BOOK-FIRES OF THE REBELLION.
With the beneficent Revolution that practically began with the
Long Parliament in November 1640, and put an end to the Star
Chamber and High Commission, it might have been hoped that a
better time was about to dawn for books. But the control of
thought really only passed from the Monarchical to the
Presbyterian party; and if authors no longer incurred the
atrocious cruelties of the Star Chamber, their works were more
freely burnt at the order of Parliament than they appear to have
been when the sentence to such a fate rested with the King or the
Archbishop of Canterbury.
Parliament, in fact, assumed the dictatorship of literature, and
exercised supreme jurisdiction over author, printer, publisher,
and licenser. Either House separately, or both concurrently,
assumed the exercise of this power; and, if a book were sentenced
to be burnt, the hangman seems always to have been called in
aid. In an age which was pre-eminently the age of pamphlets, and
torn in pieces by religious and political dissension, the number
of pamphlets that were condemned to be burnt by the common
hangman was naturally legion, though, of course, a still greater
number escaped with some lesser form of censure. It is only with
the former that I propose to deal, and only with such of them as
seem of more than usual interest as illustrating the manners and
thoughts of that turbulent time.
It is a significant fact that the first writer whose works
incurred the wrath of Parliament was the Rev. John Pocklington,
D.D., one of the foremost innovators in the Church in the days of
Laud's prosperity. The House of Lords consigned two of his books
to be burnt by the hangman, both in London and the two chief
Universities (February 12th, 1641). These were his _Sunday no
Sabbath_, and the _Altare Christianum_.
The first of these was originally a sermon, preached on August
17th, 1635, wherein the Puritan view of Sunday was vehemently
assailed, and the Puritans themselves vigorously abused. "These
Church Schismatics are the most gross, nay, the most transparent
hypocrites and the most void of conscience of all others. They
will take the benefit of the Church, but abjure the doctrine and
discipline of the Church." How often has not this argument done
duty since against Pocklington's ecclesiastical descendants! But
it is to be historically regretted that Pocklington's views of
Sunday, the same of course as those of James the First's famous
book, or Declaration of Sports, were not destined to prevail, and
seem still as far as ever from attainment.
The _Altare Christianum_ had been published in 1637, in answer to
certain books by Burton and Prynne, its object being to prove
that altars and churches had existed before the Christian Church
was 200 years old. But had these churches any more substantial
existence than that one built, as he says, by Joseph of
Arimathea, at Glastonbury, in the year 55 A.D.? Did the
Arimathean really visit Glastonbury? Anyhow, the book is full of
learning and instruction, and, indeed, both Pocklington's books
have an interest of their own, apart from their fate, which, of
so many, is their sole recommendation.
The sentence against Pocklington was strongly vindictive. Both
his practices and his doctrines were condemned. In his practice
he was declared to have been "very superstitious and full of
idolatry," and to have used many gestures and ceremonies "not
established by the laws of this realm." These were the sort of
ceremonies that, without ever having been so established by law,
our ritualists have practically established by custom; and the
offence of the ritualist doctrine as held in those days, and as
illustrated by Pocklington, lay in the following tenets ascribed
to him: (1) that it was men's duty to bow to altars as to the
throne of the Great God; (2) that the Eucharist was the host and
held corporeal presence therein; (3) that there was in the Church
a distinction between holy places and a Holy of holies; (4) that
the canons and constitutions of the Church were to be obeyed
without examination.
For these offences of ritual and doctrine--offences to which,
fortunately, we can afford to be more indifferent than our
ancestors were, no reasonable man now thinking twice about
them--Pocklington was deprived of all his livings and dignities
and preferments, and incapacitated from holding any for the
future, whilst his books were consigned to the hangman. It may
seem to us a spiteful sentence; but it was after all a mild
revenge, considering the atrocious sufferings of the Puritan
writers. It is worse to lose one's ears and one's liberty for
life than even to be deprived of Church livings; and it is
noticeable that bodily mutilations came to an end with the
clipping of the talons of the Crown and the Church at the
beginning of the Long Parliament.
Taking now in order the works of a political nature that were
condemned by the House of Commons to be burnt by the hangman, we
come first to the _Speeches of Sir Edward Dering_, member for
Kent in the Long Parliament, and a greater antiquary than he ever
was a politician. He it was who, on May 27th, 1641, moved the
first reading of the Root and Branch Bill for the abolition of
Episcopacy. "The pride, the avarice, the ambition, and oppression
by our ruling clergy is epidemical," he said; thereby proving
that such an opinion was not merely a Puritan prejudice. But
Dering appears only really to have aimed at the abolition of
Laud's archiepiscopacy, and to have wished to see some purer form
of prelacy re-established in place of the old. Naturally his
views gave offence, which he only increased by republishing his
speeches on matters of religion, Parliament being so incensed
that it burned his book, and committed its author for a week to
the Tower (February 2nd, 1642).
Dering's was the common fate of moderate men in stormy times,
who, seeing good on each side, are ill thought of by both.
Failing to be loyal to either, he was by both mistrusted. For not
only did he ultimately vote on the side of the royalist episcopal
party, but he actually fought on the King's side; then, being
disgusted with the royalists for their leaning to Popery, he
accepted the pardon offered for a compensation by Parliament in
1644, and died the same year, leaving posterity to regret that he
was ever so ill-advised as to exchange antiquities for politics
and party strife.
The famous speech of the statesman whom Charles, with his usual
defiance of public opinion, soon afterwards raised to the peerage
as Lord Digby (on the passing of the Bill of Attainder against
Lord Strafford), was, after its publication by its author,
condemned to be burnt at Westminster, Cheapside, and Smithfield
(July 13th, 1642). Digby voted against putting Strafford to
death, because he did not think it proved by the evidence that
Strafford had advised Charles to employ the army in Ireland for
the subjection of England. But he condemned his general conduct
as strongly as any man. He calls him "the great apostate to the
Commonwealth, who must not expect to be pardoned it in this world
till he be dispatched to the other." He refers very happily to
his great abilities, "whereof God hath given him the use, but the
devil the application." But does the critic's own memory stand
much higher? Was he not the King's evil genius, who, together
with the Queen, pushed him to that fatal step--the arrest of the
five members?
How soon Parliament acquired the evil habit of dealing by fire
and the hangman with uncongenial publications is proved by the
fact that in one year alone the following five leaflets or
pamphlets suffered in this way:--
1. _The Kentish Petition_, drawn up at the Maidstone Assizes by
the gentry, ministry, and commonalty of Kent, praying for the
preservation of episcopal government, and the settlement of
religious differences by a synod of the clergy (April 17th,
1642). The petition was couched in very strong language; and
Professor Gardiner is probably right in saying that it was the
condemnation of this famous petition which rendered civil war
inevitable.
2. _A True Relation of the Proceedings of the Scots and English
Forces in the North of Ireland._ This was thought to be
dishonouring to the Scots, and was accordingly ordered to be
burnt (June 8th, 1642).
3. _King James: his Judgment of a King and a Tyrant_ (September
12th, 1642).
4. _A Speedy Post from Heaven to the King of England_ (October
5th, 1642).
5. _Letter from Lord Falkland_ to the Earl of Cumberland,
concerning the action at Worcester (October 8th, 1642).
Thus did Parliament, and the House of Commons especially, improve
upon the precedent first set by the Star Chamber; and the
practice must soon have somewhat lost its force by the very
frequency of its repetition. David Buchanan's _Truth's Manifest_,
containing an account of the conduct of the Scotch nation in the
Civil War, was condemned to be burnt by the hangman (April 13th,
1646), but may still be read. _An Unhappy Game at Scotch and
English_, pamphlets like the _Mercurius Elenchicus_ and
_Mercurius Pragmaticus_, the _Justiciarius Justificatus_, by
George Wither, perished about the same time in the same way; and
in 1648 such profane Royalist political squibs as _The
Parliament's Ten Commandments_; _The Parliament's Pater Noster,
and Articles of the Faith_; and _Ecce the New Testament of our
Lords and Saviours, the House of Commons at Westminster, or the
Supreme Council at Windsor_, were, for special indignity,
condemned to be burnt in the three most public places of London.
The observance of Sunday has always been a fruitful source of
contention, and in 1649 the chief magistrates in England and
Wales were ordered by the House of Commons to cause to be burnt
all copies of James Okeford's _Doctrine of the Fourth
Commandment, deformed by Popery, reformed and restored to its
primitive purity_ (March 18th, 1650). They did their duty so well
that not a copy appears to survive, even in the British Museum.
The author, moreover, was sentenced to be taken and imprisoned;
so thoroughly did the spirit of persecution take possession of a
Parliamentary majority when the power of it fell into their
hands.
This was also shown in other matters. For instance, not only were
_Joseph Primatt's Petition_ to Parliament, with reference to his
claims to certain coal mines, and Lilburne's _Just Reproof to
Haberdasher's Hall_ on Primatt's behalf, condemned to be burnt by
the hangman (January 15th, July 30th, 1652), but both authors
were sentenced, one to fines amounting to L5,000, the other to
fines amounting to L7,000, which, though falling far short of
the Star Chamber fines, were very considerable sums in those
days. Lilburne, on this occasion, was also sentenced to be
banished, and to be deemed guilty of felony if he returned; but
this part of the sentence was never enforced, for Lilburne
remained, to continue to the very end, by speech and writing,
that perpetual warfare with the party in power which constituted
his political life.
John Fry, M.P., who sat in the High Court of Justice for the
trial of Charles I., wrote in 1648 his _Accuser Shamed_ against
Colonel Downes, a fellow-member, who had most unfairly charged
him before the House with blasphemy for certain expressions used
in private conversation, and thereby caused his temporary
suspension. Dr. Cheynel, President of St. John's at Oxford,
printed an answer to this, and Fry rejoined in his _Clergy in
their True Colours_ (1650), a pamphlet singularly expressive of
the general dislike at that time entertained for the English
clergy. He complains of the strange postures assumed by the
clergy in their prayers before the sermon, and says: "Whether the
fools and knaves in stage plays took their pattern from these
men, or these from them, I cannot determine; but sure one is the
brat of the other, they are so well alike." He confesses himself
"of the opinion of most, that the clergy are the great
incendiaries." In the matter of Psalm-singing he finds "few men
under heaven more irrational in their religious exercises than
our clergy." As to their common evasion of difficulties by the
plea that it is above reason, he fairly observes: "If a man will
consent to give up his reason, I would as soon converse with a
beast as with that man." Nevertheless, how many do so still!
Fry wrote as a rational churchman, not as an anti-Christian,
"from a hearty desire for their (the clergy's) reformation, and a
great zeal to my countrymen that they may no longer be deceived
by such as call themselves the ministers of the Gospel, but are
not." This appears on the title-page; but a good motive has
seldom yet saved a man or a book, and the House, having debated
about both tracts from morning till night, not only voted them
highly scandalous and profane, but consigned them to the hangman
to burn, and expelled Fry from his seat in Parliament (February
21st, 1651).
So far of the political utterances that for the offence they gave
were condemned to the flames; but these only represent one side
of the activity of the legislature of that time. Nothing, indeed,
better illustrates the mind of the seventeenth century than the
several instances in which Parliament, in the exercise of its
assumed power over literature generally, interfered with works of
a theological nature, nor does anything more clearly or curiously
reveal the mental turmoil of that period than does the perusal of
some of the works that then met with Parliamentary censure or
condemnation. In undertaking this interference it is possible
that Parliament exceeded its province, and one is glad that it
has long since ceased to claim the keepership of the People's
Conscience. But in those days ideas of toleration were in their
infancy; the right of free thought, or of its expression, had not
been established; and the maintenance of orthodoxy was deemed as
much the duty of Parliament as the maintenance of the rights of
the people. So a Parliamentary majority soon came to exercise as
much tyranny over thought as ever had been exercised by king or
bishop; and, in fact, the theological writer ran even greater
personal risks from the indignation of Parliament than he would
have run in the period preceding 1640, for he began to run in
danger of his life.
The first theological work dealt with by Parliament appears to
have been that curious posthumous work, entitled _Comfort for
Believers about their Sinnes and Troubles_, which appeared in
June 1645, by John Archer, Master of Arts, and preacher at All
Hallows', Lombard Street. It had but a short life, for the very
next month the Assembly of Divines, then sitting at Westminster,
complained to Parliament of its contents, and Parliament
condemned it to be publicly burnt in four places, the Assembly to
draw up a formal detestation to be read at the burning. In this
document it was admitted that the author had been "of good
estimation for learning and piety"; but the author's logic was
better than his theology, for he attributed all evil to the Cause
of all things, and contended that for wise purposes God not only
permitted sin, but had a hand in its essence, namely, "in the
privity, and ataxy, the anomye, or irregularity of the act" (if
that makes it any clearer). A single passage will convey the
drift of the seventy-six pages devoted to this difficult
problem:--
"Who hinted to God, or gave advice by counsel to Him, to let the
creature sin? Did any necessity, arising upon the creature's
being, enforce it that sin must be? Could not God have hindered
sin, if He would? Might He not have kept man from sinning, as He
did some of the angels? Therefore, it was His device and plot
before the creature was that there should be sin. . . . It is by
sin that most of God's glory in the discovery of His attributes
doth arise. . . . Therefore certainly it limits Him much to bring
in sin by a contingent accident, merely from the creature, and to
deny God a hand and will in its being and bringing forth."
The author thought these positions quite compatible with
orthodoxy; not so, however, the Presbyterian divines, nor
Parliament; and certainly Archer's questions were more easily and
more swiftly answered by fire than in any other way. Had he
lived, one wonders how the divines would have punished him. For
the next two cases prove how dangerous it was becoming to be
convicted or even suspected of heterodoxy. Parliament was
beginning to understand its duty as Defender of the Faith as the
Holy Inquisition has always understood it--namely, by the death
of the luckless assailant.
Thus, on July 24th, 1647, the House of Commons condemned to be
burnt in three different places, on three different days, Paul
Best's pamphlet, of the following curious title: _Mysteries
Discovered, or a Mercurial Picture pointing out the way from
Babylon to the Holy City, For the Good of all such as during that
Night of General Error and Apostacy, II. Thess. ii. 3, Rev. iii.
10, have been so long misled with Rome's Hobgoblin, by me, Paul
Best, prisoner in the Gatehouse, Westminster_. It concluded with
a prayer for release from an imprisonment, which had then lasted
more than three years, for certain theological opinions
"committed to a minister (a supposed friend) for his judgment and
advice only." This minister was the Rev. Roger Leys, who
infamously betrayed the trust reposed in him, and made public the
frankness of private conversation.
Best had been imprisoned in the Gatehouse for certain expressions
he was supposed to have used about the Trinity; and before he
wrote this pamphlet the House of Commons had actually voted that
he should be hanged. Justly, therefore, he wrote: "Unless the
Lord put to His helping hand of the magistrate for the manacling
of Satan in that persecuting power, there is little hope either
of the liberty of the subject or the law of God amongst us." And
if he was not orthodox, he was sensible, for he says: "I cannot
understand what detriment could redound either to Church or
Commonwealth by toleration of religions."
His heresy consisted in thinking that pagan ideas had been
imported into, and so had corrupted, the original monotheism of
Christianity. "We may perceive how by iniquity of time the real
truth of God hath been trodden under foot by a verbal kind of
divinity, introduced by the semi-pagan Christianity of the third
century in the Western Church." He certainly did not hold the
doctrine of the Trinity in what was then deemed the orthodox way,
but his precise belief is rather obscurely stated, and is a
matter of indifference.
One is glad to learn that he escaped hanging after all, and was
released about the end of 1647, probably at the instance of
Cromwell. He then retired to the family seat in Yorkshire, where
he combined farming with his favourite theological studies for
the ten remaining years of his life. His career at Cambridge had
been distinguished, as might also have been his career in the
world but for that unfortunate bent for theology, and the use of
his reason in its study, that has led so many worthy men to
disgrace and destruction.
But, in spite of the Assembly of Divines, the air was thick with
theological speculation; and only a few weeks after the
condemnation of Best's _Mysteries_, the House condemned to a
similar fate Bidle's _Twelve Arguments drawn out of Scripture,
wherein the Commonly Received Opinion touching the Deity of the
Holy Spirit is Clearly and Fully Refuted_.
Bidle, a tailor's son, must take high rank among the martyrs of
learning. After a brilliant school career at Gloucester, he went
to Magdalen College, Oxford, where, says his biographer, "he did
so philosophise, as it might be observed, he was determined more
by Reason than Authority"; and this dangerous beginning he
shortly followed up, when master of the Free School at
Gloucester, by the still more dangerous conclusion that the
common doctrine of the Trinity "was not well grounded in
Revelation, much less in Reason." For this he was brought before
the magistrates at Gloucester on the charge of heresy (1644); and
from that time till his death from gaol-fever in 1662, at the age
of forty-two, Bidle seldom knew what liberty was. It was soon
after his first imprisonment that he published his _Twelve
Arguments_. Though the House had this burnt by the hangman, it
was so popular that it was reprinted the same year. The year
following (1648) the House passed an ordinance making a denial of
the Trinity a capital offence; in spite of which Bidle published
his _Confession of Faith touching the Holy Trinity, according to
Scripture_, and his _Testimonies of Different Fathers_ regarding
the same, the last of which manifests considerable learning. The
Assembly of Divines then appealed to Parliament to put him to
death; yet, strange to say, Parliament did not do so, but soon
after released their prisoner. In 1654 he published his _Twofold
Catechism_, for which he was again committed to the Gatehouse,
and debarred from the use of pens, ink, and paper; and all his
books were sentenced to be burnt (December 13th, 1654). After a
time, his fate being still uncertain, Cromwell procured his
release, or rather sent him off to the Scilly Isles. But his
enemies got him into prison again at last, and there a blameless
and pious life fell a victim to the power of bigotry. One may
regret a life thus spent and sacrificed; but only so has the
cause of free thought been gradually won.
Bidle has also been thought to have been the translator of the
famous _Racovian Catechism_, first published in Polish at Racow
in 1605, and in Latin in 1609. In it two anti-Trinitarian divines
reduced to a systematic form the whole of the Socinian doctrine.
A special interest attaches to it from the fact that Milton, then
nearly blind, was called before the House in connection with the
Catechism, as though he had had a share in its translation or
publication. It was condemned to be burnt as blasphemous (April
1st, 1652). In the Journals of the House copious extracts are
given from the work, from which the following may serve to
indicate what chiefly gave offence:--
"What do you conceive exceedingly profitable to be known of the
Essence of God?
"It is to know that in the Essence of God there is only one
person . . . and that by no means can there be more persons in
that Essence, and that many persons in one essence is a pernicious
opinion, which doth easily pluck up and destroy the belief of one
God. . . .
"But the Christians do commonly affirm the Son and Spirit to be
also persons in the unity of the same Godhead.
"I know they do, but it is a very great error; and the arguments
brought for it are taken from Scriptures misunderstood.
"But seeing the Son is called God in the Scriptures, how can
that be answered?
"The word God in Scripture is chiefly used two ways: first, as it
signifies Him that rules in heaven and earth . . .; secondly, as
it signifies one who hath received some high power or authority
from that one God, or is some way made partaker of the Deity of
that one God. It is in this latter sense that the Son in certain
places in Scripture is called God. And the Son is upon no higher
account called God than that He is sanctified by the Father and
sent into the world.
"But hath not the Lord Jesus Christ besides His human a Divine
nature also?
"No, by no means, for that is not only repugnant to sound reason,
but to the Holy Scripture also."
This is doubtless enough to convey an idea of the Catechism,
which was again translated in 1818 by T. Rees. Whether Bidle was
the translator or not, he must have been actuated by good
intentions in what he wrote; for he says of the _Twofold
Catechism_, that it "was composed for their sakes that would fain
be mere Christians, and not of this or that sect, inasmuch as all
the sects of Christians, by what names soever distinguished, have
either more or less departed from the simplicity and truth of
the Scripture." But these Christians, who preferred their
religion to their sect, Bidle should have known were too few to
count.
Far inferior writers to Bidle were Ebiezer Coppe and Laurence
Clarkson: nor, if religious madness could be so stamped out, can
we complain of the House of Commons for condemning their works to
the flames. The strongest possible condemnation was passed for
its "horrid blasphemies" on Coppe's _Fiery Flying Roll; or, Word
from the Lord to all the Great Ones of the Earth whom this may
concern, being the Last Warning Peace at the Dreadful Day of
Judgment_. All discoverable copies of this book were to be burnt
by the hangman at three different places (February 1st, 1650);
and Coppe was imprisoned, but was released on his recantation of
his opinions. His book was the cause of that curious ordinance of
August 9th, 1650, for the "punishment of atheistical,
blasphemous, and execrable opinions," which is the best summary
and proof of the intense religious fanaticism then prevalent, and
so curiously similar in all its details to that of the primitive
Christian Church. At both periods the distinctive features were
the claim to actual divinity, and to superiority to all moral
laws.
On September 27th, 1650, Clarkson's _Single Eye: all Light, no
Darkness_, was condemned to be burnt by the hangman; and Clarkson
himself not only sent to the House of Correction for a month, but
sentenced to be banished after that for life under a penalty of
death if he returned.
These books have their value for students of human nature, and so
have the next I refer to, the works of Ludovic Muggleton, most of
which were written during this period, though not condemned to be
burnt till the year 1676, and which in other respects seem to
touch the lowest attainable depth of religious demoralisation.
The extraordinary thing is that Muggleton actually founded a sort
of religion of his own; at all events, he gave life and title to
a sect, which counts votaries to this day. Only so recently as
1846 a list of the works of Muggleton and his colleague Reeve was
published, and the books advertised for sale. These two men
claimed to be the two last witnesses or prophets, with power to
sentence men to eternal damnation or blessedness. Muggleton had a
decided preference for exercising the former power, especially in
regard to the Quakers, one of his books being called _A Looking
Glass for George Fox, the Quaker, and other Quakers, wherein they
may See Themselves to be Right Devils_. There is no reason to
believe Muggleton to have been a conscious impostor; only in an
age vexed to madness by religious controversy, religious madness
carried him further than others. An asylum would have met his
case better than the sentence of the Old Bailey, which condemned
him to stand for three days in the pillory at the three most
eminent places in the City, his books to be there in three lots
burnt over his head, and himself then to be imprisoned till he
had paid a sum of L500 (1676). But this did not finish the man,
for in 1681 he wrote his _Letter to Colonel Phaire_, the language
of which is perhaps unsurpassed for repulsiveness in the whole
range of religious literature. Muggleton's writings in short read
as a kind of religious nightmare. In their case the fire was
rather profaned by its fuel than the books honoured by the fire.