath upon Blood's
head ; he remained true to the cause of Protestantism to the end. When
he broke with Buckingham (on what ground we do not know) he was
relentlessly persecuted by his former patron ; and most astutely, Blood's
dealings with Roman Catholics, conducted in reality in the interests
of the Government, only to worm their secrets out of them, were
represented by Buckingham as proof of his treachery to the Protestant
interest. It was a sincere trouble to Blood ; and Dorman Newman (a
great Puritan printer, who in 1672 was active in securing licences for
his friends under the Indulgence) published a Book in 1679 to expose
these tactics : ' With an Account of their particular Intreigues carried
< on to insnare Mr. Blood, and several other considerable Persons, with
4 the happy Discoveries thereof.'
His health was shattered, and these proceedings preyed much upon
his mind ; and he died at his house in the Bowling Green, West-
minster, on August 24, 1680. His will showed that he died 'in the
* faith of the Lord Jesus Christ '; and that he preserved an equitable
love to all his surviving children.
246 Detailed and Expository
CHAPTER III
THE COMPLETED SCHEME
I. WHITEHALL : ITS BUILDINGS AND OFFICIALS.
As hinted in the last chapter but one, the essentially ' personal ' or
4 individual' character of the 'Indulgence' of 1672, had necessarily the
most direct consequences on the mode of its administration. The King
was its one source ; and to him every would-be recipient of it had to
apply.
Before the Indulgence could be of benefit, Licences had to be secured
by the individuals ' indulged ' ; so that, if challenged, they might show
them to any properly constituted authority. The ' Licences ' were of
three classes: (i) For a Teacher to preach in a specified 'place';
(2) for a Teacher, to preach in any licensed place (often described as a
' General Teacher ' or ' a Teacher in General ') ; and (3) for a ' Place '
(i.e., 'for the use of such as do not conform to the Church of
England ').
They were partly printed and partly written. The printed form
declared on the part of the King what was common to every licence of
its class giving 'approval^ to the Teacher, and Royal authority to preach
and conduct Nonconformist Worship ; or ' allowance ' for a ' place '-
which was also Royal authority to the owner to open the doors of his or
her house for public Nonconformist Worship. Blanks in these printed
forms were left ; (i) in all three classes for the name of the Sect to which
Teacher and worshipper belonged the phrase used was 'thePerswasion
'commonly called'; (ii) in those of the first class, blanks also for the
name of the Teacher, and the name and description of the 'place'
where he may hold services; (iii) in those of the second class,
an
additional blank for the name of the Teacher alone : and
in those
of the third class, one also for the name and description of the ' place r
allowed.
Among the documents reproduced in Vol. I., two or three in 320,
give us incidental information as to when and how these forms were
decided on. The final decision was probably given by the King in
Council ; but the preliminary processes were under the control of Lord
Arlington ; who left all the details of work in his department to his
Chief Secretary, Sir Joseph Williamson.
It further appears, from these documents, that Sir Joseph largely
consulted Dr. Nicholas Butler, whom he had employed (in conjunction
with Mr. Church and Colonel Blood) in the pourparlers and conferences
with leading Nonconformists which had issued in the Declaration of
Indulgence on March 15.
These documents also make it evident that the Declaration was
issued some days before details were arranged as to the precise forms to
The Indulgence Documents 247
be used, and the procedure to be followed, in administering the
Indulgence.
In 320 (3) we find Dr. Butler writing to Sir Joseph, with regard
to a scheme which he had suggested. He says, * I humbly desire -his
' Majesty and thoese two honourable persons ' probably Lords Arling-
ton and Clifford ' may see the whole I writ, and noe more. 1
The scheme (as I have shown in my account of Nicholas Butler)
sketched the procedure generally to be followed both by the King in
granting the Indulgence, and by those who sought it including forms
of ' licences ' to be issued to the ' indulged.'
This letter was dated Friday, March 22nd exactly a week after
the Declaration had been issued.
Seeing that the King had declared war against the Dutch only two
days after issuing the Declaration, one can hardly avoid the conclusion
that the King had been thus ' previous ' in the publication of the
Declaration because he was eager to declare war against the Dutch.
The Declaration of Indulgence must precede the Declaration of War,
so as to quiet and distract the Nonconformists ; and though matters
were not properly ripe for it, and details were not yet settled, the
Declaration of Indulgence must be issued so as to clear the way for the
Declaration of War.
The very next day (Saturday, March 23rd) he writes again to Sir
Joseph [320 (4)]. The sketch submitted was not distinct enough on
one or two points. Apparently only tw,o classes of licence were con-
templated at first : one for the Teacher in a certain defined place, and
the other for the ' place ' where he was to hold the service : the pre-
supposition of this being that the applicant for licence as a Teacher was
the minister of a congregation, which in spite of the penal statutes had
met regularly in a definite place (either in a private house, or in a build-
ing erected for the purpose). In the interval between presenting the
sketch scheme and his writing this second letter, it had occurred to him
in further conference with Nonconformist leaders* that there were many
Nonconformists who had 'gathered' no conventicles about them either in
their former spheres, or in London whither they had fled, so that they
could not mention any specific ' place ' in which, or c people ' to whom
they would desire a licence to preach. Yet the very fact that they had
so far observed the law, instead of breaking it (as was the case with
those who could claim a congregation and a ' place ' as peculiarly their
own), was a reason why they should be specially provided for rather
than excluded from the scope of the King's Indulgence ; and Dr. Butler
accordingly suggests that a third class of licence should be added (f.*.,
one for ' a general teacher ') : < I offer,' he says, < that all nonconformists
' which have not a people, if they desire it, may have a licence to preach
* in any licenced place.'
In the very next document, too [320 (5)], Dr. Butler, writing on
the following Wednesday (March 27), refers to some other special
arrangement evidently connected with the Indulgence, but so cryptic
* It will have been noted that in his previous letter [320 (3)] he had said : ' Since
' I was with you I had severall with me.'
248 Detailed and Expository
in its phraseology that any interpretation is scarcely more than a guess.
On a review of the whole situation, however, I have little hesitation in
suggesting it must partly refer to the way Roman Catholics may be
treated under it. < The words for that particular is agreed as I gave it
' viz., that they be licenced upon extraordinary family occasions, to keep
*a day of fast or thanksgiving in a private family with a moderate
4 number ' and partly to services held , at weddings or before private
baptisms or funerals for Protestant Nonconformists as well.
If I am correct in the interpretation, the suggestion came to nothing
as far as the testimony of any of these licence-documents is concerned.
There are no special licence-forms for exceptional meetings in Roman
Catholic houses j or, indeed, in Protestant houses on any particular
occasions.
The result of these conferences was that three licence-forms were
decided on of the three classes already described. [320 (7)- (17)] (Vol. I.,
pp. 198-203).
Of these we have no less than eleven samples in 320.
(i) 320 (7), (8), (9), and (9A) are of the Form for a Teacher in a
specific place.
320 (7) is printed in Vol. I. so as to be a replica of the actual
printed form, in which, though it is much smaller in size, the type of
the Licence-forms actually issued is reproduced as nearly as possible.
[The same, of course, is true also of 320 (10), and 320 (13).] 320 (8)
and 320 (9) are written forms almost identical, though a close
examination will disclose slight variations in spelling and the use of
capitals. In (9A) the salutation is abbreviated, and instead of the
blanks left in the other copies (as in the printed form) for the name of
the Teacher, the name of the place, and the name of the Sect or
4 Perswasion,' we have capital letters : A B for the Christian name and
surname of the Teacher, C for the name of the place, and D for the
name of the Sect.
(ii) 320 (10), (11), (12), and (12A) are forms for a General Teacher.
The printed form comes first ; and, as in the previous case of the
written copies, the last is abbreviated and capital letters are used instead
of blanks : A B (as before) representing the name of the Teacher, and
C representing the c Perswasion ' to which he belongs.
(iii) 320 (13), (14), (15), and (ISA) gives forms of a Licence for a
Place. As in the other two cases, the first is the printed form, the other
three are written copies, only in the last, the salutation is not abbre-
viated, the capitals A and B are not used ; but C is employed for the
Place and D for the 'Perswasion.'*
Of each of these three series the last seems to be in the handwriting
of Sir Joseph Williamson's principal clerk, Francis Benson.
In addition to these, we have two large sheets, numbered 320 (16)
and 320 (17) ; each containing drafts of all three forms of licence. In
both of these the salutation is prefixed to only the first of the three
forms. But in other respects they differ.
* It is interesting to note that Sir Joseph has used the back of 320 (51) to jot down
a memorandum of Henry Godman's application for a licence to preach in ' a certaine
' place in y e Upper Towne of Deptford.'
The Indulgence Documents 249
In 320 (16), which seems to be in Benson's handwriting, the
description of each form is prefixed to it as a titlej and the order of the
forms differs from the order in which copies of each of the three have
already been given.
In that, the form for a Teacher in a given Place comes first ; for a
Teacher in General, second ; and for a Place, last. In this we have
' Licence for a Teacher in Generall,' first ; ' Licence for a Place,'
second ; and * Licence for a Teacher,' last. In all of these, however,
instead of Capital letters for the blank spaces, we have dotted lines.
[The endorsement of the paper is curious, 'Forme of Licences for
' Teachers ' (although the second is the form of Licence for ' a Place '),
'Apr. 1672.']
In one way 320 (17) is the most interesting of the whole series, as
it is all in Sir Joseph Williamson's handwriting.
Here the Salutation common to all is given separately at the head
of the three different forms in a fashion much more logical than that
of his clerk, who prefixes it to the first of the three forms.
The description of each, moreover, is given in a marginal indented
note, at the left hand of each of the three forms. But the order is
different, alike from his clerk's summary 320 (17), and of the four sets
of copies of each. They are as follows, both in form and order :
(i) <Y e Teacher of a certaine Congregation'; (2) <Y e Place'; and
(3) ' Teacher in generall & at large.' The document is endorsed quite
correctly, * Forme of Licenses.'
Most probably we have in 320 (17), the actual document which
would be given by Sir Joseph Williamson to Lord Arlington to present
to the King in Council for their approval.
The separate sets would probably be drawn up in writing as the
result of conference and discussion of details with Dr. Butler ; and these
drafts in 320 (16) and (17) were almost certainly drawn up, the one by
his clerk, and the other by Sir Joseph himself.
In the printed forms, preserved in (320) (7), (10), and (13), we have
the exact skeleton of licences as actually issued, and with them before
us we can reproduce the actual form of the licence issued in any
particular instance. We have simply to fill in the blanks in accordance
with the facts as known (and we may add, as preserved for us in the
Entry Books, B. and E.).
[This does not appear to have been realized by historians who have
reproduced the licences granted to their heroes which have been pre-
served. They often cite them as though the form were special to the
case they are dealing with, suggesting that, in any other, the form might
considerably vary.]
When we examine carefully the form of each kind of licence finally
adopted, we find that its phraseology is largely and intentionally
reminiscent of that of the Royal Declaration.
The Salutation reminds us of the list of persons who, in the third
paragraph of the Declaration, are commanded to ' take notice of,' ' and
' pay due obedience to ' the Royal will and pleasure therein declared
(viz., that the execution of all, and all manner of penal laws in matters
< ecclesiastical against whatsoever sort of non conformists or recusants be
250 Detailed and Expository
' immediately suspended '). In the Declaration the persons enumerated
are 'all judges, judges of assize and gaol-delivery, sheriffs, justices or
' peace, mayors, bailiffs, and other officers whatsoever, whether ecclesi-
'astical or civil.'
In these licences the salutation reads : 'Charles by the Grace of God
' King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, Defender of the
'Faith, &c.* To all Mayors, Bayliffs, Constables, and other Our
' Officers and Ministers, Civil and Military, whom it may concern,
' Greeting.' The first line of the list in the Declaration is of officials,
whose duty under the Penal Statutes was with the arrest and trial of
Nonconformists on the charge of conventicling, coupled with an
intimation that under the Indulgence that duty entirely lapses. These
are not specially concerned with the ' licences,' as subordinate officers
are enjoined henceforth not to bring Nonconformists before them who
are furnished with Indulgence licences.
These, therefore, 'judges, judges of assize, and gaol-delivery, sheriffs
' and justices of peace ' are not addressed in the licences. Of the rest,
the ' mayors, bailiffs, and other officers whatsoever, whether ecclesiastical
' or civil,' addressed in the Declaration, are all addressed in the Licences,
save the ' officers ecclesiastical,' who have no concern henceforth with
Nonconformists, except to leave them alone. But in the licence-
greeting, ' Constables, and other Our Officers and Ministers, Civil and
' Military,' are specified, because in making these licences effective, these
guardians of the public peace, trained bands, and the soldiery may be
called in to protect the licensees from attack or injury.
Further, every one of the forms commences with a reference to the
Declaration of Indulgence as a reminder that the licence is granted under
the Royal Indulgence so declared : ' In pursuance of our Declaration of
'the 1 5th of March 167^.' [The alternative form of the date shows
the transitional character of the period. It is in view of the fact that the
Old Style was not finally to be dropped till September 2, 1752. As
the year ended with March 31 in the Old Style, but with December 31
in the New, March 15 was still in 1671 .Old Style, but in 1672
New Style.]
In the Licences for a Teacher in a certain place, and for a Teacher in
general, the phrase used to describe the Royal authority given to him
differs from that used in the Declaration. The Declaration speaks of
the necessity of the King ' approving ' the teacher of a congregation.
The Licences say ' We do hereby ' not ' approve,' but ' permit and
' license ' him.
In the case of the Licence for a place, the licence-form echoes the
words of the Declaration. In the Declaration the King had spoken of
' allowing ' a sufficient number of places, &c. In the Licence, he says :
' We have allowed, and We do hereby allow of ' so-and-so to be a place ;
and the other two forms speak of ' a Congregation allowed by Us,' and
of ' any other place licensed and allowed by Us.'
The description of ' the place ' allowed or licensed, however, is most
* The way in which ' France ' is sandwiched between Scotland and ' Ireland '
will strike the modern reader as very odd, though it is full of historical interest of a
most absorbing kind.
The Indulgence Documents 251
directly an echo of the terms of the Declaration. Both in the Licence
for a Teacher of the Congregation allowed in a special place, and in the
Licence for a place, it is described as * for the Use of such as do not
' conform to the Church of England,' adding in the latter case, ' to
' meet and assemble in, in order to their publick Worship and Devotion.'
It is exactly in these terms that the King in his Declaration promised to
i allow a sufficient number of places, as they shall be desired, in all parts
'of his Kingdom, for the use of such as do not conform to the Church of
' England to meet and assemble in, in order to their publick worship and
* devotion.' 1
One clause of the Declaration is most generously expanded in the
last paragraph of the Licence-form for a ' Place.' The King in his
Declaration had given as one reason for insisting on the distinct
* allowance' of each recognized Meeting-Place, and 'approval' of each
licensed Teacher, 'that they may be better protected by the civil
* magistrate,' and in the Licence for * a Place,' this is the instruction he
issues to the guardians of the public peace : ' And all and singular Our
'Officers and Ministers, Ecclesiastical, Civil, and Military, whom it
may concern, are to take due notice hereof ' (this is an echo of the
paragraph in the Declaration before referred to) : ' And they, and every
' of them, are hereby strictly charged and required to hinder any tumult
c or disturbance, and to protect them in their said Meetings and
' Assemblies.'
Here, indeed, is a turning of the tables. Until the Declaration was
issued March 15, 1672, the duty of these same 'officers and Ministers,
' Ecclesiastical, Civil, and Military,' had been to suppress, and disperse
any of these ' Meetings and Assemblies,' or even better, by any means
(including the forcible closing of the meeting-places) to prevent them ;
and in 1670, even in the City of London (as well as all over the
country), right merrily and ruthlessly had they done it, creating tumult
and disturbance in the carrying out of their odious work. Now they
were to protect these same Conventiclers, whenever they gathered for
' their public worship and devotion,' and ' hinder any tumult or dis-
'turbance' on the part of their persecutors, ecclesiastical, civil, or
military.
Thus distinctly and fully did the Licences express the intentions and
re-echo the very phraseology of the Declaration of Indulgence, in
accordance with and furtherance of it.
Before they could have any value to the recipient, however, not only
must the blanks be filled in with particulars clearly describing him and
his ' desire,' including the date of issue ; each licence must be signed
above by the King in person, and at the foot, just below the words,
' By His Majesties Command,' by some member of the King's Council.
In a few cases Lord Clifford did so. In every other case it was by one or
other of the Principal Secretaries of State ; between two or three scores
by Sir John Trevor, and all the rest probably by the Earl of Arlington.
The King, the members of the Council, and his principal Secretaries
of State, then, were the only persons from whom the licences could be
obtained, because they, and they alone, could grant them in form which
would give them validity and authority.
2 $2 Detailed and Expository
In theory, of course, that might be done, wherever King and Court
happened to be, whether in St. James's, in Whitehall, at Windsor, at
Newmarket, at Portsmouth, or at Dover.
Yet it was only in one particular spot, and from one particular place,
that practical facilities existed for the purpose.
For Charles II., London was the settled place of his abode, and
Whitehall was his favourite Palace. It was in Whitehall that his
Court was mostly held ; and it was in Whitehall that were found the
offices of those most closely associated with him in the administration of
the Indulgence. It appears that any Cabinet Minister was authorized to
act for him, or with him, in ' allowing ' a * place ' or ' approving a
4 person,' but of the five who formed the Cabal, neither Buckingham
nor Ashley (Shaftesbury) ever exercised this power.
Buckingham, through his levity, did not care to be troubled with
it. It remains a problem, which calls urgently for solution, why
Shaftesbury, so stalwart a Presbyterian, and soon to become once more
the champion of popular rights in matters both civic and religious against
the oppression of either Church or State, all through this period should
have remained so silent and inactive, that his name never once appears
in the State Papers as taking any part in the furtherance or working of
this measure, and that he should never once have used his great influence
to secure the benefits of the Indulgence for those who 4 desired ' them.
Lauderdale, too, acts in this business, but very intermittently, and that
only through his secretary. So that Clifford, Trevor, and Arlington
were left usually to work with the King, or in the King's behalf.
Clifford was, at this time, the presiding genius at the Treasury,
though he was not created Lord High Treasurer till the November of
this year. He had so little to do with the issue of licences under the
Indulgence that it was almost wholly left in the hands of Trevor,
Arlington, and his subordinates.
Whenever the King was in Town, he resided either in St. James's
Palace, or in the warren-like buildings of the Court and Palace of
Whitehall. It was these which naturally became the local centre
and headquarters of those who worked the Indulgence, and issued the
Licences granted under it.
The buildings and grounds, collectively known as Whitehall,
covered the space between what is now Whitehall Place on the North
and New Scotland Yard on the South ; being bordered by Whitehall on
the West, and by the River on the East. The present Embankment
occupies what was then the ' foreshore,' covered only at high-tide, and a
bank of oozy mud at low-tide, over which the piers and steps carried
passengers, at any state of the tide, to and from the Whitehall buildings
and the boats or barges. These ' piers ' and steps were called respec-
tively Whitehall Palace Stairs, at its northern end (near the Chapel and
the Great Hall), and leading from the river to very near the Northern
corner of the Great Courtyard ; and the Privy Stairs, about the centre
of this area, leading from the river, directly to the Royal Apartments,
and past the Queen's Wardrobe. Along the irregular southern side of
the Great Courtyard lay a block of buildings, which at its north-western
corner joined the southern end of Inigo Jones's great Banqueting Hall,
I 1
The Indulgence Documents 253
the only part of the ancient Whitehall which now remains. It is this
block of buildings in which we are most interested.
Running almost East and West, it had the Great Court Yard behind
it on the North, and the spacious ' Privy Garden ' in front of it on the
South. Broadly speaking, it consisted of four sets of apartments. The
western end of it contained the office of the Lord Keeper, where was
lodged the 'Great Seal.' Next to this, eastwards, were the Treasury
Chambers. The largest and easternmost block contained the ' Lodgings '
and offices of the Chief Secretary of State ; and between these last two,
in the centre of the building, was the Royal ' Office,' known as ' The
' King's Laboratory and Bath.'
In this year of 1672, Sir Orlando Bridgeman occupied the smaller
apartments at the western extremity of the block ; Lord Clifford pre-
sided at the Treasury ; and the easternmost part of the block was
occupied by Lord (later, the Earl of) Arlington. These were the
buildings in which the details of the licence-scheme were wrought out
by Sir Joseph Williamson, with the assistance of Dr. Nicholas Butler.
Here Sir Joseph was the resident authority and presiding genius, and it
was from this building alone that the Indulgence Licences could be
obtained.
It is well, therefore, to realize as vividly as possible their position, and
the means of communication between them and the great world outside.
In the centre of its southern front one door opened on to the north-
eastern corner of the Privy Garden, but this was the private entrance
of Lord Arlington, and possibly of Sir Joseph Williamson as his con-
fidential secretary. It is from this door that Lord Arlington, and Sir
Joseph, would have easiest access to the King's ' Laboratory.'
The door most used, however, was one in the eastern-end wall
opening almost directly on to the road leading to the Privy Stairs, and
communicating by a sort of courtyard with the Great Court behind the
Offices. It is not likely that any save the King and Court were
allowed to use the Privy Stairs, so that, for the general public, access
to Lord Arlington's offices would be from the Great Court of White-
hall, through the courtyard just described, whether they came by land
through < Whitehall ' street, or by water to the Whitehall Palace Stairs.
Between the two doors in Loid Arlington's Lodgings, was the
entrance to 'The Stone Gallery,' a sort of Piazza which extended
almost due north and south, flanking the Privy Garden along its whole
extent on the east, and dividing it from the various suites of apart-
ments, which communicated with one another by labyrinthine passages
and courtyards much after the fashion of the Pensioners' Lodgings at
Hampton Court and were bordered on the east by the river bank.
This Stone Gallery appears to have been used as a * rendezvous ' for
men who had public business in Westminster, whether in connection
with Court or Parliament : and it is of especial interest to find that
in one of the Licence-documents Arlington's Office is addressed
postally as 4 in Stone Gallery.'
321 (153) is an application for six licences, all for Congregationalists
in the East Riding of Yorkshire (Hull and its immediate neighbour-
hood), made May 15, 1672, by one ' Robert Collier ', and is addressed :
254 Detailed and Expository
* S r Joseph Williamson,
4 At the Earle of Arlington office, in Stone Gallery.'
All this, and much more, may be gained by a glance at Fisher's ex-
cellent plan (here reproduced), which is almost contemporary with our
period, having been 'taken in the reign of Charles II. in 1680' only
eight years after the issue of the Declaration of Indulgence.
Further, by the aid of the Indulgence Documents, we are enabled to
form a fairly complete idea of the Whitehall staff, who were con-
cerned with the preparation, the granting, drawing up, and issue of
the Licences.
Beside the staff in Lord Arlington's office where by far the
greater part of the work was done note should be taken of the fact
that Sir John Trevor, as one of the Secretaries of State, was fully
qualified to sign and issue Licences. His offices were situated in a blind
alley, the southern end of which opened out from the north-western
corner of the Great Courtyard, their back-yards being separated from
' Whitehall ' Street by a high wall which was unbroken by any entry
or door along its whole length between the two entrances to Scotland
Yard on the north and the great Palace Gate on the south.
This he did to a limited extent, and he might have continued
to do so for a much longer period had it not been for his prema-
ture death in this year of 1672.
I. Sir John Trevor.
Sir John Trevor was born 1626, at Tremlyn, Denbighshire. In
1646, when not twenty-one, he entered Parliament as Member for
County Flint. He is described as of Channel Row, Middlesex, and
of Plas Teg, Flintshire. In 1654 he was again returned for Flint. In
1655 he was placed on the Committee for Trade, and in 1657 on tne
Commission for the Survey of Forests. Politically both he and his
father were 'moderate' Parliamentarians : and early in 1660 (Feb. 23) he
was admitted to Monk's Council of State. In the Convention Parlia-
ment, 1660, he was M.P. for Arundel in Sussex. In 1661 he was
elected for Great Bedwin, Wilts.
In 1663 he had some responsible employment in France.
In 1667 he was admitted to the Council of State. Pepys refers
to this under date Dec. 30. In alluding to the many changes which
followed the fall and exile of the Earl of Clarendon, he speaks of
' The King being going to put out of the Council so many able men '
and among them ' Secretary Morrice to bring in Mr. Trevor.'
From February to May, 1668, he was again in France, going to
Paris on a special mission, and on May 2 to St. Germain's to ratify a
Treaty with France.
On his return to England he was knighted. In the month of
September, Pepys twice refers to his rapid rise in the Royal favour.
'Sep. 9: 1668. M r George Montague . . . talked and complimented
' me mightely . . . who, for news, tells me for certain that Trevor do
4 come to be Secretary at Michaelmas, and that Morrice goes out, and,
The Indulgence Documents 255
' he believes, without any compensation.' Ten days later he harps on the
same string. c Sep. 19: 1668. All the news now is that Mr. Trevor
is for certain to be Secretary in Morrice's place, which the I Duke
* of York did himself tell me yesterday.' The appointment was
actually made in 1669 Trevor having bought Morrice's Secretaryship
for 8,000 or ^10,000 so that rumour had been wrong in saying
Morrice was to have no compensation. Under date March 22, 1669,
Pepys writes : ' Sir W. Coventry told me that he was going to visit
4 Sir John Trevor, who hath been very kind to him.'
According to Sir Joseph Williamson, Sir John had Nonconformist
leanings, which we can well believe in view of his Parliamentary con-
nections in the 'Interregnum.' In 1671, January 18, he was appointed
on the Committee to report on the petitions of Irish owners of property
who had been dispossessed by Cromwell.
Under date May 26 of that year (1671), Evelyn refers to Sir John
Trevor as ' the other Secretary ' his allusion being to the ' Earl of
4 Arlington, Secretary of State ' as amongst those who inaugurated the
work of i the Commissioners! of Trade and Plantations, ... in the
' Earle of Bristol's house in Queene Street [Lincoln's Inn Fields].'
In July 2, 1671, he was appointed Commissioner to report on the
settlement of Ireland, and early that same year was associated with
Ashley, Clifford, and Arlington in the negotiations with the States
General for alliance with them.
In 1672, when the Indulgence was in full swing, he took his share
in issuing Licences, which he treated as items of Royal Patronage in
Ecclesiastical Affairs and entered accordingly in his Entry Book No. 27.
This volume is entitled on the back ' 27. S.P. Dom. Entry Books,
1 Ecclesiastical and Universities 1667-1678 '; and on the side, < Church.'
The book is written from both ends. The end following the side-
cover, which bears the word ' Church,' contains all the Ecclesiastical
appointments in the patronage or gift of the King ; and it is in this half
of the volume that some fifty of the licences granted under the Declara-
tion of Indulgence are entered.
The following are specimens of the kind of benefice thus entered as
in the Royal Gift :
July 2, 1667. A letter to the Dean and Chapter of Exeter Cathe-
dral commending Dr. John Wilkins (who was the following year
appointed Bishop of Chester) one of the King's chaplains, to a Canonry
in the Cathedral in place of Mr. Nay lor whom they had elected.
July 17, 1667. A Conge d'Elire of Dr. Francis Davis to the
Bishopric of LlandafT.
August 10, 1668. The Royal Permission to the Lord Mayor and
Alderman of the City of London, to remove the stone rubbish from
the ruins of St. Paul's to the lower parts of Fleet Street to raise the
roadway to a proper level.
January i, 1669-70. Dr. Tillotson is presented to the Dean and
Chapter of Chichester Cathedral for the next Canon Residentiary.
June 9, 1670. Dr. Edward Stillingfleet is presented by the King to
the next Prebend of St. Paul's, London.
256 Detailed and Expository
June 10, 1671. A Royal Commission is issued to Humphrey
(Henchman), Bishop of London, to * visit ' his Diocese.
Jan. 8, 1671-72. The King appoints William Wenslow to be
Vicar Choral of Sarum Cathedral.
February 5, 1671-72. The King appoints William Hoare Master
of Lutterworth Hospital.
Mar. 1 8, 1671-72. He presents John Cradock, M.A., to the
Rectory of St. Peter's, Walpool, Norfolk.
And on March 27, 1671-72. The King presents Joseph Sedgwick,
M.A., to the Rectory of Allthorp in the Isle of Axholme, Lincolne.'
These last two appointments were made after the Declaration of
Indulgence was issued ; the first only three days after it, and the second,
twelve.
It is after this that the entries of Licences granted under the Declara-
tion of Indulgence commence. The very next entry (on p. 30) is of
four Licences under the Indulgence : but they are followed at the foot
of the same page, by a * Corroboration of William Wade M.A. to the
4 Rectory of Broadwater in Sussex.'
The nine pages next following this c Corroboration ' are wholly
occupied with Licences to Nonconformists ; but on p. 35 appointments
to benefices in the Established Church are resumed in the Recom-
mendation of John Wood, B.D., to the Dean and Chapter of Sarum
for the next place of Canon Residentiary in Sarum Cathedral ; and these
are continued to the end of the volume.
With regard to these Licence-entries one or two things may be
noted, (i) As in the case of Lord Arlington's Entry Book 3 8 A, the
continuous series of licence-entries in B. commences with two specimen-
licences entered in full viz., those issued to Henry Lukin of Matching,
Essex, for a general licence ; and to Edward Casse, of the same place,
for his house there [B. (30^)]. (2) Of these the first is signed < J. Tr.'
So also is the Licence granted to William Wallace of East Deane,
Sussex [B. (32)]. And one entry at the head of p. 316 for the two
licences for Nathaniel Robinson to preach in Mrs. Knight's house
in Southampton is signed in full, <J. Trevor.' (3) The house-
licences are entered in the briefest terms, as merely supplements or
appendices to the preaching-licences. (4) In these Licence-entries
there is a curious chronological irregularity. The first entered is for
April 9, and the third [B. (30/>)] for April n. But on the following
page [B. (31)] April 17 is followed by April 12 ; and further on
April 13 follows April 17 ; and again it follows April 15. It suggests
that Sir John had given no definite instructions to his clerk at the
outset, and that the memoranda which had been preserved were entered
in the haphazard order in which they were taken up for entry.
The last licence entered [on B. (34^)] that to Jerome Gregory,
of Little Marlow, Bucks bore date May 17, 1672.* Sir John's mortal
illness must have followed immediately afterwards, for he died of fever
May 28, 1672, and was buried at St. Bartholomew's, f Smithfield.
* This licence is preserved in the Congregational Library, Memorial Hall, London.
t This is given, in Wood's ' Fasti,' as Church of St. Bartholomew's, and should
mean St. Bartholomew's the Less, the other being known as the Priory (see Stow).
The Indulgence Documents 257
Only for two months, therefore, after the issue of the Declaration,
had Sir John any part in the administration of the Indulgence. For
these two months, moreover, the great bulk of the work was done
at Arlington's office as was the whole of it after May 17.
Only one other member of the ' Cabal ' beside Lord Arlington took
any active part in the matter. Shaftsbury the one Minister whom we
should naturally suppose would be most energetic in securing this
4 liberty ' for Nonconformists did absolutely nothing. In the whole of
these Indulgence-documents his name does not once occur. Lauder-
dale, too, appears only, mediately and on one or two occasions, through
his secretary. But Lord Clifford, the Lord High Treasurer, occasion-
ally does show an active interest.
In view of the fact that, though very occasionally he actually
countersigned licences, as did Sir John Trevor, a brief account of him
may not be out of place. Indeed, the reason of his active intervention
in certain instances, can be understood only in the light of his public
career.
2. Lord Clifford.
Thomas Clifford was the eldest son of Hugh Clifford, Esq., of
Ugbrooke (near Chudleigh), in Central Devon; was educated at
Exeter College, Oxford, and chose rather to share young Charles's exile
than remain in England and acknowledge the Commonwealth. In
the first two Parliaments of Charles II. 's reign he was member for
Totnes, the nearest borough to his native place. In 1664 he was
appointed, in conjunction with Sir John Evelyn and two others, Com-
missioner for the Sick and Wounded and Prisoners of War ; in 1665, he
served with great distinction in the Fleet, under the Duke of York, in
the first war against the Dutch, and was knighted for his conduct ; and
henceforward he made rapid advance in the King's service through the
active influence of Lord Arlington. In 1666 he was appointed Comp-
troller of the Household ; in May, 1667, was made one of the Lords
Commisssoners of the Treasury ; in the April of this year, 1672, was
created Baron Clifford of Chudleigh ; and on November 28 of this same
year was made Lord High Treasurer of England.
For some time before this he was the most active and influential
of the Treasury Commissioners, so that he was often, and officially,
called * Mr. Treasurer ' before the Office had been actually reinstated.*
Throughout our period the Treasurer's Lodgings, therefore, were really
his Office, though he was not formally installed there till November,
occupying the block west of the King's Laboratory, as Arlington did
the block east of it.
Five documents in these volumes contain his name, and show his
influence in this Indulgence business ; two of them directly proving his
authority to issue the licences.
* Thus in 1671, in the month of May, Evelyn twice ' Dined at M r Treasurer's '
(Sir Thomas Clifford) : the first time (May 10) with a motley company, including,
besides M de Gramont and ssveral French noblemen, ' one Blood, that impudent
' bold fellow, etc.' ; and the second time, May 17, in which he suspected him to be a
little warping to Rome.
17
258 Detailed and Expository
1. First, we have a letter, directly addressed to him, reproduced as
320 (42), asking him to grant two licences.
Although clearly addressed : < For the right hon bl S r Tho Clifford/
it is, most unfortunately, unsigned. It reads :
* May it please you S r ,
' M r Francis Whiddon of Totnes desires his Ma ties Licence to
'preach to a people of the Non Conformitye.
4 The place his owne house in Totnes.
'Hee is of the Presbeterian JudgmV
One is tempted to suggest, and is free to suppose, that it was
written and sent up to London by Francis Whiddon himself.
The appended postscript, however, makes it more likely that it was
some resident in London personally known to Lord Clifford who acts
for his friend in Devon.
' Your Honour,' he adds, * is desired to mind M r Wood M r
' Stenning's friend.'
Clifford's connection with Devon, both as a native of the county,
and specially as Member for Totnes, most naturally explains Francis
Whiddon's somewhat unusual course. In the Commonwealth times
Whiddon was Rector of Totnes, and after his ejectment in 1662 he
still remained in the town, and was held in high esteem as belonging
to a good county family, as well as for his work's sake. He was,
therefore, known personally to Sir Thomas Clifford ; and Mr. Stenning
would be known to both. * Sir Thomas ' was still only * the right
* hon ble S r Tho. Clifford,' because (though he was created Baron in the
month of April this year) it was not till the last day of the month ; and
this letter must have been written quite early in the month, as on
E. (11) we find Whiddon's personal licence entered as issued April 1 1 ;
and the licence for his house the same date on E. (15).*
2. There is also a second letter, of earlier date than this, which
contains his name viz., 320 (35) though it is not addressed to him.
The letter was written by James Inness, senior, to Sir Joseph William-
son. The body of it refers to two Southwark Nonconformist ministers
viz., Nathaniel Vincent and William Whitaker. And with that part
of it Sir Thomas Clifford has nothing to do. But a P.S. follows which
* As to the name ' Wood ' mentioned in the postscript of 320 (42), there can be
little doubt the ' M r Wood ' whose case Sir Thomas is asked to ' mind ' is William
Wood of Tiverton. In another letter [321 (50)] addressed to Sir Thomas now
' Thomas Lord Clifford ' in a very bungling attempt at French, ' Monceare le Cheva-
' leare Clufford, ' the writer says : ' I bespoke a Licence for M r Saunders to preach in
' the howse of W m Wood of Tiverton in Devon.' The first application for a meeting-
place for Mr. Saunders had been made for ' the English Schoole howse in the Town '
in a memorandum calendared 320 (123), and endorsed, ' Given in by M r Treasurer's
Steward. 18 Ap.,' so that it had been sent to Sir Thomas (while still plain 'Sir
Thomas '). But that application had been refused, as we see by 320 (297), which
is an application by Richard Prowse, in a letter dated May 3, 1672, addressed to
Benson, to substitute for *y e Schoole howse, 1 Mr. Wood's house, ' in y e s d Towne.'
So that clearly 321 (50) was written by Prowse, not as before to Mr. Benson (Sir
Joseph Williamson's clerk), but direct to Thomas Lord Clifford, already called
1 M r Treasurer. ' This secures the object. The licences are both granted May 8,
1672 [E (89)] Wm. Carslake fetches them away May 14, 1672 [321 (149)].
The Indulgence Documents 259
refers to two Devon ministers both of Honiton Mr. Sourton and
Mr. Hieron. It applies for a Licence for the former, c for a place in
* Honiton call'd the Chappell of All-hallows,' and a * personall ' licence
for the latter. [Only, as a matter of fact, he confuses the men as to
the place desired ; and it needed his son, James Inness, junior, to put
the tangle right.] What interests us in this connection, however, is
that the P.S. concludes with these words : * If there be any difficultie
c in the case, I presume S r Thomas Clifford can satisfie you, having
i written to his honour about it.'
This is another Devon case ; and we must suppose Sir Thomas had
been asked to support the claims of these Honiton ministers, in case any
difficulty was made in the way of granting the licences though the
ambiguity of the English language does not make it clear whether
Sourton and Hieron had applied directly to Sir Thomas, or, having
placed their application wholly in Mr. Innes's hand, had left it to him
to write to Sir Thomas for them.
3. The third document which bears Clifford's name bears it in a
form, and breathes a spirit, which make it highly improbable that it was
addressed to him. It is numbered 321 (50), and has scrawled on the
back of it this miserable apology for French : * Monceare le Chavaleare
Clufford Anecon.' As the French equivalent for 'Sir ... Knight,'
the first part would be a correct address only prior to April 22. The
last word I cannot interpret.* It is neither dated nor signed. It is
simply a familiar reminder of applications which had as yet received no
attention, and reads :
4 1 bespoke a Licence for M r Saunders to preach in the howse of W m
Wood at Tiverton in Devon
' The like for Tho: Chesman at his owne howse in East Ilsley in Barks
' A further Licence for a howse belonging to Francis Whiddon in
Totnes.'
That familiar tone exactly fits Richard Prowse addressing Benson,
as we know he did in 320 (297) when asking a licence for William
Wood's house. But it would be insufferable as addressed to Baron
Clifford. The paper with the French scrawl on the back may have
been obtained by Prowse from Clifford's servant some time ago, and is
(possibly) used now to remind the authorities that Clifford has been
interested in the Devon cases from the outset.
As the licences both for Saunders and Mr. Wood are granted
4 8 May 72 ' [vide E. (89)], this letter must have been written between
May 3 and May 7 or 8. Though ready May 8, the licences are not
fetched away from Whitehall till May 14 ; when William Carslake, a
Devon minister (who had been ejected from Werrington, on the Corn-
wall border of the county, close to Launceston, and had found refuge in
London, south of the Thames) takes it away, together with three licences
* Rev. A. Gordon suggests that 'Anecon ' may be read 'Avecon.' In the evil
spelling of an illiterate foreigner possibly Clifford's man ' it represents either
(i) 'Avisons' supposing the document were addressed to Clifford meaning 'Let
us bear in mind ' ; or (2) ' Avisant ' supposing it were not and (following on ; Mon-
' ceare le Chavaleare Clufford ') meaning Lord Clifford ' prompting' the request.
260 Detailed and Expository
for Berks and no less than thirteen other licences for Devon [321 (149)].
The three Berkshire licences did not include Thomas Chesman's ; but
the thirteen Devon licences did include the second house belonging to
Francis Whiddon, described here simply as * a house erected in Totnes
' in Devon.'
But unquestionably the two documents connected with Lord Clifford,
which possess most special interest are
4 and 5 two licences which are countersigned by him, 'By his
'Majesty's Command CLIFFORD,' and are still lodged in the Record
Office as 321 (374) and (375) quite complete (as filled in, signed, and
dated), but which were never taken from Whitehall to be used.
321 (374) is a licence dated July 23, 1672, 'for the House of John
* Disne att . . . Lincolneshire.'
321 (375) is one dated July 22, 1672, ' for the house of George White
4 Derbyshire.'
I presume that they were left as useless because ' insufficiently
addressed,' the name of the town in which these houses were situated
not being specified. Though the thought does suggest itself to the
mind : was Lord Arlington any way nettled by Clifford's taking upon
himself to sign them as in some sort poaching upon his preserve ?
Other licences, however, were made out and issued later, for we
have entries of them in E. : of the second (for George White), on the
last line of E. (230) dated August 10, 1672, as for 'The house of
' George White of Chesterfield in Derbysfr Congr.' ; and of the first y
on E. (247) dated 'Sep. 5,' as for 'The house of John Disney Esqr
'of y e Citty of Lincolne Pr.' In what way he was so particularly
interested in these two citizens of Chesterfield and Lincoln as to sign
the licences for them, instead of Lord Arlington, does not appear.
More accurate local information might clear up the problem.
Besides these documents, however, that bear his name, there are
three other which are annotated with references to him in a way to
show that he could be stirred to interest himself in any place in Devon,
even though not in the district with which he was specially connected.
6. The first is 320 (103). It contains two memoranda on the one
paper : the first of ' The humble Petition of a Congregationall Church
' in South Molton in y e County of Devon. For his Ma ties Licence for
' M r Thomas Mall to be their Teacher. And the place for Worship
' to be a howse belonging to M r Rob 1 Squires in y e s d Towne.' The
second is for Somerset though for a part adjacent to Devon full
thirty miles distant from South Molton (in a direction East by South) :
' A Licence for M r Rob 1 Drake to preach in the howse belonginge to
4 Peter Southwood in the parish of Buckland in Somersetsheire. Of the
' Presbetirian Judgm 1 .' And this interesting note is appended to it :
' By M r T rers desires being acquainted hereof.'
It must fill us with at least momentary surprise that a Church in a
place so remote from Chudleigh, his native place, and Totnes, the little
borough he represents in Parliament, as was South Molton, should be
moved to seek the favour of his intercession and influence. But that
momentary surprise is in part removed when we note that it is Mr.
The Indulgence Documents 261
Thomas Mali who is their teacher. Mr. Thomas Mall was one of the
Preachers in Exeter Cathedral till the Act of Uniformity drove him
from its pulpit ; and, as a great public force in the cathedral city, he
must have been known to the native of Chudleigh and member for
Totnes. As minister of South Molton, too, Thomas Mall would from
the first hear much, and later get personally to know more, of the wide-
spread activities of Robert Drake, of West Buckland.
The memorandum does not particularize which of the' thirteen
' Bucklands ' it is, save to call it ' the parish of Buckland in Somerset-
shire ' So much more natural would it be for the second application to
be from a place near the first, that our first thought was to take the
county name to be a mistake. There are no less than eight Bucklands
in Devon; and two of them East and West Bucklands are quite
near to South Molton : the first only five miles and the second only
six miles from it. So that either of these would seem to be associated
with South Molton wjth the utmost naturalness. On the other side,
there are five Bucklands in the adjoining County of Somerset, and one
of them very near the Devon border viz., West Buckland, quite close
to Wellington ; so that the two churches (South Molton in Devon and
West Buckland in Somerset) and the two ministers (Thomas Mall in
Devon and Robert Drake in Somerset) might easily have had close
* correspondence ' with one another. When we find, too, that ' M r
4 Robert Drake' (Cal. III. 203) was ejected from West Monkton,
which is only about the same distance (five miles or so) north-east of
Taunton, that West Buckland is south-west of it, we are made morally
certain that this West Buckland is the ' Buckland in y e County of
' Somersetsheire ' for which a licence is sought for Robert Drake :
especially when we learn from the Episcopal Returns of 1669 that his
preaching activities were so great in the district of which Taunton and
Wellington were the ' twin foci.' They report him as preaching at :
(1) Wellington and Buckland, to congregations of 400, at the
houses of Daniel Lock and Widow Mar [on (R. 142)] ; at
(2) Pitminster and Trull, to a Conventicle of 100, at some 'Place
uncertaine ' (R. 142/>) ; at
(3) West Munkton (his old sphere) and the places adjacent, to
congregations of 400 (R. 143) ; at
(4) Creech, to a Conventicle of 200, held ' at the house of Edward
Ceely Esq ' (R. 143) ; at
(5) Oake, to a meeting of 'uncertain numbers,' at the house of one
Harnham (R. 143) ; and at
(6) Pidminster, to Conventicles of 20O, held at six different
houses (also R. 143) ;
and all this although Calamy knows so little definite about him that he
is obliged to content himself with saying : ' A considerable man, but
* there is no memorial of him.'
The identification, too, is made much more probable, as we find that
both the house in which the Bishop (in 1669) reports him as preaching
in Pitminster, and that for which he seeks licence to preach now (in
262 Detailed and Expository
1672) in Buckland belong to members of the same family South wood.
The house of Michael Southwood was one of those in Pitminster where
he was Conventicling in 1669. And it was to have authority to preach
in the house of Peter Southwood in West Buckland that he asks licence
now. Both the licences for himself and the house are issued on April
16, 1672 as vide E. (23).
7. The second document shows an even more direct and personal
exertion on the part of Lord Clifford. It is 320 (126) the second part
of which we have already cited in connection with the case of Richard
Saunders, of Tiverton.
The whole is definitely endorsed by Francis Benson : * Devon.
Given in by M r Treasurers Steward, 18 Ap.' ; and the first part reads :
4 M r Oliver Peard To be Teacher to a Congregaconall church in Barne-
c staple in Devon. The place of Worshipp The howse belonging to
4 Joseph Andrewes in y e s d Towne.'
Both licences were issued two days later, as see the entries on
E. (36), dated '20 Apr. 72,' ; and we have this interesting note inserted
at the foot of the application [320 (126)] in Mr. Benson's hand : < de-
4 livered to M r Treasurers man 20. Apr. 72.'
The whole transaction is thus most vividly sketched for us. The
application memorandum, which is after the same model as 320 (103)
which was presented * By M r Treasurer's desires,' he ' being
* acquainted hereof ' was taken to Lord Clifford on Thursday, April
1 8 probably to his 'Lodgings' at Whitehall (otherwise called * The
' Treasury '). It is given by Lord Clifford to his Steward, to take round
to his friend Arlington's Office. There it is ' taken ' by Francis Benson,
Sir Joseph Williamson's chief clerk, and attended to as speedily as the
press of this licence business will allow. The licences are made out,
signed, and dated by Saturday, April 20 ; and on Lord Clifford's man
calling for them, they are delivered to him the same day. There is
little doubt, too, that they would be promptly despatched to Devon by
post, c franked ' by Sir Thomas.
It is rather interesting to note that of the four ministers thus directly
or indirectly licensed through his influence two were Presbyterian and
two were Congregational. Francis Whiddon, of Totnes, and Robert
Drake, of West Buckland, were Presbyterians ; and Thomas Mall and
Oliver Peard were Congregational. But the houses licensed are as four
to two: four Presbyterians John Disney's, Peter South wood's, William
Wood's, and Francis Whiddon's ; and two Congregationalists George
White's and Robert Squire's.
This, however, is not quite all. There are two other memoranda
which tell much the same story about him.
8. 320 (147) is an application from 'Robert Collins M.A.' of Ottery
St. Mary, for a licence to preach in his own house there. Appended to
it are two notes in Mr. Benson's hand, which show that Sir Th. Clif-
ford's influence had been invoked exactly as in these other cases the
second stating that it had been c Given in by M r Treasurer's servant
6 19 Apr. 72,' the day after the application had been made through him
for Oliver Peard, of Barnstaple ; and the first showing that the licence
The Indulgence Documents 263
was fetched away the same time, * delivered to M r Treasurer's man
* 20 Apr. 72.'
320 (149), too, though it has nothing in it or attached to it to prove
that application was made through Sir Thomas, has a note appended
showing that it was taken away by his servant at the same time as the
other two. It is for Thomas Forward, of Pitminster, Somerset, the
note appended reading : < Some r sett. Delivered to M r Treasurer's
' man. 20 Apr. 72.'
Further still, and lastly :
9. In E. there is one entry, with a marginal note, referring to Lord
Clifford in an absolutely unique fashion. On E. (190) the second line
from the top reads :
'Licence to Fran: Bampfield a Nonconforming minister to teach in
any licensed place. 29 June ',
with this note appended in the margin : < made in Parchm 1 thus by
< my Ld Clifford's Order. 29 June.'
As far as any evidence goes, with which I am acquainted, this is the
only case in which a licence was made out on parchment. The rule
and practically universal practice was to make them out on the partly
printed, partly written forms which were on stout paper.
This particular entry (and the licence thus entered) are specially
interesting for another reason.
Baxter plumed himself upon being the only minister who had had a
licence made out without indicating the sect or < perswasion ' to which
he belonged. But Francis Bampfield's licence is made out in precisely
the same form as Baxter's, and Baxter's was not issued till four months
later than his viz., October 27, 1672 [E. (272)]. So that Baxter's
claim is without foundation. It certainly would be interesting to trace
the ground of Lord Clifford's special interest in Francis Bampfield.*
It remains abundantly evident that practically the whole of the
licences were issued from Lord Arlington's office. Happily there are
incidental references in these Licence documents which enable us to
form a conception of the staff by whose exertions the business was
carried through (with many vexatious delays no doubt, but still with a
general efficiency and promptitude).
3. Lord Arlington.
Arlington, the titular Chief of the Department, had at intervals to
give his personal attention to the business by signing * at foot ' the
licences which were approved as soon as his Royal Master had signed
them at the head.
When methods were discussed at the outset, apparently the proposal
was that the Council should meet for this particular work once a week
to discuss the applications, and to sign the licences which were granted.
* There was, of course, the general reason that Bampfield was a Devon man,
and the special one that he was well connected, one brother being a baronet, and
another the Recorder of Exeter.
264 Detailed and Expository
That I take to be the meaning of the first sentence of the second
paragraph of Dr. Butler's letter of March 27, addressed to Sir Joseph
Williamson [320 (5)] : 'Thursday morn, they meet generall(y) to sub-
' scribe, & suppose friday waite upon L d A's. soe forwards.' If that
was its meaning, however, the plan was never carried out.
The dates in the Entry Books tell a most erratic story.
In Sir John Trevor's (B.), in the month of April^ signatures were
affixed on one Monday (the 22nd), on three Tuesdays (9th, i6th, and
23rd), one Wednesday (lyth), one Thursday (nth), two consecutive
Fridays (i2th, and I9th), and one Saturday (i3th) ; and in May, on
three Wednesdays (ist, 8th, and I5th), and two Fridays (roth, and iyth).
In Lord Arlington's (E.), the signature days (the days the entries are
dated) were : In April three Tuesdays (2nd, i6th, and 30th) (in each
case with a fortnight between), one Wednesday (lyth), two consecutive
Thursdays (nth, and i8th), two Fridays following one another (i2th,
and 1 9th), and two consecutive Saturdays (i3th, and 2Oth), as well as
two Mondays (i5th, and 22nd), and one Sunday (four houses in
Middlesex) April i 4 th [E. (21)].
In May : one Monday (i3th), four Wednesdays (ist, 8th, 22nd,
and 29th), three consecutive Thursdays (2nd, Qth, and i6th), and one
Saturday (25th).
In June: but one Monday (loth), and two Saturdays (i5th
and 29th).
In July: one Monday (22nd), one Tuesday (i6th), and one
Thursday (25th).
In August : one Monday (i2th), one Thursday (8th), and one
Saturday (loth).
In September : but one Monday (the last day of the month), and one
Thursday (5th).
In October : but one day, a Monday (28th).
In November : only two days, on a Monday (i8th), and the follow-
ing Wednesday (2Oth).
In December: two Mondays (9th and 23rd).
In 1673: in January there was but one day, a Monday (i3th),
and February, only one, also a Monday (the 3rd).
Sir John's signature-days were more evenly distributed over the first
two months of the Indulgence for which alone he lived to take any
part in the matter : he died before May was out than were Lord
Arlington's over the eleven during which he had to act.
Arlington had to do this 'signing' on 13 out of the 29 days of
April) one of them being a Sunday (the Hth), the first and last being
Tuesdays (the 2nd and the 3Oth) ; on nine days in May ; on only
three days each, in June, July, and August ; on two in September,
November, and December; and on only one day of October, 1672 ;
and of January and February of 1673.
Thus his subordinates arranged the work as conveniently as possible
for him and for the King, allowing applications to accumulate, so that
they might deal with as many as possible at one time. In April and
May there were so many applications to examine and deal with, that
The Indulgence Documents 265
to give a fair show even of interest in the work, and of attention to the
Nonconformists, who were ready to take the King at his word, both
Charles and Arlington were kept busy on each of the twenty-two days
on which they attended for this purpose. They were let off very lightly
in the following months; and, as applications slackened towards the
autumn, the Indulgence gave them very little serious trouble.
The comparatively slight attention which Arlington paid ro the
details of this Indulgence question was characteristic of the man. The
work of his office was not neglected, but he had the faculty of getting
all the troublesome part of the duties of his department done for him
and done well too.
His career throughout gives evidence of this. His family name was
Bennet ; his grandfather being Sir John Bennet, Judge of the Pre-
rogative Court of Canterbury. His father was a Doctor of Laws, a
resident in Harlington, in the Staines district of Middlesex. He was
born at Harlington in 1618, was educated first at Westminster School,
and then at Christ Church, Oxford, his father designing him to be the
parson of Harlington. On the outbreak of the Civil War, he gave up
the idea of the ministry, and joined the King's army. He served with
distinction.
The marks of his military service he carried with him to his grave,
in a deep sabre cut across his nose, obliging him to wear a black patch
upon it [Evelyn's Diary : Bray's edn., 494 note].
He followed the Prince (Charles II.) to the Continent, and was first
rewarded for his loyalty by a position in the Court at Paris, being made
Secretary to the King's brother the Duke of York, and knighted by the
young exile King at Bruges, in 1658. From Clarendon's account,
however, he does not appear to have taken at all kindly to the position
assigned to him, and on Charles's return from Scotland he successfully
pressed his suit for removal to another post, and was sent as Special Envoy
to Madrid. There he remained till the Restoration, when his wishes
were again respected, being recalled to England to be near the King's
person, and appointed Privy Purse, Evelyn noting that he was < a great
' favourite.' Clarendon notes this with evident dislike and fear, with
shrewd insight viewing the introduction of ' Sir Harry Bennet ' (as he
calls him) and Sir William Coventry to the King's counsels as under-
mining his own influence. In 1663-64 he speaks of the intrigue on foot
to persuade Secretary Nicholas to resign, that room might be made for
Sir Harry Bennet. The intrigue succeeds, and in March, 1664, Bennet
was made Secretary of State in place of Nicholas who had resigned.
Apparently he was rapidly gaining great influence at Court, for
Evelyn is proud to record any instances of intercourse with him. On
April 27, he notes in his Diary how he supped 'at M r . Secretary
4 Bennet' s ' ; on May 5th he tells of ' a greate banquet held at Mort-
Mack,' to celebrate the engagement of Sir Robert Carr to Mistress
Bennet (the Secretary's sister) ; and on October 29th, of the Lord
Mayor's Guildhall Banquet (which must have cost 1,000 !), in which
he sat next Sir H. Bennet, Secretary of State, and opposite Chancellor
Clarendon, and the Duke of Buckingham.
266 Detailed and Expository
About this time Bennet purchased Goring House, on the south side
of Piccadilly (not far from Hyde Park), as his London residence, where
he rapidly accumulated a great collection of choice furniture and
valuable pictures.
Early in the year 1605, he was created Baron of Arlington.
Clarendon (in the 'Continuation of his Life,' pp. 252, 253, folio edn.;
481, 482, octavo edn.) speaks very slightingly of this episode, noting
how, in search for a title for his Barony, he wished first to assume the
name of Cheney, but was foiled in that design by the objections of a
living member of that family, and in the end was fain to take the title
of Arlington, a slight disguise of Harlington a 'little Village,' as
Clarendon calls it, 'between London and Ux bridge 9 the village where
he was born, and where was ' a little Farm that had belonged to his
' father,' had been 'sold by him,' and was at this time actually ' in the
' Possession of another private Person.' There is no doubt, however,
that he was growing rapidly in favour with the King, and that the King
was feeling the domineering and restraining influence of Clarendon more
and more irksome. Evelyn notes on January 29, 1665-66, how very-
cordial were the King and Lord Arlington to him at a reception at
Hampton Court ; how on July 25th, dining at Lord Berkeley's, at
St. James's, Lord Arlington was there ; and on November 27th, how
Lord Arlington had advanced ' Sir Thomas Clifford ' to a position in
the Court, being made Comptroller of the Household, and the next
month, December 5th, sworn of the Privy Council. [This 'novus
homo ' Evelyn speaks of rather contemptuously at this time as ' a bold
' young gentleman of a small fortune in Devon,' though he soon altered
his tone, as Clifford advanced in Royal favour.]
The following year, 1667, there was a rumour (Pepys hears it in
March) that the Treasury was to be reorganized, the ' Commission ' to
be abolished, and that Lord Arlington was to be made Lord Treasurer.
But no change in this office was made until five years after, and Arling-
ton does not seem to have been very active in the pursuit of the matter
himself. Through his indolence and carelessness indeed, it finally
slipped through his fingers altogether, and the coveted position was
conferred on Sir Thomas Clifford in 1672, who in this year 1667 had
been made one of the Commissioners of the Treasury.
In fact Arlington was busy with his personal affairs ; for he was
building a country house of great magnificence at Euston, in Suffolk.
Pepys notes, under date June 24, 1667, how Mr. Povy had remonstrated
with him on spending so much upon it, and employing so many work-
men upon it, when the country needed all the able seamen they could
press into the service of the Navy for the defence of the country against
the Dutch. At this time, too, Arlington had quarrelled with the Duke of
Buckingham. Pepys notes in July* how, throughout this episode, the
Duke was very pleasing and submissive to the King, but was most
bitter and sharp and very slighting to Lord Arlington ; and, when all
was over, and he had been released from his brief imprisonment, the
Duke said that ' any one committed to prison by my Lord Chancellor or
' my Lord Arlington could not want being popular.'
* Under date July 17, 1667.
The Indulgence Documents 267
Evidently Arlington's love of ease and luxury was destroying his
keenness as a politician. Though Buckingham linked Arlington's name
with Clarendon, however, Arlington was loose enough of any con-
nection with Clarendon not to be involved in Clarendon's fall ; and in
the changes that followed Clarendon's exile, Arlington remained in
power. He was one of the five, indeed, who formed the Cabal^ and
who maintained their hold of the King, and of the affairs of state, for
the next seven or eight years.
It should be borne in mind, however, that there was none of the
cohesion or unity of policy between the members of the Cabal essential
to a modern ' Cabinet Ministry.' Even so early in its existence as the
close of the year 1667, Pepys hears (December 30) that the Cabal were
inwardly divided, Sir G. Carteret telling him, ' That my Lords of Buck-
* ingham, Bristoll, and Arlington do seem to agree in these things, but
' that they do not in their hearts trust one another, but do drive several
c ways all of them.'
Still, throughout 1668, Arlington maintains his position. Though
early in the year rumour is busy (Pepys, the great gossip, hears it
February iyth) that great complaint is made of the inadequacy of the
' Intelligence,' secured by Lord Arlington of course, one of the most
important departments of the office of the Secretary of State some
saying, * Whatever Morrice's was, who declared he had but 75O/. a-year
' allowed him for intelligence, the King paid too dear for my Lord
'Arlington in giving him io,ooo/., and a Barony for it ' ; still, autumn
is not out before he notes 'Bucks and Arlington rule all,' and the
rumour of the previous year is revived that 'the design is to make
' Lord Arlington Treasurer.' In 1669, though he was 'at variance with
' the Duke of York,' he still keeps in with the King ; and Evelyn's
allusions to him in 1670 and 1671 show that his position was still secure.
In 1670 (June 18) Arlington was the chosen channel for the expression
of the King's desire that Evelyn should undertake to write a History of
the Dutch War; and in 1671 Evelyn evidently thinks of him as the
chief power in the State, spending a fortnight as fellow-guest, with
Mr. Treasurer Clifford [so he calls him, though only one of the Com-
missioners of the Treasury, and not made Lord High Treasurer till the
following year], with Lord Arlington, at Euston (October 16), praising
the mansion as a ' very noble pile,' and speaking warmly of Lord Arling-
ton himself, ' of whose particular friendship and kindness I had ever a
' more than ordinary care ' ; saying of him, ' There is no man more
' hospitably easy to be withall than my lord Arlington.'
Arlington's friend and favourite, Clifford, was an avowed Roman
Catholic, and Arlington was like the King, more a Roman Catholic
than an Anglican, dying an avowed member of the Roman Catholic
Church. They both favoured the Indulgence, when it was mooted by
the King, as favouring the Church of Rome ; and would have made it
as open to Roman Catholic Recusants as to Protestant Nonconformists.
Evelyn's comment (Diary, March 12, 1671-72) is : ' This was imputed to
' the same council, Clifford warping to Rome, as was believed ; nor was
' Lord Arlington clear of suspicion, to gratifie that party, but as since it
268 Detailed and Expository
' has prov'd, and was then evidently foreseen, to the extreame weakening
c of the Church of England and its Episcopal Government, as 'twas
' projected/
But the other members of the Cabal, especially Lauderdale and
Buckingham, were too strong for them. So that by the irony of fate,
this distinctly Protestant measure had to he worked, in largest part, by
one who was practically a Papist.
A little more than a month after the issue of the Declaration viz.,
on April lyth, Lord Arlington was created an Earl at the same time
that Ashley became Earl of Shaftsbury. Sir J. Williamson notes in his
Diary, April ijth, ' L. Arlington, L. Ashley created Earles . . . warr ls
c signed.' *
With the passing of the Test Act, 1673, Arlington's political career
came practically to an end. For though his impeachment by the
Commons failed, he resigned his Secretaryship, being succeeded in the
office by Sir Joseph Williamson, the man who for years had practically
done all the work ; and, for consolation, Arlington was appointed Lord
Chamberlain in 1674. In this position he enjoyed the King's con-
fidence and a good salary, though the destruction of Goring House and
all its treasures rather straitened his finances for the rest of his days,
which were divided between the Court and his mansion at Euston. He
died in 1685.
The traces of Lord Arlington's personal activity in this Indulgence
literature are very few. Apart from his signature of almost every
licence issued from his office, these licence-documents show that he left
almost everything to Sir Joseph Williamson.
Indeed, there are only two papers to show that he took, or even was
supposed to take, any personal interest in the business. And these are
not letters or even memoranda in his handwriting. They are two
letters addressed to him by Dr. Nicholas Butler.
The one is 320 (6) and the other is 320 (196).
The first is endorsed by Sir Joseph Williamson: '29 Mar. 1672.
' Dr B. My IA Indulgence,' and addressed : < For y e Right Hone
' L rd Arlington.' It informs Lord Arlington of the excellent impression
produced upon the Nonconformists by the personal audience granted
them by the King for the acceptance of their c verball thankes ' ; and
expresses the hope that the Indulgence be worked upon generous and
liberal lines.
The second is a much longer one, endorsed by Sir William : < Y e
< Indulgence, 26 Apr. 72 R. D r Butler y e use of Halls.' The address
of the letter faithfully reflects the elevation of Arlington, which had taken
place since Dr. Butler last wrote to him. It is no longer : ' For y e Right
< Hon ble L r d AV ; but < For y e Right Hon ble Earle of Arlington.' The
letter is an intimation of the serious consequences which have followed
the refusal of licences for ' public places,' halls, and unendowed chapels ;
reporting the profound disappointment and resentment it has created,
and even suspicions of the good faith of the King, with an urgent plea
that the good work be not hindered by such a grudging policy. Both
* The patent was not issued, however, till the 23rd. A. G.
The Indulgence Documents 269
of them are signed (not, it is true, in full but) in initials ' N. B.,' a great
concession ; he was so fearful that his connection with the Indulgence
should become known. [As we have seen elsewhere, in writing to Sir
Joseph Williamson, he adopts a mere cypher for secrecy's sake ] As
both are given in full, in the account furnished of the writer, the reader
must be referred to the letters themselves. [320 (6), and 320 (196).]
4. Sir Joseph Williamson.
There is no room for doubt that though Lord Arlington's office was
the local centre for the working of Charles's Indulgence, his secretary,
Sir Joseph Williamson, was 'head-centre.' Both in settling the lines to
be pursued, preparing the methods by which it was to be administered,
and in deciding the exact form the licences were to take, as well as in
attending to the applications which were made, deciding on their fate,
and actually issuing the licences which were granted, Sir Joseph
Williamson was the heart and the hand of the whole business. As we
shall see, these licence-documents bear ample witness to the fact.
Sir Joseph's whole career and training had admirably fitted him for
the task ; and we need not grudge him the credit of discharging it well.
Joseph Williamson 'was the son of a poor clergyman, somewhere in
'Cumberland.'* It was at Bridekirk, near Cockermouth, that he was
born, about 1623. He was educated at Queen's College, Oxford, and
he would be leaving College about 1645-1647, so that his time at Oxford
would be practically conterminous with the duration of the Civil War.
On leaving Oxford he travelled on the Continent ; and Evelyn implies
that he did not return to England till the Restoration of Charles (1660),
when he was received as a ' Cleark under M r Secretary Nicholas.'
Certain documents, however (cited in Supplement No. 3 of the
Friends' Historical Journal, pp. 23, 24), seem to imply that he held the
post of ' Secretary ' was it to Mr. Secretary Nicholas ? in Paris,
in 1656-57. In S. P. D. 153, 41, there is a letter quoted from Humphrey
Robinson (a shopkeeper at the sign of the 'Three Pigeons' in St. Paul's
Churchyard) to ' Secretary Williamson,' reporting the moderation of
Oliver Cromwell towards Quakers; and in S. P. D. 153, 33, one from
Charles Perrot to him, in which he addresses him as ' Honest Joseph.'
Certain it is, that whether or no he had filled the post as Clerk or
Secretary to Nicholas in France before the King's return, he began
his career in England by acting in that capacity from the year 1660.
In 1663, on the resignation of Secretary Nicholas, Joseph Williamson
retained his post under Nicholas's successor, Bennet ; and applied him-
self with the utmost diligence to relieve Sir Henry of all the details of
the work of his office.
Pepys met him about that time at Lord Peterborough's (August 10,
1663), and speaks of him as 'Mr. Williamson that belongs to Sir
* Evelyn, Diary, July 22, 1674. In Al. Oxon. I find a Joseph Williamson, son
of Joseph Williamson, of Cockermouth, Cumberland, pleb. This Joseph William-
son was born 1719, matric. Queen's, 1736. Was his father a nephew of Sir Joseph
Williamson ?
270 Detailed and Expository
H. Bennet,' as * a pretty understanding and accomplished man,' but, he
adds, * a little conceited.' Williamson rapidly made himself a necessity
to Arlington, as Evelyn puts it: 'who loving his ease more than busi-
' nesse (tho' sufficiently able had he applied himselfe to it) remitted all
' to his man Williamson, and in a short time, let him so into the seacret
' of affaires that (as his Lordship himselfe told me) there was a kind of
'necessity to advance him.' He relieved his chief of any trouble in
connection with his correspondence, and carried out all his decisions. He
looked after all the papers, tying them in bundles, endorsing them and
pigeon-holing them, so that Arlington had the business of his office
reduced by Williamson to 'apple-pie order,' and as a consequence, his
trouble in attending to it reduced to a minimum. By 1665, his work
was recognized so publicly and universally, that he was known as
' Under-Secretary of State ' ; and in November of that year, his remark-
able activity is shown by his starting the Oxford Gazette, adding the
duties of editor of that journal to those of Lord Arlington's office.
By his accomplishments ('a musitian ' Evelyn* calls him, who ' could
4 play at " Jeu de Goblets'") he became a 'society man,' and especially
a ' grata persona ' in Lord O'Brien's house. And on O'Brien's death
Williamson married his widow, Lady Catherine Stuart, a relative of the
Royal House ; but that was late in his career, in 1678, only two years
before his death. He was ambitious of distinction. As early as 1666
we find him trying, though unsuccessfully, for a seat in Parliament.
As Pepys quaintly puts it : [1666, Oct.] ' 2ist. Sir H. Cholmley tells me
' how M r Williamson stood in a little place, to have come into the House
' of Commons : and they would not choose him : they said, " No
'Courtier.'"
Though he failed on this occasion, however, he eventually succeeded ;
for on William Gaudy's t ceasing to represent Thetford (by retirement
or death), ' Sir Joseph Williamson, Kt.,' succeeded him. That, however,
was not till 1672, the year which so closely concerns us. Thetford is in
Norfolk in its south-west corner ; and Euston Park is just across the border
in Suffolk. There can be little doubt that it would be largely through
the personal influence of his chief that he secured election, as Lord
Arlington had just erected a large mansion at Euston, and had spent
large sums of money and employed a great number of workmen in the
neighbourhood. Williamson used his position to get possession of all
current political news and many State secrets ; and, as he was so much
more assiduous in State business, and so much more constant in his
attendance at Whitehall than his chief, the public sought his help and
advice, and were eager to secure his influence and aid, as though he were
himself the Chief Secretary of State rather than merely Under-Secretary.
In 1667 (July 6) Pepys was able to note that ' M r Williamson told me
c that M r Coventry is coming over (from Holland) " with a project of
' " peace " ' ; while, on July 1 7, Evelyn notes that Mr. Williamson, with
* See note on previous page.
t Was not Sir John Gaudy, whom Evelyn met at Earl Arlington's mansion at
Euston in 1677, William Gaudy's brother? In his Diary, September 7, 1677,
Evelyn writes : ' There din'd this day at my Lord's one Sir John Gaudy, a very
1 handsome person, but quite dumb, yet very intelligent by signes, and a very fine
' painter etc.'
The Indulgence Documents 271
'The Master of the Mint and his lady,' and others, dined with iiim ;
and early in 1668 (viz., March 6) he mentions Williamson's congratula-
tions, as of special value to him, on his speech in defence of the Navy-
Office. By the time that this question of a Royal Indulgence became a
question of < practical politics ' he was in a position to do much to deter-
mine how it should be worked out. It was doubtless Williamson who
enlisted the services of Dr. Nicholas Butler and Mr. Church in the
preliminary ' pourparlers ' with Nonconformist leaders ; and we have
seen that there is abundant documentary proof that the final form
assumed by the licences and the actual processes by which their issue
was effected, were determined mainly by him.
It was early in the year (1672), which saw the publication of Charles's
Declaration, that Williamson was knighted ; so that the * Sir,' always
prefixed so carefully to his name in all this licence literature, is a title
acquired scarcely twomonths before. It is under date, January 23, 1672,
that Evelyn speaks of Sir Richard Browne (his father-in-law) c resigning
< his place of Clerke to the Council ' ; and of Joseph Williamson, Esq.,
being admitted to it, and knighted.*
He refers to it with mixed feelings, as in being advanced to that
post Williamson was really acting as a ' supplanter ' ; for he goes on to
say: < This place his Majesty had promised to give me many yeares
' before ; but upon consideration of the renewal of our lease, and other
' reasons, I chose to part with it to Sir Joseph.' There is a touch of
tragi-comedy or melodrama in what follows: 'Who gave us and the
' rest of his brother clearks a handsome supper at his house, and after
c supper a consort of music.' Of course, we see little of his interesting
personality in these licence-documents, but much to prove his
admirable qualifications for this particular work.
Before looking at these, however, let us briefly follow his career to
its close. As Under-Secretary of State Williamson did his work so well
that on Lord Arlington's resignation in 1674 he quite naturally stepped
into his place. In 1677 he was elected President of the Royal Society
in succession to Lord Viscount Brouncker ; in the new Parliament
of 1678 (only the third of Charles II.'s reign) he was again returned for
Thetford, as also for the Parliaments of 1679 and 1681. Though, for
the first Parliament of James II., he was at first replaced by Henry
Hevingham for Thetford; on Hevingham's removal, Sir Joseph was
re-elected. In 1690, in William III.'s reign, he was elected for Thet-
ford ; but being declared * not duly elected ' he found a seat for
Rochester. For the Parliaments of 1695 and 1698, and 1700, he was
elected for both Thetford and Rochester ; but in each case he ' wav'ed '
his claim to Thetford, and sat for Rochester. He died in 1701 ; and in
his bequests showed his public spirit and literary tastes, leaving ^6,000
and a valuable library, with many important MSS. to the University of
Oxford.
But to return to his part in this Indulgence matter. It is evident
that to all who address themselves to the Whitehall authorities ' Sir
4 Joseph ' is practically ' Lord Arlington.'
* Shaw's date for Williamson's knighthood is the day after Evelyn speaks of it
viz., '24 Jan. 1671/2.'
272 Detailed and Expository
In 320 (168) we have a striking proof of this the more striking,
because quite unintentional. John Whitlock leaves an acknowledg-
ment of the safe delivery to him of fourteen licences for Nottingham
County, and he heads it : ' Received at S r Joseph Williamsons Office '
not Lord Arlington's * in Whitehall this 2Oth Aprill 1672 these
4 Licences following.'
Yet, like his master Arlington, he knows how to hand over all
tedious and detailed work to his subordinates, reserving everything
that is of special moment and interest for himself; so that we have
incidentally an interesting test of the relative importance he attaches
to any particular case, or any particular document, by the presence or
absence of his own handwriting upon the document in connection
with it. In the first stages of any new work, moreover, Sir Joseph
starts the thing himself in his own characteristic writing ; but when
once put in the right grooves he hands it over to his clerks.
Thus the endorsements of the first documents preserved in 320
are all his own. The drafts of the three forms which,- licences finally
assumed, as all three are given on the same sheet in 320 (17), are in
his handwriting. Almost all Dr. Nicholas Butler's letters to him were
evidently folded and endorsed by himself. Some of the first applications
for licences (specially the London ones for leading Nonconformist
ministers) are similarly distinguished e.g., 320 (23), (24), 25, and 29.
So with the first entries in E. and in the Index (which he projected
but never completed), I.
When he did not do these things himself, he saw that his clerks did
them for him. And so, for the first three months of this Indulgence
period, every scrap of paper bearing even the briefest memorandum con-
cerning these licences was carefully docketed and preserved by him.
These scraps of paper are of inestimable value. In their strange variety
of autograph they help to make the whole episode live again to our
imagination.
To the historian's disappointment and dismay, however, all the
memoranda belonging to the other seven months during which the
Indulgence lasted have disappeared. Was it that at this time Sir Joseph
left London for his summer holiday ? During his absence were the
memoranda swept ruthlessly into the waste-paper basket ? It may well
have been so ; and, on his return, finding things in such a state of chaos,
he did not care to resume a series of records, the continuity of which
had been so pitilessly broken.*
* Of letters written directly to him in connection with this business many are
preserved in these two vols.
1. The bulk of Dr, Butler's viz., 320 (3), (4), (5), (6), (61), (110), (152 or 153).
(170), (185). (197), (198), (210) ; and 321 (19?A).
2. There are two from Timothy Cloudsley (of Yorkshire), 320 (80) and (203).
3. Two from John Gould, 321 (276) and (315).
And single letters from :
4. Edward Veal (of Wapping), 320 (62).
5. Charles Fisher 320 (112).
6. Ralph Snowe, 320 (211).
7. Henry Coleman, M.A., 321 (137) ; and probably from
8. Stephen Ford, 321 (19).
The Indulgence Documents 273
It is clear, moreover, that exactly as Lord Arlington was willing
enough to delegate the responsibility of working the Indulgence to his
secretary, Sir Joseph Williamson, as time went on, and the business
connected with the Indulgence increased, Sir Joseph was glad to hand
over the major part of the actual work to his chief clerk, Mr. Francis
Benson. All these licence-documents were folded and endorsed before
being tied in bundles and stowed away : but comparatively few of them
were endorsed by Sir Joseph himself only those he considered of special
and critical importance e.g., 320 (1) the vote of the Court of the.
Haberdasher's Company ; 320 (2) the Address of Thanks of the
Nonconformist Ministers of Devon ; Dr. Butler's letters to him 320
(3), (4) ; his memoranda 320 (23), (24), (25), etc.
If the licence-documents, however, prove the indefatigable industry
of Sir Joseph Williamson, they prove as clearly the efficiency and
industry of his subordinates.
First (and foremost) among them, was
i. Francis Benson.
I have little hesitation in ascribing to him the neat and regular
handwriting of the greater number of the endorsements of memoranda,,
the Official Lists of accumulated applications, and the greater part of the
entries in E and I.
Some of the memoranda, too, are in his handwriting, indicating that
some of the applications were made in person, orally ; the particulars
being taken down by Mr. Benson.
His influence and importance in this licence business is proved even
more strikingly by the number of letters addressed to him by appli-
cants for licences.
(1) After a time even Dr. Butler had to content himself with
writing to Mr. Benson, instead of to Sir Joseph : as we see in 320 (199) j
(?) 321 (65), and (333).
(2) Timothy Cloudsley does the same in 321 (199) and (200).
(3) Richard Prowse writes him in 320 (? 197c), (241), (297) ; and
in 321 (128) and (234).
(4) Richard Steele writes him thrice 321 (246), (311) and (341).
(5) Brabazon Aylmer appeals to him in 321 (67) ; and D. Buck-
master's letter 320 (304) is probably addressed to Mr. Benson j
while
(6) There are letters of application to Mr. Benson from unnamed
correspondents, 320 (271), 321 (8), and 321 (327), probably from
R. Steele.
We see him actually dispensing the favours of the King, moreover,
in 320 (148), which acknowledges the receipt of licences from Mr.
Francis Benson. Nor is this all we are permitted to see of the staff
in Lord Arlington's Office.
Another of the clerks
2. Mr. Swaddell, is entrusted by John Rawe with an application
from his father, Richard Rawe, in 321 (195).
3. Mr. Hugh Reynolds is still another witness John Cressett's
18
274 Detailed and Expository
acknowledgment of the receipt of licences from him 321 (229)* ; and a
fourth, Mr. Reynolds' subordinate, Mr. Dawson, is brought before us in
the same memorandum.
This, then, is the personnel of the Whitehall staff, as revealed to us in
these documents Lord Arlington, coming with his Royal master, at
intervals to sign the licences already made out by Mr. Benson ; Sir Joseph
Williamson opening all letters, to reserve for Arlington's personal
perusal and attention only those of special and critical importance ; Mr.
Francis Benson doing the chief clerical work of a specially responsible
character such as filling in the blanks in the printed licences, and at
first entering them in the Register or Ledger E, and gradually taking
a great deal of the responsibility in accepting or refusing applications ;
Mr. Swaddell and Mr. Hugh Reynolds doing much of the less important
clerical work ; and Mr. Dawson, a messenger or porter to the office.
Was Robert Francis one of the clerks then ? He was four years
earlier (1668) vide letter to him in S. P. Dom. Car. II. 215, 84.
II. HOW WERE THE LICENCES SECURED ? WHO MADE PERSONAL
APPLICATION FOR THEM ? AND WHO TOOK THEM AWAY ?
In the preceding section we have gained some knowledge of the
executive side of the Indulgence administration. We have acquired a
fair picture of the office-building. In imagination we have looked out
of the windows of the south front on to the Privy Garden, with its
celebrated sundial to our right, and on to the end of the Great Stone
Gallery to our left. We might have been enabled to do this under the
aegis of the easy courtesy of the titular chief of the office Lord
Arlington notable for his rich dress and the black patch upon his
nose. Or more probably it would have been under the rather pompous
patronage of Under-Secretary Sir Joseph Williamson. We have been
in imagination behind the counter-desks of the outer office at its eastern
end, facing the door which opens on to the small courtyard that links
the avenue from the Privy Stairs down on the river bank with the
Great Court, by which every member of the undistinguished public
have to approach the Office. And there we have spent some time with
Sir Joseph and his chief clerk, Francis Benson. We have peeped into
the rooms at the rear, where the petty details of the ordinary work cf
the Office is done ; where the desks of Mr. Reynolds and Mr. Swaddell
are lighted by the windows which look out north into the vast space of
the Great Court.
We have seen how the King's Printers have prepared piles of
licence-forms of the three classes for a general teacher, for a teacher in
a specified place, and for a place ; and how Francis Benson, by Sir
Joseph Williamson's directions, fills in the blanks with the names of
person, place, and denomination ; and enters those particulars in E, a
* One very human touch of Hugh Reynolds is revealed in 321 (370). We seem
to have caught him in an idle hour scribbling away some of the office-hours ' Hugh
' Reynolds is my name, and with my pen I wrote the same ; and if my pen had
'Been. . . .'
The Indulgence Documents 275
little later writing them up in I. How, at intervals, determined by the
varying pressure of applications, the King and Lord Arlington affix their
signatures at the head and at the foot respectively of the pile of licences
Sir Joseph brings ; and how the licences and the entries in the entry-
books alike are dated by Benson, with the date on which the Royal and
ministerial ' imprimaturs ' have thus given authority and validity to the
licences now ready to be issued.
In this section we want to look at the other side of the picture to
realize as vividly as we can the process by which, and the persons
through whom, those who ' desire ' to avail themselves of the Royal
Indulgence may actually secure a licence.
We must sweep aside as anachronisms all our natural fancies of
getting licences through the post. There are a few cases of which
these licence-documents give evidence in which the post was used to
convey either the applicant's desire or the authorities' response. To a
favoured few [as we see in the Notes on E. (2), (3), (4), and (5)] such
as William Jenkin of the City of London ; James Innes, senior, of
Westminster ; Theophilus Polwheile, of Tiverton ; Lewis Stuckley, of
Exeter ; and Dr. Nicholas Butler Sir Joseph Williamson actually sent
by post (* sent down ') the licences (when made out and signed). The
rule evidently was that those who had asked for them must fetch them
from Whitehall, and that those who ' desired ' them should apply for
them either in person or by some authorised proxy at Lord Arlington's
Office in Whitehall.
How do we know all this ? From the Entry Books, as a whole, we
could not gather it. In the few relevant entries in B there is nothing ;
in the Index I, if that were possible, there is even less ; and in 163 out
of the 167 printed pages covered by E there is nothing to help us.
The utmost we could gather from these is the bare fact that a particular
licence was granted on a particular date. In the first few pages of E.,
however, we find certain notes appended or inserted by Sir Joseph
Williamson which do much to supply the sort of information of which
we are in quest ; and, had he continued to insert similar notes all
through the Entry Book, we should have much to make these dry
entries glow with living interest.
Thus (i.) : on E. (1), the first two licences granted are entered in full,
each entry an exact transcript of the actual licence ; and on E. (4) the
entry of John Milward's licence is also an exact transcript of the licence
itself. The first two were the licences granted to William Jenkin
viz., a personal one for him to preach in a house in Home Alley, and a
local one a licence for the house as a < meeting place ' ; and John
Milward's was for him as ' a generall Teacher.' These three, therefore,
are three several specimens of the three kinds of Licence issued viz.,
(i) a General Licence ; (2) a Licence for a Teacher in a specified
place ; and (3) a Licence for a * Place.'
Then (ii.) : on E. (3) there are notes inserted by Sir Joseph, telling
us how the licences entered were secured. The first three notes tell us
who took away the first seven licences entered on that page. They are
all entered as granted April 2, 1672 (a Tuesday) ; and these notes tell us.
1 8 2
276 Detailed and Expository
they were delivered to the licensees in person the following day. The
first five entries are (i) for Thomas Cawton, his person and his house in
St. Ann's Lane, Westminster ; (2) for James Sharpe, his person and a
house in King's Head Court in Beach Lane (now Beech Street, Barbi-
can) ; and (3) the personal licence for Nicholas Blakey, Blackfriars; and
the note appended to the last is : ' Delivered These above to y e parties
* themselves. Apr. 3. 72.'
This simple entry makes the whole transaction live before us. On
that Wednesday, April 3, in the year of grace, 1672, we see Thomas
Cawton leave his house in St. Ann's Lane, pass Dean's Yard, cross the
Sanctuary, go along King Street, and through Holbein's arched gateway
into Whitehall, pass the Privy Garden and the Banqueting Hall, into
the Great Court on the right, and returning to its farther corner on the
south-east, turn sharp to his right into Lord Arlington's Office. We
see James Sharpe leaving his home, beyond Aldersgate in the Old City
Wall, wending his way through Smithfield, into Fleet Street, down the
Strand to the northern end of Whitehall (at Charing Cross), and then
due south to the great gate of the Court Yard, perhaps meeting his
friend Cawton there, that they may go in to the Office together. And
we see Nicholas Blakey walking down the steep decline from his house
under the shadow of St. Ann's Church to the river-side, stepping into a
boat at Blackfriars Stairs ; rowed up stream, past the mouth of the Fleet
River (now dignified by the name of the New Canal), and that imposing
series of lordly mansions, with their beautiful gardens sloping to the
water's edge, which must have made the northern aspect of that bend
of the Thames a reminder of the Cambridge * Backs ' ; past North-
umberland House and Scotland Yard to the Palace Stairs ; stepping up
on to the pier-like approach to the Whitehall Palace Buildings, and up
the road between the Chapel and the Buttery, past the Great Hall on
the left, and sharp round through the Great Court, and by the narrow
opening in its south-eastern corner to Lord Arlington's Office, perchance
to meet his friends in the Office itself.
The second and third notes by Sir Joseph still on E. (3) are
appended to the licence-entries for Mr. William Sims : for himself as
' a Presbyterian Teacher ' and for Mr. Piccard's house in Kingston-
upon-Thames as a < place ' for him to preach in. These notes are
identical in terms : < delivered M r Sims himselfe 3 Ap.' That gives us
the pleasant picture of the ejected minister, who ten years since had been
driven from his charge in Leicester, and had found refuge in Wim-
bledon ; who while there had three years back been reported as preach-
ing at illegal Conventicles in Ewell (R. 265), and was now settled in
Kingston ; taking the stage coach there, driving past Richmond Park,
through the villages of Wandsworth and Clapham to Lambeth, taking
ferry across to Westminster, and then on foot past the Cathedral, into
King's Street and Whitehall. Verily these little annotations by Sir
Joseph breathe into Benson's dry-as-dust entries something of the
1 breath of life.'
When we pass from these to the next entry we find a note more
vivid and vivifying still. The entry records the licence granted on
The Indulgence Documents 277
Tuesday, April 2 for ' a certaine Howse near adjoining to Blackfriers
* Church,' which was to be Nicholas Blakey's meeting-house and preach-
ing station ; and the note appended reads : ' desired by M r Blakey, who
* was brought by Mr. Blood.' What a dramatic touch is here ! Not
only did he come to receive his licences to Whitehall on that Wednes-
day, but he had made that river-journey some days before to make
personal application for them. He had not made his venture alone,
however. The ejected minister, who had been driven trom his living
at Pebmarsh, at the further limit of Essex, opposite to Sudbury, and
had found asylum in this great City of Refuge, under the shadow
of the Parish Church in the purlieus of Blackfriars, had secured the
influence of one whom he may have befriended and sheltered when
a wandering outlaw, but who now stands high in the favour of the
King and the Court, a special protege of the Duke of Buckingham,
and for some months past an habitue of Whitehall both the Palace and
these * lodgings ' of Lord Arlington none other than the ' notorious '
Colonel Thomas Blood (of Dublin Castle and Tower of London fame).
We see Blood meeting Blakey by appointment, probably just outside
the Office, or, it may have been, in that convenient rendezvous the Great
Stone Gallery, and taking him into Sir Joseph Williamson's Office,
introducing him to Sir Joseph or to Mr. Benson, speaking a word in
his favour, and leaving a memorandum or a message which secured
prompt attention to his request.
(iii.) Yet further, there is another batch of ten licence-entries, the
note appended to which introduces us to a man of greater importance
and influence in this matter of the Indulgence than even Colonel Blood,
and of a personality almost as interesting. I refer to Dr. Butler.
In the negotiations between the Court and the Nonconformists, no
one had exercised a more effective influence, and no one had taken a
more vigorous part in the subsequent conferences held at Whitehall,
when once the King in Council had decided to issue it conferences in
which they settled the form which the Indulgence was to take, the
actual formulae to be adopted in the licences issued, and the methods in
which the Indulgence was to be worked.
Of these ten licence-entries, two are the last entered on E. (3) : two
others are the first on E. (4) ; five others are the last on the same page ;
and the tenth is the first on E. (5). And to all ten is appended the
same note : < Desired by D r Butler, & sent to him 4 April.' The
entries are all dated ' April 2.'
The licences thus entered are for Edward West, of Ropemakers'
Alley, Little Moorfields ; for Dr. Samuel Annesley, of Spittlefields ;
for Christopher Marshall, of Topliffe, in Yorkshire ; for John Harrison,
of Pebmarsh, Essex, the place whence Nicholas Blakey had been ejected ;
and for John Milward and Robert Chambers, whose residence and
ministerial sphere are not specified. For each of the first four two
licences are required one licence for the applicant as Teacher or
Preacher, and the other for the Place in which he wishes to exercise his
ministry ; for the last two, only one is wanted for each, because they
both desire a ' general licence ' a roving commission to preach in any
278 Detailed and Expository
place licensed or allowed. The simple note appended to the entries,
therefore, brings Dr. Butler before us as interested enough in these six
men to apply at Whitehall for licences for them.
Nor is it difficult to trace the consequences of Dr. Butler's personal
intervention.
(1) First, the memorandum of application by Dr. Butler, for the
first two and the last two of the above list, which is fortunately pre-
served in 320 (25), is specially honoured with an endorsement in Sir
Joseph Williamson's own hand.
(2) Second, by an act of courtesy quite unusual, Sir Joseph sends
the licences to the applicant soon after they were made out ; instead of
letting them lie in the Office until they were called for.
(3) Seeing that the application in 320 (25) is unsigned, we should
not have known who handed it in at Whitehall, for it is evidently
not in Dr. Butler's handwriting (so easily recognizable in its character-
istically crabbed scrawl), had it not been that Sir Joseph was sufficiently
interested in the matter to add to the entry the note that it was
Dr. Butler who did so.
Further, from other sources, we are able to indicate much that is
interesting about one of these ten licences.
Of the two for whom the licences were to be ' general ' one was
4 Robert Chambre.' Now this ' Robert Chambre ' was probably the
'Robert Chambers' who was implicated in the Plot of 1663 for the
surprise of the garrison of Dublin Castle, in which his brother (Col.)
John Chambers, was an active participant, and of which (Col.) Thomas
Blood was the leading spirit. In that same year (1663), on May 31,
one James Tanner made a deposition before the Lord-Lieutenant (pre-
served in S. P. Ireland 305, pp. 116-17) in which, among many other
things, he alleged that * Blood told witness that Robert Chambers,
c a minister, was in the said design, and Robert Chambers was seen
c by witness at Blood's house, and Blood had been at Chambers' house
4 in the Coome.' Like Blood, he escaped to England, on the premature
disclosure of the plot ; and had apparently been living in London ever
since. Under the 'alias' of Mr. Grimes he had been a frequent preacher
at secret Conventicles in 1663-64, was one of the noble band who
ministered to the Plague-stricken populace in 1665, and was reported as
holding a Conventicle at Home Alley, Aldersgate Street, in 1669
(R. 220).
(iv.) On E. (4) between the first two which were desired by Dr.
Butler and the five which follow, two licences are entered for John
Durant for the Almnery Hall, Canterbury.
And these again have special interest given them ; because, appended
to the first is the following significant (but somewhat puzzling) note :
4 Desired by Mr. Mascall a Merch 1 upon a lett r from y e Teacher &
' Congregation 4 Ap. '; while we have a formal application in the
stately handwriting of Robert Mascall, preserved in 320 (32) :
I
The Indulgence Documents 279
4 Of y e City of Canterbury John Durant Teacher
' Their Meeting Place is
' The Almirey Hall (her'tafore belonging to Ethelberts Pallace)
' Situate near and without y e walls of y e City of Canterbury in or near
4 y e Burrough of Longport.
4 Whitehall Ap 4: 1672 Rob Mascall of London.'
Both the note and 320 (32) are dated April 4, yet the licence-entries
are dated April 2. The most probable solution of the difficulty is this.
Durant had written to his old friend and parishioner, Mr. Robert
Mascall (who in the Commonwealth days had been a prominent citizen
of Canterbury), with a petition for these licences from the congregation.
Mascall had left them at Whitehall (May 30 or April I or 2), and now,
with his signed memorandum, he came, on the 4th, to claim the licences
which had been awaiting him two days.
(v.) In three other licence-entries [on E. (5)], a note appended
shows that ' Mr. Innesse ' is performing the same kindly function as
Dr. Butler ; and is treated with the same exceptional courtesy by the
authorities of Whitehall, the licences being c sent to him.'
These are two for Thomas Doelittle and his meeting-house
adjoining his own house in Mugwell Street (now Monkwell Street),
[just within the City Wall at its north-west corner near Cripplegate],
and one for Edmund Calamy. This Mr. Innesse is also a specially
interesting personality. There were two of the same name, James
Inness (or Innes), father and son, sometimes spelt ' Ennys ' or * Ennis.'
The father, a Scotsman who enjoyed the friendship of Lord Lauder-
dale, a powerful member of the Cabal ministry, had first settled at
St. Breock in Cornwall ; but his conscience not allowing him to remain
after the passing of the Act of Uniformity ; he had come to live in
London, or, to speak more exactly, in Ax Yard, King Street, West-
minster. Through the influence of Lauderdale he soon obtained access
to the Court ; and, despite his Nonconformity, enjoyed the personal
favour of the King.
His son and namesake became agent for obtaining licences for those
who had not leisure or opportunity to obtain them for themselves. In-
troduced early to the work by his father, he soon came by his quiet
industry and zeal to do it on a far larger scale than any one else, except
John Hickes, so that he might well be called (as I have incidentally
suggested elsewhere) the Nonconformists 1 'universal provider.'
In the three notes inserted in E. (5) there is scarcely any doubt that
it is the father who is intended by Sir Joseph Williamson.
(vi.) Further, there are two marginal notes, as distinct from notes
appended to the text, on E. (2), which are also of exceptional interest.
Both of them, like all the other notes we have been examining, were
written in by Williamson. Unfortunately the first, owing to the
minuteness of the characters, I have not been able satisfactorily to
decipher. And the experts in the Record Office have been unable to
help me. It applies to four licences two for Theophilus Polwheele in
280 Detailed and Expository
Tiverton, and two for Lewis Stuckley in Exeter. [The applications
for these took the form of elaborate Petitions addressed direct 'To y e
' Kings most Excell 1 Maj tie> ; and fortunately both have been preserved :
the first in 320 (18) ' The humble Peticon of a Church of Christ in
'Tiverton '; and the second in the very next document 320 (19) ' The
* Cordiall acknowledgm* & humble Petition of a Church of Christ in
* Exeter.'] The note reads ' Given to M r T ... to send down.'
But the name of the person thus favoured is a mystery. It might be
' Tvait,' or more probably ' Teart.' Yet neither interpretation com-
mends itself as really satisfactory.*
The second marginal note links the last two entries on E. (2) with
the only two entries on the first. It applies to the two licences for Samuel
Cradock of Geesings in Suffolk, who had been ejected from the living
of North Cadbury, Somerset, but had been able to retire to a com-
fortable estate in the Parish of Wickham (Brook) in Suffolk, which had
become his by inheritance from a rich uncle.
There was probably a personal friendship between Cradock and
Jenkyn (as Calamy spells the name), who has the distinction of being
the first to receive a licence under the Declaration of Indulgence.
William Jenkin had had an honorable ministry first as curate or Lec-
turer at St. Nicholas Aeons, in the heart of the City of London ; then
for about a year at Hithe, near Colchester in Essex ; then for some
seven years at Christchurch, Newgate, when, on the death of Charles I.,
though a stout Puritan, he was suspended and sequestered by Parliament,
because he refused to give public thanksgiving for the execution of the
King and the destruction of the Monarchy. But after a brief retire-
ment in Billericay, he returned to London, and, though he suffered a
short term of imprisonment in the Tower as implicated in Love's plot,
he ministered at Blackfriars with great acceptance ; and at the request
of his old parishioners, lectured in his old parish of Christchurch, till
Christopher Feake (the Fifth Monarchist|who had been appointed in his
place), when remanded to the Tower, was removed from the living ;
when Jenkin resumed his ministry there till he was ejected in 1662.
He then went to live outside the walls, not far from his old parish, in
Home's Alley (a turning to the right out of Aldersgate Street), where
we have just noted Robert Chambers under the alias of Mr. Grimes,
was reported in 1669 as holding a Conventicle, and where Jenkin
himself preached to many of his old parishioners spite the Penal
Statutes. Here we see him securing the very first licences granted under
the Declaration of Indulgence to preach in the meeting-house in Home
Alley [Chambers being content to receive the Royal authority to preach
at any allowed place].
We should scarcely have imagined that these entries would have had
any special moment and importance in the eyes of Sir Joseph William-
son. Yet he evidently did think them critical of a new epoch.
* Calamy (II. 287) has, as ejected from Winchester, FAITHFUL TEATE, D.D.,'
but he can tell us nothing about his career. Nor do the main facts of his life as given
in the account (is D. N. B. ) of his son, Nahum Tate, show him to have had any
connection with Devon, or to have spent any time in London.
The Indulgence Documents 281
In his Diary for the month of April, 1672 (preserved in the Record
Office) we have these entries:
'April i.
c Tuesday 2. Mr. Jenkins takes out his Licences to preach : the
c first that was taken out.
< lver on licences to Congreg 11 way sent downe
' 3. Wednesday.
4 Licences 2 (sic) Preach Maddockes
' Vincent
' Sharp
< Blackey
' Cawton
< to Sims.'
The licence-entries of the first two of these five (it will be observed)
have no note appended to them by Sir Joseph : save that the first two
and the last are annotated by him as * Presbyterien.'
They are entered between the four sent down by Mr. T. ' Ap. 2,'
and the two given to Mr. Jenkins to send down the same day ; and
evidently were not c given out ' at the same time with them. But (as
appears from Sir Joseph's Diary) they were given to 'Sims' (i.e.,
William Simms of Kingston-on-Tftames) the next day, April 3, the
day on which, as the note on E. (3) informs us, Mr. Sims'* licences were
' deliv d to M r Sims himselfe.'
In this Diary-jotting Sir Joseph seems to have slipped into a mistake
about Sharp, Blackey (Blakey), and Cawton ; as the Entry-Book note
declares that their licences were ' delivered to the parties themselves,'
not given to c Sims ' as his Diary-note suggests, the same day that Mr.
Simms received his.
The only other notes inserted in this Entry Book are confined
to the forty pages which follow. And they quite naturally fall into two
groups, each connected with one name. To mention the last first.
On E. (43) three Congregationalist licences for Henley-on-Thames
are entered as issued ' Apr. 22.' To the first two is appended the
single word * Cressett,' but to the third, the fuller note is inserted,
' Delivered out to Capt. Cressett 24 Apr.' i.e., two days only after
they were ready. Elsewhere we shall find that this Captain Cressett
acted as agent in other cases connected with two distinguished London
Nonconformists Dr. Jacomb and Dr. Owen.
A second set of eleven suggests, if they do not directly name,
another Licence-Agent, whose character and activities are of an
almost romantic interest I mean, John Hickes, late of Saltash, Corn-
wall, now of Kingsbridge, Devon. One note on E. (31) is appended
to an entry for Henry Cornish of Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, and
reads : 'Delivered to Mr. Hicks '; a second on E. (33) appended to the
entry of a general licence for John Gardner reads, ' M r Hickes fd it
'23. Apr.'; and a third on the very next line, appended to the entry of
one for the house of David Bayly both of Bridgwater, and both dated
282 Detailed and Expository
April 19, 1672 runs : ' Mr. Hicks reed 23. Apr. 72.' All these notes
are in Sir Joseph's handwriting.
The fourth on E. (39), however, written over the name of John Fox,
of Marshfield, Glocester, in these terms, ' Mr. Hickes rec6! it 23. Apr., 1
is apparently in Mr. Benson's hand.
On E. (7), E. (8), and E. (9), too, Mr. Benson has written in
brackets, after the licence entries of eight Devon ministers [seven out of
the eight being * general' licences] c is of y e County of Devon '; and,
as shown elsewhere, it was so written because for these eight, Mr. Martin
of Plymouth and Mr. John Hickes had made personal application at
Whitehall, on their arrival in London to present in person to the King
an Address of Thanks from no less than seventy-two Devon ministers.
It was John Hickes's initiative which doubtless secured the early issue.
Notes such as these undoubtedly do much to redeem the pages of
the Entry Book from sterility and ' dry-as-dust '-ness. Only they are
so few that they help us only to an infinitesimal extent.
We may be very thankful, therefore, that in 320 and 321 we have
implicit a great body of information, of a character similar to that given
to so limited an extent in these scrappy notes; and to these then we
may turn to get the living breath which turns the c dry bones ' of the
Entry Books into a living host of men and women eager to obtain for
themselves or for others liberty to worship God in methods dictated by an
instructed conscience and under the impulses of a quickened spirit. In
them we have the actual memoranda of application put in by the appli-
cants at Whitehall, and of receipt left by those who had the satisfaction
of fetching licences away.
Though a number of them have neither date affixed nor signature
attached to them, those which bear a signature give us in all one hundred
and forty names. I have done my best to identify these names, and to
gather information of the personality and careers of those who bore them.
Many still remain scarcely more than names ; and to give these a
living meaning, there is room and call for further research. In the pages
which immediately follow, I have given the fruits of my own labour.
How to present the information gained in any reasoned or organic
order has been a very difficult problem. One group stands naturally
apart from all the rest as associated with special grit, and energy, and
zeal ; I mean those who came to Whitehall in person to claim their
licences, and when successful, came in person to take them away.
These I treat first in our next chapter. The rest who acted as proxies
or agents for others I have arranged as far as possible in groups suggested
by their personal ties, their social position, or their professional character.
Where this was out of the question, I have placed them in a miscel-
laneous list alphabetically arranged, and given with each what scraps
are suggested by the licences themselves which they either sought or
received.
The Indulgence Documents 283
CHAPTER IV
I. THE NOBLE THIRTY- EIGHT: MEN WHO CAME TO
WHITEHALL TO SECURE THEIR OWN LICENCES
OF those who came to Whitehall in person to secure their licences
there were thirty-eight. From almost every part of the country did they
come. Only one of the groups into which we have distributed the
counties is unrepresented and that the most distant of all the
Northern. Three came from the Northern Midlands : one from Notts,
one from Leicestershire, and one from Rutland. Two came from the
Southern Midlands : one from Warwick county, and one from Bristol.
Four came from the Eastern Counties, viz., one from Suffolk, and three
from Cambridge. But most of them came from the two groups which
were south of the Thames, and from the Metropolis itself. Nine came
from the South-Eastern group, and seven from the South- Western. Of
the nine which came from the South-Eastern group, one came from
Berks, two from Middlesex, two from Kent, one from Surrey, and three
from Hampshire : while, of the six from the South- Western counties,
three are from Dorset, and three from Devon. From the London area
there came eleven : a very small proportion of the scores of Noncon-
formists, to whom London was either their usual place ot residence, or
had become their city of refuge and adopted home. And of these
eleven, only three were from the City proper and the East End
(Stepney). To the other eight, the villages of Hackney (Clapton) and
Stoke- Newington contribute three, the Borough of Southwark one ; and
the Strand, Westminster, Middle Moorfields, and Bartholomew Close,
each contribute one.
To all these English pilgrims we must add two from Wales ; both
of them from Swansea in Glamorganshire.
Of the whole number eleven are laymen. All the rest are ministers ;
ministers who had been ejected from their livings in 1662.
In dealing with them we cannot do better than follow the local or
geographical order.
I. NORTHERN MIDLANDS.
First, then, from the Northern Midlands came three: one from
Notts, one from Leicestershire, and one from Rutland.
i. JOHN WHITLOCK.
The first is John Whitlock of Mansfield.
John Whitlock's name is attached to only one document 320 (168).
Therein he appears as Agent : (i) For friends* in Mansfield (where he
was residing at the time) ; (2) for others in Nottingham f where he had
* Robert Porter and John Billingsley.
t One preacher John Leighton ; and one house John Chamberlain's.
284 Detailed and Expository
worked for eleven years till the Act of Uniformity ejected him, as well as
in Bingham, for which he seeks licences for William Cross in the house
of Thomas Porter; (3) for others yet in the counties of Derbyshire*
and of Bedford, where he had spent the first five years of his active
ministry ; and (4) lastly, for himself and his dwelling-house in Mans-
field: acknowledging his receipt of these 14 licences in Whitehall.
In his long ministry he had been as closely associated in personal
friendship and service with a Mr. William Reynolds, as were Damon
with Pythias, or as David would fain have been with Jonathan. [It is
singular that his friend's name does not appear upon this paper.] He
was a native of London, being born there in 1625. His father, a mer-
chant of ancient family, sent him to Cambridge to be educated for the
ministry. There, at Emmanuel College, he was chamber-fellow with
young William Reynolds, with whom he formed so close a friendship
that, for almost the whole of their life, they lived under the same roof;
even after their marriages sharing the same study, though they wisely
kept entirely separate establishments. For two years the friends were
separated. Reynolds was forbidden by his father to enter the ministry :
and was sent to Russia to conduct the foreign department of his father's
business. But at the end of that time, his father's death demanded his
return to England, and set him at liberty to follow his original intention
of entering the Christian ministry.
John Whitlock had just settled at Leighton Buzzard, on the western
border of Bedfordshire, and there Reynolds joined him; the two friends
living and labouring together for five years, from 1646 to 1651. Re-
fusing to take the Engagement, they lost the Augmentation at Leighton,
which was all they had there (though they had been working first Oking-
ham al. Wokingham in Berkshire, and then Aylesbury at the same
time); and they were much straitened (though they had means of their
own). In a most providential and unlooked-for way, they received a
call to Nottingham St. Mary's (Cal. III. 102), which they accepted ;
and there they remained until the Act of Uniformity expelled them.
For the next three years they lived at Colwich Hall about a mile off :
though they were pitilessly persecuted under the Conventicle Act. The
Five Mile Act in 1665 compelled them to retire to Therbrook (/.*.,
Shirebrook) in Derbyshire; but in 1668 they removed to Mansfield,
where they found quite a company of like-minded sufferers for Noncon-
formity, and there they continued to live and labour for seventeen years ;
so that it was from Mansfield that John Whitlock came up to London
to secure these licences for himself and his friends.
In 1685 they were seized on suspicion of complicity in Monmouth's
rising, and remained in confinement in Hull for two years. On their
liberation and under the Toleration Act, they returned to Nottingham,
and laboured there in honour and usefulness till their death Reynolds
in 1698, and Whitlock ten years later, in 1708.
* Two ministers, Samuel Nowell and John Otefield ; and two houses, those
of John Richard and John Spateman, the former in Newton, and the latter in
Roadnook.
The Indulgence Documents 285
There is a brass plate to their memory, and that of others of the
ejected of Nottingham and the neighbourhood, fixed to the reredos (?)
of the communion-table in the Old Meeting-House, which was erected
there on the restoration of the Chapel, 1870. It is reproduced in
Horner Groves's ' History of Mansfield ' (p. 339).
Licences had been applied for on Whitlock's behalf and that of his
friends about a month after the issue of the Declaration of Indulgence,
on 320 (105). This contained a list of applications for several other
licences beside those he acknowledges on 320 (168).
It is headed by applications for four licences for the neighbourhood
of London : two for Wapping and two for Highgate, which seem to be
in the handwriting of Robert Mascall. The rest are all in the same
handwriting ; and look very much like an official list drawn up by
Francis Benson from several applications given in orally or on slips.
They include four for the Town of Nottingham, not acknowledged on
320 (168), for the very sufficient reason that all four were refused as
being public halls. One is for himself to preach in the Town Hall;
one for his friend, William Reynolds, to preach in the County Hall; one
for John Barrett to preach in the Spice Chambers; and another for
Samuel Cotes to preach in the Free School.
The rest were issued on the iyth of April, and are all entered in
E. (27) except that for the house of Thomas Bryan in Leighton Bud-
dezart, which is entered on E. (26).
John Whitlock signs the paper acknowledging their receipt on the
2Oth, only three days later. This, be it remembered, is little more than
a month after the publication of the Declaration of Indulgence (March
15, 1671-72). So that John Whitlock and his friends were stirring
betimes, and had not been long in doubt as to whether they would
avail themselves of the Indulgence; and it is an indubitable sign of
Whitlock's earnestness and energy that he should have made the
journey to London personally to secure them.
Mansfield was nearly 140 miles from London by the main road, so
that the journey Whitlock undertook to effect his object was a serious
and a costly one. Its first stage would be through Sherwood Forest to
Nottingham, thence through Loughborough to Leicester; and from
Leicester, through Harborough, Newport Pagnell, and St. Alban's, to
London. The approach from the Midlands was through Highgate and
Islington. We do not know where John Whitlock would be staying,
except that it would probably be with some of his near kindred. For
London was his native place, and coming once more into its crowded
streets, he would be reminded of the days of his childhood and youth
when the city had been surging with all the excitements which ripened
into the outbreak of civil war. But if it was at all central to the city,
his way to Whitehall would be from the Old Swan Stairs close to
London Bridge, by boat to the Whitehall Stairs, and to Arlington's
offices by the way I have already described.
The document he signs reads as follows :
286 Detailed and Expository
< Received at S r Joseph Williamson's office in Whitehall this 2O lh
Aprill 1672 these licences following :*
for M r John Leighton & for the house of M r Jn Chamberla
Nottingh 111
for M r Sam 11 Nowell & for the house of M r Jn Richard for Newto
for W m Cross & for the house of M r Thomas Porter of Bingha
Nott.
for M r Jno. Whitlock and his dwelling house in Mansfield
Nottingh m
for Jn Otefield at M r Jn Spatema house Roadnooke Derbyshire
for M r Samtt Clark at M r Tho : Bryas house in Leighto
Bedfordshire
for M r Rob 1 Porter of Mansfeeld Notting m shire Gen 11 Teacher
for M r Jn Billingsley of Mansfeeld Gen 11 Teacher
4 by mee
c JOHN WHITLOCK.'
to
The document is in three handwritings : the first four lines of the
list are in Sir Joseph Williamson's, the second four appear to be in
Richard Steel's (Philip Henry's friend), but the signature is undoubtedly
John Whitlock's own, an interesting literary relic of a remarkable
personality.
2. ROBERT BASSE.
The second who came from the Northern Midlands (and the first
layman) is Robert Basse, of Market Harborough, if the inferences I
draw from the one document which bears his name are sound. In that
case, he would be taking the same route to London as John Whitlock
of Mansfield, did only a month later. Did Whitlock call as he passed
through the town ?
The document is 321 (92), and is endorsed by Benson < Basse's note.'
It consists of three paragraphs, each an application for one or more
licences; all for Leicestershire. One unique feature of it, however, is
that to each paragraph is added the phrase, ' To bee cal'd for p Barnaby
< Hallett.'
There must have been an arrangement made between Basse and
Hallett, that the former should c put in ' the applications, and that the
latter should go to Whitehall to take away the licences. That the
applications were drawn up by Robert Basse, and handed in by him is
made more than likely by Benson endorsing the paper as * Basse's note,'
and the fact that it is dated c London May II th 1672,' shows that it was
drawn up in London. As the first paragraph distinctly describes
* I have already drawn attention, in another connection, to the significant fact
that the Office in Whitehall Government Buildings, where John Whitlock actually
received the licences, is here ingenuously called ' Sir Joseph Williamson's ' instead
of what it really was, 'Lord Arlington's.' It is a striking, though quite uninten-
tional, proof that the Under- Secretary so thoroughly performed the duties, which in
his careless ease the Chief Secretary had passed on to him, that in the eyes of the
public the subordinate had already come to be looked upon as the principal.
The Indulgence Documents 287
' Robert Basse,' as ' of Market Harbrough in Leicestershire,' and the
second is for c Matthew Clarke,' ' living at Market Harborough ' ; the
main facts emerge vividly enough.
Robert Basse journeys to London to secure licences for his own
house, and for Matthew Clarke who since his ejectment from Nar-
borough had preached wherever opportunity was offered him ; but had
apparently gravitated towards Harborough, and at last found a resting-
place there, quite possibly in Robert Basse's home. In the Episcopal
Returns Clarke had been reported as preaching as far North of his old
living as Hucklescote and Ibstock (R. 206^) ; at Sibson and Stoke
Golding (R. 207) ; and at Earl Shilton (R. 206), Sapcote (R. 209/0,
and Ashby Ma2;na (R. 208/>), all comparatively near it ; and at Kib-
worth (R. 208J), Great Bowden (R. 207), Theddingworth (R. 208),
comparatively near to Market Harborough, as well as at Market
Harborough itself (R. 207). He is charged by John Shuttlewood, too,
h'"s ministerial neighbour at Lubbenham, to obtain licences for himself
and his house there. Probably he called at Whitehall for instructions
how to proceed, and quite possibly drew up his ' note ' there and then
in Arlington's Office. It seems that his time in London was short, and
so had made an arrangement with Barnaby Hallett to call for the
licences when made out. The officials were rather negligent, or at
least dilatory in the matter ; for it was not till the 2Qth that they were
issued and entered on [E. (143)], eighteen days after he had called.
Who took them away and despatched them to the licensees, we do
not know. Hallett, in the course of those eighteen days, may have
called for them so often that he despaired of ever obtaining them.
Whatever be the explanation, however, neither he nor any one else left
a memorandum of their receipts.
Of Robert Basse, I have been able to get no further personal trace.
But the Basses seem to have been a substantial Leicestershire family.
Philip Basse, of Bredon (in the northernmost corner of the county), had
a son Philip who was a clergyman of Wispington in Lincolnshire.
3. JOHN RICHARDSON.
The third, who came from the Northern Midlands, is John
Richardson, of Uppingham. This is a very interesting case, presenting
a problem which the meagreness of our information makes it very
difficult to solve. He is in it closely associated with Joseph Cawthorne.
Both had been ministers in Stamford, Lincolnshire ; John Richardson
certainly in St. Michael's Church (Cal. II. 430), where also Joseph
Cawthorne was married April 5, 1658, to Mrs. Elizabeth Bassano, of
St. George's Parish, Stamford. From the entry of the marriage in the
register of St. Michael's, too, it appears that Joseph Cawthorne was
minister of St. George's. It describes him as 'Joseph Cawthorne, of
' St George's, clerk.'
John Richardson remained in Stamford till the Act of 1665 drove
him away, when it seems he retired to Uppingham (in Rutlandshire),
where he was still living in 1672. [He asks for licences for 'his owne
288 Detailed and Expository
' house in Uppingham' as well as for himself as preacher.] Calamy says
of Joseph Cawthorne that 'some time after his ejectment he came to
'London,' but when, he does not say. Probably it was in 1665 when
his friend left for Uppingham. But that is by no means clear, as he
now asks for licences, not for any place in or near London, but for his
old sphere of work in Stamford, in the house of a friend, Mr. Humphrey
Reynolds, probably an old parishioner there. When he did finally settle
in the neighbourhood of the Metropolis, it was in Stoke Newington, a
village then some distance from the City on the Great North Road,
where Lady Hartopp resided [a granddaughter of the Protector, being
daughter of Bridget, who was wife of Colonel Charles Fleetwood,
Ireton's widow, and daughter of Oliver Cromwell], and sheltered Non-
conformists, welcoming Nonconformist Conventicles in her house. It
is scarcely likely, however, that he had settled there yet, else surely his
application would have been for Stoke Newington (as his friend Richard-
son's was for Uppingham), and not for Stamford. In that case, how-
ever, it seems more likely that as soon as the pressure of persecution
under the 1665 Act had ceased, he had returned to Stamford, if not to
settle, yet to be the guest of Mr. Humphrey Reynolds there.
In that case, too, we should have the attractive picture of these two
friends journeying up to London together ; John Richardson from
Uppingham, and Joseph Cawthorne from Stamford, each presenting an
application for the same ten licences : 7 for Rutlandshire, 2 for
Lincolnshire, and I for Northamptonshire. John Richardson's in
321 (274), and Joseph Cawthorne's in 321 (275).
But this, again, is made very uncertain, as Joseph Cawthorne's
paper is not dated. John Richardson's is, as put in on ' May 2y th 72.'
The Editor of the Calendar apparently ventures to think they were put
in together, as the two papers are placed together, numbered consecutively
274 and 275. And the probabilities are that they were, as May 27th
was so near the date beyond which none of these precious memoranda
are preserved viz,., the middle of June.
[In the absence of certainty, however, I have inserted my notice of
Joseph Cawthorne at the end of this Chapter, among those who ' put in '
licences personally, as residents in the London area.]
The application made by John Richardson was neglected for nearly
a fortnight. The licences were not issued till June loth [as is attested
by their entries on E. (160)] . It is clear that Richardson could not
stay in London to receive them, or he would certainly have left his
memorandum of receipt.
Nor have we any receipt in Cawthorne's hand. So, again, we are
left in the dark as to who called for them, and despatched them to the
licensees.
Both Richardson and Cawthorne are said by Calamy to have had a
University training, and both to have been educated at Cambridge.
But the signs of it are much more evident in the memorandum left
by Richardson. The spelling is wonderfully correct, even to that word
which is so often mauled and martyred 'Presbyterian.' Cawthorpe
avoids that test word altogether by (most criminally) omitting all de-
The Indulgence Documents 289
nominational epithets. But his spelling of proper names is meat irregular.
<wn friend in Stamford he calls < Mr. Reynolles ' in one line, and
4 Umphrey Reynolds' in another. [Richardson has called him * Mr.
' Humphry Reynolds.'] ' Lincolnshire,' he represents by * Lyncoln h .'
Richardson's 'Glye' becomes 'Slye,' and ' Dosthorpe, c Dosthrope.'
But in Mr. Langdale's house-place, he seems more accurate than his
friend. Richardson's ' Cawcot ' is rendered c Caldecote ' (the modern
form being 'Caldicote').
Calamy's notice of Cawthorne is sympathetic, but the account he
gives of Richardson is much fuller and even more appreciative. They
are found in Cal. II. 430-433 ; and Cal. II. 433.
II. SOUTHERN MIDLANDS.
From the Southern Midlands we have two travellers, one from
Warwickshire, and the other from Gloucester.
i. MATTHEW LEADBEATER.
Matthew Leadbeater, of Nether Whitacre, the third minister who
goes up to London.
Matthew Leadbeater in 320 (284), simply acknowledges the Receipt
of two licences : one for himself as 'generall teacher,' c of Whitacre in
'Warwickshire'; and one for Mr. Moxon, of Astbury, Cheshire; but
his name also figures in a memorandum of applications [320 (214;] in a
way that suggests that he put in the paper himself.*
His name does not appear in Calamy, but that of a Thomas
Leadbeater does.
The references in these various documents, moreover, converge and
interlace in such a remarkable way, that it is difficult to avoid the
conclusion that they were brothers.
In his notice of Thomas Leadbeater, Calamy (II., 386) tells us that
he was a native of Cheshire, the district about Nantwich, that he was
educated in Cambridge, that in his earlier days ' he was chaplain to the
* pious Lady Wimbledon,' that he was appointed to the Vicarage of
Hinckley, in Leicestershire, where ' his ministerial labours were very
'acceptable and useful,' and that after his ejectment he retired to his
own country, taking out a licence in 1672 for a house of his in
Armitage, near Church Holme,t and ending his days in Wirral.
Now in 320 (214), the applications are all for Warwickshire, where
4 Matthew Leadbeater, presb,' in the last line of the memorandum,
* doth Humbly beg a licence to preach in any Licenst place,' and
* It contains four items, duly numbered, and the last reads :
'4. Matthew Leadbeater presbyt. doth Humbly begg a License to preach in
' any Licenst place for the use of those of his perswasion.'
f In an official list of applications (the latter part of which, at any rate, is made
out by Francis Benson [320 (94)]) application is made for 'Mr. Thomas Leadbeater.
'Pr. at his howse called the Hermitage. Sandbatch Parish, Cheshire,' and both
licences are entered as granted April 16, 1672 'E. (22). (23,]. Church Hulme (or
Holme; is also called Holmes Chapel, and is a township chapelry in the parish of
Sandbach. Calamy seems to have mistaken the name of Thomas Leadbeater's
house in Church Hulme for the name of a parish near it.
19
290 Detailed and Expository
licences are asked for ' Kingsbury and Coleshill,' which are not far from
Nether Whitacre, the one north and the other south of it, as well as
for Nether Whitacre itself, of which, in his Receipt 320 (284), he
describes himself as a resident. But what is specially interesting is that
the place in Nether Whitacre, for whjch a licence is asked, is 'the
4 House of Sophia Viscountesse Wimbaldon in the parish of Nether-
4 Whitacre in Warwickshire for the use of such as are of the Congr.
* perswasion.' Surely, then, it was here that Thomas Leadbeater was
chaplain in his earlier years, and it certainly looks as if Matthew might
well be practically chaplain there now.
How can we avoid the conjecture that Matthew and Thomas
Leadbeater were brothers ? that Matthew was finding refuge for his
Nonconformity where his brother had enjoyed a profitable patronage,
while Thomas retires to their ancestral estate in Cheshire (the house
called < The Hermitage, in Church Hulme, in Sandbach parish ') ? and
that it was for a ministerial friend and neighbour of his brother Thomas,
in Cheshire, that Matthew is doing a service, when he fetches away a
licence for George Moxon, the much persecuted minister of Astbury
(which is only a few miles from the Hermitage, in Sandbach) ?
This is the memorandum [320 (284)]. Addressed at back :
' MR. BENSON.
< May 2. 72
4 Rec d a Licence generall for Matth. Leadbeater of Whitacre
in Warwickshire & a Licence for Mr. George Moxon for his House in
Astbury, Cheshire.
c p me
'M. LEADBEATER.'
His journey to London would not be an easy one, and its expense
would be considerable. But we can scarcely doubt that for this special
journey the Viscountess Wimbledon would be ready to help him,
although he was a Presbyterian, and she desired a licence for her house
for Congregationalists to worship in, especially if she was broad-minded
enough to make him practically her chaplain.
He would travel via Coleshill to Coventry, and then on to the
Stratfords (Stony and Fenny) through Daventry and Towcester, and
through Dunstable to St. Alban's, whence his route to London would
be the same way as those who came from the Northern Midlands.
The second, who came up from this South-Midland group, was
2. JEREMIAH HOLWEY.
Jeremiah Holwey (Holway), of Bristol (the second layman).
He is not as so many were that precede him a minister. He is
a Puritan layman, of grit and earnest purpose, who feels so strongly on
religious matters as to journey all the way from Bristol to London to
secure a licence, authorizing the use of his house for public worship by
those of the Congregational faith or order. He may have gone by sea
in one of the trading vessels plying round the south coast and the
English Channel ; but more probably he would take the coach, or post
The Indulgence Documents 291
along the great Western road through Bath,Chippenham,Marlborough,
Hungerford, Newbury, Reading, and Maidenhead, through Hounslow
Heath and Brompton to Charing Cross.
His application is preserved on 321 (84). It is endorsed by Francis
Benson, < Holwey's House ' ; and reads :
' M r Jeremy Holwey house in Cornestreet in Bristoll for one that is
Lisenced of the Congregationall perswasion
' the io th of May 1672.
C JER. HOLWEY.'
This was on a Friday. It was attended to within a week, for the
licence is entered on E. (117) as granted on the i6th inst. It is the last
on the page :
4 The howse of Jeremy Holwey in Cornestreet, Bristoll Congr.
Meeting Place. 16 May.'
Whether Holwey stayed in London long enough to go to Whitehall
again, and receive the licence in person, or commissioned some friend to
call for it, and send it on, we do not know, for no memorandum of its
receipt is preserved in the Record Office. The house thus licensed is
likely to have been a large one, for Corn Street was then and is now
one of the principal streets of the city. It (on the west) with Wine
Street (on the east) runs along the highest ridge, and is met at their
point of junction by High Street running south, and Broad Street
running steeply north, down to St. James's Gate (still preserved). It
contained some of the principal buildings of the city, including the
Town Hall ; and most probably local city records would reveal some-
thing interesting of this good Congregational citizen of Bristol.
The minister for whose service it was licensed was almost certainly
John Thompson, for nine years a student (? fellow) of Christ Church,
Oxford. Other two Congregationalists were licensed viz., William
Troughton and Enoch Gray. But they were not licensed till between
three and four months afterwards Enoch Gray September 5 [E. (239)],
and William Troughton on September 30 [E. (251)] whereas John
Thompson had been licensed exactly a month before Holwey's house,*
and so was the only ' one that is Lisenced of the Congregationall per-
' swasion ' at the time. Holwey himself applied for his licence viz.,
on May 10, 1672.
Since writing the above, I have examined 4 the local city records,'
and have found what I expected.
The City Archives of Bristol show that Jeremiah Holwey was a
wealthy and respected citizen. As early as 1656 he had secured the
confidence of his fellow citizens so far that they elected him a member
of the Common Council. For some reason unstated was it modesty ?
or the fear that civic business would too much try his faith ? he tried
to evade the responsibility and to avoid office.
* Thompson's licence was entered April 16 [E. (27)], and Holwey's May 16
[E. (117)].
l 9 2
292 Detailed and Expository
As witness the following minute in the Common Council Records :
' 26 Aug. 1656. M r Jeremy Holwey formerly chosen a member of
the Comon Council, being this day sumoned to appeare and to take
y e oath of a Comon Councellman uppon his appearance refused to
take the said oath.'
The City would not let him go ; and more than a year later, we
find that his scruples had been overcome, and that he had consented to
serve.
'9 Sep. 1657.' ^ n a ^ st ^ tne Common Council, inserted in a hand-
writing different from the rest of the minutes, are these words :
* M r Jeremy Holwey . . . according to the sumons ordered by this
house, appeared and was sworne a member of the Comon Councill.'
Mr. Holwey appears to have attended regularly from this date to the
end of 1660. Indeed, as late as May 8, 1660, we find a reference
which implies either a special confidence in him, or a spiteful scheme to
entangle him in trouble with his Puritan friends (at the same Council
Meeting at which they chose their two Members to represent them in
the First Long Parliament of Charles II.'s reign viz., Mr. John
Stephens and Mr. John Knight, senior) :
* It is ordered that M r Alderman Yate and M r Holwey doe speake
with M r Ewens and informe themselves by what authority he preaches
the Thursday Lecture at S 1 Nicholas, and report the same to this house/
This ' M r Ewens ' is, of course, the Thomas Ewens who was the
first Pastor of the great Baptist Church at Broadmead, Bristol.
Five months later, too, in this same year of the Restoration, he was
nominated for the second Sheriff of the city. Was it with the hope
that, if elected, he would either refuse, or buy himself off with a heavy
fine? [In the Commonwealth times that happened again and again
with well-known Royalists, < Cavaliers,' or < Malignants.'] The
record runs:
'5 th Sep. 1660. M r Thomas Stephens' (I suppose brother of the
Recorder, Mr. John Stephens) * having positively refused to serve one
of the Sheriffs, and a fyne of 2Oot havinge been imposed on him for his
contempt, and being comitted to Gaole for nonpaym 1 thereof. The
Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Councell proceeded to a new Eleccon
of an other person to be a second SherifFe for y e yeare ensueinge
Whereupon M r Jeremy Holwey was nomated by M r Mayor, M r
Anthony Gay by the Aldermen and Sheriffs, and M r John Knight
sen r by the Comon Councell, and M r John Knight was chosen second
Sheriff.'
Probably Mr. Holwey thought himself fortunate to escape office
in the changed times, when he was so utterly out of sympathy with
the revived Ecclesiastical Establishment ; and amongst the names noted
as absent ' on 25 July 1661 ' is his : * Jere: Holwey ', following that of
' Joftes Knight sen r .' His name occurs as present September 25, 1661 :
< Jeremia Holwey.' It is dropped from that date onwards, and we may
take it he was glad to withdraw ' unscathed ' from the civic duties of
those Royalist days, when, to his good Nonconformist conscience, all
things would seem strangely out of joint.
The Indulgence Documents 293
It would be a special pleasure to him in the year of Indulgence
when Royal action had once more made religious liberty possible to
those who sought the Royal licence to journey up to London and
secure one for his house, that his friend Mr. Thompson, the Congrega-
tional minister, might conduct services in it.
III. EASTERN COUNTIES.
From the Eastern Counties three come : one from Suffolk, and two
from Cambridge.
i. JOHN PINDAR.
John Pindar is the pilgrim from Suffolk.
Calamy has little to say about him. He gives him (III., 295) as
ejected from Wingfield, Suffolk; describes him as *A pious, affable
* man ', and tells us that < after his ejectment he lived at Ousden, where
* he had a good estate * ; adding, ' he constantly attended his parish
* church, and seldom preached.' Yet the Episcopal Returns of 1669
report him as preaching at Cowling (R. 230), * Att the houses of John
*Juggards & Gilbert Colliers,' and at Thurlow Magna (R. 230), in
association with Stephen Scanderet, to congregations < at the house of
* one John Barnes & of Samuel Alison numbering 60, sometimes 100.'
These are both on the road from Owsden to Haverhill; the former
between three and four miles, the latter six miles further from Owsden;
and when, in 1672, he applies for licences, it is for authority to preach
at Cowling, one of the places already mentioned ; and for Rede (or
Reed), which is as far to the South-east from Owsden as Cowling is
south by west (almost due south) of it.
He had got a Mr. Coleman (presumably a friend resident in Lon-
don) to apply for these licences. The application-mem, is 321 (131),
endorsed ' Coleman's note Suffolk ', which reads :
* M r John Pindar of the Presbyterian perswasion to be Licensed for
the dwelling house of Robert Sanfield of Reed in y e County of
SufFolke
4 The house of Robert Sanfield of Reed in y e County of Suffolke to
be licensed for a congregation to meet in of the Presbyterian
perswasion
< The house of John Collyer of Couling in the County of Suffolke
to be licensed for a Congregation to meet in of the Presbyterian
perswasion.
4 To be delivered to M r RICHARD COLEMAN.'
The licences are granted. They are entered on E. (112) :
* Licence to John Pindar to be a Pr. Teacher in the howse of Rob.
Sanfield in Reed in Suffolk. 13 May
* The of John Collyer in Couling, Suffolk Presb. Meeting
Place. 13 May.
< The howse of Rob. Sanfield in Reed in Suffolk Presb. Meeting
Place. 13 May '
294 Detailed and Expository
Whether Mr. Coleman was suddenly disabled from going for the
licences he had secured, or not, we cannot say. For whatever reason,
we find that it is not Mr. Coleman who takes them away, but Mr.
Pindar himself, and only two days after they had been issued. He
came up to London expressly over this matter ; and, on May 1 5, calls
for them, taking them with him as he leaves, leaving behind him this
rather peculiarly phrased memorandum, 321 (161) :
' A licence for the person of John Pindar & for the house of John
Collyer & Robert Sanfield
' received this fifteenth day of May 1672
4 taken out by mee
* JOHN PINDAR.'
To reach London from Owsden, he would probably post first to
Bury St. Edmunds, and then on the great high road through (Long
Melford and) Sudbury, Halstead, and Chelmsford.
All these facts certainly picture John Pindar as much more
energetic and eager than we should gather from the brief notice of
Calamy.
Of the two ministers who came from Cambridgeshire, each is
characteristically representative of the denomination to which he belongs
Francis Holcroft, of the Congregationalist, and John Denne, of the
Baptist.
2. FRANCIS HOLCROFT.
Francis Holcroft was a remarkable man ; of great learning, but
intense evangelistic fervour and preaching power, he was also a great
champion of Congregational principles.
A native of the immediate neighbourhood of London the son ot
Sir Francis Holcroft, of West Ham he was educated at Clare Hall,
Cambridge, where he had as his chamber-fellow John Tillotson, who
ultimately became Archbishop of Canterbury. Even while a student
Holcroft began to preach at Littlington, nearly fifteen miles south-
west of Cambridge Town ; and, in 1655, ne accepted the living
of Bassingbourne, about two miles north of Litlington. After his
ejectment in 1662 he formed a circuit of gathered Churches of the
Congregational type, to whom he preached in turn with Jos. Oddey,
S. Corbyn, J. Waites, and W. Beare ; yet supervising them all, like a
* chorepiscopus ' of the third or fourth century.
But the authorities persecuted him bitterly : and from 1663 to 1685
he was often in prison in Cambridge Castle (twelve years in all he
passed there) [Cal. I. 256-262], His imprisonment did not wholly
prevent his preaching : for, in accordance with the strange practice of
those times, he was let out by his gaoler, on ' parole ', to go to minister
to one or other of his scattered flocks. In his troubles, too, his old
college friend, Dr. Tillotson, often intervened for his relief and
deliverance.
That as early as 1663 he was doing this chorepiscopal work we have
interesting proof in a Paper preserved at the Record Office (S. P. Dom.
The Indulgence Documents 295
Car. II. 88, 73) which is endorsed : * Schismaticks. An ace 1 of persons
w th there (sic) quallities, and places of aboad (sic) '; which has on it
the pencilled note: 'Found under 1663'; and contains valuable lists
of Teachers and their meetings in London and Kent, in Herts and
Middlesex, and concludes with these paragraphs :
4 Early in harfordshire
4 M r Houlcraft lyes at widow hawkes who hath meetings of 300
at a tyme there
* M r Audey an assistant to him 3 miles from Royston at Mildred
meetes many hundreds both Independents and Baptists
' Cambridge
' M r Houldcraft meetes and many hundreds with him
' M r Audy) both assistants who takes turnes to ride into harford-
M r Lock ) shire Cambridgeshire and Beffordshire
at Hitchin, and pauls Wallden and att Bedford, att Shefford
and Romney. att all these places dwells many that are
Joyned to Houlcraft.'
It is easy to recognize in ' M r Audey ' Joseph Oddey ; and, without
a doubt, ' M r Houldcraft ' is Francis Holcroft himself. After most
diligent search, and varied inquiry, I find this State Paper (Dom.
Car. II. 88, 73) which is one of many Informers' Reports sent into
Whitehall throughout this decade of persecution, 1662-1672 to be
one of those which are condensed and entered in the ' Spy Book ',
mentioned by Dr. John Brown in his 'Life of Bunyan ', pp. 224-25,
which he describes there as ' arranged alphabetically, showing how the
( district between Bedford and Cambridge was at this time placed under
' surveillance, &c.' It is preserved as S. P. Dom. Miscell. 26, No. 43.
A complete transcript of it is printed in the ' Transactions of the Con-
gregational Historical Society,' Vol. V., No. 4. January, 1912. The
paragraphs referring to Holcroft are the following :
' Audey (an Assistant to Houlcroft) lives 3 Miles from Royston at
Mildred p.*., Meldreth] where are convencons* of
many hundreds both Independ ts & Baptists.'
[Then on next page]
' Audey. An Assistant to Houle Croft & Lock who rides by turne
w th ye s d L oc k i nto Hartfordshire, Cambridgeshire
& Bedfordshire to gather concorse of people to their
meetings.
[Then under the letter < H ']
' Houlcraft lyes at Widdow Haukes att Barly in Harfordshire who
hath meetings of 300 at a time. The sd: Hould-
craft meets w th many hundreds at Cambridge.
* I.e., Conventions or Conventicles.
Detailed and Expository
It looks very much as though this Spy Book were arranged, and
begun by Joseph Williamson, to contain precis of Informers' Reports
so as to have indexed for ready reference the names of all who were
thus * informed ' against as holding Conventicles, preaching, and con-
ducting Nonconformist worship : just as, in 1672, he began a Book
tabulating and alphabetically indexing all the Licences granted under
the Declaration of Indulgence, and entered in E., which is calendared
as * S. P. Dom. E. B. 388,' and referred to in these volumes as I.
Though I. has been preserved, and extends as far as the early part of
June, it is yet imperfect, containing no List for London, etc. Both pro-
jects were abandoned, the Spy Book much the more readily of the two.
When we come to the Episcopal Returns of 1669, we find inci-
dental proofs of Holcroft's evangelistic activity being still carried on in
many directions.
In R. (179) Holcroft is reported, with Mr. Oddey (who is
mentioned first) and a Mr. Borne, as a Teacher at a Conventicle in
Willingham (At the houses of John Braiser, Francis Duckins, and John
* Crispe, j r '), usually about one hundred, and * All very meane, Except
* some few yeomen'; and that they were gathered by messengers from
adjoining neighbourhoods is confirmed by the added note : * And many
' of them come from other places, and goe from place to place to Con-
' venticles.' At Histons, again (R. 180) ' M r Holcroft ' is reported
as associated with Mr. Oddey and Mr. Corbin as preaching to a Con-
venticle of about thirty Independents, ' of y e middle & mean r sort, Most
'women & mayds'; while at Ockington he and Mr. Oddey are
reported as holding a Conventicle of Independents and Quakers, ' about
* IOO ' in number, and ' of meane quality '; and in Over, he (with Mr.
Corbin and Mr. Oddey) is reported as preaching to a Conventicle of
'Fanatiques' about 100 in number 'of w ch ', however, they report,
< not 20 ' are ' of this pish.'
These four places are north-west of Cambridge, at varying distances.
Then, north-east of it, at Stow-Quoy, at a Conventicle held in the
h )use ' of Henry Bostock Carpenter,' of ' uncertayne ' numbers, ' about
' 50 or 60 sometimes neere 100,' he is reported (R. 181) as teaching,
with other three 'Non-Conformist Minist rs ' viz., Mr. Oddey, Mr.
Smith, and Mr. Parke, and with 'John Overrande Labo rer & Wild-
' man Bricklayer.' The Quality of the Conventiclers is described as
' Mean r & poorer sort most of them ; yet some strang rs come amongst
' y m that are wealthy ' (as ' Quy ' was near Cambridge Town, it is
probable that 'the wealthy' ones were those who went out from
Cambridge to hear them) ; and it is added (in the ' Numbers ' column)
that these come ' From other Parishes halfe at least.'
At Haddenham, again as we learn from R. (182) in the neigh-
bourhood of those first-mentioned, he, with Mr. Oddey and Mr.
' Corbon,' ' Nonconformist Minist rs ' address ' about 60 ' Fanatiques :
' Most women.' On the same page, too, these same three are reported
as having preached to Conventicles in the parish of St. Michael's, in the
Towne of Cambridge. The Bishop states, however, that there were
4 None for y se last 6 months '; the last that was consisted of ' about 100,'
The Indulgence Documents 297
though composed of ' Meane sort & inconsiderable persons.' 'It was
* at y e Widdow Petit' s house.'
Besides all these preachings in the County of Cambridge, he is
reported by the Bishop of Lincoln (R. 206/>) as preaching away in the
north-west corner of Leicestershire, to a Conventicle of ' about forty '
' ordinary ' Presbyterians in ' Hucklescoate cum Dunnington.' He is
there reported as one of six ' Heads & Teach rs ,' c all ejected ministers ' :
his name (given as 'Mr. Hocraft') last of the list. His presence, so far
away from his Congregational diocese, is probably explained by the fact
that ' Mr. William Smyth ejected out of the vicarage of Packington ' is
the leader of the band, and there is little room for doubt that he is the
' Mr. Smith,' who is mentioned as associated with Mr. Holcroft, Mr.
Oddey, and Mr. Parke as preaching at Stow Quoy (R. 181). [The
other four preaching at Hucklescoate (Hugglescote) are ' Mr. Matthew
* Clarke, Mr. Bee, Mr. Crosse, and Mr. Drayton.']
So varied and persistent was his evangelical activity through all those
years of persecution.
When we come to the year of Indulgence, 1672, we find only one of
the licence documents which bears his name, though it bears his
signature in full, ' Francis Holcroft.'
It is 321 (60). The whole of the memorandum, which is an
application for eight licences, all for persons and places connected with
this scheme or circuit of Congregational churches, is in his own hand-
writing. The places applied for are: (i) 'y e House of Elizabeth
' Pettit ' in Cambridge town (mentioned in R. 182) ; and ' y e House of
'Job Hall,' in Cambridge; (2) 'a Meeting place at Meldred,' at the
southern limit of the county ; and (3) ' a Meeting place in Willing 111 ,'
almost at its northern limit. The persons are himself, 'Francis Hol-
' croft,' and his assistant associates in this great work, Sam. Corbyn,
Thomas Lock, and Joseph Oddey.
Three memoranda of application have been preserved. The first,
321 (28), is only for himself at a meeting-house in Cambridge.
' Fran : Holcroft in the howse of Job Hall in Bridge Street in
' Cambridge, a Congregational Teacher. 8 May 72.' This slip is in
the handwriting of Francis Benson, Sir Joseph Williamson's head
clerk. It suggests that early on that Wednesday, Francis Holcroft
called and made verbal application for these two licences, the particulars
being taken down by Benson across the counter.
The other two are applications for several others beside Holcroft, and
must have been put together later in the day, when Holcroft returned
to Whitehall in the company of John Light. 321 (47) is not so clear or
systematic in form as 321 (48) ; but both make application for the same
persons, and for the same meeting-places : one of the latter being in the
Isle of Ely (in the town of March), but all the other four in the
Congregational diocese, which had its local centre in Cambridge.
In 321 (48) the preachers are named in pairs with the exception
of Thomas Locke, who is named alone for Meldred. Oddey and Day
are named for March, Corbyn and Oddey for Willingham. But for
Cambridge itself, we have two meeting-places mentioned, and a pair of
298 Detailed and Expository
preachers at each. Corbin and Day apply for licences to preach at
Elizabeth Pettit's house near Green Street. And Francis Holcroft
chooses Joseph Oddey as his associate to preach at the same meeting-
house in Bridge Street. It is described in 321 (48) as * in a place neere
' the house of Job Hall * ; but in 321 (47) it is succinctly referred to as
4 Job Halls Cambridge,' suggesting that the meeting-house was a separate
building erected in Job Hall's garden [as the meeting-house licensed for
John Bunyan in Bedford was erected in the garden of Josias Roughead].
The memorandum signed by Francis Holcroft [321 (60)] mentions
all these names except those of ' the meeting-house in March,' and of
James Day the preacher.
It is a singularly composite document, as it seems to acknowledge the
receipt of some licences, as well as applying for others. It reads :
* Take out a License for y e House of Eliz : Pettit
* Taken out a Licence for y e Person of Sam. Corbyn & Thomas Lock
& for a Meeting place at Meldred
& for Francis Holcroft &
' A Licence for y e House of Job Hall ' (this in Cambridge)
4 A Licence for Joseph Oddey
' A Licence for a Meeting place in Willing
4 FRANCIS HOLCROFT.'
Then is added the sentence, in John Light's handwriting \cf. 321
(85)] : ' Mr. Light remaineing behind.' And at the back, we have the
words : ' Taken out y e Licences ' in Francis Holcroft's hand.
What lies on the surface of this document is that Francis Holcroft
journeys purposely to London to put in this application ; but that on his
visit to Whitehall he was accompanied by Mr. Light, who had agreed
to stay in the Office at Whitehall till all the licences were made out, as
Mr. Holcroft had to return to Cambridge.
The licences were all granted, and all of them bear date May 8th.
The meeting-place at Meldred is ' The howse of Widow Evans,' and
that in Willingham is ' the howse of Fran: Duckins ' [E. (80) and
E. (81)].
The natural conclusion is that they were granted the very day that
Francis Holcroft made application for them, so that Mr. Light would be
able to send them down by the first post which was despatched from
London to Cambridge. This * Mr. Light ' was evidently John Light,
who after his silencing in Dorset came to live in London, and was
licensed himself as a Congregational Teacher to preach in his own
house in Thames Street.
Of John Light's further activity as a Licence-Agent we shall see
something when we come to treat directly of him.
Till 1689 Francis Holcroft exercised his apostolic episcopate, nor did
he survive the surrender of his energetic ministry more than three years.
For he died at Thriplow, 1692.
The Indulgence Documents 299
3. JOHN AND THOMAS DENNE.
These are two Baptist brothers, who between them divide the
honours of obtaining no less than thirty licences twenty for the County
of Cambridge, and ten for that of Huntingdon all for Baptist or Ana-
baptist Nonconformists. John Denne is a Teacher, but Thomas is not.
Nor, apparently, is he a resident in either of the counties concerned.
It looks as though John came up to London to make the personal
application at Whitehall, but was not able to stay long enough to fetch
them, and so got Thomas to call for them later.
The memorandum put in by John Denne is a most elaborate
document [321 (174)]. It is headed : < A Schedule of the meeting places
* and teachers desired by the baptised Congregations in the Countyes of
' Cambridge & Huntington,' and is drawn up in three columns one for
the Teachers, and one for the houses in which they are to teach ; and a
third for the places in which the houses are situated ; the last two
separated (or linked) by a plus and * at.' The lists are arranged in two
groups : the one headed ' In the county of Cambridge,' and the other
c In the County of Huntington.' The remarkable thing, however a
point, too, which makes this list quite unique is that the column for
* The houses ' is placed first ; that for the Teachers is placed third, on
the right hand. Curiously enough, too, it is in three different hand-
writings. The main columns are in one handwriting, the left-hand
column is in another, and the signature only is in John Denne's.
The conclusion that we should naturally draw from the list is
probably the correct one : that John Denne was a resident in St. Ives,
where he hired a house in which to conduct services, and that he came
up to London, ' putting in ' this list, by personally calling at Whitehall,
and leaving it with Sir Joseph Williamson, or his clerk.
[The strong probability is that, spite the similarity of name, John
Dennis of Wilbraham Magna, not far East of Cambridge, was a distinct
personality, and he certainly must not be confused with John Donne,
the friend of Bunyan.]
Thomas Denne, John's lay brother, may have been a resident in
London, entertaining John when he came up, and undertaking to call
at Whitehall for them when John found himself unable to wait long
enough in London to secure them.
John Denne and his associates in this list evidently act apart from
John Bunyan and his, for while John Bunyan (though a Baptist) will
not call himself or any of his friends Baptist, but calls himself and them
Congregationalists (as defining the ecclesiastical organization which was
common to Paedobaptists and Adult-Baptists alike), John Denne puts in
his claim for the * baptized congregations,' which he proceeds to
enumerate.
This application of the Huntingdon Baptist is promptly attended to.
The licences are all issued May i6th, as shown by the entries on
E. (123) and E. (124),* and when Thomas Denne calls he is able to
take them all away.
* And where the denomination is given, it is given as Anab.,' or ' Anabaptist.'
300 Detailed and Expository
The Memorandum of Receipt [321 (175)] is a very different kind of
document from the Memorandum of Application. There is none of
the methodical formality and neatness which characterizes his brother's
application. It is simply a list of the names of those to whom the
licences are granted, in no order whatever; the word * Teacher' or
* house' appended to each; just bracketed together as ' All in Hunting-
'don & Cambridgeshire'; headed 'Received the Licences foils,' and
signed ' p Thomas Denne.'
These, John and Thomas Denne, must surely be the sons of Henry
Denne, who had been educated in Cambridge, was one of the pioneers
and protomartyrs of Baptist views, and had been twice apprehended ;
once in 1644 in Cambridgeshire, and once in 1646 at Spalding in Lin-
colnshire by the Parliamentary Committee. Driven out of the ministry
by the Church authorities of those days, he had joined the army and
had become a distinguished soldier. He had died in 1661. Dr. John
Brown quotes a letter he wrote to his friend,* Thomas Smith (pro-
fessor and librarian), in defence of Bunyan (p. 123).
IV. SOUTH-EASTERN COUNTIES.
From the South-Eastern group of counties, we have nine : one from
Berks, two from Middlesex, one from Surrey, two from Kent, and three
from Hampshire.
i. RICHARD ELLIS.
Richard Ellis, of Reading, is the one from Berks. This is the
third instance of a Nonconformist layman, wishing to have his house
licensed for Nonconformist worship, who feels interested and anxious
enough about it to come up to London to secure it.
He seems to have acted at first by proxy, securing the services of
John Hickes (ejected from Saltash, Cornwall ; and much persecuted in
Kingsbridge, Devon), who is now staying in London, to serve his
brethren in the provinces by securing licences for them. From the
first he does not move for himself alone. Two other Nonconformist
laymen in R.eading join him in his willingness and desire to have their
houses licensed for Nonconformist worship viz., Griffin Bully and
Richard Hunt. The special denomination to which they belonged has
no exclusive charm for them : they are anxious mainly for the freedom
of Nonconformist worship. In the first application [viz., 321 (54)],
which is made out by John Hickes, his handwriting is unmistakable,
the three are bracketed together as applying in this large-minded way
c Richard Ellis, \ . ...
Griffine Bully, I '" Rin in Brkshire
Richard Hunt, J t
for Presbyterians or Independents, indifferently, to conduct the services.
John Hickes does not sign or date the document, so that we cannot
be sure that he < put it ' in, "though most probably he did.
* Neal's ' History of Puritans,' II. 38771, III. io8w, 361.
their houses for ***- & Inde P endts
The Indulgence Documents 301
The next two application-memoranda are in Richard Ellis' s hand-
writing, 321 (123) certainly, 321 (124) less certainly. The same three
Reading houses are applied for in each ; only in 321 (123) Richard
Ellis puts Griffin Bully before himself.
But he puts each very distinctly, ' Griffin Bullys house in Redding
'&c.' [note the spelling, in a citizen of the town itself] ; * Rich.
4 Ellis his house in Redding &c. ' ; and < Rich. Hunte his house in
< Redding &c.' In 321 (124) they are put together again, more after
the fashion of 321 (54):
' In Redding in the County of Berkes
< Thp hrmsp nf "Rirh F.11i Hri'ffi
< The house of Rich : Ellis : Griffine Bully & Rich : Hunt/
and immediately after is a clause definitely indicating John Hickes's
active service in the matter : c deliver'd by John Hickes.'
In each of these three application-memoranda, the application for
these three Reading laymen is associated with others. In the first with
four for Somerset, and two for Herts ; in the second and third, with the
same two for Herts (Chipping Barnet), but with five others for Wilts
(not Somerset). It is singular, and surely significant, in a not altogether
satisfactory way, that in applying for licences for their houses as Non-
conformist meeting-places in Reading there is no application for a
minister or ministers to preach in them. In the whole of these
* Original Records,' indeed, there is allusion to only three ministers of
either the Presbyterian or Congregational order in Reading ; and, about
each of these, strange circumstances seem to preclude the idea of their
ministering regularly or reliably in any of these three houses.
Two of them are Presbyterian : Christopher Fowler and Richard King.
(i) In the case of Christopher Fowler an application was put
in by Thomas Blood (the notable Colonel Blood of Tower of
London fame), that Christopher Fowler might be licensed to preach in
Griffin Bully's house [321 (210)] ; and matters went so far that a
licence was made out (i.e., the blanks were filled in with the particulars)
[321 (257)] . The licence was neither signed nor dated, and the im-
perfect licence remains in the Record Office to the present day. This
was all subsequent to the complete licensing of all three of the houses
of which we are speaking. They were all licensed May 13, 1672
[E. (102) and E. (Ill)], and were taken away by our Richard Ellis the
following day ; and Colonel Blood's application was not made till six
days later May 19 [321 (210)].
Fowler, moreover, did not endorse the action of Colonel Blood on
his behalf. He had been ejected from Reading (Cal. I. 294, 295), so
that it would have been most natural and peculiarly welcome, we should
think, to the Nonconformists of Reading, had he secured a licence to
minister to his old flock in each of these three houses in turn. [One cannot
resist the conjecture, indeed, that Richard Ellis in making his application,
had hoped that this is the arrangement which would be carried through.]
But Fowler applies himself [321 (265)] for licences to preach at his
own house in Kennington, whither he had retired, instead of among
his old friends in Reading ! and secures the licences only six days after
302 Detailed and Expository
Colonel Blood had applied for him to preach in Griffin Bully's house
[E. (137)].
So that this most promising ministerial connection for Richard Ellis
and his two friends was put out of the question by Christopher Fowler's
own action.
(2) Richard King's licence-entry is not dated, so that we cannot
be certain that it was ever issued. If it was, it would not be till the
month of November (as the entry on the line above it in the same page
[E. (271)] is dated November 18, 1672). It reads :
'Licence to Rich: Kinge of Reding in y e County of Berks Pr
' Teacher,' and shows that Richard King, who had been ejected from
somewhere in Dorset (Cal. II. 175) and had retired to Reading, did not
wish to tie himself to Reading as his sphere much less to either of
the three houses licensed there but simply to be free as a Presbyterian
Teacher to preach in any licensed place.
The only other minister referred to in connection with Reading is
(3) Dr. John Pordage (Neal, II. 631, 632), who in 1669 was reported
(R. 240) with Mr. Bromley, as < suspected to be Conventicle hold rs &
'Teachers also' at Bradfield, whence he had been ejected in 1657 ty
Oliver's Triers, though restored on Charles's accession in 1660 ; but
who, at this time, was living in Reading. In 1669, moreover, he is
reported as not alone fostering this Conventicle in his old sphere at
Bradfield ; but also (R. 240/) as the chief Teacher of two Conventicles
in Reading itself the one in the house of a Mrs. Farnham, and the
other 'at one Burren's, formerly Cromwell's Butler.' So that he, too,
might have ministered to the Nonconformists of Reading in one or
other of these three houses. Yet he would be distrusted by them in
matters of doctrine, and on account of his attitude to the Cromwellian
Puritans. For he had written against Oliver's commissioners a
pamphlet, entitled ' Innocency appearing'; and this had been answered
by Christopher Fowler. Between these two ministers, then, relations
were probably still so strained that neither would care publicly to
officiate in these Nonconformist meeting houses.
Mr. Bromley (R. 240) might supply them from Bradfield ; or either
of the ministers licensed for Oakingham (Wokingham), Benjamin
Perkins or Thomas Gardiner (both old Bucks ejected clergy) ; or
perhaps William Brice from Maidenhead.
Still, though disappointed of their natural hopes of definite ministerial
connection, these three Puritan citizens of Reading carried through
their design ; and Richard Ellis went up to London to see the matter
through.
He carries it through in courtly style. He does not (as many did)
timorously address himself to Mr. Francis Benson, head clerk to Sir
Joseph Williamson, nor even to Sir Joseph Williamson ; but to Sir
Joseph's chief : for the memorandum of receipt [321 (148)] is addressed
at the back, ' The Right Hon bl the Earl of Arlington '; astutely giving
him his new title. [He had been created ' Earl ' only three weeks
before (on April 22).] And he takes away with him three licences for
Marlborough, three for Devizes (both of these in Wilts), and two for
The Indulgence Documents 303
Herts, besides the three for Reading (for himself and his two friends)
eleven in all subscribing the document almost triumphantly: 'All
* these Rec d the I4th day of May 1672. p me Rich: Ellis.' He would
probably journey to London (and return) by the coach road through
Maidenhead, Colnbrook, and Hounslow, and so through Hammersmith
to Charing Cross.
2. EDWARD PROBEE.
Edward Probee is one of the two from Middlesex.
Here again we have a Nonconformist layman (the fourth layman
we have noticed) coming to town to get licences. This time, how-
ever, it is not for himself alone or, as in the last case, for brother-
laymen but for his minister and himself, as well as for a neighbouring
minister.
He has no long journey to make, for he and his minister are residents
at Chiswick, and the neighbouring minister is of Brentford both on
the Thames just opposite Kew and now both within the vast area
of c Larger London.' But in those days it was a journey, and the edge
of London was not reached until they had passed along the great high
road from Staines to London, through the hamlets of Hammersmith and
Kensington to the eastern end of Hyde Park (Hyde Park Corner).
The three licences he was able to take away had been applied for
three times.* In the first memorandum 320 (189) they were on the
same paper with an application for Mr. David Clarkson of Mortlake
(a little farther up the Thames, the Surrey side of the river). But Mr.
Clarkson's case was being taken up and carried through just at that time
April 25 [320 (188)] and [320 (285)] by Mr. Matthew Shephard (or
Heppard), so that the second application [320 (190)] contains only these
three just in the order in which they are mentioned in Mr. Probee's
receipt.
The third and last was like unto it [320 (282)]. Only in another
hand, opposite Mr. Case's name, we have the note 'This I have'; and
at the foot the further note appended * Given out 2 May.' [These
notes must have been added at least two or three days after the applica-
tion was put in, for the licences are dated April 30, 1672 E. (48).]
The official who actually delivered them to Mr. Probee was not
Sir Joseph Williamson, but his chief clerk, Mr. Benson [320 (283)].
The mem. reads :
4 Rec d this 2n d of May 1672 of M r Benson
a licence for M r Thos Case of Chiswick an
other for M r John Jackson of Brentford
& an other for the house of Ed: Probee of Chiswick
' p EDWARD PROBEE.'
The minister (Thomas Case) to whom he was so warmly attached
as to offer his house as the * meeting-place' for his ministry, was one of
the veterans of the Nonconformist host. Born before the seventeenth
century dawned, he was now seventy-four years of age.
* They were licences for Thomas Case and himself at Chiswick, and for John
Jackson, of Brentford.
304 Detailed and Expository
He was a native of Kent, where his father had been minister of Boxi<
'His own first pastoral charge' (Calamy I. 153) was at Erpingh:
in Norfolk, but Bishop Wren's severities drove him from Erpingham, and
he afterward settled in London, being appointed to the sequesten
living of St. Mary Magdalen's, Milk Street, where he was very labork
and faithful in his ministerial work. He was the founder of 'TJ
* Morning Exercise.'
He was a strong royalist in sympathy, and had been implicated
Love's plot in 1650-51, so that in 1659 ne could not take the
ment and had to surrender his living. [Mr. Thomas Vincent was his
successor.]
He was chosen one of the ' 10 Presbyterian Preachers ' who, the
following year, crossed the Channel to Holland, and on May 16 ' waited
'on King Charles II. at the Hague with a Tender of their and
'their Brethren's Duty and Affection.' In the short interval between
his ejectment from Milk Street and his journey to the Hague, however,
he was not idle. He was lecturer at Aldermanbury and St. Giles's,
Cripplegate [and afterwards Rector of St. Giles's in the Fields
(Calamy)]. After the King's return he was appointed one of the
Commissioners at the Savoy in 1661 ; but, spite his royalism, he was
silenced, because he could not accept the conditions of the Act of
1662, and retired to Chiswick, where, though his public ministry was at
an end, he ceased not in private to do all the good he could. After the
brief ten months of liberty in 1672, he spent the remaining nine years
of his life in quiet service, and died May 30, 1682, aged 84.
What gives added interest to this licence which Edward Probee
secured for his minister, is that it is one of the few ' actual licences '
which are preserved to this day. It is preserved in the British Museum
Library (MS. Department) in the Lansdowne Collection (Vol. 1236,
fol. 134). Besides the necessary signatures by 'Charles R.' above, and
by Arlington at the foot, and Benson's note at the left-hand bottom
corner ' tase a Teacher,' it has the Royal Signet attached at the top
left-hand corner.
It is made out for Thomas Case living in the Parish of Chiswick
Middlesex ' of the Perswasion commonly called Presbyterien to be a
Teacher, and to teach in any place licensed and allowed by Us &c.,'
and is dated '30 th Aprill, 1672.'
It is entered on E. (48) on the same page in E. as the other two
which Probee took away, only in the reverse order to that given by him
in his receipt.
'The howse of Edward Probee in the Parish of
Cheswick Midd Pr. Meeting Place. 30. Apr. 72.
' Licence to John Jackson of Brentford Midd. to be
a Pr. Teacher in GralL 30. Apr. 72.
'Like _to Thomas Case of Chiswick, Midd. Pr.
30. Apr. -2."
Cheswick
Pr.
Probee's howse.
Jackson
Pr.
Brentford.
Case
Pr.
Chiswick
The other neighbouring minister was Mr. John Jackson of Brent-
ford, son of Arthur Jackson, Rector of St. Faith's under St. Paul's, who
The Indulgence Documents 305
like Mr. Case had been implicated in Love's plot, imprisoned and fined
j5OO, but had continued in this living till ejected by the Act of
Uniformity (August 24, 1662).
His son, John Jackson, was Rector of St. Benet's, Paul's
Wharf, till, late in 1661, he was ejected. But he was reappointed
to Moulsey, on the Surrey side of the Thames (just opposite to Hampton
Court). He could not, however, retain the living long. Conscience
forbade him, as it forbade his father, to accept the Act of Uniformity ;
and on his ejectment from Moulsey he retired to Brentford probably
to be near one so like-minded in matters political as well as ecclesiastical
as his father's old friend, Mr. Case, at Chiswick.
3. WILLIAM NICOLL.
William Nicoll is the other from these Home Counties; also a
layman (the fifth to show his ' grit ' this way), a citizen of Uxbridge
who comes up to Westminster to receive licences for his stirring little
town, and among them one for his own house.
They had been applied for by a Mr. William Bowler, of whom I
have been able to obtain no further information. The memorandum
of application by Bowler is 321 (130), and this memorandum of receipt
by Nicoll is 321 (255). William Bowler's paper is unfortunately un-
dated ; but William NicolPs receipt is dated bearing its date as its
heading : ' May the 24 th 72.'
The licences received by Nicol are the whole of those asked for by
Bowler, and had all been entered on E. (107) and E. (108), as issued
the same day viz., May I3th. So that they had been waiting to be
taken away eleven days before William Nicoll went up to Whitehall to
inquire after them, and, as it proved, triumphantly to take them away.
Let us, then, look at the two agents together, as negotiating the
same set of licences.
There were six of these : three for teachers (Hugh Butler, Robert
Hall, and Hezekiah Woodward), and three for houses, all in Uxbridge
(in the part of Middlesex bordering on Bucks).
The application-memorandum [321 (130)] is endorsed by Benson :
* Bowlers note,' and reads :
c M r Hugh Butler presbeteran
M r Robert Hall independent
M r Hezakia Woodward presbeteran
the hous of M r John Crowder
the house of Richard Piscoe
the house of William Nicoll
in the parish of Woxbridg in the County of Middlesex
presented by William Bowler '
Of the William Nicoll, whose receipt [321 (255)] is dated May 24,
1672, we see that he was the last in the list of those whose houses were
licensed ' in the parish of Woxbridge in the County of Middlesex.' So
20
306 Detailed and Expository
that he must have been a resident in Uxbridge, who came up to Town
from Uxbridge to secure the licences for which his friend William
Bowler had applied.
Though Calamy can tell us little about these licences, the Episcopal
Returns of 1 669 tell us much :
(1) William Nicholl gains greatly in our estimation. For in the
Return (R. 222^) c Uxbridge ' is given as having * Severall little Con-
' venticles.' And in the very first in the list of seven Nicholl is spoken
of in these terms : (i) ' The Chiefe in the house of one Nicholls, a very
* old man.' All honour, therefore, to this veteran Puritan, who, in
1669, is the host of the chief Uxbridge Conventicle; and three years
later has spirit and vigour to go into Westminster, to take away the
Uxbridge licences from the Office in Whitehall. [Was he any relative
of Charles Nicolls, the energetic evangelist who was ejected from
Adisham (Cal. II. 318, 319) ?]
Then, working up the list of licences applied for, we come to :
(2) ' Richard Piscoe ' as desiring one for his house. He is mentioned
also in the 1669 Return. The fourth Conventicle reported is: 'In
' y e house of one Buscold a Rich Tanner'; and it is in his house that
Woodward lives.
Then we come to Woodward himself, given in with our list as
(3) <M r Hezekia Woodward presb.' Of him the 1669 Return
speaks at length. In ' Buscold's house ' (or * Biscoe's ') there < lives an
4 old Intruding Minister of Bray nere Windsor : and hath been a con-
4 stant Teacher these 3 or 4 years ' [/.<?., since 1665 or 1666] ' on Sundays
* & some Weeke days ; he is frequented by y e best of y e Towne. He
' is an Excommunicate pson. His name is Woodward.'
He is noticed, too, by Dr. Walker (< Sufferings of the Clergy ') and
Anthony Wood in his < Fasti Oxonienses.' Dr. Walker speaks of him
in connection with Dr. Anthony Farndon (or Farindon), who, 'on
4 the Breaking out of the Rebellion,' was dispossessed both of the
Divinity Lectureship in the Free Chapel at Windsor and the Vicarage
of Bray (II. 96) ; and, with reference to the last, says : < He was suc-
* ceeded in this Living by one Woodward, a Violent Independent, and
< Chaplain to Oliver ' (Part II. 240).
Anlhony Wood makes a brief reference to Woodward in his notice
of Dr. Edward Fulham, who succeeded him at Bray (on the gift of the
Bishop of Oxford), but gives a much fuller account of him as an
author educated at Oxford :
* Hezekiah or Thomas Woodward ' [it will be seen that Dr. Calamy
has adopted the second Christian name, while the licence application
uses the first only spelt c Hezakia '] ' was always puritanically affected:
sided with the Presbyterians in 1641, & was a great zealot, & frequent
preacher among them either at St. Mary's in Aldermanbury or near it.
Afterwards he took the Covenant, and shewed the use & necessity of it
in his discowrse & preaching ; but soon after, when he saw the Inde-
pendents & other factious people to be dominant, he became one of
them : and not unknown to Oliver, who, having quartered more than a
year in the vicaridge house at Bray, near Maidenhead in Berks, during
The Indulgence Documents 307
the time of the rebellion (in which town he had opportunity to know
the parish to be very large, being a whole hundred of itself) he sent after-
wards thither our author Woodward, being then his chaplain, or at least
favourite, under the notion of doing some eminent good to that great
place, & to take care of the souls therein. He continued there 10 years
or more' (1649-1659) c and had the good opinion of the rabble and
factious people : but of others of sense, not.' . . . * He was very
invective against the King, his followers, whom he called Malignants,
the Church of England, her rites, ceremonies, & all forms of worship ;
and it is commonly reported among the inhabitants of Bray that he
wrote a book against the Lord's Prayer. ... He had a select congrega-
tion out of his parish of those that were to be saved, who frequently met
to pray in the vicaridge house, which, if he had staid a year or two
more, would have destroyed all that were to be saved by falling upon
them ; for he was a great dilapidator ; suffered some of the offices,
stable, and woodhouse to fall ; made hey (sic) -lofts of the chamber, and
suffer'd one side of the hall ' (the assembly room) * to drop down.
Insomuch that Edward Fulham, who succeeded him, at the King's
Restoration, was forced to build it up in the first month he had it.'
Evidently, then, in the estimate of so good a judge of men as
Cromwell, Hezekiah Woodward was a strong man, a good preacher,
and essentially a pastor ' as an assiduous shepherd of souls ' a sound
Independent and a practical believer in 'gathered churches.' No
wonder, then, that after his ejectment from Bray and retirement to
Uxbridge he could not remain silent or inactive ; and became practi-
cally the founder of a Congregational Church the c chiefe Conventicle
' in the Towne' from 1665 or 1666 to 1669, * in y e house of one Buscold
4 a Rich Tanner '; but later in the house of our friend and active agent
the veteran William Nicoll. [Though the licence entries E. (107) and
(108) make both teacher and host Presbyterian.]
(4) To Robert Hall, Independent, again, there is an interesting refer-
ence in the 1669 Return, though Calamy (I. 298) knows nothing of
him, but that he was ejected from Colnbrook, Bucks. He is the
' Preacher or Teacher ' of the fifth Conventicle, ' In the house of Edw.
' Nicholas a bold, factious fellow. One Hall, a late soldier, is Teacher.
4 And as scholem r ' [schoolmaster] c teaches many children.'
(5) Nor is it otherwise with * M r Hugh Butler presbeteran ', the
first upon the licence application-list. His is the sixth Conventicle in the
1669 Return, held [not, as desired now, in John Crowder's house, but]
4 In y e house of one Swift, a Cooper ; Where lately was held a most
' audacious Meeting.' The Teacher was * One Butler lately come from
c Amersham.' All Calamy has to say about him is that he was ejected
from the Rectory of Beaconsfield, and was * a very grave person, and
< a solid divine' (I. 297).
Or does the Return intend that Butler is the Teacher of the seventh
Conventicle at * Hillingdon ' ? and that Swift, the cooper, held a Con-
venticle in his own house ? The lineation of the Return is not very
clear, so that its significance is ambiguous.
The whole of the six for whom Bowler sought licences are signalized
20 2
308 Detailed and Expository
in the Episcopal Returns of 1669 ; but other four therein mentioned
viz., * Tim Fly, Tradesman ' ; one ' Hale, a Stiffe Sectary ' ; Edward
Nicholas, 'a bold factious fellow '; and * one Swift, a Cooper/ made no
application for licences in 1672. [Were they Quakers, or extreme
Baptists?]
All six licences were ready on May 13, and as neither William
Bowler nor any other Nonconformist friend in London went to White-
hall to fetch them, William Nicolls though in 1669 'a very old man '
has energy and determination enough, eleven days later, to go to
London, posting or coaching along the high road, through Hillingdon,
Southall, Hanwell, Ealing, Acton, Shepherd's Bush, and Kensington
(then all separate hamlets in the country), to London, traversing Tyburn
and Oxford Street, and then down St. Martin's Lane to Charing
Cross.
It is on a Friday he makes the memorable journey ; and, calling at
Lord Arlington's Office in Whitehall, finds the licences ready. The
licences are handed in by Sir Joseph, or by Benson ; and, leaving a
memorandum of receipt which he wrote out on the spot he takes
them back with him to Uxbridge.
The writing and spelling show his age and want of culture, but
the memorandum remains a lasting memorial of his vigour and
determination.
It is preserved in 321 (255), and reads :
' May the 24 th 72
' Rec d then a Lycence for R l Hall to teach in the house of Rich.
Biscoe of Uxbridg an other for Hazekiah Woodward to teach in the
house of William Nicolls of Uxbridg an other for Hugh Buttler to teach
in the house of John Grower in Uxbridg all in Middlsex
' By mee
' WILLIAM NICHOLL.'
The liberties taken in spelling, so characteristic of this period, are
signally illustrated by the variation in his own name, ' Nicolls ', in the
memorandum ; becoming ' Nicholl ' in his signature ; ' Piscoe ' of W.
Bowler's application becoming Biscoe in Nicholl's receipt ; ' Crowder '
becoming 'Grower'; 'Butler' becoming 'Buttler'; and 'Hezakia'
becoming ' Hazekiah.'
4. JOHN DABERON.
From Surrey we have one : John Daberon.
He, again, is a layman the sixth in our list seeking a licence
for his house as a Presbyterian meeting-house. He is residing at
Walton-on-Thames, and considers it worth his while to go to West-
minster to make personal application at Whitehall. On his modest
journey thither he would keep to the south side of the river till he
reached Lambeth probably joining the great Guildford road at Esher,
and passing through Thames Ditton, Kingston, and Wandsworth. Or he
The Indulgence Documents 309
might join the high road at Kingston, crossing the river twice first at
East Moulsey, then skirting Hampton Park, and re-crossing it at the
western end of Kingston.
From Lambeth he would take ferry to the southern limit of West-
minster, and so on to Whitehall. There he left a memorandum,
preserved as 321 (188), which Benson has endorsed < Daberons note,'
and which reads :
' for the house of John Daberon in y e parish of Wallton upon Thames
in Surry : presbiterian
' for JOHN DABERON :'
The application was duly attended to, for the licence is entered as
granted May 16, 1672, on E. (117) :
' The howse of John Daberon in the Parish of Walton upon Thames
in Surrey Pr. Meeting Place. 16 May'
Whether it was attended to promptly or tardily we cannot tell, as
his application was not dated. Nor have we any memorandum of
receipt to tell us who took it away from Whitehall.
The name he bears is a distinguished one, for it must be a variant
of Dabernon (D'Abernon), a county family who gave their name to
the hamlet of Stoke d'Abernon, some six miles or so south-south-east of
Walton. The Manor was the gift of William the Conqueror to one of
the family called heraldically ' Dawburnon the Normand'; and John is
a Christian name not alien to the family ; for Sir John d'Abernon, in
1253, na< ^ a g rant of free-warren in his lands from Henry III.
The meeting would probably be supplied from Kingston by either
Richard Mayo, who had been Rector there in the Commonwealth days,
or William Sims, who had retired thither after ejectment from Leicester ;
or even more probably from Wey bridge, by John James, who had been
ejected from Ilsley, in Bucks (Cal. I. 288).
From Kent, two came ; one from its north-east corner in the Isle
of Thanet, the other from its most important port of Dover.
5. PETER JOHNSON.
Peter Johnson was a native of Thanet, and came of a very reputable
family in the Island, as is confirmed by the fact that in Foster's Al. Ox.
he is styled < gent.' He was entered as scholar of Corpus Christi
College, Cambridge, and was at first intended for the profession of
the Law, as appears from his taking chambers in Gray's Inn, London,
in 1648. His ideas changed, however, and he decided to enter a Puritan
ministry. In 1 649 he * began ' again by matriculating from Magdalen
Hall, Oxford, and graduated B.A. the same time. He proceeded
M.A. June 5, 1651, was ordained in London in 1654 : his ordination
certificate being signed by Edmund Calamy, senr., Simeon Ash, and
three others, and was appointed to Maresfield, Sussex (at the southern
limit of Ashdown Forest), where he remained till ejected in 1660.
310 Detailed and Expository
He then received appointment in the land of his nativity at St. Law-
rence, in the Isle of Thanet. His ministry was not a long one, as he
could not conform ; and therefore a second time he suffered eject-
ment. He still remained in the neighbourhood, 'teaching school,'
and now and then preached at Ramsgate, where he was the first to
gather a dissenting congregation. From the licences he sought, and
obtained, we see that he did not confine his evangelistic activity to
Ramsgate, but gathered a Presbyterian congregation also in Margate.
His application is preserved in 321 (127), and is endorsed by Benson,
* Johnson's note. Kent.'
* M r Peter Johnson desires a Lycence to teach in the house of
Rob: Smith at Romonsgate ' (Ramsgate) 'In the He (sic] of Tenant'
(Thanet) * in Kent, and in M r W m Perkins house in Margate in
Kent
* of the presbyterien p r swation
' to be Taken out by mee
' PETER JOHNSON.'
The licences were all issued May 13, 1672, as entered in E. (102).
'Licence to Peter Johnson to be a Pr. Teacher in the howse of
W m Petkins in Margatte, (sic) Kent. 13 May '
'The howse of W m Petkins in Margatte, Kent. Pr. Meeting
Place. 13 May
' The howse of Rob. Smith in the Isle of Tenant Kent Pr. Meeting
Place. 1 3 May '
One thing in the above calls for remark, and that is that
though he asked for licence to preach at Ramsgate as though his
connection with Ramsgate were the closer his personal licence is
made out to preach at Margate ; the Ramsgate house is licensed
additionally, as that at Margate was intended to be, by the terms of
his application.
Practically, of course, it made no difference ; but one would like to
know why the places were reversed.
Calamy tells us (II. 345) it is from Calamy and Foster's ' Alumni
' Oxonienses ' that this brief account is compiled that while preach-
ing ' he did not altogether absent himself from the established worship.
' He was a man of good learning, and very useful gifts. But at last he
' lost his sight, and for several years was confined by various afflictions.
'He died' Calamy adds 'in 1704 and was buried in St. Lawrence
'Church.'
Though, in his application, Peter Johnson says so distinctly ' To
' be Taken out by mee,' the memorandum of receipt is not preserved ;
so that we cannot tell whether he staid long enough in London to
carry out his intention. It was no mean journey he had to take :
for it was sixteen miles to Canterbury from Margate, and by the great
high road was another fifty-five miles from Canterbury to London
(through Sittingbourne, Rochester, Gravesend, and Greenwich, and so
to Lambeth ferry and Westminster), over seventy miles in all.
The Indulgence Documents 311
6. RICHARD HOBBS.
The second is Richard Hobbs of Dover. 320 (81) is the only docu-
ment that bears this name.
It is unique in form as an ' application/ It is not a Petition to
the King, nor a letter to Sir Joseph Williamson or his subordinate,
Mr. Benson. Nor is it a mere memorandum of applicatidn left at
Whitehall when the application was made. It is a sort of Certificate
of the desire of a large body of Baptists 'all the Baptized people'
(they called themselves) ' in Dover/ expressed in this rather formal
document, signed on their behalf by four members of the Church, their
Teacher or Pastor, ' Richard Hobbs,' being one ; and includes the
request that the licences, when ready, may be delivered to ' this bearer,'
whom I imagined to have been this same Richard Hobbs, their Pastor.
It is endorsed by Benson 'Dover,' dated 'Dover 15 Apr. 1672,' and
reads :
' These are to certifie That as a testimony of o r thankfull acceptance
of his Ma ties gracious declaration of the I5th March last, wee do
humbly desire wee may have a licence for RICHARD HOBBS to be o r
Teacher & also a Licence for o r meeting-house, w ch is allready fixt &
fitted, being a roome at the Southend of Samuell Tavenors house neere
y e Market-place in Dover, & that the said licences may be delivered to
this bearer to send downe to us.
' Signed by us whose names are und r written, by the consent &
appointing & on behalfe of o r selves & all the Baptized people in Dover.
' AMBROS WILLIAMS
' RICHARD HOBBS c RICHARD CANNON
4 SAM: TAUENORS'
Unlike so many of their Baptist brethren who refused to ask a
licence, they are moving early only just a month after the issue of the
Declaration. They secured their licences very readily, too ; for they
were both issued, in the terms they desired, only five days after they
signed their request viz., April 20. Now when we realize that even
an Express post on his Majesty's service took thirteen hours to execute
the journey, it shows that whoever undertook the actual task of going
to Whitehall to present the document must have shown commendable
alacrity. I have taken for granted that William Hobbs did it himself;
but that perhaps is a mistaken supposition : and there is no memor-
andum of receipt to show who took the licences away, or on what date.
The entries are as follows :
E- K (37). I < Lisence to Richard Hobbs to be an Anabaptist Teacher in
a Roome in the South end of Sam: Taverners howse neare
the Markett place in Dover. 20. Apr. 72.
'A Roome at the South end of Sam: Taverners howse
near the Markett place in Dover licensed to be a Anabaptist
Meeting place. 20. Apr. 72.'
Hobbs
Anab.
Dover.
' E. (38).
Dover
Anabapt.
Taverners
howse.
312 Detailed and Expository
Richard Hobbs had a further licence to preach in Lower Deale, but
that was not dated till August 8 more than three months afterwards
and though the house in Lower Deale is named no separate licence
is entered for it.
E(223). 'Like to Richard Hobbs Bapt teacher at the house of
Joane Colemar at Lower Deale in Kent. Aug. 8 th '
The Presbyterians of Dover did not move for nearly two months
after the Baptists had secured their licences. The licences for Nathaniel
Berry (who had been ejected from St. Mary's Parish Church in 1661)
and Mr. Edwards's house were both dated June 10, 1672.
Singularly enough, too, the Congregationalists or Independents in
Dover seem to have made no move at all; although, in 1669, the
Episcopal Returns (R. 156) show that all three denominations, and the
Quakers also, had their Conventicles in the town the note being
inserted : ' All these are numerous.'
It is specially interesting to find in connection with the Conventicle
of ' Anabaptists,' that two of the names which we have before us in
these Licence documents, are cited in the Bishop's report. ' Rich d
' Hobs (Hobbes) ' is mentioned as a Preacher, and as one of the
' Principalls & Abbettors ' as well ; and 'Sam. Taverner' also (a teacher
as well as an Abettor) ; while, beside these two, ' one Milford ' is
mentioned as a teacher, and c Laur. Knott ' as an Abettor. The names
of Ambrose Williams and Richard Cannon, however, which are among
the signatories of the certificate-petition, do not appear in the Episcopal
Returns.
From the above it appears that Richard Hobbs is connected almost
as closely with Deal as with Dover. The reason is to be found in his
intimate relations with Samuel Taverner. So intimate do they seem
to be, that I do not think we should be far wrong to call him Samuel
Taverner's chaplain or minister.
In the Commonwealth times, Samuel Taverner was Governor of
Deal Castle, and so strongly identified himself with the Baptists in the
town, that he is credited with having built the first General Baptist
Chapel there. With the Restoration, of course, he would lose his
position. But for the next six years at least he continued to live in
Deal.
In an interesting State Paper preserved in the Public Record Office,
he is referred to, as well as John Milford and Knot. It is calendared
S. P. Dom. Car. II. 119, 21, and is endorsed : ' R. 24 Apr. 65. from
M r Watts. Schismaticks in Deale.'
This * M r Watts ' is evidently a renegade Baptist turned informer, for
thejfirst paragraph in the paper referring to Taverner reads as follows :
' Capt. Sam Taverner fformerly comander of Deale Castle
A great witt. hee hath about 40 Ib. p. Ann. 8 children & in debt.
Hee is the ringleader of the Phanatticks & an upholder of
Heresies, preaching comonly at my house. And hee himself above
ordinances.'
The Indulgence Documents 313
No other meaning can be put upon that last sentence but one ;
that * Mr. Watts ' posed as a Baptist among the ' fanatics/ entertaining
their conventicles in his own house : yet traitorously informed against
them to the Government in 1665.
There was a John Watts, who, in 1672, obtained a licence for his
house in Sandwich as a Congregational meeting-place, who very possibly
was of the same family. But this ' Mr. Watts ' is shown to be a different
man, as on July 29, 1670, he writes from Deal to Sir Joseph and signs
himself Richard Watts. He says : 'The Nonconformists have been
' very whist of late, but have been encouraged by those in London fra-
' ternizing with them.'
That ' Samuel Taverner' was 'above ordinances,' means simply,
I imagine, that he had conscientious objections to going to the Parish
Church and joining in the Prayer-Book services, because superior to all
existing Church organisations.
The following year he is informed against by Benjamin Harrison of
Sandwich, in a paper dated 1666, May 23, and headed:
' Information sent by Ben. Harrison to the Archbishop of Canterbury,'
'Capt. Taverner of Deal an Anabaptist preacher has been a
fighting man.'
Probably it was in 1667 or 1668 that he removed to Dover : for in
1669 ne is reported (R. 156) as both Abettor and Preacher at a Con-
venticle at Dover. His ministerial friend Richard Hobbs also figures
with him in both columns. The other ' abettors ' are Robt. Hemming,
John Edwards, and Laurence Knott ; and the two other preachers are
4 one Milford and Luke Howard.'
Two other of these Dover Baptists are reported among the Schis-
maticks in Deale in 1665. ( J ) 'Mr. John Milford' (Mr. Watts
describes as) ' A good scholler a cunning fellow, an excommunicated
' Anabaptist. Hee is but poore : hee is followed by all the anabap 1 and
' independent in the Cuntry. This is hee who is Lodge the post dark,
' for Lodge cannot write A legible hand. Hee hath the view of o r letters
' severall houres before wee see them.' (2) 'Knot/ Mr. Watts con-
temptuously describes as ' A poor Sysmatick.' The State Papers give
ample testimony to the fact that Dover Nonconformity flourished spite
the Penal Statutes.
In the second half of 1670 Carlile writes of them in three news-
letters, directed to Sir Joseph Williamson.
(1) On June 13 [S. P. Dom. Car. II. 276, 127] he reports:
' Yesterday being Sabbath we sent out some officers, who found upwards
' of 200 persons at a conventicle of Anabaptists. The speaker is
' a tailor, who encourageth the people to stand fast and not to be
'afraid of the wicked. One of the brethren having said he would
' sacrifice his life for what he asserted, & seal it with his blood, I sent
< him to prison, but the Mayor took bail and released him until the
' sessions. Can bail be taken in such a case, it being treason or mis-
' prision of treason ?'
(2) Within a week he writes again [1670, June 21, S. P. Dom.
Car. II. 276, 172] : 'Fearing my last miscarried, I renew my appli-
314 Detailed and Expository
' cation as to whether the sectary arrested at the conventicle for assert-
' ing he would sacrifice his life for what he asserted is bailable. The
' Presbyterians & Anabaptists had their meetings last Sabbath, but were
'dispersed by the officers. 1
J3) Again on July 27, he writes [S. P. Dom. Car. II. 277, 112]:
' They are much troubled at Dover with an obstinate party of Ana-
4 baptists who persist in their old way notwithstanding they are dis-
4 persed ; and when the law is put in force, they hinder it by shutting
' their doors & shops. Advise whether we may break open the doors &
' imprison the teachers.'
In 1671, spite the persistent application of the new Conventicle
Act all the Nonconformist sects continued to flourish and increase.
On Feb. 2, 1671, John Carlile writes to Sir Joseph [S. P. Dom.
Car. II. 287, 171]: 'On Friday last [which would be Jan. 27] the
' Mayor and jurats caused the Anabaptists' pulpit, forms, & benches to
' be pulled down, and upon Sunday morning ' [Jan. 29] ' betimes the
' staples and locks were broke off, and the Anabaptists went to their old
{ trade again. (At the Presbyterian Meeting-house we could not get
* in; those that hired it were so obstinate, they would not open the door,
' so we caused a lock to be hanged.)'
And on Oct. 28, 1671, he reports to Williamson [S. P. Dom.
Car. II. 293, 183] : 'The Mayor, who is no great politician, is guided
' by a party, some Quakers, many Anabaptists ; and most of them Non-
* conformists, and excommunicated persons.'
From Hampshire come three representatives viz., Richard Batche-
laur, Isaac Chauncy, and Samuel Tomlyns.
7. RICHARD BATCHELAUR.
Richard Batchelaur comes from the northern borders of the county,
where it abuts on Berks.
There is something so firm and characteristic in the handwriting of
the memoranda which bear Richard Batchelaur's name, and especially in
his signature ; there is also something so fresh and forceful alike in their
substance and their form that we cannot resist the impression that his
personality was original and strong.
Calamy has little to tell us. In dealing with Somersetshire, he
merely gives him as one of the ejected in that county. ' CAMLEY [R]
'MR. RICHARD BATCHELOUR.' (III. 181) But we learn more from
Foster's 'Alumni Oxonienses,' viz., that Richard Batchelar (so he
spells his surname) was the son of John Batchelar of ' Ashmersworth co :
' Southton ' in more modern phrase, of Ashmansworth in the county of
Hampshire. Though of substance enough to give his son a University
education, John Batchelaur was not heraldically one of the county
'gentry' ; and so he is described in the College books as 'pleb.' Richard
was born 1620, and matriculated from Lincoln College, Oxford, at the age
of sixteen. He graduated B.A., June 9, 1649 > anc ^ m T ^53 was appointed
Rector of Camley, Somerset, in the northern part of the county
The Indulgence Documents 315
between Wells and Pensford. But his influence on that district must
have been specially strong and deep. For in the Episcopal Returns for
1669, a Conventicle is reported at Camley, as actually held in the Parish
Church. Seven years after his ejectment the Puritan party is strong
enough to hold Nonconformist services in the Church and pulpit vacated
by him ! Thence he was ejected in 1662; when he returned to Ash-
manshurst to live with his father.
But he could be neither silent nor inactive. For, seven years later,
we learn (from the Conventicle Returns made 1669) that he was one
of the preachers at Newbury, and away north at East Ilsley, both in
Berkshire; though his name does not occur amongst the * Heads and
i Teachers' in Hampshire. The family name appears in the Returns
from the Basingstoke Deanery ; where one Conventicle is reported in
Kingscleare- Woodlands as 'Kept at one Nicholas Batchellor's house.'
But the Conventicle is one of Quakers, whose numbers are ' not knowne.'
*The chiefe person that frequents this & all other meetings is one Henry
* Duckett, his Father a man of good estate the rest of meane Quality.' *
The only Head or ' Teacher ' of it being ' Andrew Pyke the sonne of
* one Pyke a Shoomaker att Thacham.' [R. 261 . ]
Evidently, therefore, his friends in Nonconformity are northward
over the border in Berks, rather than in his native county.
The particulars given of those Conventicles in which he preached
are of unusual interest. They were both in the Arch-Deaconry of
Berks.
At Newbury ('Newbery' it is spelt) (R. 239), the Conventicle
with which he was connected is the first of no less than five Conventicles
which are reported. It was held 'at M r Bond's house, morning &
* Evening on Sundays, but since removed to severall houses. They are
i Presbyterians who gather there, to the number of 600 ordinarily at
' least, Ordinary persons, as to Qualitie ' ; 'all but M r Rog r Knight's
' wife ; and the teachers include ' M r Rich: Bachiler.' They are
given thus : * M r Benjamin Woodbridge ' (the minister ejected from
Newbury), <M r Rich: Bachiler (sic), Mr Thomas Black of Chute, M r
* Burges of Marlborough, M r Hen Dent of Ramsbury, and M r Tames
' (James) of Stanes.' [Nor can I refrain from quoting the note appended
by him who gives in the Report.] 'These meetings consists (sic) of
* such as have beene ingaged (as generally the whole towne was) in y e late
' warre ag l the King; And their abetto rs are such as have been ejected
4 upon y e Act for Regulating Corporacons.' Then follows still on
(R. 239/0 the report for East Ilsley. There a Conventicle is held ' in a
* Barne of Thomas Cheesmans,' composed of ' Vulgar people from divers
' parishes ' ; its ' Teachers ' being the householder, ' Thomas Cheesman,
4 an Excommunicate person, and one Bachel r of Hampshire ' [clearly our
Richard Batchelaur.]
All this is abundantly confirmed by the licence-memoranda of three
* In 1672 he was one of the signatories of a Petition [321 (321)] for Richard
Avery to preach there, in William Jones's house ; and in the Consistory Court
Records at Winchester Cathedral we find him 'presented ' (for non-attendance, etc.)
on March 8, 1677, when he was fined 7 ; on November 22, 1678, when he was
* warned' ; and on May 2, 1679, when he was excommunicated.
316 Detailed and Expository
years later (1672). There are four in his own neat forcible handwriting,
three of them bearing his signature ; and he asks and obtains licences
not alone for himself, but for a friend across the border in Newbury.
(i) The first [321 (107)] is endorsed : ' Batchelour's note,' and reads :
* Richard Batchelaur prayeth for a Licence to performe all Ministeriall
Offices at his owne Houses within the Rectory of Eastwoodhay and
Ashmansworth in the County of Soutn, Master of Arts, Presbyterian ;
as likewise at any Place which is already or shall at any time hereafter
bee allowed by the King's Most Excellent Majestic for Religious
Meetings.
' Edward Fanner of Newbery in the County of Berks Presbyterian
prayeth a License to bee granted by the King's Most excellent Ma tie for
performance of all Ministeriall Offices at his owne House there, or at
any other place allowed as is abovesaid. Hee the sd Ed: Fanner is
Presbyterian.
' Both to bee waited for by the said
'RICHARD BATCHELAUR.'
(ii) The second is a separate application for himself.
321 (108) ' A Licence for M r Richard Batchelaur, Master of Arts,
Presbyterian, to performe all Gospell Ministeriall Acts in his owne
Houses and in any Meeting Places already granted or to bee granted by
the King's most Excellent Majestic for the exercise of God's worship, is
humbly desired
'RICHARD BATCHELAUR.'
' Purposeth (under God) to waite for the same, but prayeth dispatch with
convenient expedition.'
The third, not signed
(iii) 321 (109).
' Batchelaur At Eastwoodhay ) J_T t L-
a Teacher Ashmansworth J
Fanner
A Teacher
At Newbery in Berkshire '
(iv) The last both dated and signed shows his efforts crowned
with success.
321 (110).
'May 13: 1672
Received Batchelaurs Person & place.
Received Fanners Person & Place
By mee
RICHARD BATCHELAUR.'
As unfortunately none of these are dated except the last, it is im-
possible to determine the intervals, if any, which elapsed between their
presentation. At first glance there is an air of peremptory impatience
The Indulgence Documents 317
in the footnote in 321 (107) : ' Both to be waited for,' etc. It looks a
little like a ' stand and deliver ' note presented to the Whitehall officials,
as though this resolute applicant were determined that the licences should
be made out while he waited in the office ; and that he had told them that,
God helping him, 'under God' he would not leave the office without
the licences.
But second thoughts suggest a less 'categorical imperative.' It
clearly means this only : that he had come up to London from Hamp-
shire for this special purpose, and was determined to wait in town,
until he could get the licences, and carry them back with him. So that
there may have been an interval of some few days between the first
request for both 321 (107) and the second, for his own [321 (108)].
The third looks like a supplemental memorandum supplying simply
the points with which the licence-forms had to be filled in, concisely
summarizing 321 (107). And the fourth is the acknowledgment of the
actual receipt of the Licences on the I3th of May.
Now one thing we do know viz., that they were made out the very
day he acknowledges their receipt. They are entered in E. (102), and
the entries read (they are the first four entries on that page) :
'The howse of Rich: Batchelour in the Rectory of Eastwoodhay &
Ashmansworth in Southampton. Presb. Meeting Place. 13 May
4 Licence to Rich: Batchelour to be a Pr. Teacher in his howse in the
Rectory of Eastwoodhay & Ashmansworth Southampton. 13 May
' The House of Edw: Fanner in Newbury, Berks Pr. Meeting Place.
13 May
' Licence to Edw. Fanner to be a Pr. Teacher in his howse in Newbury,
Berks. 13 May'
So that one of two things happened. Either, by good fortune, he
made his last visit in the afternoon of the day in which the Licences had
been signed and dated ; or, he called early in the day when he presented
321 (108) ; and finding them still unmade, he simply waited until they
could be produced. The I3th being on a Monday, he may have left
321 (107) on the previous Friday or Saturday. Anyway it was on
Monday, the I3th of May, that he received the precious documents for
his friend Fanner and himself, and returned home for nine brief months
to exercise his * ministerial gifts and offices,' without fear of interference,
from bailiff, constable, or Justice of the Peace.
Was it another member of this family who, as Calamy tells us,
(I. 299) was ejected from Eton ? He gives us 'John Batchiler, M.A.,
' Vice-Provost, of Eton College : of Emanuel College, Cambridge.' The
name is so uncommon as naturally to suegest he was a brother of
Richard.
One thing is pretty certain, that the Walter Bachiler who is one of
the twenty signatories of ' The humble Petition ' [321 (321)] ' of divers
' of y e inhabitants of y e Parish of Kings cleare in y e county of South-
* ampton,' for licenses to Richard Averie to be a Presbyterian Teacher
in 'an house appertaineing to M r William Jones,' is one of his near
kinsmen. [Kingscleare is not more than three or four miles from
Richard's home in Ashmansworth.]
318 Detailed and Expository
That the property in the two adjacent parishes of Kastwoodhay and
Ashmansworth, which Richard inherited from his father, was a valuable
one, is shown by the Returns of the Hearth tax. Each of the houses is
much larger than any other assessed in these parishes; and his father
must have died soon after he had retired from Gamely, as the houses are
assessed in his name and not in that of his father. There is little doubt
that in going up to London he would cross the Hampshire border to
Newbury and then traverse the fifty-six miles of the great high road to
the Metropolis through Reading and Windsor or Staines, and by Houn-
slow and Chiswick, Hammersmith and Kensington to Charine; Cross
and Whitehall.
8. ISAAC CHAUNCY.
The second Hampshire pilgrim is Isaac Chauncy from Andover.
His sphere of regular work was confined to North- West Hants, but
his sphere of friendly service crossed the county border into Wilts, at
Newton Tony.
Were we to judge the influence and service of Isaac Chauncy by
the number of licence-memoranda in his handwriting, we should
probably be over-estimating them. We have no less than eight, but
only one is a Receipt [321 (90)] ; and that shows that he actually
secured and took away with him only four licences : two for Wilts, and
two for Hants. Of the seven application-memoranda, moreover, two
viz., 320 (273), and 320 (274) are practically repeats, and were probably
put in at the same time as duplicates ; and the same may be said of two
others 320 (275) and 320 (276) so that the seven are reduced
practically to five effectives viz., 320 (206), 320 (207), 320 (272),
320 (273-4), and 320 (275-6), showing that not more than six visits
were paid to Whitehall to lodge the eight memoranda.
But they reveal a very strong personal element, which is explained
largely by the character of Chauncy's career.
Isaac Chauncy was the eldest of six sons of a remarkable man,
Charles Chauncy by name, who was for some years Puritan minister of
Ware in Hertfordshire. His Puritanism, however, brought him into
such trouble that he emigrated (like so many more) to New England.
There his signal ability soon brought him into influence, and he became
President of Harvard College, occupying that position during the whole
of the period so troublous to Nonconformists in the Old Country, and
dying there only a year before the Indulgence was declared. Several of
his sons were distinguished like himself by their skill, both as physicians
and as speakers.
Isaac was one of them, and Ichabod was another. Both of them
settled in the West of England : Ichabod as a physician in Bristol,
Gloucester ; and Isaac as a minister in Woodborough, east of Devizes,
in Wilts. From Woodborough, Isaac suffered ejectment in 1662, and
thereafter he removed to Hampshire, labouring at Andover,* having
* That he had retired to Andover very soon after his ejectment is made probable
by the fact that as early as May, 1664, he was ' presented ' at Winchester for non-
conformity ' . . . Chancey de Andover.'
The Indulgence Documents 319
gathered a Congregational Church there, and afterwards for a time in
conjunction with Samuel Sprint ministering to a Union Church or
Presbyterians and Congregational ists, though both ministers seem to
have been Presbyterians.
About a month or six weeks after the appearance of the Indulgence
Chauncy came up to London to secure licences for himself and his
friends.
The first application he put in [320 (206)] was dated * April 27,
' 1672,' and was for eight licences. Two of them were for Wilts
County, but for Newton Tony, not far from the Hampshire border ; the
rest were for Hampshire two for Longparish, one for Wherwell
(' Horwell '), two for Longstock, and one for Andover ; but none of
these are for himself.
The second application paper 320 (207) was for twelve, included
the same two for Wilts, and four of the six for Hants ; but this paper
contained also six others for the same county, all centring in Andover,
and amongst these were two for himself. The phrasing of his claim is
a little puzzling. It is :
' M r Isaac Chancy of Estonton neer Andover, Southto '
Of course, the ' Southto ' is for ' Southamptonshire,' or Hants, but
the 'Estonton neer Andover,' is not so easy to identify. It is un-
doubtedly the same with the * Estonto Andover,' which he appends to
his signature of 320 (206). But the only town of the name of Easton
in that north-western corner of Hampshire is Crux Easton, between
Ashmansworth and Woodcott, fully eight or nine miles north of
Andover. So that it is rather a stretching of terms to call it as he does
* neer Andover.' Still, there is a good road between them, andi he may
call it ' Easton by Andover,' to distinguish it from Easton by Win-
chester, which is quite twice as far away. If this is a correct identifica-
tion, he would be quite near to Richard Batehelaur.
This view is supported at any rate, not contradicted by another
application-memorandum, putting in claims for him, and for his friends,
Samuel Sprint and James Brown, but apparently written (and sent to
Whitehall) by some one else. (Was it Samuel Sprint, or James Brown ?)
It is numbered 320 (208) ; is endorsed by Benson * Southampton,'
and reads :
4 Samuel Sprint of Upper Clatford in the County of Sowthampton
being of the Presbiterian Preswaission desier Licence to Preach
4 not appr. In the Towne Hall of Andover in the saeyd County or
in any other Licensed Place
' Isacke Chancy of Easton towne in the sec! County desiers Licence
to preach in his One House or any other Licensed place hee
being of the presbiterian Preswaisson
* James Browne of Lower Clatford in the sed County desiers
Licence to preach in his One House or any other Licensed place
hee being of the Presbiterian Preswaission.'
The curious spelling, so regardless of the etymology as well as the
accustomed orthography of such words as * said,' ' desires,' ' own,' and
320 Detailed and Expository
especially ' persuasion,' seems to rule out the authorship of the cultured
Samuel Sprint, and makes it more probable that James Brown put it in.
The recurrence of the unique spelling of < persuasion ' as < Perswas-
' sion ' in 320 (72), an application put in by Samuel Tomlins, of
Upham, seems to suggest that it was put in by Tomlins.
Then there come a series or group of memoranda in 320, all in
Chauncy's handwriting 272, 273, 274, 275, and 276 all of them
applications.
The first of them is dated May 2nd, and the two licences for himself
and his house are entered as issued on May ist, in E. (55) :
1 Chancy
Pr.
East Town
4 East Town
Pr.
Southampton.
4 The howse of Isack Chancy of Easton Town in South-
4 ton licensed to be a Pr. Meeting Place. I May 72
* License to Isack Chancy to be a Pr. Teacher in his
' howse in Easton Town Southampton, i May 72 ' ;
and there follow on the same page the entries of James Brown's
licences for Lower Clatford ( c Chatford ' it is written), increasing the
probability that the application 320 (208) was put in by James Brown.
[For some strange reason Samuel Sprint's licences were not issued till
the end of June, after the most persistent dunning of the Whitehall
officials.]
Now April 2yth, the date when he put in his first application, was a
Saturday. There were only two ' working days' then between his first
application and the issue of his licences Monday, the 29th, and
Tuesday, the 3Oth. Is it not unlikely, therefore, that Isaac Chauncy
put in 320 (207), the first mem. in which his name appears on the
Monday, and that his application was reinforced by James Browne's
[320 (208)] on Tuesday, so that when he calls on either Wednesday,
May ist, or Thursday, May 2nd, he finds his licences ready, and James
Browne's as well. There is no memorandum of receipt preserved at
the Record Office, so that we are left to conjecture, but I venture to
submit that it is a very natural and probable one. By this time, he has
been commissioned by other brethren, who have heard that he is in
London to try to secure licences for them.
In the first of this series [320 (272)] he asks for three licences for
Wilts and two for Hants.
The Wilts licences are to be for one teacher and two houses in
Marlborough. Now that is a clear memory of his old Wiltshire ministry,
for Marlborough is scarcely five miles from Woodborough, whence he
was ejected. The Hants licences are for a Baptist brother of Stoke for
a place in Whitchurch on the Basingstoke road, nearer to Andover
than < Easton Town.'
320 (273) is undated, repeats the applications for Marlborough and
for Whitchurch; adds one for his friend, Samuel Sprint, of Upper
Clatford ; and as Sprint's former application for the Town Hall has been
rejected (it is marked in the margin of 320 (208) * not appr.'), he
substitutes for it an application for ' The Farm House in Newstreet, in
The Indulgence Documents 321
4 Andover,' as a meeting-place for both Presbyterians and Independents.
320 (274) is merely a duplicate of 320 (273). It is doubtful whether it
is in Chauncy's hand.
The next shows that his patience is being tried. He has paid four
visits at least to Whitehall for his friend Sprint without result, and in
this 320 (275), after enumerating seven licences desired, all in Hamp-
shire those for Samuel Sprint being put first he appends the note :
4 These have been long waited for
<By me Is : CHANCY.'
320 (276) is simply a replica of the above [320 (275)] , only in an
abbreviated form. Neither of these are dated, but I should put them
some days later than 320 (272), say May yth or 8th, or his complaint
would scarcely be justified even in the most impatient enthusiast.
And now we come to the last of his memoranda [321 (90)], the one
Receipt in the whole. It is dated May loth, and shows that he is able
at last to take away the six licences which he had applied for in the very
first memorandum he presented [320 (206)] viz., the two for Newton
Tony, Wilts, and four for Hants ; two persons and two houses in Long-
parish and Longstock. The entries of these are dated May 8th
(Wednesday), which is nine days after they were applied for, and he
carries them off two days later, May loth (Friday). Beside these, another
for which he had applied at the same time viz., that for Mr. Hopkins'
house in Wherwell was issued May 8th (the same day as those which
he took away on the loth); but someone else must have called and
received it for him. He had now been full three weeks in London, and
he had to return to Hampshire without his friend Sprint's licences.
Indeed, spite his efforts on Sprint's behalf, Sprint's licences were not
issued till long after this. His personal licence was granted June 29th,
but the licence for his house not for a month later, July 25th.
Calamy tells us that 'sometime after the recalling of Charles's
4 Indulgence,' he came to London with the design of practising as a
physician ; but that, after some years of ' practice,' he took to < preach-
' ing ' again, being chosen as the successor of Mr. Clarkson, who himself
had succeeded Dr. John Owen. This pastorate he maintained for four-
teen years, 1687-1701 ; for part of the time being Tutor to 'the Dis-
4 senting Academy in London.'
It is worthy of note that Isaac Chauncy evidently changed his views
on Church polity, and that very late in life. For some years after his
ejectment he was content to be regarded a Presbyterian. During his
pastorate at Andover he called himself such; and when in 1672 he
applied for and obtained licences at Whitehall, it was as a Presbyterian
Teacher that he put in his application and secured his licence. It is
questionable whether his views even then were very strong for Presby-
terianism, for he worked earnestly for the union of his Church with the
other Andover Church, that of the Congregationalists, though in vain.
He was quite as eager or willing to secure licences for Congregationalists
as for Presbyterians. After leaving Hampshire, his first thirteen or
fourteen years' residence in London as a physician gave him greater
21
322 Detailed and Expository
freedom to reconsider the whole problem, and when he resumed the
ministry, it was to succeed Clarkson, a man of * moderate principles'
(but like Clarkson's predecessor a Congregationalist), and it was after he
had been pastor just ten years that he published a Congregational
Manual, entitled ' The Divine Institution of Congregational Churches.'
* London: Printed for Nathaniel Hiller, at the Princes Arms, in Leaden-
Hall Street, over against St. Mary Ax, 1697.'
9. SAMUEL TOMLINS.
The third pilgrim from Hants is Samuel Tomlins from Central
Hampshire.
This is the ' Samuel Tomlyns, M.A.,' of Calamy (II. 263), from
whom we learn that he was a native of Newbury, Berks ; was educated
at Trinity College, Cambridge ; was presented to the Rectory of
Crawley in 1655, and was thence ejected in 1662. Crawley is some
seven miles north-west of Winchester. Calamy says that ' he after-
4 wards preached privately as he had opportunity till he was called to a
4 congregation at Winchester.'
To this, the Return of Bishop Morley in 1669 bears witness, for he
is there reported [R. 263] as preaching to a Conventicle in Winchester.
It is there described as a Conventicle of Presbyterians meeting ' Att the
4 house of one Jones' in the parish of 'St. Michaels in the Soke at
4 Winton,' and he is mentioned as one of two < Heads & Teachers,'
under the description < Mr. Tomlins formerly Intruder att Crawley,' in
association with * Mr. Marshall, a violent Nonconformist ' (doubtless
W.M. ejected from Hursley).
Apparently, however, he was not living in Winchester, but in
Upham, a place about as distant south-east from Winchester as Crawley
is north-west ; and in 1672 he came up to London specially to procure
licences for himself, and places in which to preach. His application is
rather original in form. It is contained in 320 (72), is endorsed by
Benson, ' Southampton,' and reads :
' Samuel Tomlins, Late Minister & of the Presbiterian Perswassion
Living in the pish of Upham in the County of Southamton desiers the
Benefit of Our Most Gratious Majesties Declaration for Granting
Liberty to preach in the Howse of Ann Complin widdow in the Citty
of Winchester and Over the Markett House of the sayde Citty and in
Order theire unto desiers a License for the same.'
His application is not dated, so that we have no means of judging
whether the Whitehall officials were prompt or not in their response to
it. But it must have been soon after the issue of the Declaration, since
the licences which were both granted were dated April I3th that is,
less than a month after the Declaration appeared. They are entered on
E. (19) and E. (20) :
(19). < Licence to Samuel Tomlins to be a Presb. Teacher in
y e howse of Ann Complin in Winton & over
Winton the Markett place of that Citty. 13 Apr. 1672.
The Indulgence Documents 323
E(20).
Winton
Pr.
Complins howse.
The howse of Ann Complin in Winton & over the
Markett howse of the sd Citty licensed to be a Pr.
Meeting place. 13 Apr. 1672.'
With regard to the ' place ' or < places ' in Winchester, in which he
desired licence to preach : the expression used by him in his application
is a little ambiguous. 'The howse of Ann Complin in Winton &
* over the Markett howse of the s d Citty ' may mean either ' only one
4 place,' the two phrases following the name ' Complin ' being only a
two-fold description of Ann Complin's house viz., that it was in the
City of Winchester, and was over the Market House. But the words
may also mean two places viz., Widdow Complin's house in the
City, and the Room or Hall over the Market House. I am inclined
to think that Tomlins intended the latter. The Whitehall officials
astutely drew out the licence in exactly the terms of the applica-
tion, and by implication the one place-licence implies that they took
his words to mean c one ' place.
Samuel Tomlins, however, did not continue long to live in Upham.
He came to live in Winchester itself. Of that fact we have indisputable
evidence in the Records of the Consistory Court in Winchester Cathe-
dral. They show him in the year 1679 to be alike a resident in
St. Thomas's Parish in that city, and to be the object of very persistent
persecution. His name appears first among the presentments for
Nonconformity, May 2, 1679 (in the form apparently of persistent
absence from the Parish Church), when he is fined seven shillings :
4 .... Tomlins, po ae S cti Thomae Winton . . . vij s '
This seems, however, to have been far from the first offence, for the
note is added : c paid hitherto for dismissions to M r Bramston.'
The sentence is repeated, too, at Courts held a week later, May 9 ;
a week after that, May 16 when the entry is :
4 1679. May 1 6. . . . Tomlins de Civitate Winton Renovatur
deer. vij s ';
and a fortnight after that there is a similar entry for May 30.
He is persistent in his offence ; and his persecutors are persistent in
their prosecutions ; for he is presented again twice in June the second
time on June 27. But beyond this date they seem unwilling to accept
mere fines, and in the beginning of July they excommunicate him,
following up his excommunication two months later by his arrest and
imprisonment. This the following entries clearly attest :
4 1 679. July 4.
' Samuelem Tomlins de Civitate Winton
* Dims pronuntiavit eum contumacem, et in pcenam contumaciae
suae
c excom fore decrevit
< M r Henricus Andeson
4 ctcus praedict
c eundem Samuelem Tomlins excommunicavit,
' in scripto prob 1 in schedula.'
324 Detailed ana Expository
And on September 17, 1679, of a list of seven for whose arrest z
warrant is issued, the second is Samuel Tomlins :
' Decernitur significavit pro Corporis captione
' Ricfti Avery
* Samuelis Tomlins
<&c'
So that the last glimpse we have or Samuel Tomlins is as a faithful con-
fessor, willing to suffer fines and imprisonment for conscience' sake.*
V. SOUTH-WESTERN GROUP.
From the South- Western group we have six : three from Dorset,
and three from Devon. None come up from Wilts, or Somerset, or
Cornwall.
i. From Dorset the three are : Richard Harris, from Shaftsbury,
on the borders of Wilts; Joshua Churchill, from Dorchester, Central
South ; and John Hodder, from Hawkchurch, its extreme western
limit.
i. RICHARD HARRIS.
Richard Harris, of Shaftsbury.
If I am right in placing him in the ' noble band,' he will be the
seventh Puritan layman who journeys to London to secure his licence
or, at any rate, visits Whitehall, and takes his licence away with him.
I do so place him, on the strength of a note appended to 320 (114).
This paper is an application - memorandum, endorsed by Benson
4 Dorset and Devon ', put in by John Hickes, who signs the paper,
appending to his name the date ' 17 Ap: 72' (/.*., only a little more
than a month after the Declaration of Indulgence had been published).
The application is for four licences in Devon and two in Dorset.
The two in Dorset are both for Shaftsbury the one a general licence
for a Mr. William Eastman (who had been ejected from Everley,
Wilts), and the other for the house of this Puritan gentleman, Richard
Harris.
These two licences are entered on E. (20) as made out and issued
that same day. They are the first two entries on that page :
' Shafsberry
Pr.
Harris howse
' Eastman
Pr.
Shaffsberry
' The howse of Richard Harris in Shafsberry, Dorsetshire
licensed for a Presb. Meeting place. 17. Apr. 72.
* Licence to W m Eastman to be a Presb. Teacher in any
allowed place. 17. Apr. 72. of Shafsberry Dor-
setshire. 17. Apr. 72.'
*His fellow 'sufferer,' Richard Avery, had been ejected from someplace (un-
known to Calamy) in Berkshire [Cal. i. 296], in 1669, was chaplain to Mrs. Richard
Cromwell in Hursley (R. 263) ; and in 1672, on the petition of twenty of the
inhabitants of Kingscleare, was licensed to preach in the house of William Jones
there.
*
The Indulgence Documents 325
The four licences in Devon, applied for on the same memorandum,
are also entered on E. (30), and follow these two without a gap. But
they are not issued till the following day, April 18. I cannot help
attaching special significance, therefore, to the note to which I have
referred. A star placed between the Christian and surname of Richard
Harris (on the last line of the application-memorandum) refers to a
footnote, which reads thus : ( * given him that night.'
Of course, it might ' possibly ' (apart from dates) refer to the whole
of the licences asked for in 320 (114), and mean that they were all
given to John Hickes late the same day on which the application was
made. The dates of issue of the licences preclude that supposition. It
is only the two Shaftsbury licences which were made out and issued
April 17 the same day on which John Hickes put in the application.
So that it could be only these two which could be ' given out ' that same
day. As the asterisk, therefore, is affixed to Richard Harris's name, it
is most natural to make the ' him ' of the note to apply to Richard
Harris; and as Mr. William Eastman's licence was ready also, it is
most probable that Eastman's licence would be given out to Richard
Harris at the same time that night, the late evening of Wednesday,
April 17.
The interpretation I put upon these data, then, is the following.
Both Eastman, the preacher, and Richard Harris, the householder, had
put their claims into the hands of John Hickes. John Hickes had
acted with his usual promptitude. Some occasion had arisen, or oppor-
tunity had been given, for Richard Harris to come up to London, so
that late in the afternoon he had called at Whitehall ; and either
while he waited for them, or when he called a little later, these two
Shaftsbury licences were 'given him that night.' He would return
with them to Shaftsbury by the first Salisbury coach through
Hounslow, Staines, Basingstoke, Whitchurch, and Andover (a run of
eighty-one miles), and on to Shaftsbury (another nineteen) a hundred
miles in all.
2. JOSHUA CHURCHILL.
He comes all the way from Dorchester, about twenty miles further
than Richard Harris, from Shaftsbury. The first part of the way (about
forty miles) on the main road from Bridport, through Blandford to
Salisbury, and thence to London.
Calamy can tell us little about him (II. 129), save that he was
ejected from Fordington, a suburb of Dorchester, on the road out to
Winterbourne Came ; and that some time after his ejectment he assisted
Mr. Benn at Dorchester, and succeeded him there. The State Papers
inform us that in 1663-64 he, with four other ejected ministers, had been
* with many other factious persons of Dochester comitted to prison on sus-
* picon of having an hand in the late treasonable plott,' and these 'Original
'Records' largely supplement Calamy's information. In 1665-66 the
Bishop of Bristol reports of him (R. 315) ' M r Churchill, late Vicar
* of Fordington ' that he ' is now Resident at Compton Valence afore-
' said ' : the last word referring to the further fact reported in the pre-
326 Detailed and Expository
ceding line that Mr. Thorne, late Rector of Radipole, was also
residing there. For a time, then, he lived in retirement, as a neighbour
of his fellow-sufferer, Mr. Thorne at Compton Valence, and now
East Compton, on the old Roman Road, about seven miles west of
Dorchester. Though in retirement, however, he is not inactive. Three
or four years later, in 1669, he is reported (R. 243) as one of the
preachers at a Conventicle of ' 100 or 200,' held ' At M r Thomas Graves
'and his sonnes house' in Donhead St. Andrew, right over the north-
eastern border of the county, beyond Shaftsbury, in Wilts ; as well as
still at work among his old friends (R. 247) preaching at ' a constant
' Conventicle ' in Fordington of two hundred persons. Here he is
associated with ' M r Benn,' who had been ejected from Dorchester.
Probably, therefore, it was in this mutual service at Fordington that he
was preparing to take up the'work at Dorchester as Mr. Benn's assistant.
When the Indulgence was declared in 1672, the same energy which
impelled him to evangelistic labour beyond the limits of his county drove
him up to London, within a month from its publication, to secure
licences for himself and his friends. Although the earliest memo-
randum that bears his name is undated, the date of the issue of the
licence which he therein applied for shows that he must have travelled
up to London either the end of the week preceding Sunday, April 14,
or on the Monday or Tuesday following it.
There are two memoranda of application referring to licences for
himself and a friend of his viz., 320 (116) and 320 (117) ; and though
only the latter bears his name, it is difficult to resist the impression that
he wrote (or, at least, presented) them both at Whitehall on Tuesday,
April 1 6.
320 (116) is endorsed by Benson ' Dorsetshire,' and reads :
' M r Joshua Churchill Teacher, of the Congregationall way.
* The meeting place at his own house in Dorchester in Dorset-
shire & at M r Benjamin Davenish's house in Fordington
adjoyning.'
320 (117) reads :
4 The house of Benjamin Devenish in Fordington in the County of
dorsett for a meeting place for the Congregationall perswation.
CHURCHILL.'
The licences are granted immediately, and are entered as issued
April 17, 1672, on E. (29), in a form which is unusual, and which
shows that Churchill's own separate application for his friend's house in
Fordington has produced its impression on the official mind. The two
houses (his own in Dorchester and Benjamin Devenish's in Fordington)
are mentioned together in the Entry for the place-licence as well as in
the personal, instead of being entered as two separate licences (though I
imagine the two must have been actually issued) :
1 Licence to Josuha Churchill to be a Congregationall
Teacher in his owne howse in Dorchester & Beri-
' Churchill
Congr.
Dorchester
jamin Devenish's in Fordington. 17. Apr. 72.
The Indulgence Documents 327
' Dorchester
Congr.
Churchills
howse
The bowses of Josua Churchill in Dorchester & Ben-
jamin Devenish's howse in Fordington to be a
Congregationall Meeting place. 17. Apr. 72.'
These three licences were all ready for him, then, on the evening
of Wednesday, April 17. He called at Whitehall the next day for
320 (143), a composite memorandum the first part an application, and
the second, a receipt, signed in full ' Joshua Churchill ' is dated
4 Apr. 1 8, 72. Apparently, he did not think the licences he had
already applied for could yet be ready : and the officials do not trouble
to look them out and give them to him. So he goes away without
them, merely leaving applications for two London brethren, and taking
with him four licences for his own West Country but only for
Somerset and Gloucester, not for Dorset ; for which he appends the
curiously indefinite receipt :
* Receaved four Licences for Bristol, & Temple :Coome
<p me
* JOSHUA CHURCHILL.
'Apr. 1 8 72.'
They evidently were the licences for John Thompson, in John
Harris's house, in Castle Street, Bristol ; and for John Eaton in James
White's house, in Temple Comb, in Somerset entered on pp. E. (22)
and E. (23 ), dated April 1 6 all of them Congregationalists. So were the
two London brethren, who cannot go so far as Whitehall themselves,
but must get a brother all the way from Dorchester to go for them !
The application is in Churchill's handwriting, and is sufficiently peculiar
in form and spelling to cite :
4 Pray Licence for Francis Johnson M r Arts who is of the per-
swassion comonly called In. &c to preach in his owne house in
St. Andrews parish Holborne
< The same for Wittm Beale in his house in St. Giles Cripplegate
of y e same perswassion &c.'
Francis Johnson had been Master of University College, Oxford
(Cal. I. 257), and one of Oliver's chaplains. After his ejectment
he had retired to c the obscurity ' of London, living c in one of his own
< houses in Gray's-Inn-Lane, London ' (Calamy). His licences, entered
on E. (194), amply confirm Calamy's statement. They read :
' The howse of Francis Johnson in Grayes Inn, London Ind.
4 Licence to Fran: Johnson to be an Ind. Teacher in his own
howse at Grays Inn Lane, London.'
William Beal had been ejected from Stow in the Wold, Gloucester-
shire (Cal. II. 254), and all Calamy has to say of him is that < he died
' in London not long after his ejectment.' Evidently Calamy's informant
was wrong in his chronology. He applies for, and through Joshua
Churchill receives, licence to preach in his own house in Cripplegate
' ten years after his ejectment.'
328 Detailed and Expository
The licences are entered E. (188) and E. (194), only in the former
his name is incorrectly spelt ' Beat.'
E. (188) :
4 Licence to W m Beat to be an Ind. Teacher in his howse in
Cripplegate, London.'
E. (194) :
4 The howse of W m Beale in Cripplegate, London Ind.'
His will, too, shows that his family belonged to Gloucester City,
and that he was living seven years after obtaining his licences in
' 3 King's Court, Whitecross Street.' It was proved April 14, 1679.
As these undated entries have other entries dated June 29 on the
pages between them E. (190), E. (191), and E. (192) it is pretty
evident that Joshua Churchill's application remained unattended to for
ten or eleven weeks.
He appears to have remained in London some time. At any
rate, it was not till nearly a fortnight had passed that he received his
own licences and that of his friend Benjamin Devenish. It was on
May Day he went, and he seems to have met in Sir Joseph Williamson's
Office two other stalwarts in this matter of securing licences under the
Indulgence Richard Steele (Philip Henry's friend) and James Innes,
junior (the Nonconformists' universal provider). At any rate, the paper
320 (242), on which he acknowledges the receipt of his licences, is used
also for a similar purpose by them both, as is testified by the two signed
lists which follow his.*
It would also appear from 320 (177) and 320 (182) that some
one had applied for another Congregational meeting-place in Fording-
ton, and for two licences for the Congregationalist Edward Dammer, of
Winterbourne Stickland (between Blandford and Dorchester) ; and he
takes these two latter with his own, as well as two for Daniel Bull, of
Stoke Newington. It seems a ' far cry ' from Dorset to Stoke Newington
a northern suburb of London. But the connection was a real one.
Daniel Bull must have been a friend of Edward Buckler, who had been
ejected from Bradford Abbas, for in 1669 he is reported (R. 247) as
preaching with him to ' Severall Conventicles uncertaine,' c of 60 or 80,'
' At the house of Michael Hervey Esq r a Justice of the Peace ' in the
parish of 'Yetminster & Clifton' which borders on that of Bradford
Abbas. . . . Was Joshua Churchill staying with Daniel Bull ?
Joshua Churchill would not prolong his stay much in London after
receiving his licences, on May i. But he did not leave the Whitehall
Office before he had left three separate application-memoranda for three
Dorset friends. The first [320 (264)] was for his colleague and chief
* The form of the receipt, too, bears incidental testimony to the pressure of busi-
ness at Whitehall in this licence department on that May Day, 1672. He receives
the licences, not from Sir Joseph Williamson nor even from Francis Benson, his
chief clerk, but from a subordinate, Mr. Reynolds. It is signed: 'Rece d of
1 M r Alexander Raynolds this first day of May 1672 the Licenses for the places &
' persons above menconed. I say, rec d by me, Joshua Churchill.'
The Indulgence Documents 329
in the work in Dorchester. It is endorsed by Benson ' Dorset,' and
reads :
< M r William Ben of Dorchester of the Congregationall perswation,
at the house of Philip Stansby in Dorchester in the County of
Dorset '
The second [320 (265)] was for another Congregationalist of
Dorchester :
4 M r Benjamin Way of Dorchester of the Congregationall perswa-
tion for the house of M r William Hayden in Dorchester in the
County of Dorset '
And the third is for a third Congregational brother, of East Morden,
on the ridge between Beer Regis and Wimborne Minster [320 (266)] :
' M r Philip Lamb of the Congregationall perswation, for his owne
house at East Morden in the County of Dorset '
These memoranda are not dated, but the licences were all issued
that same May Day. William Ben's are entered on E. (57), Benjamin
Way's on E. (61), and Philip Lamb's on E. (62) ; and James Innes,
junior, called for them, probably on the 2nd or 3rd of May, for he
acknowledges the receipt of these six and fifty-one others on one
memorandum, numbered 320 (295) ; which is placed together with
seven other undated memoranda between 320 (287), which is dated
4 May y e 2nd 1672,' and a letter, 320 (296), which is dated 'May 3 d
4 1672.'
Probably, therefore, we may picture Joshua Churchill calling at
Whitehall early with Richard Steele and James Innes, junior receiv-
ing his six licences, and leaving his three application-memoranda ;
returning to Mr. Daniel Bull's at Stoke Newington to leave his two
licences with his host, and the following day returning to Dorchester
by stage coach the way he came.
One other fact about him is revealed by these documents viz., that
he was one of the ministers who signed ' The humble acknowledgment
* of severall Nonconforming ministers of the County of Dorset ' [321 (77)]
which, from the endorsement in Francis Benson's hand, was presented
Friday, May 10. The names of his Dorchester friends stand high up
upon the list. His own chier's name, indeed, < W m Ben,' stands second ;
and Benjamin Way's fifth ; but he signs last in the middle column of
the three columns of autograph signatures which are appended to the
acknowledgment.
That, again, makes it the more probable that he returned to Dor-
chester soon after May I ; and that as soon as he had personally
delivered their licences to his friends in Dorchester, he would set them
and other Dorset Nonconformists upon the project of sending up this
* Acknowledgment ' to the King, bringing word from what he had
heard himself at Whitehall that such an expression of gratitude and
loyalty would be specially welcome at Court.
330 Detailed and Expository
And so we catch glimpses of his fortnight in London, from about the
middle of April to the first week in May.
Was he any relative of Awnsham Churchill, the publisher of
Locke's 4 Letter of Toleration ' ? The two brothers Awnsham and
John Churchill carrying on business (1689) at the 'Black-Swan, in
4 Ave-Mary-lane, near Pater-Noster-Row,' published Locke's Second and
Third Letters, and such books as Rushworth's c Historical Collections,'
Bishop Hall's Works, Dr. Burnet's 4 Travels,' &c. They were also
associated with Abel Swale, as publishers of the valuable series of County
Maps by Rob 1 Morden. Each map has this note affixed at foot :
fAbel Swale
4 Sold byx Awnsham &
(John Churchill '
The Town Records of Dorchester show in a way, I believe, to be
quite unique the importance in the eyes of the Corporation of the
licences which Nonconformist ministers in the town had secured.
Only a week after the Acknowledgment had been sent up to the King
every one of the licensees came to the Town Hall and exhibited their
licences, so that all the Town officials might know that they had now
the King's authority to meet for worship, according to the dictates of
their conscience, outside the parish churches and in methods other than
those prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer. In addition to those,
too, which Joshua Churchill had been instrumental in securing, there
were three which had been obtained by George Hammond (the Presby-
terian), in response to a Petition addressed by ten of the citizens direct
to the King [321 (197^)]. The entries in the Town Records are as
follows :
4 17 May 1672.
* This day M r William Ben pduced his Ma tles Licence to bee a
Teacher of the Congregation allowed by his Ma*y in the Roome
of M r Phillip Stansby in Dorchester. Dat i mo May 1672 for
y e us of such as doe not conforme
4 the same day M r Benjamin Way pduced the like for the house
of M r W m Heydon in Dorch: for y e us of such as doe not
conforme
4 M r Georg Hamon pduce the like for y e Presbiterian pswasion in
any place 4 Aprill 1672 [N.B. The date was really April n,
1672 vide E. (10).]
4 M r Georg Hamon pduceth two other Licenses date the 8 day of
May 1672 one for y e place viz l att M r John West's howse in
Dorch: & John Marsh howse
4 M r Joshua Churchill pduced the like for himselfe a Congregational
teacher in his owne howse in Dorchester.'
The Town Records also give ample proof that Philip Stansby,
whose house was licensed to receive Mr. Ben's congregation, was one of
the most prominent and influential of Dorchester's citizens.
In 1647, October 8, he was chosen 4 Governor of Dorchester
* Hospital.'
The Indulgence Documents 331
In 1654 ne was chosen a Capital Burgess in the place of James
Gould, dispossed.
In 1656 he was made Bailiff, and in 1657 ne was elected Mayor.
In 1660 he acted as Alderman, and in 1661 he was chosen Steward
of the Hospital.
3. JOHN HODDER.
The third man from Dorset was John Hodder.
That is, according to modern maps and modern gazetteers, for he
came from Thorncombe which, according to these, is reckoned in
Dorset. Not so, on the evidence of ancient maps or of these licence-
documents according to which Thorncombe is in Devon, though
Devon * detached,' being cut off from the body of the county by a strip
of Dorset running up almost to Chard, in Somerset.
There is no doubt, however, about his being a Dorset man, both by
birth and by virtue of the sphere of his ministry.
Calamy has little to tell us of him (Cal. II. 130). He simply gives
us Hawkchurch, in Dorset, as the place whence he was ejected, adding
that < after his ejectment ' he usually preached at Mr. Henley's at
Colway House, near Lyme. From Foster's * Alumni Oxonienses '
we know that he was born in 1627 at Beaminster (which was only a
few miles from Thorncombe and Hawkchurch, and, without question,
in Dorset), of which his father, and namesake, was Rector ; that he
matriculated at Wadham College, Oxford, in 1642 ; and, after leaving
1662 (so that he was then a man of thirty-five, in the prime of his
College, was Rector of Hawkchurch, Dorset, till he was ejected in
vigour).
He was a great Loyalist, Calamy tells us, though a strong Puritan, and
a powerful preacher. After his ejectment though Calamy's statement
may be true that he preached often at Colway, just north of Lyme Regis
the Episcopal Returns make it clear that he retired to Thorncombe,
where he had bought or inherited an estate, on which he lived some con-
siderable time. Indeed, he seems to have become the centre of a little
colony of ejected Nonconformist ministers, just as John Hickes did,
first at Saltash, Cornwall, and afterwards at Kingsbridge, Devon. In
1665-66 Seth Ward, Bishop of Exeter, reports him as living there. In
the resume (R. 307), amongst the seventy-three Nonconformist ejected
Ministers he returns as living in his diocese, he reports in c Thorn-
< combe. 27. John Hodder. 28. M r Branker. 29. M r Wakeley &
c 30. M r Trottle '; and in his fuller account of f Nonconformists ' in the
4 Honyton Deanery' (R. 402), he describes him and his friends as
follows :
4 M r John Hodder sometymes minister of Hawkchurch in Dorsett,
now liveing in Thorncomb on his owne demeasne
< M r Branker sometymes minister of Sturminster Newton in Dorsett
teaching schoole in Thornecombe
< M r Wakeley sometymes minister of Laurence Lydiat in Somersett
now liveing in Thornecombe on his own demeasnes
4 M r Trottle sometymes minister in Dorsett now living in Thorne-
combe.'
332 Detailed and Expository
So that with him in this isolated part of County Devon were settled
two brother ministers from Dorset, both from the valley of the Stour
Mr. Trottle, from Spetisbury (Mr. Palmer has been able to supply the
information as to the parish in Dorset whence he was ejected [vide
Index]), and Mr. Branker, from Sturminster Newton (high up the river,
in the neighbourhood of Stalbridge and Shaftsbury), who was ekeing out
a livelihood there by teaching school ; and one from over its northern
border, from Laurence Lydiat (half-way between Williton and Taun-
ton), who, like himself, had bought or inherited a little estate, so as to
make Thornecombe his settled home.
That he did not lay aside his spiritual ministry and was actively
associated with Mr. Wakeley in it we have proof in the Episcopal
Returns of three or four years later. In 1669 Seth Ward's successor
(Anthony Sparrow) reports (R. 185^) three Conventicles in Thorne-
combe one of Quakers, c incosiderable ' in numbers ; and two other of
Presbyterians one held in the house of Edmund Prideaux, Esq. (Pri-
deaux was a great family name in Devon and Cornwall), and the other
in the houses of John Wakeley and John Hodder (whom he describes
as * Noncoformists '), consisting of ' about 100, oftentimes more,' and
ministered to by these two brethren c the said M r Wakely & M r Hodder.'
And now, three years later not two months after the publication
of Charles's Indulgence we find John Hodder coming up to London
early in May, 1672, to secure licences for himself and friends.
He had already commissioned Stephen Ford (of Southwark) to act
for him, and in 320 (56), which Benson endorses ' Ford's note,' the
second item on his list of applications is :
< 2. A Lycence for M r John Hodder of Thorncombe. And for M r
John Wakeley's house in Thorncombe in y e County of Devon.
y e people are of y e presbiterian perswasion '
The licence is not forthcoming ; and we find James Innes, junior,
next taking up their case, and presenting it with that of a lay friend in
Hawkchurch in a long list of thirty-five, in these terms [320 (227)] :
4 M r John Hodder of Thornecombe in Devon. Presb.
his own house there & a house or outhouse belonging to Tho:
Moor Esq r in Hawkchurch in Dorcett'
His old parishioners are evidently anxious to recover his ministry
under the aegis of the Royal Indulgence. But young Innes is not
successful either (the first time of asking), so he puts in another long
list, 321 (20), and Hodder's name heads the list :
< M r John Hodder Presb.
his own house in Thorncombe Devon
a house belonging to Tho: Moore Esq r in Hawkchurch in
Dorcett '
This time the application is successful, for all three of these licences
are granted, and entered as issued May 8, 1672, on E. (78) :
The Indulgence Documents 333
' Licence to John Hodder to be a Pr. Teacher in his howse in
Thornecomb, Devon. 8 May 72.
4 The howse of Thomas More Esq r in Hawk Church Dorsett Pr.
Meeting Place. 8 May 72.
4 The howse of John Hodder in Thornecomb, Devon Pr. Meeting
Place. 8 May 72.'
There is no memorandum of receipt preserved in the Record
Office ; but, as we have an application-memorandum for licences for
West Country friends signed by him, and dated the same day his own
licences were issued, I take it that he had come up to London on the
Monday or Tuesday, May 6 or 7 ; and, calling on Wednesday afternoon
(the 8th), had found them ready, and received them putting in his
application 321 (26) before he left the Office. It is endorsed by
Benson, c Hodder's note.'
It is for one licence for Somerset and four for Dorset. It reads :
* A Licence ffor M r Robte Pinny of Chard parish. Presb: Som r st.
< A Licence ffor M r Edward Dammer of Dorchester. Congr.
' A Licence ffor the house of M rs Dorothy Chaplain in Trinity
pish in Wareham Dors 1 Presb.
* A Licence ffor M r James Hallett of Winterbourne Kingston Dors 1
Presb:
* A Licence ffor the house of M rs Woolfrey in Winterbourne King-
ston for Presb:
4 A Licence for the house of M r John Darner in Cerne, Dors 1 ffor a
meeting, for those of y e Presb:
' Desir'd by mee
<JOHN HODDER
' May y e 8th.'
As we find young Innes taking up several of these cases, and fetch-
ing the licences away from Whitehall when granted over a week
later, it is natural to conclude that John Hodder returned to Thorne-
comb as soon as he had received the licences in which he was most
deeply interested those for himself as a preacher, for his own house
in Thornecomb, and for his friend Mr. Moor in his old parish of
Hawkchurch.
His name appears in the 'Thanks of the Non Conformists Ministers
4 of Dorsett,' which is dated ' 10 May 72 '; and, rather significantly, it is
last on the long list of thirty-eight. Had he returned in time to append
his name just before it was sent up to London ? or, did he hear that it
was coming, and wait in London to sign it there ? His was a long
journey quite twenty-five miles to Dorchester, and thence the same
long ride which Joshua Churchill had taken a week before.
2. From Devon three journeyed up to London : one from Ottery
St. Mary, in the south-east of the county ; one from Kingsbridge, at
the extreme south central ; and one from the extreme north-west. But
the second of this trio John Hickes, from Kingsbridge, took so special
334 Detailed and Expository
a part in what led up to the Declaration, was so active in securing
licences for his friends, and had a character and career altogether so
remarkable, that a special place has been assigned to him.
(i) ROBERT COLLINS.
It was Robert Collins who came up from Ottery St. Mary.
Dr. Calamy gives a very full account of him (II. 74-77). He notes
him as ejected from Tallaton, and says that 'after his ejectment he
'lived at Ottery St. Mary, where he had an estate of about ioo/. per
* ann. He was much respected by the good people of the town and
4 places adjacent, who usually attended on his ministry in the public
' church, and were now desirous to enjoy it in a more private way.
' He preached therefore in his own house, between the morning and
'afternoon service; and usually, with his family, attended the public
' worship in the afternoon.'
In his Return of 1665, Seth Ward, Bishop of Exeter, reports him as
then already living in Ottery St. Mary. In the Summary (R. 307^) he
is noted '19. Rob. Collins. Conventicle hold 1 "'; and in the fuller
Return (R. 399/>) he mentions him first amongst the ' Non-Conformist
' Ministers ' in the Westbeare Deanery. The Bishop's account of him
is far fuller than that of any one else. These are his words :
' M r Robert Collins, sometymes Rector of Tallaton & eiected for
inconformity, lives now in Ottery St. Mary in his owne house neare the
Church, where he keepes Conventicles frequently but especially upon
Sundayes in tyme of divine Service to the Scandall of many ; but for
want of a Justice of the Peace, The Churchwardens or Constables dare
not enter the house to take them, and their privacy is such that they
cannot yet proove enough ag st them to convict them by Lawe ; I am
told he was never at Church in y e tyme of Comon prayer, since the Act
of Conformity, and is a very pertinacious Nonconformist.'
It will be noted that the Bishop's informants give a very much
harsher view of his conduct than Dr. Calamy's. Indeed, the two
accounts do not square. The Bishop's man asserts that he held his
Conventicles during Divine Service in the Church : Dr. Calamy's,
that it was between the morning and afternoon service ; the former
that he was never at church in the time of Common Prayer after 1662,
while the latter says his usual practice was to attend public worship in
the parish church in the afternoon.
In 1669, again, Anthony Sparrow (who had succeeded Seth Ward
in the Diocese of Exeter) returns (R. 285^) two Conventicles in Ottery
St. Mary, the first of which, he reports, as numbering 'about 200,'
consisting * of few gentry, but ma(n)y tradesmen of good note,' as held
* att y e house of Robert Collins a gent, of a good estate,' and the
Teacher in it * y e said Robert Collins being a Non-Conformist minister.'
Calamy says : ' He lived very peaceably till the Conventicle Act took
* place.' It is clear, however, that by this he meant not the First Con-
venticle Act, which was passed in 1664, but the Second which revived
the lapsed Act, in many respects with greater rigour in 1670 : for the
The Indulgence Documents 335
events he so vividly describes (pp. 74 and 75) belong to the months of
September and October in that year.
Calamy apparently did not know of his obtaining any licences under
the Declaration of Indulgence. Yet this he did, and probably not
through the mediation of any friend in London. He seems to have
journeyed up to town, and made his application in person at Whitehall.
If he did so, however, it was not at Lord Arlington's Office, but at
Lord Clifford's. The memorandum of his application is preserved in
320 (147). It reads :
4 Robert Collins Master of Arts pray a Licence to preach in his
owne howse in y e parish of St. Mary Ottery in y e County of
Devon being of the Presbysterien Judgm 1
i delivered to M r Treasurer's man
20. Apr. 72.
< Given in by M r Treasurer's servant
19. Apr. 72.'*
Of the five applications put in for him, the first two (by some strange
misadventure or error) were only for his house as a Presbyterian meeting-
place. These were: 320 (114), put in by John Hickes, April 17,
1672 ; and 320 (125), a long list, apparently drawn up by Mr. Benson
from applications handed in by different persons at different times,
endorsed by him, c Persons & Places desired to be licensed,' and awaiting
attention, dated the following day, ' 18 Apr. 1672.'
In John Hickes's application 320 (114) the line referring to him
reads : ' M r Robert Collings his house in St. Mary Ottery.' In the official
list of 320 (121) it reads :
'License desired for the howse of Rob: Colling in St. Mary
Olbery (?) Devon to be a Presbyterian Meeting-Place.'
A third application (handed in apparently the same day that the
official list was made up) is so loosely drawn up that we scarcely know
whether it be intended to supplement the former application, by asking
a personal licence as well. It also is put in by John Hickes, is num-
bered 320 (145), and is headed < Names of Persons & places.' The
thirteenth line in it reads :
' Robert Collings of S' Mary Ottery.'
As the c houses ' mentioned distinctly are all placed at the end,
these first may be meant for * persons.' If so it would be put in by
John Hickes after he had taken away the licence for Collins's house :
that Thursday (April 18).
The licence was made out at once, and issued that same day, Apr. 18.
V C^(]}
St. Mary Ottery ' The howse of Rob. Colling in St. Mary Ottery, Devofi,
Pr - licensed to be a Presb. Meeting place. 18. Apr. 72.'
Collings howse.
* My first and long-continued impression was that this memorandum was to be
so interpreted ; still, it may be questioned whether it is more than one of the five
applications put in for him by others, this one, given in at Lord Clifford's office,
while all the rest were handed in at Lord Arlington's.
336 Detailed and Expository
The fourth application, and the first of the series which distinctly
asks for a teacher's licence for Robert Collins, as well as one for
his house, is 320 (147), and is the one which has led me to put him
amongst 'the noble thirty-eight.' It concerns his case alone. It is
endorsed simply 'Devon,' and very clearly and fully expresses his
' desire.'
'Robert Collins Master of Arts pray a Licence to preach in his
owne house in y e parish of S* Mary Ottery in y e County of
Devon being of the Presbyterien Judgm 1 .'
Appended to it are the two notes :
' delivered to M r Treasurer's man
20. Apr. 72
' Given in by M r Treasurer's servant
19. Apr. 72.'
The unequivocal meaning of these two notes is that the note of
application constituting the body of the document was committed to Sir
Thomas Clifford ; that he sent it round by his servant to Lord Arling-
ton's Office on Friday, April 19; and that the licences were delivered
to his man the following day, Saturday, the 2Oth.
Meantime, another application had been put in almost certainly on
Friday the I9th, in which the Clerk has made a sad muddle.
It is in the second part of 320 (151) ; endorsed by Benson : ' South-
wark, Yorkshire, Surrey ' the first of the three items which that second
part contains :
' in S l Mary Ottery Southwark ' (this in Benson's handwriting)
' M r Robert Collins preacher, and his own House the place of
' Meteinge.'
It is odd that a man of such intelligence as Benson should have
confused St. Mary Ottery (Devon) with St. Mary Overie (Southwark),
especially in a case with which they had dealt in the Office already ; but
it is a proof of the special interest this application had excited in the
Office, and that Sir Joseph Williamson himself has appended to it the
word ' Presbyt.' to supply the lack of denominational description.
The application which thus comes to Sir Joseph's Office from the
Treasurer, and which has commanded Sir Joseph's special attention, is
made out the first thing next day. See the entries on E. (37) and E. (38).
' The howse of Rob: Collins in S l Mary Ottery's Parish
Devon licensed to be a Presb. Meeting Place.
20. Apr. 72.'
'License to Rob: Collins to be a Presb. Teacher in his
howse in the Parish of S l Mary Ottery, Devon.
2O. Apr. 72.'
The stir made in Sir Joseph Williamson's Office by it is doubtless
due to the fact that the application was brought round by Sir Thomas
Clifford's liveried servant. It certainly did make an unwonted stir ; for
they made out two fresh licences, although they had given out one for
E. (37).
4 St. Mary Ottery
Pr.
Collins howse.
E (38).
' Collins
Pr.
St. Mary Ottery
The Indulgence Documents 337
Collins's house only two days before, and all that was really wanted was
to make out a fresh one for Collins as teacher there.
The question, however, which is most interesting to us, is how did
the application-memorandum come into Sir Thomas Clifford's hand ? It
is natural to suppose that it was made out by Collins himself. He tries
to enlist Sir Thomas's personal influence because of his connection with
that part of Devon. Sir Thomas was a Devon man and was M.P.
for Totnes.
Of course, he may have sent it to Sir Thomas by post. But I
think on the whole it is more probable as it certainly would be more
interesting to suppose that he came up to London and called on the
Treasurer at his Office, at the western end of the building, and left the
application with him. Sir Thomas Clifford would tell him to call the
following day ; and calling, he would receive the licences which Sir
Thomas had sent for the first thing, so as to have it ready for his
applicant from the west.
(2) WM. ATKINS.
From the extreme north-west came William Atkins.
This William Atkins is the eighth case of a layman. He is a
strongly convinced Nonconformist Presbyterian resident in Hartland,
Devon, who comes all the way to London from that north-west corner
of Devon to secure a licence for his house, that it may become a duly
authorized Presbyterian meeting-house. The application paper he put in
is preserved in 321 (372), and reads :
' William Atkin of the pish of Hartland & County of Devon, being
a presbeterian desires his house in Hartland may be licensed according
to the Kinges declaration for Licensed Ministers to preach in & the
same Licence to be delivered to
<WM. ATKINS.'
There are two Atkinses mentioned by Calamy. Was William
Atkins connected with either ?
Robert Atkins, iM.A., through the personal influence of Mr. T.
Ford had left Coopersale in Essex, and come to Exeter ; for a few
months had preached at St. Sidwell's while the choir of the Cathedral
was being prepared for congregational worship, and then for several
years had ministered there as colleague of Mr. Ford to a vast auditory,
the Choir having been walled off from the nave to make it a separate
chapel, and called generally East St. Peter's. (Cal. II. 32-35.)
In 1660, with the re-establishment of the Episcopal Church and the
Prayer-Book service, the partition-wall was removed, the Choir and
Choral service were restored, and both Mr. Ford and Mr. Atkins
were ejected from the Cathedral.
Mr. Atkins was not driven from Exeter, but was appointed to
St. John's. He could not conform to the Act of Uniformity and was
ejected a second time (1662). He continued to live in Exeter, preaching
as he had opportunity, spite the malignant persecution of the Epis-
copalians, till his death in 1685.
22
338 Detailed and Expository
The second, Samuel Atkins, is mentioned by Calamy as among
those who ' exercised their ministry in Devon, after the Uniformity Act,
c though they were not fixed at the time '; but all he tells us of him is
that c he died young ' (II. 114).
Calamy says of Robert that he was * the youngest son of 1 5
' children. . . .' Was William Atkins one of his elder brothers, who
had settled in the opposite corner of the county ?
This lay-pilgrim has to make by far the longest journey to reach
London. He would have first to post to Bideford, and thence reach the
great London road by journeying almost due south through Torrington
and Hatherleigh to Oakhampton; or going on to Barnstaple through South
Molton (by either Tiverton or Crediton) to Exeter, whence his road
would lie through Honiton and Axminster to Bridport and Dorchester,
thence traversing the same route taken by Joshua Churchill.
VI. WALES.
From Wales there are two, who both come from that beautiful
peninsula of Gower, which has been called * Little England ' beyond
Wales ; and both from the same town Swansea.
They are Stephen Hughes and Daniel Higgs.
i. STEPHEN HUGHES.
Stephen Hughes was one of the Welsh Nonconforming clergy.
Calamy (III. 498, 499) gives us ihis name as ejected from Mydrym
(or Mydrim) in Carmarthenshire, in the valley of the Kathgenny, north
of St. Clare (or St. Clear). He was a native of Carmarthen, so that his
living was not far from his home. But some time after his ejectment,
Calamy tells he married ' a pious woman in Swansey, whose portion,
' frugality, and industry, contributed very much to his comfortable
' subsistence and future usefulness '* By this modest competence he
was able to print many useful works in Welsh ; did much to en-
courage the illiterate to learn to read and write ; and was an indefati-
gable evangelist, often riding eight or ten miles between two preaching
services upon the same day. He was much persecuted and suffered
long and close imprisonment in his native town.
Now the bare facts furnished by the licence-memoranda are rather
puzzling ; though they are naturally co-ordinated by the information
supplied in Calamy's account.
His friends in England move early for him. In the first or second
week in April, Richard Steelet applies on his behalf for licences for
him to preach at Llanstephan on the southern border of his county, at
the mouth of the Tovy, and at Penkader near its northern border.
* As he had no home in Mydrim to which to ask her, he apparently went to live
with her ; at any rate, he settled down in Swansey.
f Were they college friends? Richard Steele was educated at Cambridge.
Calamy does not seem to know anything of Hughes' education.
The Indulgence Documents 339
The memorandum of application is 320 (84) ; but a second application
had to be made 320 (86) before the licences were issued. Yet the
three licences were ready by April 17, 1672 [E. (26)].
It must have been about this time that he determined to go up
to London himself. He seems to have gone up with a second Non-
conformist minister viz., Daniel Higgs. His friend is before him
in any personal visit to Whitehall ; and Stephen Hughes' house in
Swansea is one of the objects of Higgs's application. Most probably
this was part of his wife's portion, which was such a practical help
to the ejected minister. At first glance one would be tempted to
conclude that they were living there.
There is good reason, however, to believe that they were not ; and
it is a practical proof of their religious earnestness that they should wish
their house to be used as a place of Nonconformist worship ; and it
is a token of their ecclesiastical consistency that it should be licensed
as a Congregational meeting-place, like those other three houses in
Gower (at Bishopston, Nicholaston and Rhoscilly), which were licensed
not for himself, but for Daniel Higgs to preach in. The application
is made by Daniel Higgs on 320 (233). The licences were granted and
issued April 30, 1672 [E. (39)].
Stephen Hughes's first visit to Whitehall seems to have been made
in Daniel Higgs's company, for the first memorandum that bears his
signature [320 (235)] bears Daniel Higgs's as well. It is a receipt form
bearing no date, but acknowledging on his part the receipt of six licences
three for Glamorgan and three for Pembroke.
These licences had been all issued on April 30, so that Hughes and
Higgs must have been in London together some fortnight or so before
Hughes ventured with Higgs into the precincts of the Court in West-
minster. Hughes's first visit seems to have been Higgs's last. Higgs
returned to Swansea with what Welsh licences they had secured ; and
Hughes stayed on to receive more.
That was not till May 20, when he leaves the following memo-
randum :
321 (214) :
'May the 2O th 1672
c Received then a License for James Davies to preach in his owne
house at Cardigan and another for Jenkin Jones to teach in
his owne house at Kilgerran in Pembrokeshire
' In witnes whereof have heere unto set my hand
c STEPHEN HUGHES.'
It would be soon after this that he would return to Wales, not, I
imagine, to Swansea, but to Carmarthen. I come to that conclusion
for these reasons : Carmarthen was his native town ; was comparatively
near the village of Mydrim, whence he had been ejected ; was a natural
point from which to work Llanstephan in the south and Penkader in
the north (the two places for which he had obtained licences through
his friend Daniel Higgs, which were quite unworkable from Swansea),
22 2
34 Detailed and Expository
accessible to Kilgerran and Cardigan, the licences for which he took
with him from London ; and all too natural a place for him to be
imprisoned in, as he would not observe the Statutes against Non-
conformity.
2. DANIEL HIGGS.
Though wholly devoted to his Welsh flock in Gower, and closely
associated with Stephen Hughes in this licence enterprise, Daniel
Higgs was not a Welshman. He was a native of Chaddewich in
Worcestershire, not far from Bromsgrove, to the north.
Calamy (III. 503, 504) calls it Chadwitch [Bartholomew marks it
as Chadwick (' Manor ' and ' Grange ')]. Calamy tells us nothing of
his schooling or collegiate education, save what is implied in his degree
' M.A.,' which he religiously preserves. But from Foster's ' Alumn.,
Oxon,' we learn he matriculated from Magdalen Hall, Oxford, Jan. 29,
1648-49, and graduated B.A., July 4, 1651.* He was appointed one
would like to know the why ? (there must have been one) to the little
Rectory of Rhoscilly ( c Rossilly,' Calamy calls it), right away in the
western extremity of the peninsula of Gower. f
What a journey in those days, from his home, on his first settlement
there ! First down to Bromsgrove, and through Droitwich to Wor-
cester, down the Severn Valley to Gloucester, and then skirting the
Estuary, through Chepstow and Newport and Cardiff, across to Bridgend
and by Baglan to Neath; across the Neath River to Morriston and
Swansea, whence he would keep the high ground through Sketty and
Killay past listen ; through the lovely glen of Park Mill, Penmaen and
Nicholaston, and by Penrice or Oxwich along the upland, leaving Port
Eynon on the left (overhanging its lovely bay), through Pilton and
Middleton to his destination. His Rectory looked down upon the
three miles stretch of the purest sands to be seen in the British Isles
(edging Rhossili Bay, due north and south), with the splendid headland
just west of it commanding the beauties of Mewslade Bay, and the
grand series of cliffs that run south-east right away to Port Eynon, and
flanked by the chain of fantastic rocks which straggle out due west into
the ocean, with the queer but appropriate title of Worms Head.
That was Daniel Higgs's sphere, and among the independent
peasantry of his widespread parish he soon made a home and did a
splendid work. But the Restoration brought a change in those parts,
which were so largely Royalist in their inner leanings, and in 1660 he
was ejected.
* Foster's entry reads : ' Higgs, Daniel (Higes), pleb. Magdalen Hall, matric.
Jan. 29, 1648-9 ; B.A. 4 July, 1651. rector of Rhosilly, co. Glamorgan, ejected 1661.
1 born at Chadwitch, co. Worcester, rector of Port Eynon co. Glamorgan 1660.
' died Sept., 1691.'
f ' Little England beyond Wales ' is its most apt description ; for while all the
natural features of the country have Welsh names, many of the villages (scarcely
any of them are big enough to be called towns) have English names. [E.g.,
Rhoscilli, of course, is Welsh ; but Middleton close by is English, and so are Pilton
(with Pilton Green), Overton, Horton, Port Eynon, Slade and Norton, Knelston,
Reynoldston, Nicholaston, and Bishopston.J
The Indulgence Documents 341
In 1660 he had also received the Rectory of Port Eynon, and for a
time, it seems, he was undisturbed. Port Eynon was a spot more
sheltered than Rhoscilly. And there he quietly laboured until the Act
of Uniformity in 1662 drove him thence. [Palmer's reference to it
shows a delightful ignorance of Gower. < He was cast out from
Some other living in 1662' (he says in a footnote to p. 503) * which
' Dr. Calamy calls Portynon '; but no such place is to be found.] The
Episcopal Returns of 1665 report him as late Rector of Portynon, but
at that time out of the Diocese ; a statement which exactly fits Calamy's
further statements. He says ' The lowest of the populace, too, turned
' against him.' He was ' forced to leave his house, and wife, and seven
< children'; and 'to avoid the fury of the mob, he retired' (Calamy
says) ' to his father's in Worcestershire.
But he got very cold comfort there. ' His father told him he must
< expect no assistance or encouragement from him, unless he would con-
< form, and urged upon him the strongest arguments he could think of :
' telling him how miserable and abject a life he must expect to lead, and
' what contempt he would fall under if he did not, etc.' But he replied
4 that he would a thousand times rather trust himself and his family with
' divine providence, than offer to conform contrary to his conscience.' And
Calamy adds : < He was once in prison for Nonconformity,' but where
he does not say, whether in Worcestershire or in Gower. I imagine it
would be in Gower. For it is most probable that, after such a cold re-
ception in his ancestral home, he would return to Gower ; and it appears
that he settled down in Swansea with wife and family, and soon assembled
a ' gathered Church there,' with small branches affiliated to it, in Bishops-
ton, Nicholaston, and the place of his first love and first work, Rhossili.
' He was a good scholar,' Calamy writes, 'a judicious preacher, a vigilant
' pastor, and a strict observer of church discipline. He was indefatigable
c in his Master's work in Swansey, and the neighbouring parts.' And
he adds : ' He preached constantly once a month at a place about ten
'miles off.' Unfortunately he does not tell us where it was, and
relates how once, in riding thither, he felt constrained to change his
subject, and how that service was more spiritually effective than any he
had ever conducted.
When the Indulgence was declared, in March, 1672, he evi-
dently consulted with his Congregational brother, Stephen Hughes.
The Presbyterian minister there, Marmaduke Matthews, had availed
himself already of it before they had thought of moving in the
matter.
Matthews's licences were dated April 12 [E (17)]. But his two
brethren were not long behind him. They determined to look after the
matter for themselves ; and apparently made the long journey to London
together. They would journey along the same road Daniel Higgs had
travelled thrice already, as far as Portskewett or Chepstow, then cross
the Estuary to the Old or New Passage, and on to Bristol ; thence post-
ing due east to London by Staines and Hounslow, and past Hyde Park
to Charing Cross. Where they lodged we do not know, nor exactly
when they first went to Whitehall.
34 2 Detailed and Expository
Two friends had exerted themselves on their behalf before they
made a personal application.
(i) Richard Steele, first put in 320 (84) for both. Then Owen
Davies called (whose multiplied service we have noticed elsewhere) ;
and (ii) put in 320 (85), which was for Higgs alone, for a meeting-place
which was never granted, and in a way which does not speak well for
his knowledge of Welsh geography. It is endorsed : * Swansey.
' Davies/ and reads :
320 (85).
'Walles [Wales.]
* Daniell Higgs preacher of the Congregationall way in Swansey, att
4 Tho: Williams house Swansey pembrockshyere.
<O: D.'
Thomas Williams's house was never licensed, and you and I
know that Swansea is in Glamorgan, not Pembroke (having the breadth
of Carmarthenshire between). The beauty of the phrase c of the Con-
' gregationall way ' is some atonement for his topographical mistake.
Disappointed at their friends' failures, they went together to
Whitehall, and (iii) left 320 (86), which recounts the most pressing
desires of each. It is endorsed : * Swansey. Lancashire, not appr.,'
and reads :
' Daniel Higgs. Congregat.
" not licensed " [in J. W.'s hand writing.]
Swansey Schoole house and his owne house, Glamorgan-
shire.
' Stephen Hughes, congregat.,
at y e house of Evan Morris of Lanstephan and at y e widdow
Jenkins of penkader, Carmarthen shire.'
The annotation, above 'schoole house' is in Sir Joseph Williamson's
hand, and must have been made after April 1 7 ; when the applications
had been considered ; and, of the ' meeting-places ' desired for Daniel
Higgs, only 'his own house* in Swansea had been approved and 'allowed';
for in (iv) 320 (88) his application for the School House, is repeated in
a long list of twenty-one licences, in Mr. Benson's handwriting :
6 Daniel Diggs (sic) Congregationall, at the Schoole house in Swansey.'
That the application made in the case of 320 (86) was presented
personally is a matter of conjecture as it is not signed. I have treated
it as such because of its form. But we now come to a memorandum
which is proof positive that Daniel Higgs is determined to see what a
personal application can effect, (v) 320 (233) is headed by the line :
< A license is desired By Daniell Higgs Congr.', which is equivalent to
the assertion that it was ' put in ' or * given in ' by him personally. And
in it he applies for licences for four houses : one for his friend, Stephen
Hughes's house in Swansea, and three for houses of friends in that chain
of Gower villages which linked Swansea with his old parish, the scene
of his first ministry, Bishopston, Nicholaston, and Roscilly itself; 'to be
' publick meeting places, all in Glamorganshire.' The names of these
The Indulgence Documents 343
good Congregationalists are worthy of record : Henry Griffith, Robert
Gethen, and Richard Bevan.
The next (vi) 320 (234) is 'put in' by his friend, Stephen Hughes.
The handwriting is clearly that of the first part of 235, which bears
Stephen Hughes's signature. The request in it is very distinct for these
three houses, as his preaching-stations : c Daniell Higgs desires a
* Lycence to preach in the house of M r Henry Griffith & in the house
* of Richard Bevan & Robert Gethyn in the County of Glamorgan in
4 Gower who is of the Congregationall perswasion ' . . . besides others
for Samuel Jones and Peregrine Philips.
By the lyth, licences had been issued both for his friend, Stephen
Hughes, and for himself to preach at his own house in Swansea
[E (26)] ; but it was not till the 2Oth that licences were made out
for the three meeting-places in Gower [E (39)].
It was some day after that that they called together at Whitehall,
and were able each to sign the acknowledgment in the memorandum
numbered 320 (235), of the licences in which each was personally
most interested. Stephen Hughes for Samuel Jones's and Peregrine
Philips' s, in Llangynwyd and Haverfordwest ; and Daniel Higgs for his
three Gower friends. I quote the second half:
4 M r Daniell Higgs for the house of Rich: Bevan Robert Gethin
& Henry Griffith in Glamorgan shire
4 reed by mee,
4 DAN: HIGGS.'
Probably Daniel Higgs returned to Swansea, as soon as he was able
to take away these much-desired licences, that he might use them in the
free and fearless exercise of his evangelistic and pastoral work in Gower.
[Stephen Hughes stayed on in London for another month at least.] And
so zealously and earnestly did he carry it on that, as Calamy expresses
it, 4 His hard study and labours at length brought on him such disorders
* and weakness as almost incapacitated him for public service ; so that he
4 left his people and retired into Worcestershire.'
Probably by this time his father had died, and he was able to live
on part of his patrimony. 4 But there,' Calamy adds, ' so desirous was
'he of advancing the public welfare that he undertook to teach aca-
< demical learning, in which he took great delight, and had goo 
