BOOK-FIRES OF THE RESTORATION.
With the Restoration, the burning of certain obnoxious books
formed one of the first episodes of that Royalist war of revenge
of which the most disgraceful expression was the exhumation and
hanging at Tyburn of the bones of Cromwell and Ireton. And had
Goodwin and Milton not absconded, it is probable that the revenge
which had to content itself with their books would have extended
to their persons.
John Goodwin, distinguished as a minister and a prolific writer
on the people's side, had dedicated in 1649 to the House of
Commons his _Obstructours of Justice_, in which he defended the
execution of Charles I. He based his case, indeed, after the
fashion of those days, too completely on Biblical texts to suit
our modern taste; but his book is far from being the "very weak
and inconclusive performance" of which Neal speaks in his
history of the Puritans. The sentiments follow exactly those of
Rutherford's _Lex Rex_; as, for example, "The Crown is but the
kingdom's or people's livery. . . . The king bears the relation
of a political servant or vassal to that state, kingdom, or
people over which he is set to govern." But the commonplaces of
to-day were rank heresy in a chaplain to Cromwell.
There seems to be no evidence to support Bishop Burnet's
assertion that Goodwin was the head of the Fifth-Monarchy
fanatics; and his story is simply that of a fearless, sensible,
and conscientious minister, who took a strong interest in the
political drama of his time, and advocated liberty of conscience
before even Milton or Locke. But his chief distinction is to have
been marked out for revenge in company with Milton by the
miserable Restoration Parliament.
Milton's _Eikonoklastes_ and _Defensio Populi Anglicani_ rank, of
course, among the masterpieces of English prose, and ought to be
read, where they never will be, in every Board and public school
of England. In the first the picture of Charles I., as painted in
the _Eikon Basilike_, was unmercifully torn to pieces. Charles's
religion, Milton declares, had been all hypocrisy. He had
resorted to "ignoble shifts to seem holy, and to get a saintship
among the ignorant and wretched people." The prayer he had given
as a relic to the bishop at his execution had been stolen from
Sidney's _Arcadia_. In outward devotion he had not at all
exceeded some of the worst kings in history. But in spite of
Milton, the _Eikon Basilike_ sold rapidly, and contributed
greatly to the reaction; and the Secretary of the Council of
State had just reason to complain of the perverseness of his
generation, "who, having first cried to God to be delivered from
their king, now murmur against God for having heard their prayer,
and cry as loud for their king against those that delivered
them."
The next year (1650) Milton had to take up his pen again in the
same cause against the _Defence of Charles I. to Charles II._ by
the learned Salmasius. Milton was not sparing in terms of abuse.
He calls Salmasius "a rogue," "a foreign insignificant
professor," "a slug," "a silly loggerhead," "a superlative fool."
Even a _Times_ leader of to-day would fall short of Milton in
vituperative terms. It is not for this we still reverence the
_Defensio_; but for its political force, and its occasional
splendid passages. Two samples must suffice:--
"Be this right of kings whatever it will, the right of the people
is as much from God as it. And whenever any people, without some
visible designation from God Himself, appoint a king over them,
they have the same right to pull him down as they had to set him
up at first. And certainly it is a more Godlike action to depose
a tyrant than to set one up; and there appears much more of God
in the people when they depose an unjust prince than in a king
that oppresses an innocent people. . . . So that there is but
little reason for that wicked and foolish opinion that kings, who
commonly are the worst of men, should be so high in God's account
as that He should have put the world under them, to be at their
beck and be governed according to their humour; and that for
their sakes alone He should have reduced all mankind, whom He
made after His own image, into the same condition as brutes."
The conclusion of Milton's _Defensio_ is not more remarkable for
its eloquence than it is for its closing paragraph. Addressing
his countrymen in an exhortation that reminds one of the speeches
of Pericles to the Athenians, he proceeds:--
"God has graciously delivered you, the first of nations, from
the two greatest miseries of this life, and most pernicious to
virtue, tyranny, and superstition; He has endued you with
greatness of mind to be the first of mankind, who, after having
conquered their own king, and having had him delivered into their
hands, have not scrupled to condemn him judicially, and pursuant
to that sentence of condemnation to put him to death. After the
performing so glorious an action as this, you ought to do nothing
that is mean and little, not so much as to think of, much less to
do, anything but what is great and sublime."
An exhortation to virtue founded on an act of regicide! To such
an issue had come the dispute concerning the Divine Right of
kings; and with such diversity of opinion do different men form
their judgments concerning the leading events of their time!
The House of Commons, reverting for a time to the ancient
procedure in these matters, petitioned the King on June 16th,
1660, to call in these books of Goodwin and Milton, and to order
them to be burnt by the common hangman: and the King so far
assented as to issue a proclamation ordering all persons in
possession of such books to deliver them up to their county
sheriffs to be burnt by the hangman at the next assizes (August
13th, 1660).[122:1] In this way a good many were burnt; but,
happily for the authors themselves, "they so fled or so obscured
themselves" that all endeavours to apprehend their persons
failed. Subsequently the benefits of the Act of Oblivion were
conferred on Milton; but they were denied to Goodwin, who, having
barely escaped sentence of death by Parliament, was incapacitated
from ever holding any office again.
The _Lex Rex_, or the _Law and the Prince_ (1644), by the
Presbyterian divine Samuel Rutherford, was another book which
incurred the vengeance of the Restoration, and for the same
reasons as Goodwin's book or Milton's. It was burnt by the
hangman at Edinburgh (October 16th, 1660), St. Andrews (October
23rd, 1660),[122:2] and London; its author was deprived of his
offices both in the University and the Church, and was summoned
on a charge of high treason before the Parliament of Edinburgh.
His death in 1661 anticipated the probable legal sentence, and
saved Rutherford from political martyrdom.
His book was an answer to the _Sacra Sancta Regum Majestas_, in
which the Divine Right of kings, and the duty of passive
obedience, had been strenuously upheld. Its appearance in 1644
created a great sensation, and threw into the shade Buchanan's
_De Jure Regni apud Scotos_, which had hitherto held the field on
the popular side. The purpose and style of the book may be
gathered from the passage in the preface, wherein the writer
gives, as his reason for writing, the opinion that arbitrary
government had "over-swelled all banks of law, that it was now at
the highest float . . . that the naked truth was, that prelates, a
wild and pushing cattle to the lambs and flocks of Christ, had
made a hideous noise; the wheels of their chariot did run an
unequal pace with the bloodthirsty mind of the daughter of
Babel." The contention was, that all regal power sprang from the
suffrages of the people. "The king is subordinate to the
Parliament, not co-ordinate, for the constituent is above the
constituted." "What are kings but vassals to the State, who, if
they turn tyrants, fall from their right?" For the rest, a book
so crammed and stuffed with Biblical quotations as to be most
unreadable. And indeed, of all the features of that miserable
seventeenth century, surely nothing is more extraordinary than
this insatiate taste of men of all parties for Jewish precedents.
Never was the enslavement of the human mind to authority carried
to more absurd lengths with more lamentable results; never was
manifested a greater waste, or a greater wealth, of ability. For
that reason, though Rutherford may claim a place on our shelves,
he is little likely ever to be taken down from them. But may the
principles he contended for remain as undisturbed as his repose!
The year following the burning of these books the House of
Commons directed its vengeance against certain statutes passed by
the Republican government. On May 17th, 1661, a large majority
condemned the _Solemn League and Covenant_ to be burnt by the
hangman, the House of Lords concurring. All copies of it were
also to be taken down from all churches and public places.
Evelyn, seeing it burnt in several places in London on Monday
22nd, exclaims, "Oh! prodigious change!" The Irish Parliament
also condemned it to the flames, not only in Dublin, but in all
the towns of Ireland.
A few days later, May 27th, the House of Commons, unanimously and
with no petition to the King, condemned to be burnt as
"treasonable parchment writings":
1. "The Act for erecting a High Court of Justice for the trial of
Charles I."
2. "The Act declaring and constituting the people of England a
Commonwealth."
3. "The Act for subscribing the Engagement."
4. "The Act for renouncing and disannulling the title of Charles
Stuart" (September 1656).
5. "The Act for the security of the Lord Protector's person and
continuance of the Nation in peace and safety" (September 1656).
Three of these were burnt at Westminster and two at the Exchange.
Pepys, beholding the latter sight from a balcony, was led to
moralise on the mutability of human opinion. The strange thing is
that, when these Acts were burnt, the Act for the abolition of
the House of Lords (1649) appears to have escaped condemnation.
For its intrinsic interest, I here insert the words of the old
parchment:--
"The Commons of England assembled in Parliament, finding by too
long experience that the House of Lords is useless and dangerous
to the people of England to be continued, hath thought fit to
ordain and enact, and be it ordained and enacted by this present
Parliament and by the authority of the same: That from henceforth
the House of Lords in Parliament shall be and is hereby wholly
abolished and taken away; and that the Lords shall not from
henceforth meet and sit in the said house, called the Lords'
House, or in any other house or place whatsoever as a House of
Lords; nor shall sit, vote, advise, adjudge, or determine of any
matter or thing whatsoever as a House of Lords in Parliament:
Nevertheless, it is hereby declared, that neither such Lords as
have demeaned themselves with honour, courage, and fidelity to
the Commonwealth, nor their posterities (who shall continue so),
shall be excluded from the public councils of the Nation, but
shall be admitted thereunto and have their free vote in
Parliament, if they shall be thereunto elected, as other persons
of interest elected and qualified thereunto ought to have. And be
it further ordained and enacted by the authority aforesaid, That
no peer of this land (not being elected, qualified, and sitting
as aforesaid) shall claim, have, or make use of any privilege of
Parliament either in relation to his person, quality, or estate
any law, usage, or custom to the contrary
notwithstanding."[127:1]
How true a presentiment our ancestors had of the incompatibility
between an hereditary chamber and popular liberty is
conspicuously shown by the next book we read of as burnt; and
indeed there are few more instructive historical tracts than
Locke's _Letter from a Person of Quality to his Friend in the
Country_, which was ordered to be burnt by the Privy Council; and
wherein he gave an account of the debates in the Lords on a Bill
"to prevent the dangers which may arise from persons disaffected
to the Government," in April and May 1675. It was actually
proposed by this Bill to make compulsory on all officers of
Church or State, and on all members of both Houses, an oath, not
only declaring it unlawful upon any pretence to take arms against
the King, but swearing to endeavour at no time the alteration of
the government in Church and State. To that logical position had
the Royalist spirit come within fifteen years of the Restoration;
Charles II., according to Burnet, being much set on this scheme,
which, says Locke, was "first hatched (as almost all the
mischiefs of the world have been) amongst the great churchmen."
The bishops and clergy, by their outcry, had caused Charles's
Declaration of Indulgence (March 17th, 1671) to be cancelled, and
the great seal broken off it; they had "tricked away the rights
and liberties of the people, in this and all other countries,
wherever they had had opportunity . . . that priest and prince
may, like Castor and Pollux, be worshipped together as divine,
in the same temple, by us poor lay-subjects; and that sense
and reason, law, properties, rights, and liberties shall be
understood as the oracles of those deities shall interpret."
There seems no doubt that the extinction of liberty was as
vigorously aimed at as it was nearly achieved at the period Locke
describes, under the administration of Lord Danby. But the Bill,
though carried in the Lords, was strongly contested. Locke says
that it occupied sixteen or seventeen whole days of debate, the
House sitting often till 8 or 9 P.M., or even to midnight. His
account of the speakers and their arguments is one of the most
graphic pages of historical painting in our language; but it is
said to have been drawn up at the desire, and almost at the
dictation, of Locke's friend, Lord Shaftesbury, who himself took
a prominent part against the Bill. Fortunately, it never got
beyond the House of Lords, a dispute between the two Houses
leading to a prorogation of Parliament and so to the salvation of
liberty. But the whole episode impresses on the mind the force of
the current then, as always, flowing in favour of arbitrary
government throughout our history, as well as a sense of the very
narrow margin by which liberty of any sort has escaped or been
evolved, and, in general, of wonder that it should ever have
survived at all the combinations of adverse circumstances against
it.
It has been shown in the account of books burnt in the time of
the Rebellion, how freely in the struggle between Orthodoxy and
Free Thought--between the dogmas, that is, of the strongest sect
and the speculations of individuals--fire was resorted to for the
purpose of burning out unpopular opinions. These, indeed, were
often of so fantastic a nature, that no fire was really needed to
insure their extinction; whilst of others it may be said that, as
their existence was originally independent of actual expression,
so the punishment inflicted on their utterance could prove no
barrier to their propagation.
But besides the war that was waged in the domain of theology
proper, between opinions claiming to be sound and opinions
claiming to be true, a contest no less fierce centred for long
round the very organisation of the Church; and between the
Establishment and Dissent that hostile condition of thrust and
parry, which has since become chronic, and is so detrimental to
the cause professed by both alike, is no less visible in the
field of literature than in that of our general history.
Associated with the literary side of this great and bitter
conflict--a side only too much ignored in the discreet popular
histories of the English Church--are the names of Delaune, Defoe,
Tindal, on the aggressive side, of Sacheverell and Drake on the
defensive; each party, during the heat of battle, giving vent to
sentiments so offensive to the other as to make it seem that fire
alone could atone for the injury or remove the sting.
The first book to mention in connection with this struggle is
Delaune's _Plea for the Nonconformists_; a book round which hangs
a melancholy tale, and which is entitled to a niche in the
library of Fame for other reasons than the mere fact of its
having been burnt before the Royal Exchange in 1683. The story
shows the sacerdotalism of the Church of England at its very
worst, and helps to explain the evil heritage of hatred which, in
the hearts of the nonconforming sects, has since descended and
still clings to her.
Dr. Calamy, one of the King's chaplains, had preached and printed
a sermon called _Scrupulous Conscience_, challenging to, or
advocating, the friendly discussion of points of difference
between the Church and the Nonconformists. Delaune, who kept a
grammar school, was weak enough to take him at his word, and so
wrote his _Plea_, a book of wondrous learning, and to this day
one of the best to read concerning the origin and growth of the
various rites of the Church. Thereupon he was whisked off to herd
with the commonest felons in Newgate, whence he wrote repeatedly
to Dr. Calamy, to beg him, as the cause of his unjust arrest, to
procure his release. Delaune disclaimed all malignity against the
English Church, or any member of it, and, with grim humour,
entreated to be convinced of his errors "by something more like
divinity than Newgate." But the Church has not always dealt in
more convincing divinity, and accordingly the cowardly
ecclesiastic held his peace and left his victim to suffer.
It is difficult even now to tell the rest of Delaune's story with
patience. He was indicted for intending to disturb the peace of
the kingdom, to bring the King into the greatest hatred and
contempt, and for printing and publishing, by force of arms, a
scandalous libel against the King and the Prayer-Book. Of course
it was extravagantly absurd, but these indictments were the legal
forms under which the luckless Dissenters experienced sufferings
that were to them the sternest realities. Delaune was, in
consequence, fined a sum he could not possibly pay; his books
(for he also wrote _The Image of the Beast_, wherein he showed,
in three parallel columns, the far greater resemblance of the
Catholic rites to those of Pagan Rome than to those of the New
Testament) were condemned to be burnt; and his judges, humane
enough to let him off the pillory in consideration of his
education, sent him back to Newgate notwithstanding it. There, in
that noisome atmosphere and in that foul company, he was obliged
to shelter his wife and two small children; and there, after
fifteen months, he died, having first seen all he loved on earth
pine and die before him. And he was only one of eight thousand
other Protestant Dissenters who died in prison during the merry,
miserable reign of Charles II.! Of a truth, Dissent has something
to forgive the Church; for persecution in Protestant England was
very much the same as in Catholic France, with, if possible, less
justification.
The main argument of Delaune's book was, that the Church of
England agreed more in its rites and doctrines with the Church of
Rome, and both Churches with Pagan or pre-Christian Rome, than
either did with the primitive Church or the word of the Gospel--a
thesis that has long since become generally accepted; but his
main offence consisted in saying that the Lord's Prayer ought in
one sentence to have been translated precisely as it now has been
in the Revised Version, and in contending that the frequent
repetition of the prayer in church was contrary to the express
command of Scripture. On these and other points Delaune's book
was never answered--for the reason, I believe, that it never
could be. After the Act of Toleration (1689) it was often
reprinted; the eighth and last time in 1706, when the High Church
movement to persecute Dissent had assumed dangerous strength,
with an excellent preface by Defoe, and concluding with the
letters to Dr. Calamy, written by Delaune from Newgate. Defoe
well points out that the great artifice of Delaune's time was to
make the persecution of Dissent appear necessary, by
representing it as dangerous to the State as well as the Church.
The mention of two other books seems to complete the list of
burnt political literature down to the Revolution of 1688.
One is _Malice Defeated_, or a brief relation of the accusation
and deliverance of Elizabeth Cellier. The authoress was
implicated in the Dangerfield conspiracy, and, having been
indicted for plotting to kill the King and to reintroduce Popery,
was sentenced at the Old Bailey to be imprisoned till she had
paid a fine of L1,000, to stand three times in the pillory, and
to have her books burnt by the hangman. I do not suppose that, in
her case, literature incurred any loss.
The other is the translation of Claude's _Plaintes des
Protestants_, burnt at the Exchange on May 5th, 1686. After the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, people like Sir Roger
l'Estrange were well paid to write denials of any cruelties as
connected with that measure in France; much as in our own day
people wrote denials of the Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria. The
famous Huguenot minister's book proved of course abundantly the
falsity of this denial; but, as Evelyn says, so great a power in
the English Court had then the French ambassador, "who was
doubtless in great indignation at the pious and truly generous
charity of all the nation for the relief of those miserable
sufferers who came over for shelter," that, in deference to his
wishes, the Government of James II. condemned the truth to the
flames. Nothing in that monarch's reign proves more conclusively
the depth of degradation to which his foreign policy and that of
his brother had caused his country to fall.
FOOTNOTES:
[122:1] In Kennet's _Register_, 189.
[122:2] Lamont's _Diary_, 159.
[127:1] Scobell's _Collection of Acts_, II. 8.