CHAPTER X

RELIGIOUS WARS IN THE NETHERLANDS AND GERMANY

(1520-1648)

The revolt of the Netherlands, which created a new and vigorous

European state in the sixteenth century, and a great commercial and

colonizing world-power in the seventeenth, was as much a religious as a

political movement. The centralizing, autocratic, and unconciliatory

policy of Philip II. was probably enough in itself to have caused

rebellion in the Netherlands; while the religious conflict was so

bitter that it would almost certainly have caused a revolt, even if

there had been no political friction. The revolt of 1568 and the war

which lasted till 1609, as a matter of fact, turned on causes belonging

equally to both fields.

When Charles V. visited the Netherlands in 1520, on his way to claim

the imperial crown, the twenty-two provinces then gathered into his

hands were all nominally Catholic; and the large majority of the

population were sincerely attached to Rome. Yet reformed doctrines soon

made their way into the country in several forms. In the southern and

central states, Flanders, Brabant, Hainault, Holland, and Zealand,

Calvinism entered from France; into Friesland and North Holland came

many Mennonites; in some of the towns there were Anabaptists; in the

great commercial cities, such as Antwerp and Amsterdam, Lutherans were

numerous, some of them immigrants from Germany, some converted to that

faith through the communications between lower Germany and the adjacent

provinces of the Netherlands. [Footnote: Blok, Hist. of the People of

the Netherlands (English trans), III., 22.] Even the Catholics of the

Netherlands were not of a bigoted or militant type; heresy had been

wide-spread there since the thirteenth century, and the inhabitants had

not the horror of it that was felt in some more orthodox countries.

[Footnote: Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, I., Introd, xii.]

Among the wealthy, turbulent, strong-minded, and patriotic Netherland

burghers and peasantry Reformation doctrines and principles readily

spread and gained acceptance; yet they were met by the most determined

and harsh opposition from the government which now held the Netherlands

in the hollow of its hand. In 1521 Charles V. issued from Worms an

edict dooming to loss of property and death every Dutch, Flemish, or

Walloon adherent of the teachings of Luther; and in 1523 two monks were

burned at Brussels as first-fruits of the long and miserable harvest

which was so abundantly reaped afterwards.

A series of edicts known as the "Placards" was now issued by Charles,

prohibiting private meetings for religious worship, reading of the

Scripture by laymen, discussions on questions of faith, the destruction

of religious emblems, the harboring of heretics, the possession of

heretical books, and, in general, all heretic or non-Catholic opinions

and practices. These edicts were enforced by all the power of the civil

government, and by the activity of four inquisitors. The "Placards"

reached their culmination in the edict of 1550, renewing and making

more severe all punishments for religious offences. When Charles, in

1556, laid down the burden of government in favor of his son, the

persecutions had numbered their hundreds, if not thousands, of victims;

but heresy had spread only the more widely, and Protestantism in its

various forms had become only the stronger.

Philip II. entered upon the struggle with heresy even more vigorously

than his father. Even the Catholics of the Netherlands were opposed to

the enforcement of the "Placards," while the heretics who were

suffering and multiplying under it were looking forward almost

desperately to some change that would make their position more

tolerable. The States-General, the nearest approach to a national

legislature that the Netherlands possessed, in 1559 pleaded for

mildness. It was only the Spanish ruler who was determined to apply the

heresy laws in all their vigor; and when he left the Netherlands and

began to direct their administration from Spain, the religious question

became more and more the great unifying element in national resistance

to his policy.

William of Orange, in the council of state, took the lead in drawing up

a petition to the king for the amelioration of the "Placards" and for

the suspension of the decrees for an inflexible orthodoxy which had

just been promulgated from Trent. He pointed out the necessity of

recognizing the proximity and influence of Lutheran Germany upon the

Netherlands, the actual extension of Protestantism in the provinces,

and the degree to which the old church had lost its authority over the

hearts of men. In words that rose in dignity and significance far above

the ordinary contests of Catholics and Protestants, he declared: "I am

Catholic, and will not deviate from religion; but I cannot approve the

custom of kings to confine men's creed and religion within arbitrary

limits." [Footnote: Blok, Hist. of the People of the Netherlands

(English trans), III., 14.] Philip replied to this petition of the

Catholic nobles of the Netherlands by the edict of Segovia, dated

October 17, 1565, insisting more vehemently than ever before on the

enforcement of the laws against heresy in all their severity, including

what was practically the introduction of the Spanish Inquisition. On

the other hand, the Reformation pressed on with rapid strides; vast

crowds gathered outside of Tournai, Harlem, Antwerp, and other cities

to listen to Calvinist preachers. Ten, twelve, and twenty thousand of

the populace assembled at a time to sing psalms and hymns and to listen

to the appeals of teachers eloquent and devout, but almost invariably

heretical.

The inevitable crisis was now hastening on. The lesser nobles,

including some Calvinists, soon formed the "Confederation," sent their

petition to the king, and in 1567 broke out in fruitless rebellion.

Almost at the same time the mob rose in the image-breaking riots which

spread like wild-fire over all the provinces except the most southern.

Then came Alva, with his unlimited powers, his veteran troops, his

"Council of Blood," his more than ten thousand victims of political and

religious persecution, and the awful severity and barbarity that have

made his name a synonym of cruelty and heartless despotism. William of

Orange brought an army into Brabant in 1568, and revolt was soon in

full progress. Even under Charles V. there had been much emigration

from the Netherlands to Germany and England, to escape religious

persecution. Now the barbarities of Alva increased the number many-

fold. It was estimated that there were at one time sixty thousand Dutch

and Walloon refugees living in England. By 1568 the emigrants were said

to number four hundred thousand.

As the revolt progressed and the various cities expelled the officers

of the Spanish governor and put themselves under the banner of Orange,

they became little oases of toleration. The instructions of William to

his lieutenants in the north in 1572 ordered them "to restore fugitives

and the banished for conscience' sake--and to see that the Word of God

is preached, without, however, suffering any hindrance to the Roman

Church in the exercise of its religion." [Footnote: Motley, Rise of the

Dutch Republic, pt. iii.] By November, 1576, when the treaty known as

the Pacification of Ghent was made between Holland and Zealand on the

one hand and the fifteen southern provinces on the other, liberalism in

religious views had progressed as far as the power of the patriotic

party extended; and all "Placards" and edicts on the subject of

religion were suspended till a national assembly should take final

action on the subject. At the same time it was provided that there

should be no action against the Catholic religion, outside the

territory of Holland and Zealand. [Footnote: Blok, Hist, of the People

of the Netherlands (English trans.), III., 105, 106.]

Soon the Flemish provinces, where Protestantism had made least headway

and where distrust of the north was strong, were "pacified" by Don John

of Austria and Alexander of Parma. The Union of Arras, of January 6,

1579, became a centre of union and reconciliation to Spain and

Catholicism for the fifteen southern provinces. Just three weeks

afterwards the Union of Utrecht was formed, which united the seven

northern provinces and became the basis of the free republic of the

United Netherlands: each province was to make its own religious

arrangements, though toleration was secured by the provision that no

one should be molested or questioned on the subject of divine worship.

[Footnote: Arts. 5, 9, 10, n, 12, 13, quoted in Motley, pt. vi.,

chap.i.] Thus while the southern provinces set their feet in the path

of a return to Roman Catholic uniformity, the northern provinces

pledged themselves to toleration of Catholics and of all sects of

Protestants alike.

Toleration is to the modern student the chief interest and glory of the

foundation of the United Netherlands; but it was not toleration but

Protestantism which then gave the young republic its peculiar strength,

vigor, and enterprise. Even in the Pacification of Ghent and the Union

of Utrecht, Holland and Zealand were recognized as Protestant states.

As the bitter struggle progressed, their Protestantism became more

pronounced and more militant. Exiled Calvinists from the south flocked

to Amsterdam, Middleburg, Rotterdam, and other northern cities in great

numbers, intensifying the Protestant character of these communities and

enriching them with capital, business ability, and an astonishingly

large proportion of gifted men. [Footnote: Jameson, Usselinx, 27.] The

formal abjuration of Philip by the United Provinces in 1581, on grounds

so largely religious, could not but bring into still greater prominence

the Protestantism of the country which now claimed its independence.

The long-continued warfare that followed the assassination of the

beloved prince of Orange, the sieges, mutinies, and battles by land and

sea, steadily deepened the religious and political hatred between the

Netherlands and Spain.

By the year 1596 internal theological struggles between Remonstrants

and Contra-Remonstrants approached the proportions of a civil war; and

the victory gained by the latter party through the intervention of the

stadtholder Maurice connected religion and politics, church and state,

even more clearly, and made still more intense the fiery Protestantism

of the Dutch government. [Footnote: Blok, Hist of the People of the

Netherlands (English trans.), III., 398-447.] Strengthened by her

efforts, hardened by her struggles, awakened to vigorous life by the

exhilaration of the long and arduous conflict, the little Protestant

state approached the end of the sixteenth century, enterprising in

internal plans and eager for new fields of foreign commerce. The

probability that commercial expansion would bring her into conflict

with Spain added zest to the prospect and gave promise that in

extending trade, conquering distant possessions, and establishing

colonies, she would at the same time be weakening her bitterest enemy.

Hence the early Dutch expeditions to the Indies, the formation of the

East and West India Companies, the establishment of the colonies in

Brazil, Guiana, and North America, and of commercial factories in the

East Indies, were all of them in a certain sense part of the religious

and political struggle between the Netherlands and Spain. When the

twelve years' truce was signed, in 1609, those provinces which had

returned to the Spanish obedience were uniformly Catholic, but their

prosperity and international significance had disappeared. The

independent provinces, on the other hand, were, for all their

toleration, almost uniformly Protestant, and they were already one of

the great maritime and commercial powers of Europe. [Footnote: Blok,

Hist of the People of the Netherlands (English trans), III., 326-334.]

The United Netherlands speedily colonized New Amsterdam, Guiana, Cape

Colony, Java, and other places, with a population persistent in

Protestantism and in many race characteristics. Unfortunately for

Holland the number of her emigrants was never great enough to enable

her permanently to play a great part in the history of colonization.

The Dutch are not an emigrating people. Yet those who did emigrate

carried with them such an assertive character and so highly developed a

group of institutions that they exercised a deep and permanent

influence over communities like New York, in which they soon ceased to

be the dominant element; while their institutions in Holland made such

a strong impression upon English sojourners in their midst that some of

their characteristics reappeared long afterwards in American colonies

in which no Dutchman had ever settled. [Footnote: Douglas Campbell,

Puritan in Holland.]

The Reformation, with the wars to which it gave rise, made Germany for

a time the most conspicuous state in Europe, but its ultimate effect

was to reduce that state to a degree of material poverty, political

insignificance, and intellectual torpidity unknown before in her

experience. Civil war was long delayed; the political necessities and

the astute policy of Charles V., the conservative instincts and

patriotic scruples of Luther, and the doubtful position of many of the

German provinces and cities, long prevented any attempt by the emperor

to enforce the orthodoxy required by the Diet of Worms, and induced the

Lutherans to go more than halfway in accepting the policy of

postponement. [Footnote: Armstrong, The Emperor Charles V., I., 201-

203, 240-256,] Yet even this early period was troubled by successive

minor outbreaks of violence. The "Knights' War" of 1523, the Peasants'

Revolt of 1524 and 1525, the Zwinglian wars in Switzerland in 1531, and

the Anabaptist outbreak at Munster in 1534 were all connected with the

religious ferment of the times.

From 1530, when the League of Schmalkald was formed to unite the

Protestant princes and cities, Germany really belonged to two camps,

and civil war was only a question of time. The time came in 1546, the

year of Luther's death, when Charles was at last free from foreign

complications and could make the attempt to reintroduce conformity into

Germany. The Schmalkaldic War, although marked by a series of imperial

successes and temporarily closed by a triumphant truce in 1548, was

soon renewed, and the Peace of Passau of 1552 was a general compromise,

representing rather the weariness of war and the jealousies of the

various powers of Germany than any permanent political of religious

equilibrium. An attempt was made to establish a more lasting settlement

in the conference of Augsburg in 1555. Here the terms of the recent

treaty were put in more formal shape: Lutheranism was given legal

recognition; all religious disputes should be settled by peaceful

means; in legal causes between a Protestant and a Catholic the Imperial

Hight Court of Justice should be composed of an equal number of

Catholics and Protestants.

On the other hand, certain compromises were then introduced which were

destined to be fatal to the permanency of the religious and political

settlement.

1. Instead of individual toleration, as was originally proposed, the

principle was adopted which has become known as cujus regio ejus

religio--that is to say, each prince or imperial city should choose

between Catholicism and Lutheranism; and thereafter all inhabitants

must conform, or, if unwilling to do so, must expatriate themselves.

The unstable equilibrium of the empire was thus transferred to the

individual states, and each was threatened with internal revolution

whenever there was a change in the prevailing religious views of the

inhabitants or the personal beliefs of the prince.

2. A second compromise was reached by providing that all ecclesiastical

property seized by temporal governments down to the close of the late

war should be guaranteed to its new possessors; but that for the future

the process of secularization should cease. Thus an artificial obstacle

was placed in the way of the avarice or the desire for reform of the

Protestant princes, at the very time they were given increased control

in their own states.

3. The "ecclesiastical reservation" made an exception to the right of

territorial independence in religion in the case of the ecclesiastical

states, which were so numerous in Germany. If any archbishop, bishop,

or abbot, who was also a secular prince, should become a Lutheran, he

must resign his office and divest himself of his power and

jurisdiction, which would pass to his Catholic successor. This

provision deprived Protestant subjects of ecclesiastical princes of all

prospect of religious freedom, and doomed them to compulsory

reconciliation with the Catholic Church or to exile, except for certain

rights guaranteed to them by the treaty.

4. The compromises of Augsburg were compromises between Catholics and

Lutherans only, and neither Calvinists nor Zwinglians were given

recognition in its terms, although Calvinism was destined to be the

great aggressive force of the Reformation, making an appeal to the

masses of the people and taking a fundamental hold upon its adherents

beyond anything which Lutheranism, or indeed any other form of the

Reformation, ever obtained.

The agreement reached in 1555, incomplete and unstable as it seemed,

remained the foundation of an outward if somewhat troubled religious

peace for more than sixty years. Yet a renewal of the conflict was

threatened from time to time, and in 1618 the terrible Thirty Years'

War broke out. The earlier contests had been civil wars only, the

renewed war was no longer merely a German struggle. In 1625 Christian

IV., king of Denmark, entered the war as leader on the Protestant side,

only to yield to the perseverance of Tilly, the general of the Catholic

armies, and to the genius of Wallenstein, the representative of Emperor

Ferdinand; and to retire in 1629, leaving north Germany more completely

than before at the mercy of the emperor and of the Catholic party.

Scarcely a year later Gustavus Adolphus, full of enthusiasm for the

Protestant cause and provided with funds from France, brought his

veteran regiments and his military ability from Sweden into Germany,

and fought in consecutive years his three wonderful campaigns. After

the death of the "Lion of the North," in 1632, the "Swedish period"

endured still two years; and when, in 1634, Catholic and Protestant

princes entered upon a truce they made terms upon an equality, though

there was even yet but little promise of a permanent settlement.

Just before the fatal battle of Lutzen, in the midst of military

preparations, a decisive step was taken by Gustavus which ultimately

led to the creation of one more American colony. Ever since the

introduction of new issues. One after another, foreign states were

drawn into the struggle until a mere German civil war had developed

into a general European conflict, in which foreigners were struggling

for German territory. Catholics made alliances with Lutherans and with

Calvinists, until what had begun as a religious struggle became a

purely political contest among unpatriotic German princes and ambitious

neighbors of Germany contending for power and prestige.

When, at the peace of 1648, political questions had been settled,

territorial changes agreed upon, the Netherlands and Switzerland

definitely separated from the empire, Alsace surrendered to France, and

much of Pomerania to Sweden, the religious conflict was brought to an

end as far as possible by returning to the old plan of the treaty of

Augsburg, except that such toleration as was then granted to Catholics

and Lutherans was now extended to Calvinists also. To these provisions

some further extensions of religious liberty were added by securing

guarantees of protection to subjects differing in their religion from

their princes and by including in the highest imperial tribunal a

certain number of Protestants. [Footnote: Lamprecht, Deutsche

Geschichte, V., sect ii., 764.] The material sufferings and losses of

Germany during the war were almost beyond description. [Footnote:

Erdmannsdorffer, Deutsche Geschichte, 1648-1740, I., 100-115] The

armies, made tip largely of soldiers of different nationalities,

without attachment to the countries through which they marched, without

interest in the questions at issue, without a regular commissariat,

often without pay, brutalized by long campaigning and repeated sacks of

cities, followed by an immense rabble of non-combatant men, women, and

children, were a barbarian horde, and ravaged the lands in which they

were established like a fire or a pestilence. The tortures they

inflicted upon the peasantry and the citizens, the robbery, the

outrages, the wanton destruction, pressed close to the limits of human

endurance, and seemed almost to threaten the extermination of the

population. The prosperity of the cities was crushed by war

contributions, even when they escaped being plundered like Magdeburg;

and the debasement of the coinage practised by the emperor and the

princes bore hardly upon all who bought or sold. [Footnote: Gindeley,

History of the Thirty Years' War (English trans.), II., 390-395] During

the later campaigns of the war military operations in many regions

became almost impracticable from the very impoverishment of the

country; no sustenance existed for friend or for enemy; population in

some parts was almost destroyed, and it was everywhere extensively

displaced. [Footnote: Ibid., 398.] The conservatism, the settled

rooting of the people in the soil, acquired and inherited property,

moral and material fixity, were all alike disturbed.

The half-century that followed 1648 did but little to restore

prosperity or repose to Germany. The western provinces especially were

the scene of frequently renewed warfare. The territorial ambitions of

Louis XIV. were directed to the German lands which lay on the eastern

border of France, and there was no strength in the empire to resist his

aggressions or to make him fear either defeat or reprisals. Even the

European coalitions which forced upon him successive treaties did not

prevent renewed attacks or heal the scars of the repeated devastations

of the lower and the upper Rhine country. The culmination of this

period of suffering was the terrible ravaging of the Palatinate, in

1688, when the fertile region about Heidelberg, Mannheim, Speyer, and

Worms was harried and burned and pillaged by the soldiers of Louis,

with the same brutality and more destructiveness than the wild Swedish

and mercenary armies of the Thirty Years' War had used.

A people with an experience such as that of the Germans in the

seventeenth century was thenceforth easily drawn away from home. One

generation of continuous warfare throughout all Germany, followed by

another generation of intermittent invasion from France, and closed by

a crisis of rapine and devastation, made hundreds of thousands of the

German people homeless, despairing, and eager for escape. It was this

situation of the people, combined with the religious condition before

described, that made Germany the best recruiting-ground for American

colonists to be found in Europe. Before the close of the seventeenth

century a stream of emigration set from Germany towards America which

furnished to Pennsylvania one-third of her pre-Revolutionary

inhabitants, and made a considerable part of the population of several

of the other colonies.

A second effect of the Thirty Years' War was the practical dissolution

of the empire and the loss by the emperor of all centralized control

over its policy. This was a cumulative result of the war rather than a

definite provision of the peace. The princes, nobles, and cities had so

frequently allied themselves with foreign states against the emperor

and against one another, their policy had been so constantly regulated

by their own interests alone, in entire disregard of those of the

nation at large, and the religious divisions had been settled on such a

sectional basis, that there was now no thought of derogating from their

independence for the sake of the central power of Germany. By Article

VIII. of the treaty of peace all German states were definitely

permitted to form independent alliances among themselves and with

foreign states, so long as these were not directed against either the

emperor or the empire. [Footnote: Lamprecht, Deutsche Geschtchte, V.,

Section 2, pp 765, 766.] As a matter of fact, the bond of union among

the states of Germany had become so weak as to be almost non-existent.

The emperor was the actual ruler of the Hapsburg dominions and the

nominal head of the empire; but Germany was a geographical rather than

a national expression, and its head could play no part as a national

ruler outside of his immediate hereditary dominions. Germany had many

interests in America. Martin Behaim, Regiomontanus, and other German

scientists contributed largely to the development of the science of

navigation during the period of discovery; Waldseemuller suggested the

name that has been universally accepted for the New World; the numerous

printing-presses of Germany did much to make known to Europe the

history of the exploration and early conquests and the wonders of the

Indies; under Charles V. the empire was brought closely into connection

with Spain, the greatest colonizing power of the seventeenth century;

her Fuggers, Welsers, and other capitalists provided much of the means

for the early Spanish voyages, and for a time held extensive grants in

Venezuela under the Spanish crown; and her teeming emigrants furnished

a large part of the colonial population. Yet Germany as a nation has,

of all the nations of Europe, exercised the least influence on the

fortunes of America. Neither the emperor nor any German prince has ever

exercised any direct or indirect power over any American territory.

Many causes may have contributed to this failure, but the most

effective was doubtless the Thirty Years' War. The religious disunion,

the material impoverishment, and the political insignificance which

this war caused, during the most important colonizing century, excluded

Germany as a nation from a role among the European powers which have

held control over parts of the New World.

CHAPTER XI

THE ENGLISH CHURCH AND THE CATHOLICS

(1534-1660)

England passed through the crisis of the Reformation without a civil

war, yet no country of Europe found greater difficulty in coming to a

religious equilibrium after that change. Though actual rebellion was

nipped in the bud wherever it appeared, as in the Pilgrimage of Grace

of 1536 and in the Rising of the North of 1569, yet between those

years, and long after the second rising, religious passions were

embittered to the very verge of outbreak. In the early period of the

Reformation changes were rapid and violent, and during more than a

century and a half after Protestantism was established hostile

legislation imposed heavy burdens upon all those who differed from the

dominant party in religious faith.

When England became a colonizing country at the opening of the

seventeenth century, the effect of the religious changes up to that

time had been to produce four well-marked religious parties among her

people--Churchmen, Catholics, Puritans, and Independents. First in

order came the adherents of the established church, a church which was

in a very real sense the creation of Queen Elizabeth and of her times--

for all that had gone before was unstable and tentative, and might

readily have been altered by a ruler of different character or policy.

When Elizabeth ascended the throne in 1558 the great body of the people

of England, from a religious point of view, was still a fluid mass, a

sea accustomed to be drawn, like the tide, by the planet that ruled the

sky, whether an Erastian Henry VIII., a Catholic Mary, or a Protestant

Protector Somerset.

Elizabeth declared at her accession that she would not allow her people

to swerve to the right hand or the left from the religion established

by law; and in the main she succeeded in carrying out this policy. The

prayer-book, the articles of religion, the supremacy of the queen, the

uniformity of service, the practices and doctrines of the official

English church during the long reign of Elizabeth, meant something very

definite and made the established church an objective reality. Of

course she learned, as other sovereigns have learned, that even the

will of a king may break against the rock of religious conviction, and

large numbers of the people of England during her reign remained, or

became, dissatisfied with the established church.

Nevertheless, when Elizabeth died Anglicanism was the national church

in a sense in which it had not been before, and in exactly the same

sense as that in which the Roman Catholic church was the church of

Spain. A generation had grown up which had seen no other religious

system in authority, whose beliefs and duties were taught them by its

clergy, and whose sentiments and devotion naturally gathered around it

as their object. This religious system, therefore, was strongly

intrenched: it had all the authoritativeness of law, all the sanction

of patriotic feeling in a period of intense patriotism, and the support

of much sound learning; besides, the church was fast becoming hallowed

by tradition and beautified to the imagination by sentiment. Yet for

various reasons the Anglican church failed to obtain the allegiance of

the whole English nation.

The second of the four great religious classes, the Catholics, held

allegiance to a still older and more imposing organization. However

clear the argument of English churchmen that the Anglican body was the

church founded by the apostles and enduring continuously in England

through all the intervening centuries, the "old church" was still to

many the church of which the pope was the earthly head. From the time

that Henry VIII. attacked the supremacy of the pope and many of the

characteristic doctrines and practices of the mediaeval church, a party

separate from the national church came into being, which clung

faithfully to that system.

The existence of the English Roman Catholics as a separate body from

the established English church may be considered to date from the

resignation of Sir Thomas More from the chancellorship in 1532. During

the remainder of Henry's reign their position was equivocal and

dangerous, a number of conspicuous Catholics accepting martyrdom under

the laws against treason, when brought to the test of the acceptance or

rejection of the king's claim to the headship of the English church.

Under the enlightened rule of Somerset they were not persecuted, but

under his successor, and under the personal rule of Edward VI., they

fared much worse. [Footnote: Pollard, England Under Protector Somerset,

110-120, 258-264, 322] The time of consolation came under Queen Mary,

when for a space of five years (1553-1558) the English church and

English Catholicism again became identical.

Elizabeth on her accession had no antagonism to the Roman Catholics as

such. Neither in doctrine nor in ceremonial was there any essential

breach between Elizabeth and the Catholic church; and for a moment the

world watched to see what her decision would be. [Footnote: Maitland,

"Defender of the Faith" (Eng Hist Review, XV.,120).] Yet the nature of

her position dictated to her a return to the ecclesiastical position of

her father, and an acquiescence in the main results of the Protestant

development under Edward VI. She accepted the requirements of the

policy readily enough, and by the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity of

1559 [Footnote: I Eliz., chaps, i., ii. ] the English Catholics again

became a proscribed body, living in disobedience to the law, subject to

severe pains and penalties for any speech or action against the

established church, and even for the negative offence of absence from

its religious services.

The disabilities of the Catholics according to the laws passed at the

opening of the reign of Elizabeth were as follows: 1. No Catholic could

hold any office or employment under the crown, or any ecclesiastical

office in England, or receive any university degree: for all such

persons were required to take an oath renouncing the authority of the

pope, and acknowledging the headship of the queen in ecclesiastical

matters. [Footnote: Ibid., chap, ii., sub-section 19-25.] 2. No

Catholic could attend mass: the service of the prayer-book being

required at all meetings for worship in England. [Footnote: Ibid.,

chap, ii., sub-section 3-8.] 3. No Catholic could remain away from the

regular services of the established church: as the law required that

"all and every person and persons inhabiting within the realm or any

other the queen's majesty's dominions shall diligently and faithfully,

having no lawful or reasonable excuse to be absent, endeavor themselves

to resort to their parish church or chapel accustomed ... upon every

Sunday and other days ordained and used to be kept as holy days, and

then and there to abide orderly and soberly during the time of the

common prayer, preachings, or other service of God there to be used and

ministered." [Footnote: I Eliz., chap, ii., Section 14.] 4. No Catholic

could speak, write, or circulate any arguments or appeals in favor of

the ecclesiastical claims of the Catholic church or in derogation of

the royal supremacy or of the prayer-book.

The penalties for violation of these laws varied from a fine of one

shilling for absence from church on a Sunday or holy day to the

terrible customary punishment for treason in the case of repeated

conviction for supporting the claims of the pope. These fundamental

disabilities remained in existence during the whole of the sixteenth

and seventeenth centuries. They were added to from time to time as the

religious conflict in England, and in Europe at large, became more

embittered; although, on the other hand, there were occasional periods

when the exigencies of policy or the sympathies of the sovereign

temporarily suspended their enforcement. They remained the fundamental

law long after the Act of Toleration of 1689 made easy the burdens of

other Nonconformists, and until the gradual progress of enlightenment

in the eighteenth century led to a willing neglect to enforce them; and

they disappeared only in 1829.

The tendency during the reign of Elizabeth was constantly towards an

increase in the severity of the laws against "popish recusants," as

those who refused to conform to the established church were called, and

to greater rigor in their application. At four successive periods

during that reign additions were made to the disabilities and

sufferings imposed by law upon Roman Catholics.

1. An act of 1563 extended the lines of restriction so that the oath of

supremacy must be taken by a much greater number of officials--by all

school-masters, lawyers, and petty officers of court, and by all

members of the House of Commons; and so that the first refusal of any

person to take it, as well as the first occasion on which any one

should in writing or speech support the claims of the pope, should be

punished by confiscation and outlawry, the second offence by the

penalties of treason. [Footnote: Eliz., chap. i.] 2. The difficulties

of the Catholics were increased by the coming, in 1568, of Mary Queen

of Scots to England, where she became a permanent centre of Catholic

disaffection and hopes; by the Rebellion of the North in 1569; and by

the papal bull of deposition of the queen in 1570. The laws at once

reflected the anger and alarm of Parliament and ministers, and their

care "for the surety and preservation of the queen's most royal person,

in whom consisteth all the happiness and comfort of the whole state and

subjects of the realm." [Footnote: 13 Eliz., chap, i., Section I.] From

1571 to 1575 four new treason laws, [Footnote: Ibid., chaps, i, ii.; 14

Eliz., chaps, i., ii.] directed against sympathizers with Mary and

bringers of bulls from Rome, recall the savage legislation of Henry

VIII. under somewhat similar circumstances.

3. A third series of additions to the anti-Catholic code was called out

by the efforts of the Jesuits, from 1579 onward, to reconquer the

heretical nations and especially England, for the church. Hence, in

1581, the mere attempt to convert any subject of the queen to Roman

Catholicism, as well as the acceptance of such reconciliation with the

church, was made treason; the saying or hearing of the mass was

forbidden under penalty of heavy fine and long imprisonment; recusants

who were absent from church a month at a time were fined 20 pounds a

month for the length of time for which they stayed away; [Footnote: 23

Eliz., chap. i.] and by a later law the crown was allowed, in case of

recusancy, instead of the fine, to seize two-thirds of the property of

the offender. [Footnote: Ibid., chap. ii.]

Certain offences which Catholics might be especially expected to

commit, such as "by setting or erecting any figure or by casting of

nativities or by calculations or by any prophesying, witchcraft,

conjuration, or other like unlawful means whatsoever, seek to know, and

shall set forth by express words, deeds, or writings how long her

majesty shall live, or who shall reign king or queen of this realm of

England after her highness's decease," were made punishable by death

and confiscation of goods. In 1585 all Jesuits and Catholic priests

trained abroad were banished on pain of death, and all English subjects

studying abroad in one of those Jesuit schools, which had already

become famous as the best schools in Christendom, were required to

return to England immediately and take the oath of supremacy or suffer

the penalties of treason.

4. Within the next few years came the execution of Mary, the war with

Spain, the defeat of the Armada, and the definite passing of the crisis

of Elizabeth's reign. Nevertheless, the year 1593 was marked by an "act

against popish recusants," which required all English Catholics to

remain within five miles of their homes, and provided for a still

closer search for Jesuits and priests. [Footnote: 35 Eliz., chap. ii.]

Thus an augmenting body of oppressive law, in addition to their

fundamental disabilities, burdened the English Catholics at the

accession of James I. in 1603. That event they may well have looked

forward to and welcomed with joy. James was the son of Mary of

Scotland, for whom many of them had made such deep personal sacrifices

and on whose account all had been made to suffer. He was known to be a

man of moderate spirit, easy good-nature, and philosophic breadth of

mind. Circumstances, by relieving England from the fear of invasion

from Spain, and by establishing the Protestant succession, might be

considered to have left the way open for the admission of a more

generous and tolerant treatment of the Catholic minority. The king

controlled the enforcement or the non-enforcement of the law; his word

could put the machinery of the courts, high and low, into motion for

purposes of persecution; or, on the other hand, could open the prison

doors to those already incarcerated, and restrain the indictment of

those amenable to the law. James might fairly be expected to have the

will, as he undoubtedly had the power, to treat the Catholics with

greater leniency.

On the other hand, parliamentary and popular antagonism to the Roman

Catholics had to be contended with. Notwithstanding the legal supremacy

and complete predominance of the Anglican church, there was still a

wide-spread fear of the "usurped power and jurisdiction of the bishop

of Rome"; and much patriotic hatred of the Catholic enemies of England

and of their sympathizers within the realm. This national sentiment was

strongly reinforced by the fanatical Puritan fervor of opposition to

"the devilish positions and doctrines whereon popery is built and

taught." The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in which Catesby, Guy Fawkes, and

other Catholic conspirators showed themselves ready to sacrifice the

king, his family, his ministers, and members of Parliament, filled

James for a while with fears for his own safety. If James, therefore,

should favor the Catholics he must do so in opposition to the

overwhelming public opinion of the people of England and to his own

timidity. What would be his policy? Would the persecuted minority be

taken under the protection of the crown? Or would their position remain

as it had been for half a century, or even be made worse?

Upon the answer to this question depended the happiness or unhappiness

of the Catholics in England and the likelihood or unlikelihood that

many of them would emigrate. Should their position become intolerable,

those who could would either take refuge in one of the Catholic states

of the continent or find an asylum in those boundless lands claimed by

England across the sea. The minds of men through all Europe were

turning towards America, not only as a sphere for trade and a base for

the fighting out of Old-World quarrels, [Footnote: Zuniga to the king

of Spain, December 24, 1606, and September 22,1607, in Brown, Genesis

of the United States, I., 88-90, 116-118.] but as a place of settlement

for men who could not conform to their Old-World religious

surroundings.

Before the reign of James was over Sir George Calvert obtained a

charter for Avalon, in Newfoundland, the ambiguity of whose terms made

it possible to take Catholic priests and settlers there; and in 1632 he

received in exchange for this a charter for Maryland, under which

Catholics held all official positions and Jesuit missionaries carried

on their work. The British island of Montserrat, in the West Indies,

appears to have been settled in 1634 by Catholic refugees from

Virginia; [Footnote: Eggleston, Beginners of a Nation, 261, n. 9.] and

there were other floating proposals to colonize English and Irish

Catholics in America. [Footnote: Cal. of State Pap., 1628, p. 95.] It

was evidently quite within the bounds of possibility that Catholic

colonies should be established in those "other your highness's

dominions," from which the House of Commons in 1623 especially

petitioned that Romanists should be excluded. [Footnote: Rushworth,

Historical Collections, I., 141.]

As a matter of fact, the policy of James and of his son and successor

Charles towards the Catholics had little consistency, and shows an

alternation of leniency and increased severity, reflecting the varying

inclinations of the king and the changing exigencies of external and

internal politics. During the first two years of his reign James

lightened their burdens, in accordance with the promises of his first

speech in Parliament, "so much as time, occasion, or law should

permit." [Footnote: Prothero, Statutes and Constitutional Documents,

284.] The Gunpowder Plot then thoroughly frightened and angered the

king and justified the House of Commons in its protests against

leniency to the Catholics. In 1606 two long detailed statutes

[Footnote: 3 and 4 James I., chaps. iv., v.] were enacted, carrying

much further in principle the persecuting provisions of the law under

Elizabeth, increasing the burdens upon the conscience, the purse, and

the liberty of Catholics, and specifying the most minute arrangements

for the enforcement of the law and the discovery of those who were

secretly Romanists.

Before many years a change came, due principally to the interest of

James in the scheme of obtaining a Spanish bride for his son, and to

his increasing subserviency to Gondomar, the shrewd Spanish minister.

The king of Spain would not listen to any negotiations for the hand of

his sister, unless the persecution of his co-religionists in England

was stopped; and James, in order to carry out his foreign policy,

blinded by his admiration for the Spaniard, and always prone to follow

the line of least resistance, promised what he certainly could not

perform, the parliamentary repeal of the anti-Catholic laws.

Nevertheless, he performed what he could, and ordered the suspension of

their enforcement. In 1622 the lord keeper of the privy seal wrote to

the judges that "it is his majesty's pleasure that they make no

niceness or difficulty to extend the princely favor to all such as they

shall find prisoners in the jails of their circuits for any church

recusancy or refusing the oath of supremacy or dispensing of popish

books, or any other point of recusancy that shall concern religion only

and not matters of state." [Footnote: Rushworth, Historical

Collections, I., 63.] A vast number of Catholics were, in this year,

released on bail or freed completely from prosecution. When the Spanish

marriage negotiations failed, just before the close of the reign of

James, Parliament again petitioned the king to enforce the old penal

laws, at last with success; and a momentary wave of severity towards

the Catholics spread over England.

Spain was not the only Catholic country with which England was in

negotiation. The marriage of Charles with Henrietta Maria of France

followed close upon his accession to the throne. The conditions of the

marriage treaty called for greater leniency to the Catholics, and the

influence of the queen secured it, though not in the degree promised.

Yet on the whole the attitude of the crown and of the judges during the

period from 1625 to 1640 was favorable to the Catholics; and although

Laud was not plotting to hand over the English church to Rome, as was

the popular belief, he was too sympathetic with the spirit of Roman

Catholicism to put into force the savage laws against it which were

upon the statute-book.

In 1640 Laud fell, the hand of the king was removed from the helm, and

the domination of the Long Parliament and the protectorate for the next

twenty years meant the bitter persecution of the Catholics; while the

Restoration, in 1660, saw a partial toleration of them, preparatory to

the Declaration of Indulgence and the active efforts of James II. in

their favor twenty-five years later.

Through all this succession of alternately rigorous and lenient

applications of the harsh laws of the statute-book, as a matter of fact

few Catholics left England, and no American colony remained for any

considerable length of time a Catholic community. The reasons for this

result are not hard to find. In the first place, it may well be

questioned whether the position of the Catholics in England was ever so

bad as one would expect to find it from reading the laws and

parliamentary proceedings. In all Tudor and Stuart legislation there

was a wide chasm between the passage of the law and its enforcement;

the statute-book is loaded with laws that were never carried out, or

were put into force only to the most limited extent. The laws against

the Catholics certainly remained largely unenforced.

Secondly, the English Catholics were never without hope of an

amelioration of their state at home. The most natural time for a great

Catholic exodus was in the later years of the reign of James I. and the

early years of Charles I., when the foundations alike of Virginia and

New England were being laid, and when Maryland was offering a basis on

which either a Catholic or a Protestant community might presumably have

been built up; but this was just the period when the influence of the

crown was most consistently used in favor of the Catholics at home.

They might fairly hope that a better day was dawning for them, when the

powerful interposition of Spain and France was willingly accepted by

James and Charles in their favor. The special time when emigration

seemed most practicable was also the time when the occasion for it was

least.

Again, it is to be noted that no American colony ever reached the

position in which it could provide a positively secure refuge to

Catholics. Maryland wavered from toleration to Catholicism, then to

Anglicanism and to Puritanism, and then back to toleration; but never

at any time was it a Catholic settlement in the sense in which

Massachusetts belonged to the Puritans or Pennsylvania was the special

home of the Quakers. English Catholics, hesitating between emigration

and the further endurance of their ills at home, would feel no

irresistible attraction in the dubious toleration of any of the

colonies. [Footnote: Tyler, England in America, chaps, vii., viii.]

Lastly, it is to be noticed that the great proportion of the English

Catholics were not of the emigrating classes. Many of them were of the

nobility and gentry, and therefore not of the ordinary stuff of which

colonists were made. It is quite possible that the same conservative

tendencies which held them to the old church held them to their old

homes. If they had been as easily detached from their native soil as

the Puritans and Quakers, one cannot doubt that some great migration

comparable to that of those two bodies would have taken place.

CHAPTER XII

THE ENGLISH PURITANS AND THE SECTS (1550-1689)

The multitude of Englishmen other than Catholics, who, at the opening

of the seventeenth century, were dissatisfied with the church of

England as by law established, may be grouped under the general name of

Puritans; although as time passed on various newly organized religious

bodies formed themselves from among them, so that two more religious

classes, at least, have to be differentiated. The roots of Puritanism

are to be found in the characteristics of human temperament.

Conservatives and radicals will always exist; the Puritans were those

who carried or tried to carry the principles and ideas of the

Reformation to their logical and rigorous conclusion. Such men as

Latimer, Cranmer, and many of the theologians of the reign of Edward

VI., were already steadily approaching the fundamental position of the

Puritans, as their thought developed, long before the foreign influence

of the reign of Queen Mary became effective and the modified

Protestantism of Elizabeth was introduced.

If the government had kept its hands off, England would have divided

into two camps, that of the Catholics and that of a Puritanically

reformed church. The Anglican system was an artificial one, a

compromise established under the influence of the crown and kept in

power by royal determination till it eventually won the devotion, the

loyalty, or at least the deliberate acceptance of the great body of

moderate and conservative Englishmen. Catholics and Puritans were the

logical opposites, and not Catholics and Anglicans, nor yet Anglicans

and Puritans.

Yet in a more immediate sense Mary gave occasion to the rise of

Puritanism by driving into banishment many of the more devout

Protestants of her day. At Frankfort, Strasburg, Basel, Zurich, and

Geneva groups of these English exiles gathered, formed congregations

worshipping together; developed, apart from the restrictions of

government, the logical tendencies of their religious ideas; and in

many cases came under the powerful influence of continental reformers.

Especially at Frankfort [Footnote: Hinds, The England of Elizabeth, 12-

67.] and at Geneva was the religious life of these Protestant

communities at white heat; and controversies were then begun and

principles adopted which dominated all the later life of these

Englishmen, and were handed down to their successors in England and

America as party cries through more than a century. When the ordeal of

Mary's reign was over, the exiled for conscience' sake returned to

England, but they formed already a body divergent from the church as it

was then established.

During Elizabeth's reign three stages of the development of Puritanism

gave occasion for corresponding conflicts with the crown and for making

more clear the differences between Anglican and Puritan. During the

first decade of the reign, Puritanism meant a protest against certain

of the ceremonies and formulas and vestments required of clergymen by

the law. The sign of the cross on the child's forehead in baptism, the

celebration of saints' days, insistence on kneeling to receive the

communion, the use of church organs, the changing of robes during the

service, and even the wearing of a surplice or a square cap, were to

many earnest souls survivals of "popery" and temptations to

superstition. The clergy who held such beliefs tried by resolutions in

convocation to change the practices of the church: but notwithstanding

the large votes in their favor they were still in the minority and were

defeated. [Footnote: Strype, Annals, I., 500-505.]

Then individual ministers began to disregard the law, and either to

neglect the use of certain requirements of the prayer-book altogether

or to change the forms there laid down. The archbishop and the Court of

High Commission issued detailed instructions insisting on observance of

the authorized form of worship; [Footnote: Prothero, Statutes and

Constitutional Documents, 191-194.] but the ministers declared that

they owed obedience to God rather than to man, and either resigned

their pastorates or, encouraged by their congregations, continued to

disobey the law and the archiepiscopal injunctions. It was at this time

and in this connection that the word "Puritan" came into use, as a term

of reproach for those who insisted on an ultra-pure ritual, purged from

all traces of the old religion. "Puritan" was used as "Pharisee" might

have been. [Footnote: Camden, Annals, year 1568.]

From 1570 onward Puritanism entered upon a second stage, in the form of

a contest for changes in the organization of the established church. In

the main the same men who were dissatisfied with the liturgy of the

church began to oppose the system of its government by bishops and

archbishops. [Footnote: Letter from Sampson, formerly dean of Christ

Church, to Lord Burleigh, March 8, 1574, in Strype, Annals, III., 373.]

The "Admonition to Parliament" of 1572 declares that "as the names of

archbishops, archdeacons, lord bishops, chancellors, etc., are drawn

out of the pope's shop, together with their offices, so the government

which they use ... is anti-Christian and devilish and contrary to the

Scriptures. And as safely may we, by the warrant of God's words,

subscribe to allow the dominion of the pope universally to rule over

the word of God as an archbishop over a whole province or a lord bishop

over a diocese which containeth many shires and parishes. For the

dominion that they exercise ... is unlawful and expressly forbidden by

the word of God." [Footnote: Prothero, Statutes and Constitutional

Documents, 199.]

The greater number of those who attacked the episcopal organization of

the church advocated the system of Presbyterianism which had been

extensively adopted on the Continent and recently introduced into

Scotland by the Book of Discipline. November 20, 1572, was erected at

Wandsworth, in Surrey, the first presbytery in England; [Footnote:

Bancroft, Dangerous Positions, chap, i., quoted in Prothero, Statutes

and Constitutional Documents, 247.] from this time forward presbyteries

were established here and there by groups of neighboring parishes. Some

ten or fifteen years later the larger group, known as the "classis,"

was introduced; provincial and national "synods" were contemplated by

many of the Puritan clergy; and the English church bade fair to be

reorganized on Presbyterian lines, without the authority of the law.

This action met the stern opposition of the queen and the Court of High

Commission. In 1583 Elizabeth appointed Whitgift archbishop of

Canterbury, and under him the law was enforced with rigor. Individual

clergymen were deposed or forced to conform; the devotional practices

called "exercises," on which Puritanism throve, were forbidden; and

although the contest continued, the introduction of Presbyterianism was

held in check.

The latter years of Elizabeth's reign saw Puritanism within the church

taking on a new activity, by turning from questions of ceremony and

church government to questions of morals. The Puritans always stood for

greater earnestness and for the abolition of abuses in the church, but

as time passed on they brought into greater prominence the ascetic

ideal of life; the strict keeping of the Sabbath borrowed from the

Jewish ritual became customary; [Footnote: Eggleston, Beginners of a

Nation, 123-132.] prevailing immoralities and extravagances were more

bitterly reprobated in books, sermons, and parliamentary statutes; and

Puritanism took on that unlovely aspect of exaggerated austerity which

characterized its most conspicuous manifestations in the seventeenth

century.

The great body of men of Puritan tendencies, both clergymen and laymen,

were deeply interested in reforming the church of England in liturgy,

in organization, and in practices; but they had no wish or intention to

break it up, to divide it into different bodies, or to withdraw

individually from its membership. They were as completely dominated by

the ideal of a single united national church, one in doctrine,

organization, and form of worship, as was the queen herself.

Nevertheless, a group of men arose among them, under the general name

of Independents, to whom the very idea of a national church seemed

idolatrous; who found in the Scriptures, or were driven by the logic of

their position, to one plan of church government only--the absolute

independence of each congregation of Christian believers. They looked

back to the little groups of chosen believers in Syria and Asia Minor,

the shadowy outlines of whose organization are found in the New

Testament; their imagination gave definite shape and their reverence

for the Scriptures gave divine authority to these as examples.

According to the analogy of biblical times, they looked upon themselves

as a remnant of saints, sacred and set apart from a wicked and

persecuting world.

Some of these extreme Puritans were under the influence of Robert

Browne, a zealous advocate, whose activity lay principally between 1581

and 1586. Others came under the somewhat more systematic teachings of

Barrow and Greenwood. Thus it became a fundamental principle of several

thousand persons, between 1580 and 1600, to separate themselves from

the established church. They are, therefore, known as "Separatists,"

though they were more commonly called at that time, as a term of

reproach, by the names of their leaders, "Brownists" or "Barrowists."

They met in "conventicles," and even strove to form more permanent

congregations by gathering in secret places, or sometimes openly, in

defiance of the authorities. A churchman of the time says that they

teach "that the worship of the English church is flat idolatry; that we

admit into our church persons unsanctified; that our preachers have no

lawful calling; that our government is ungodly; that no bishop or

preacher preacheth Christ sincerely and truly; that the people of every

parish ought to choose their bishop, and that every elder, though he be

no doctor nor pastor, is a bishop." [Footnote: Paule, Life of Whitgift

(1612), 43, quoted in Prothero, Statutes and Constitutional Documents,

223.]

In times when church and state were one, such teaching could not be

endured. If the Puritans were scourged with whips the Separatists were

lashed with scorpions. Their teachers were silenced and imprisoned, and

Barrow and Greenwood were, in 1587, hanged at Tyburn. Their

congregations were broken up and attendants at their conventicles were

fined, deprived of their property, and thrown into prison, where they

died by the score. Before Elizabeth's reign was over, the Separatists

had gone into exile or become but a persecuted remnant, so far, at

least, as outward manifestation extended; though one can scarcely doubt

that among Puritans generally, and even, perhaps, among those who still

adhered to the established church, were many who shared their

convictions. It is to be remembered that the Independents and all the

new sects which were formed in England later in the seventeenth

century, as well as the Puritans of New England, organized themselves

on the basis of independent congregations of Christian believers.

The close of the sixteenth century saw the contrast between the

Anglican churchman on the one hand and the Puritan and Separatist on

the other becoming more harsh, their incompatibility more evident.

Fifty years earlier episcopacy and ceremonialism seemed to most

Anglicans comparatively unimportant in themselves. They rather blamed

the Puritans for making a difficulty about matters indifferent, and for

opposing the civil authority in things pertaining to conscience; but

did not quarrel with them on religious questions. But a generation of

disputes, the development of fundamental principles, the need for

justification of a position already taken, drove both parties into a

more dogmatic attitude. The high-church party in the established church

now began to assert the divine appointment of the episcopal office, to

lay stress on the doctrine of the apostolic succession, and gradually

to reintroduce much symbolic ceremonial.

The Puritans, on the other hand, were more than ever convinced that the

system they advanced was based upon divine authority; and that the

church as it stood was founded upon human regulation only and must be

forced, if it could not be persuaded, to change its system. Still

greater clearness was given to this division of parties by the

theological contest that came into existence between 1600 and 1620. The

Puritans were almost completely Calvinist, and they claimed that the

established church itself had always been so. On the other hand, the

Anglican leaders of the early seventeenth century were Arminian, and

this form of theological doctrine was asserted by all those who

defended the existing organization and ceremonial practices of the

church. [Footnote: Makower, Constitutional History of the Church of

England, 75.] Thus the breach between the Puritan and the churchman was

now so wide that James I., indolent and arrogant for all his toleration

and learning, did nothing--perhaps could do nothing--towards its

closing. He said of the Puritans, at the Conference at Hampton Court in

1604: "I shall make them conform themselves or I will harry them out of

this land, or else do worse." [Footnote: Gardiner, Hist, of England,

I., 157.] He disappointed and angered them, drove them into opposition

to his civil rule as well as to his church policy, and strengthened

their number and their position by his treatment of Parliament, whose

interests and theirs had come to be inseparable.

All the "antagonisms, religious and political," of the reign of James

were intensified in that of Charles I. The new king was more autocratic

and more unsympathetic with his subjects; Parliament was more self-

assertive and more determined to impose its wishes upon king and

ministers; the authorities of the established church were more

intolerant towards the Puritans and milder towards the Catholics. The

Puritans, on the other hand, were more convinced that the Anglican

church was retrograding towards Catholicism, and more determined to

destroy episcopacy if they should ever be able to do so.

The freest opportunity of the established church to destroy Puritanism

came during the period of the personal government of Charles, from 1629

to 1640, when Parliament had no meetings, and when the Court of Star

Chamber, the High Commission, and the Privy Council were the all-

powerful instruments of an administration sympathetic with the high-

church party. The oppressions of the Puritans were now at their height,

and the prospect of ever obtaining freedom to worship as they chose

seemed the darkest. With the most prominent liberal and Puritan leaders

imprisoned for their political opinions, like Sir John Eliot, or lying

in prison, crushed under enormous fines, like Prynne; with the courts

subservient to the royal will; with court preachers declaring the duty

of passive obedience to the government; with Laud guiding the policy of

the king in all ecclesiastical matters,--the state of the Puritans

might well seem hopeless, and they might well look towards some distant

land as a place for the establishment of a purified national church.

Archbishop Laud typified and embodied the spirit of the dominant

church, and in addition he had unwearied energy, industry, and

determination. Sincere, practical, and brave, but narrow-minded and

unsympathetic, he set about the work of reducing the church of England

to absolute uniformity in accordance with the law as he interpreted it.

The Nonconformists had no rest; Puritan clergymen must conform; Puritan

laymen must suffer under the power of the church, which, dominated by

its bishops and wedded to its idols, was becoming steadily more

powerful and all-inclusive. The reign of Charles was not marked by the

passage of harsher laws against the Puritans, but it was distinguished

from all periods that preceded or followed it by the continuous,

steady, and thorough-going application of those already in existence.

It was under this regime that the great Puritan migration to America

took place. The Puritans represented a class of society which was much

more ready to emigrate than the Catholics. As early as 1597 some

imprisoned Brownists sent a petition to the Privy Council asking that

they might be allowed to settle in America; and four men of the same

persuasion even went on a voyage to examine the land. [Footnote:

Eggleston, Beginners of a Nation, 167.] In 1608 many Puritans seem to

have prepared to emigrate to Virginia, when by Archbishop Bancroft's

influence they were forbidden by the king to go, except with his

express permission in each individual case. [Footnote: Stith, Hist, of

Virginia, book II., year 1608.]

The Separatists early became wanderers on the face of the earth, a now

famous group of them leaving their English homes for Amsterdam,

migrating thence to Leyden, and then, after hesitating between a Dutch

and an English colony and between North and South America, a portion

settling themselves on Plymouth Harbor. [Footnote: Griffis, Pilgrims in

Their Three Homes.] In all the history of early colonization there have

been few such occasions as that of the year 1638, when fourteen ships

bound for New England lay in the Thames at one time, and when three

thousand settlers reached Boston within the same year. [Footnote:

Authorities quoted in Eggleston, The Beginners of a Nation, 344] Almost

all the Englishmen who were ever to emigrate to New England left their

homes during the twelve years between 1628 and 1640. Unfavorable

economic conditions at home and the prospect of greater prosperity in

the colony doubtless had their influence; but of the more than twenty

thousand who passed from the old England to New England during that

time, it is fair to presume that by far the greater number were more or

less influenced by their Puritan opinions.

The most decisive proof of this motive for emigration is the slacking

of the tide of Puritan expatriation after 1640. When Parliament, after

eleven years of intermission, met in that year at Westminster in the

full appreciation of its power, one of its first actions was to order

the impeachment and arrest of Archbishop Laud. At last the Puritans had

their turn, and the assembling of Parliament found them no longer a

scattered, disorganized, diversified element in the English church and

nation; but, thanks to long persecution, a compact body, austere in

morals, dogmatic in religious belief, ready to make use of political

means for religious ends, and determined to impose their asceticism and

their orthodoxy on the English people so far as they might be able.

[Footnote: Eggleston, Beginners of a Nation, 133.]

A majority of Parliament, small but sufficient, were Puritans, as had

probably been true of every Parliament for many years, had they been

free to act. Their intentions showed themselves in a prompt inception

of reforms in the church, and the burdens of official ecclesiastical

oppression were rapidly transferred to the shoulders of those who had

previously bound the loads upon Puritan backs. In 1641 orders were

issued by the House of Commons for the demolition of all images,

altars, and crucifixes. [Footnote: Commons Journals, II., 279.] A

commission known as the "Committee of Scandalous Ministers" was

appointed, and proceeded to discipline the clergy and to harass the

universities. Demands for the harsher treatment of priests and Jesuits

were soon followed by plans for the diminution of the power of

archbishops and bishops of the established church. The Court of High

Commission was abolished July 5, 1641. [Footnote: 16 Chas. I., chap.

ii.] The archbishops and bishops were removed from the House of Lords

and the Privy Council by the act of February 13, 1642. [Footnote:

Ibid., chap, xxvii.]

The Solemn League and Covenant of September 25, 1643, pledged

Parliament and the leaders of the now dominant party to extirpate

"church government by archbishops, bishops, their chancellors and

commissaries, deans, deans and chapters, archdeacons, and all other

ecclesiastical officers depending on that hierarchy"; and to reform

religion in England "in doctrine, worship, discipline, and government,

according to the word of God and the example of the best reformed

churches." [Footnote: League and Covenant, Sub Section 1, 2.]

By this time the quarrel between Charles and Parliament had been put to

the arbitrament of the sword, and the distinction of Cavalier and

Roundhead to a certain extent superseded that between Anglican and

Puritan. In 1645 came the catastrophe of Naseby, then the long series

of futile negotiations ending in the execution of the king at Whitehall

in 1649. From the general confusion emerged the commonwealth, "without

any king or House of Lords," the church organized on Presbyterian

lines, the spirit of Puritanism dominating, although there was

toleration for every form of Christian belief, "provided this liberty

be not extended to popery or prelacy." [Footnote: Instrument of

Government, Section 37.] For full twenty years the Anglican church was

under a cloud, first Presbyterianism and then Independency being the

official form of the church of England. The ill-fortunes of the

royalist party in the civil war and under the commonwealth, and the

religious oppression imposed by the Puritans upon churchmen, now

combined to send to the colonies the very classes which had so recently

been the persecutors. From 1640 to 1660 Virginia, Maryland, and the

Carolinas received an influx of English churchmen escaping from

conditions at home as intolerable to them as, those which drove the

Pilgrims and Puritans to New England during the previous decades.

The commonwealth was not merely a triumph of Puritanism, it was a

birth-time of new religious sects. The excitement of a period of civil

war, the breaking down of old standards, the disappearance of old

authority, the opportunities offered by the quasi-democracy of the

commonwealth, the preoccupation of the seventeenth-century mind with

questions of religion, all combined to cause almost a complete

disintegration of religious organization. Here and there a man began to

preach religious truth and duty as they looked to him; he obtained

adherents, a congregation was organized, the tenets of this body

spread, and branches were formed; till shortly a new religious society

had come into existence, with its creed, organization, missionary

spirit, and more or less vigorous hope of converting all men and

absorbing all other religious organizations. An almost indefinite

number of such religious bodies arose during the middle years of the

seventeenth century--Millenarians or Fifth Monarchy Men, Baptists or

Anabaptists, Quakers, Ranters, Notionists, Familists, Perfectists, and

others. Most of them died out within the brief period which gave them

birth, but some survived to become great religious denominations,

extending into America as well as throughout England. [Footnote: Gooch,

English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century, chap. viii.]

Of these the Quakers are the most interesting in their relations to the

New World. The spirit from which they arose was closely similar to that

which gave birth to the Baptists of England, the Anabaptists,

Mennonites, Pietists, and Quietists of the Continent. Their movement

was an extreme revolt against the formalism, corporate character, and

externality of established religion. It contained a deep element of

mysticism. The Quakers declared all believers, irrespective of

learning, sex, or official appointment, to be priests. [Footnote: Fox,

Letters, No. 249.] They asserted the adequacy of the "inner light" to

guide every man in his faith and in his actions. They opposed all forms

and ceremonies, even many of those of ordinary courtesy and fashion,

such as removing the hat or conforming the garb to changing custom.

George Fox, the representative of these ideas, began his public

preaching in 1648, and his doctrines at once found wide acceptance. In

1652 there were said to be twenty-five Quaker preachers passing through

the country; by 1654 there were sixty, some of whom were women, who, by

the principles of their teachings, should preach as freely as men.

Their missionary journeys led them to Scotland and Ireland, and later

even to Holland and Germany and the far east of Europe. Organization

among the Quakers proceeded somewhat slowly. This was due partly to the

individualist character of their beliefs, partly to the lack of

constructive interest on the part of Fox and the other leaders during

the early period of their missionary work. Nevertheless, "meetings"

were gradually organized, took definite shape, and kept up regular

communication with one another, so that there came to be a net-work of

such bodies over the whole country. In 1659 it is estimated that there

were thirty thousand Quakers in England.

Notwithstanding the religious liberty guaranteed by the Instrument of

Government of 1653, the teachings and practices of the Quaker preachers

brought them into much turmoil. Their vituperation of the clergy, their

intrusion into church services and ceremonies, already reduced only too

frequently to confusion by the rapid changes of the time, their

objection to the payment of tithes, their refusal to take an oath,

their outspoken denunciation of all whose actions they disapproved, the

prominence of women in their propaganda, and, in early times,

suspicions that they were connected with political plots, could not but

subject them to ridicule, abuse, and actual persecution. They

habitually violated numerous laws on the statute-book, ranging from

those requiring good order to those forbidding what was construed as

blasphemy. They were, therefore, beaten and stoned by the mob; abused,

fined, and imprisoned by the magistrates; ridiculed and prosecuted by

the clergy; subjected to starvation, exposure, and other hardships by

sheriffs and jailers. [Footnote: Besse, Sufferings of the Quakers, I.,

chaps, iii., iv, xi., xviii., II, chap. i., etc.]

In 1660 Charles II. was recalled to the throne. This event was a

restoration of the church even more than a restoration of the monarchy.

The royal power could never again be what it had been before the civil

war, the execution of a king, and the establishment of a republic. But

the church, with the longevity and recuperative power of all religious

organizations, arose again to a life apparently as vigorous and

despotic as in the times of Laud. The year 1662 found four thousand two

hundred Quakers in the jails of England; [Footnote: Sewel, Hist. of the

Quakers, 346.] and the popular reaction against the austerity of the

Puritan regime subjected Quakers to much ill-treatment by the rabble.

Yet just at this juncture the dignity of the body was strengthened and

its power of self-assertion increased by the adherence to it of men of

higher education and social position. The Quakers of the commonwealth

period were almost all of the middle and lower-middle or trading

classes. Soon after the Restoration a number of men of good family and

some means threw in their fortunes with the persecuted sect. One of

them, Robert Barclay, reduced to order and system the scattered and

incoherent statements of its theology. In his Apology, published in

1675, he set forth a logical and consistent statement of beliefs,

couched in clear and graceful language and supported by calm reasoning

and example. [Footnote: Thomas, Hist. of the Society of Friends in

America, chap ii., 200, 201.] Of the same class was William Penn, an

educated, wealthy, polished, and genial English gentleman. Yet he was

also a serious-minded and devout Quaker preacher, missionary, and

writer, and as he saw and shared in the sufferings of the faithful he

might well despair of better conditions in England and think of a "Holy

Experiment" in America, where Quakers from 1675 onward were settling in

West New Jersey. [Footnote: Fiske, The Dutch and Quaker Colonies, II.,

99, 167; Andrews, Colonial Self-Government, chap. vii.]

Under Charles II. the attitude of the king was favorable to the

Quakers, while in the short reign of James II. they had the great

advantage of the personal friendship of the king for Penn. Yet no

matter what should be the favor of the king, or even their more

moderate treatment by the authorities of the established church,

Quakers could not hope for material comfort or ease of mind in

surroundings so alien to their ideals as England was in the last

decades of the seventeenth century. They, still more than the Puritans

in the time of Laud or the churchmen in the time of Cromwell, suffered

because of the incongruity of the ordinary law and custom with their

ideals. It was the realization of this incompatibility, along with the

attraction of a community under Quaker government, cheap and abundant

land, a promise of a growing population and lucrative business

opportunities that set flowing to Pennsylvania the tide of Quaker

emigration and created in a few years a great Quaker commonwealth in

America.

Besides Puritans, Anglicans, and Quakers, another great stream of

emigration poured into the central colonies of America--the

Presbyterian Scotch-Irish. To understand their coming, it is necessary

to return to the early years of the seventeenth century and to consider

the policy of James I. towards rebellious Ireland. At the opening of,

his reign James found in Ireland an opportunity to plant a colony near

home. [Footnote: Walpole, Kingdom of Ireland, 130-135.] When Englishmen

and Scotchmen had been established in Ireland, the Irish sore would be

healed, and that restless Catholic community be transformed into an

outlying district of England. The "Plantation of Ulster" began in 1611.

The titles of the natives were ruthlessly forfeited, the six counties

of the province of Ulster were re-divided, and the land was re-granted

to proprietors who engaged to settle colonists from England and

Scotland upon it according to a fixed system.

This system was skilfully devised and rigidly carried out. It required

the new land-owners to establish freeholders, small tenants, laborers,

and artisans upon the soil in proportion to the amount of land they

received, allowing only a certain minimum number of the Irish natives

to be retained as laborers. The proprietors were largely merchants of

London and merchandising noblemen of the court; the tenants they

introduced were mostly from the towns and country districts of the

north of England and the lowlands of Scotland. Men of Puritan

tendencies showed the same readiness to emigrate to Ireland that they

showed soon afterwards as to New England, and as a result the settlers

of Ulster, during the first two decades of the seventeenth century,

were almost universally Presbyterians.

Under these new and somewhat anomalous conditions a population grew up

in the north of Ireland which was almost as distinct in race and

religious organization from the people of England and Scotland as it

was from the Catholic and Celtic population which it had displaced. Its

religion, without being proscribed, was not acknowledged, for

Anglicanism was the established church of Ireland, though it numbered

but few adherents. Ulster's industrial interests were, from the

beginning, subordinated to those of England, as completely as were

those of the natives. [Footnote: Cunningham, Growth of English Industry

and Commerce, II., 136.] As the century progressed the economic evils

under which the Scotch-Irish suffered became more pronounced. The

navigation acts were so interpreted as to exclude Ireland from all

their advantages and to cut her off from any direct trade with the

colonies. Tobacco-growing was forbidden, and the exportation of cattle

to England placed under prohibitory duties. The wool manufacture was

crushed by heavy export taxes, and the linen manufacture neglected or

discouraged. In 1642 and again in 1689 came war and new conquests of

the country, to add to its disorganization and chronic sufferings.

Kidnapping, enforced service in the colonies, and traffic in political

prisoners were indulged in by the government. Ireland, as a dwelling-

place for Catholics or Protestants, for Celts or Saxons, for natives or

English and Scotch settlers, was a country of ever-renewed distress.

To economic disabilities is to be added religious persecution of a mild

type, especially after 1689. All the laws that interfered with the

religious equality of the Presbyterians in England were extended to

Ireland; and they seemed more vexatious there because in Ulster the

Presbyterians were in the vast majority and the established church

almost unrepresented, except by tithe collectors and absentee

landlords. At the close of the seventeenth century there were more than

a million Ulster Presbyterians. But soon, as a result of this combined

economic and religious oppression, they began to migrate in a narrow

stream which by 1720 became a wide river. They formed the largest body

of emigrants that left Europe for the American colonies. Before the

eighteenth century was over the Presbyterian population of Ireland was

reduced by at least a half; [Footnote: Fiske, The Dutch and Quaker

Colonies in America, II., 354.] and the missing moiety was to be found

scattered along the whole line of the Appalachian mountain-chain, at

the backbone of the English colonies, extending eastward and westward

and forming a prolific and influential element of the American people.

CHAPTER XIII

THE POLITICAL SYSTEM OF ENGLAND (1500-1689)

An earlier chapter of this work has been devoted to the political

institutions of Spain, France, and the Netherlands, and each had its

share of influence on American history; but it is England from which

the American nation really sprang, of which it was for more than a

century and a half a dependency, and to whose traditions, institutions,

and government we must look back for the origins of our own. The oldest

political institution in England is the monarchy. Older than

Parliament, older than the law-courts, older than the division of the

country into shires, the monarchy dates back to the consolidation of

the petty Anglo-Saxon states in the ninth century--and these were

themselves kingdoms.

At no time in this long course of English history were the claims of

the monarchy more exorbitant than under James I. and Charles I., from

1603 to 1642, just when the tide of immigration began to flow towards

America, and when the governments of the colonies were being

established. "What God hath joined, then, let no man separate. I am the

husband and all the whole isle is my lawful wife. I am the head and it

is my body. I am the shepherd and it is my flock. . . ." [Footnote:

Prothero, Select Statutes, 283.] So King James wove metaphors, when he

addressed Parliament at its opening in 1604. When disputes had arisen

in 1610 he declared: "The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon

earth, for kings are not only God's lieutenants upon earth and sit upon

God's throne, but even by God himself they are called gods. ... As to

dispute what God may do is blasphemy, ... so is it sedition in subjects

to dispute what a king may do in the height of his power." "Encroach

not upon the prerogative of the crown; if there falls out a question

that concerns my prerogative or mystery of state, deal not with it till

you consult with the king or his council, or both, for they are

transcendent matters." [Footnote: Ibid., 293, 294.]

This absolute prerogative of the king was attributed to him by others,

as well as claimed by himself. Dr. Cowell, professor of civil law at

Cambridge, declared that the king "is above the law by his absolute

power"; [Footnote: Cowell, Interpreter, under word "king."] and Sir

Walter Raleigh wrote that attempts to bind the king by law justified

his breach of it, "his charters and other instruments being no other

than the surviving witnesses of unconstrained will." [Footnote:

Raleigh, Prerogative of Parliament, Preface.] But this definition of

the prerogative of the king was an exaggerated description of his real

position in the English system of government, and was either academic

or argumentative. As properly used, absolute monarchy merely meant an

all-powerful not an autocratic government; government was supreme, but

the king was not necessarily supreme in the government. As government

had been developed in England, in the course of time it had grown up

around the monarchy as its centre and found in it its embodiment.

In Anglo-Saxon England government was crude and embryonic, but even

then the king held a general oversight over the exercise of its few

functions. In the later Middle Ages, when government was somewhat more

highly developed, its more numerous functions, in so far as they were

not performed by feudal lords or church officials, were fulfilled by

the king. It was by the monarchy that the law-courts were formed and

commissioned, that Parliament was summoned and given the opportunity

for self-development, that the system of taxation and of military life

was organized. The great advance in the organization and effectiveness

of government which marked the reigns of the Tudor rulers consisted in

the elaboration and increased activity of the administrative or royal

element in the government.

The royal prerogative might, therefore, be conceived of as the function

of keeping the machine of government running. The king was the director

and controller of an aggregate of governmental powers. All officials

were commissioned in his name, and those of higher rank were actually

selected and appointed by him. All foreign intercourse was carried on

in his name, and in the main directed by him; Parliament was called,

prorogued, and adjourned at his will, and he kept at least a negative

control over its actions. All justice, was exercised in his name, and

his interests and known wishes sometimes influenced decisions. All

charters, whether to cities, to guilds, to possessors of mercantile

monopolies, or to commercial and colonizing companies, were issued

under his name and seal, and the powers granted in them could not be in

opposition to his will. [Footnote: Smith, The Commonwealth of England,

book I., chap, ix., book II., chap. iv.]

The powers of the king were, therefore, very real, even if the

philosophic contentions of James and other theorists be disregarded;

but they were powers restricted in every direction by actual

conditions, and exercised through ministers whose familiarity with

precedent, whose control over the details of administration, whose

dignified offices, and whose personal weight of judgment and character

made them, though nominally servants of the king, a real power in the

government.

Much of the royal power was exercised through the three great law-

courts, King's Bench, Exchequer, and Common Pleas; through the courts

of equity, held by the chancellor, the master of the rolls, and the

master of requests; through the half-administrative, half-judicial

bodies, the council of the north and the council of the marches of

Wales, and through the circuit courts of assize. Much was exercised

through higher and lower administrative officers, through the

Exchequer, and through lower offices such as the wardrobe and the

admiralty.

But the real centre of gravity of the executive powers of the

government at this time is to be found in the Council or Privy Council,

two terms which are used indiscriminately. [Footnote: Dicey, The Privy

Council, 80] This body was made up of seventeen or eighteen members,

including all the great ministers of state, the lord chancellor, or, as

he was sometimes called, lord keeper of the great seal, the high

treasurer, the two secretaries, the great master and the comptroller of

the household, the chamberlain and the great admiral, besides a certain

number chosen as members of the Privy Council without otherwise

occupying office. [Footnote: Acts of the Privy Council, 1594-1597]

There were usually from six to ten members of the council present, the

membership of some of the ministers being somewhat perfunctory.

As a body, however, its services were as far from perfunctory as can

well be conceived. Its sessions were held almost daily and its sphere

of activity was apparently coextensive with the life of England and of

all its dependencies. Scarcely an interest, public or private, escapes

its attention, whether it is the organization of a campaign in France

or the settlement of a family quarrel between father and son;

[Footnote: Acts of the Privy Council, 1591-1592, pp 160, 193, 256-258,

292, 327, 414, 476, etc.] whether it is "Sir John Norreis, knight, and

Thomas Diggs, esquire," or a Lord Morley, or the chief baron of the

Court of Exchequer, Lord Manwood, or some merchants or poor artisans or

an "Elice Gailer, of Berton, yeoman," that appear before the council at

its summons; whether it is engaged in formulating rules for articles

contraband of war, or trying to put an end to illicit coinage on the

borders of Wales; whether engaged in one or other of a hundred

different interests, the council is always active, intrusive, and high-

handed. [Footnote: Ibid, 231, 305, 314, 378, 449, 572.] It regulated

manufactures and trade, protected foreigners, disciplined recusants,

kept the oversight of customs and other officials, settled disputes

between colleges and their tenants, bishops, deans, and government

officers, instructed sheriffs and justices of the peace as to their

duty, made provision for the keeping up of military and naval forces,

and performed other duties so numerous and varied as to defy

enumeration or classification.

A special duty of the Privy Council was to keep up correspondence with

the officials of outlying districts under the dominion of the crown and

not within the systematic administration of sheriffs, assize courts,

justices of the peace, or other regular governance. These regions

included the marches of Wales and of Scotland, certain counties of

England, Ireland, and the Channel Islands, the last two of these having

been placed under the direct supervision of the Privy Council by

statute. [Footnote: Poynings's Act (1495), Dicey, The Privy Council,

90.] As colonies grew up they fell, naturally, under the special care

of the Privy Council. The duty of hearing appeals from colonial courts

became and is still a duty of the council; to the Privy Council were

referred colonial laws for approval or veto; and the successive bodies

formed for the oversight of the colonies, culminating in the Board of

Trade and Plantations of 1696, were either committees of the Privy

Council or boards acting under its control and reporting to it.

Although most of this control over the colonies was still far in the

future, the power exercised by the council over England's nearest

dependency, Ireland, may fairly be taken as anticipatory of it. Irish

matters during the later years of Queen Elizabeth and the early years

of James I. demanded much attention and time from the Privy Council,

notwithstanding the existence of an Irish Parliament, a lord deputy,

various provincial officials, and the whole framework of a subordinate

government in Ireland. All the variety of cases that came before the

council from England were duplicated from Ireland. In fact, Ireland was

treated much as if it were an English county, or better, perhaps, one

of those regions of England, like the marches of Wales, which had a

somewhat peculiar jurisdiction.

The most important form of oversight of Ireland exercised by the Privy

Council was that based upon "Poynings's Act" of 1495. Sir Edward

Poynings, a type of that class of vigorous officials of middle rank

which were such useful instruments of the Tudor government, was sent,

in 1494, to Ireland as lord deputy; the next year he called a

parliament at Drogheda and obtained its assent to a number of statutes

designed to introduce order into that disturbed country, and to make

real the power of English government by diminishing that of the

turbulent lords of the Pale. [Footnote: Morris, Hist. of Ireland, 1496-

1868, pp. 58-63.] As a means of reaching the latter object, the Irish

Parliament, which had long been under their control and which had

lately made some assertion of its right of independent action,

[Footnote: Irish Statutes, 37 Henry VI.] was to be curbed, and that by

its own ordinance.

It was therefore enacted that in the future no bill should be

introduced into the Irish Parliament unless its heads had first been

submitted to the English Privy Council and obtained the approval of

that body and of the king. [Footnote: Irish Statutes, 10 Henry VII.,

chap. iv.] Moreover, this approval must be given before Parliament met.

This reduced the Irish Parliament to a mere registering body for royal

enactments. In 1556 an explanatory act was passed [Footnote: Irish

Statutes, 3 and 4 Philip and Mary, chap. iv.] amending Poynings's Act

so far as to make it allowable for the Irish Parliament to pass any

bills which had received the approval of the crown and of the English

Privy Council at any time during its session. The regular practice of

Irish legislation under these acts was as follows: any member of either

house of the Irish Parliament might bring in heads of a bill, which, if

approved by both houses, were submitted to the viceroy, who referred

them to the Irish Privy Council; that body sent them, altered or

unaltered, to the king, who referred them to the English Privy Council;

this body then approved, rejected, or modified them; and they were

returned, through the viceroy, to the Irish Parliament in the form of a

bill, to be accepted or rejected as a whole, but not to be further

modified. [Footnote: Walpole, Kingdom of Ireland, 253, 254.]

By this cumbrous method only could the Irish Parliament legislate. It

was, moreover, subject not only to the English Privy Council, but to

the English Parliament. One of the clauses of Poynings's Act had

provided that all statutes which up to that time had been passed by the

English Parliament should bind Ireland also. [Footnote: Irish Statutes,

10 Henry VII., chap. xxii.] Many laws were subsequently passed by the

English Parliament for Ireland, thus ignoring the Irish Parliament; but

it was not till later than the period we are considering that a claim

of the superiority of the English Parliament was definitely made. In

the eighteenth century a member of the Irish Parliament published a

book called The Case of Ireland Being Bound by Acts of Parliament in

England Stated. This was formally condemned by the English Parliament

and ordered to be burned by the common hangman. [Footnote: Walpole,

Kingdom of Ireland, 252.] When still later the Irish House of Lords

protested against the reversal of one of its judgments, on appeal, by

the English House of Lords, the English Parliament, in 1720, passed an

act depriving the Irish House of Lords of any appellate jurisdiction,

and declaring that "the English Parliament had, hath, and of right

ought to have full power and authority to make laws and statutes of

sufficient force and validity to bind the people of Ireland" [Footnote:

6 George I., chap, v.]--a precedent of portentous applicability to the

American colonies when a similar question came up in regard to them a

half-century later. The power of Parliament over external dependencies

was destined to come into greater prominence in the future. The

question at issue at the beginning of the seventeenth century was the

extent of its power over England itself. Was it, like the Privy

Council, the law-courts, and other such bodies, merely a creation and

dependency of the crown? Or was it, although in form an assembly of

royal councillors, meeting only when the king summoned it and ceasing

to exist when he ordered its dissolution, a branch of the government

co-ordinate with or even in certain relations superior to him?

In the organization of Parliament there were several grave

deficiencies, if it were to be considered an independent body. It was a

composite assembly of two ill-related parts. The House of Lords, which

consisted at this time of some fifty members, [Footnote: D'Ewes,

Journals, 599] had an existence as a royal council quite apart from the

House of Commons, and there were still many evidences that it was the

original body and the House of Commons a later accretion. In 1601, when

Elizabeth appeared in the House of Lords to open her last Parliament,

the Commons, who were waiting in their own chamber, did not hear of her

presence promptly, and when they hastened to the Lords' chamber the

door was closed and they could not obtain admission, so they "returned

back again into their own House much discontented." [Footnote: Ibid,

620.] The Lords had various privileges and constitutional rights of

their own: as individuals, of trial by peers, of being represented by

proxies, of entering individual protests, of audience with the

sovereign, of certain advantages of procedure in the courts of common

law; as a body, of trying impeachments brought by the House of Commons,

and of acting as a final court of appeal for all lower courts whether

of law or equity. [Footnote: Pike, Constitutional History of the House

of Lords, chaps. ix., xi.-xiv.]

The House of Commons was composed of two knights or gentlemen elected

for each shire; and one or two representatives for each of nearly three

hundred cities and boroughs. The system of representation was crude and

antiquated. The knights of the shire were elected by the "forty-

shilling freeholders"--that is to say, by all who had a tenure

approaching ownership in lands whose annual rental value reached that

sum. This was an electorate that reached far down in the social scale,

but it was limited by the tendency of English land to remain in the

hands of large owners, and by the influence, legitimate and

illegitimate, of the gentry, the great county noble families, and the

crown. The knights of the shire, therefore, as a matter of fact, not

only belonged to, but were elected by and reflected the interests and

feelings of, the great body of rural gentry; while the yeomen exercised

little influence in Parliament, as the laboring classes certainly

exercised none at all.

There were vast differences in the system of election by the towns

which were represented in Parliament, varying all the way from

appointment by patrons, in some towns, down through divers grades of

extension of the franchise to an almost universal suffrage in a few.

Nevertheless, from the towns, as from the counties, it was

representatives of the upper and middle classes that sat in the

Commons. There was no approach to equality in the constituencies

represented in the House of Commons; members were elected often by

outside influence and always by a narrow constituency, and no control

was possessed by the electors over their representatives.

Yet these defects were more apparent than real. The special powers of

the House of Lords were becoming shadowy, and almost the only real

significance of the peerage was when it was united with the House of

Commons and made a part of the larger whole of Parliament. [Footnote:

36 and 37 Henry VIII., f. 60 (Dyer, Reports, pt. i, 327).]

In the House of Commons was the real source of power of Parliament.

Whatever the imperfections in the method of election, whatever the

irregularity of constituencies, whatever the crudity of the idea of

representation, the five hundred or more knights, country gentlemen,

lawyers, and merchants who made up the Commons at this time [Footnote:

Names of Members Returned to Serve in Parliament, pt. i., 442-448.]

were convinced that in some way they stood for the whole nation. When

Parliament had been once summoned and organized, it became a body with

three hundred years of precedent back of it; and in the days of the

Stuarts it confronted the king with claims to a very different position

and power from those he was inclined to concede to it. So far from

assimilating their position to that of the law-courts, Privy Council,

and other such bodies, at the very opening of the reign of James the

Commons declared "there is not the highest standing court in this land

that ought to enter into competency either for dignity or authority

with this high court of Parliament which with your Majesty's royal

assent gives laws to other courts, but from other courts receives

neither laws nor orders." [Footnote: Apology of the Commons, 1604;

Petyt, Jus Parliamentarium, 227-247.]

The course of time intensified this difference of opinion. "Set chairs

for the ambassadors," James cried, mockingly, when the deputies from

the House of Commons visited him with a petition during the dispute of

1621. To the king Parliament seemed to be making a claim to sovereignty

against which the only proper argument was a jest. Shortly afterwards

he wrote to the speaker of the House of Commons, "These are, therefore,

to command you to make known in our name unto the House that none

therein shall presume henceforth to meddle with anything concerning our

government or deep matters of state." He insisted that "these are unfit

things to be handled in Parliament except your king requires it of you.

"As to the privileges of Parliament James wrote, "We cannot allow

of the style calling it your ancient and undoubted right and

inheritance, but could rather have wished that ye had said that your

privileges were derived from the grace and permission of our ancestors

and us." [Footnote: Letter of the king to the House of Commons,

December 10,1621.]

The Commons, on the other hand, a week later, placed this protestation

on their minutes: "That the liberties, privileges, and jurisdictions of

Parliament are the ancient and undoubted birthright and inheritance of

the subjects of England, and that the arduous and urgent affairs

concerning the king, state, and defence of the realm, and of the church

of England and the maintenance and making of laws, and redress of

mischiefs and grievances which daily happen within this realm, are

proper subjects and matters of counsel and debate in Parliament; and

that in the handling and proceeding of those businesses every member of

the House of Parliament hath and of right ought to have freedom of

speech to propound, treat, reason, and bring to conclusion the same."

[Footnote: Rushworth, Historical Collections, I., 53.] It is true that

James sent for the Journal and tore this page from its records, but he

could not tear the belief in its statements from the hearts of a great

part of the people of England.

King and Parliament held diametrically opposite views of their relative

powers, and both appealed to the past in justification of their

opinions. But England's past was a long story, and its successive

chapters read very variously. James appealed to the immediate past to

justify his possession of the "inseparable rights and prerogatives

annexed to our imperial crown, whereof, not only in the times of other

our progenitors, but in the blessed reign of our late predecessor, that

renowned queen Elizabeth, we found our crown actually possessed."

[Footnote: King's proclamation on dissolving Parliament, January

6,1622.] The leaders of the House of Commons, on the other hand, were

looking back to a more remote past, the birth-time and period of

acknowledgment by the crown of the parliamentary privileges and English

liberties which now seemed to them endangered.

As a matter of fact, Parliament, like all other political institutions

in England, had grown up around the monarchy. Primarily, the Houses

were a body of advisers of the king, summoned by him to give their

counsel in matters in which he needed the advice of the various classes

of his subjects; and to give their consent to taxation, which would

require sacrifice on the part of the people. Once organized, however,

Parliament gathered into itself all the shadowy survivals of self-

government coming down from a still earlier period; it reflected the

local independence of the towns and counties which sent members to the

House of Commons, and the corporate rights of the church and individual

privileges of the nobility, which constituted its upper house; it

served as the instrument by which the nation at various times protected

itself against bad government; it embodied the fifteenth-century ideal

of a government conjointly by king and estates of the realm.

Moreover, Parliament gained by repeated use and acknowledgment an

established procedure and powers, well-understood rights, and

precedents frequently invoked. The four fundamental privileges of

members of Parliament were: (1) freedom of elections: (2) freedom from

arrest during the sessions; (3) freedom of speech in debate; (4)

freedom of access to the sovereign for their speaker, if not for all

individually. These were frequently acknowledged by the sovereign at

the opening of Parliament and enrolled upon its records, and still more

frequently asserted in the House. [Footnote: D'Ewes, Journals, 65, 66,

175, 236, 259, 411, 460, etc; Petyt, Jus Parliamentarium, 227-243,

quoted in Prothero, Select Statutes, 289; Commons Journals, I., 431,

etc.] The powers of Parliament were less clearly defined than its

privileges; but its control over taxation and legislation, its right to

impeach the king's ministers and to discuss all matters of interest to

the nation, were frequently asserted, and usually conceded. [Footnote:

Gneist, Hist. of the English Constitution, chaps. v., xxxii.] Thus

Parliament was much more than a royal council; it was a body with

claims to co-ordinate powers of government. How far, at any one time,

these privileges and powers were conceded, how far they were denied or

encroached upon by the crown, was largely dependent on circumstances.

These circumstances during Tudor times had been such as to put the

initiative and much of the actual power of government in the hands of

the king, and parliamentary powers were largely in abeyance. Parliament

during this time was a conservative body; the monarchy was the

innovating element of the state.

Circumstances changed with the closing years of the sixteenth century

and favored an increase of parliamentary participation in government.

With all her prestige the old queen herself had to feel it. [Footnote:

D'Ewes, Journals, 602.] With the accession of the half-foreign Stuarts,

with the cessation of danger of invasion from abroad, with the

increasing weight of exactions of an unwise and unpopular personal

government, with the growing interest of the seventeenth century in

matters of politics, and, above all, with the development of

Puritanism, individualistic and self-assertive in its very essence,

Parliament was sure to reassert all the powers which it had ever

possessed, and likely to seek to extend them. The king was now the

conservative element, while Parliament, if recent conditions be taken

as the standard, was the innovating party.

It was exactly at this period of contest and of unsettled balance of

powers that the early settlements were made in America. The colonists

represented almost without exception what might be called the

parliamentarian view. It was not the king, the--courtiers, the nobles,

the judges, the higher clergy, the official classes, and the fellows of

the universities that emigrated. Among these the royalist spirit was

strong, but they remained in England. It was rather from the middle and

lower classes, from those who were on poor terms with the king,

whatever their position in society, from the persecuted, the

dissatisfied, the restless, that the great body of colonists was drawn;

and among these classes the views upheld by the House of Commons were

wide-spread. The same thing was true of those companies which,

remaining in England, yet had so much influence over the destinies of

the American colonies. The most influential elements in the Virginia

Company, the Massachusetts Bay Company, and other similar bodies were

distinctly opposed to the high claims of the king. Yet unanimity did

not exist even among those who, left England; and strong as the

predilection was among the founders of America for self-government and

representative institutions, the Old-World differences of view were

transferred to the colonies and played a part in local struggles there.

Much of the disputation between James and the House of Commons

concerned the privileges of Parliament, and might be suspected of being

largely the natural jealousy of its own rights felt and asserted by an

ancient corporation. But Parliament was waging war for larger objects

than the rights of its own body; it felt itself to be defending in its

own privileges the personal rights of all Englishmen. In the contested

election case of 1604 a member declared that "the case of Sir John

Fortescue and Sir Francis Goodwin has become the case of the whole

kingdom." [Footnote: Commons Journals, I, 159, March 30, 1604] "The

rights and liberties of your subjects of England and the privileges of

this House," is a formula that appears frequently in the documents of

the time, and combines the two objects of the contest, in which the

latter were upheld largely because they supported and protected the

former.