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house of commons, which on the 9th of Nov. had given the king thanks for his declaration by their speaker nem. contradicente, should on the 28th of the same month reject it before a second reading. This blasted all the expectations of the presbyterian clergy at once. It was now apparent that the court did not design the declaration should be carried into execution,but only serve as a temporary expedient to keep them quiet, till the church should be in circumstances to bid them defiance. While the diocesan doctors were at Breda (says Mr. Baxter they did not dream that their way to the highest grandeur was so fair; then they would have been glad of the terms of the declaration of Breda; when they came in they proceeded by slow degrees, that they might feel the ground under them; for this purpose they proposed the declaration, which being but a temporary provision must give place to laws, but when they found the parliament and populace ripe for any thing they should propose, they dropt the declaration, and all further thoughts of accomodation.

The court and bishops were now at ease, and went on briskly with restoring all things to the old standard; the doctrines of passive obedience and non-resistance were revived; men of the highest principles, and most inveterate resentments, were preferred to bishoprics, by which they were more than compensated for their sufferings, by the large sums of money they raised on the renewal of leases,* which after so long an interval were almost all expired; but what a sad use they made of their riches, I choose rather to relate in the words of bishop Burnet than my own. "What the bishops did with their great fines was a patfern to all their lower dignitaries, who generally took more care of themselves than of the church; the men of service were loaded with many livings, and many dignities. With | Life, p. 287.

The terms on which these leases were renewed, were high and op pressive; and the bishops incurred the severe censure of the presbyterian ministers, and raised against themselves the clamor of the subor. dinate and dependent clergy. The fines raised by renewing the leases amounted to a million and half. In some sees they produced forty or fifty thousand pounds, which were applied to the enriching the bishops' families. Secret History of the Court and Reign of King Charles II. vol. i. p. 350-54, and Burnet's History of his own Times, vol. i. p. 271, 12mo. Ed.

this accession of wealth, there broke in upon the church a great deal of luxury and high living, on pretence of hospitality; and with this overset of wealth, and pomp that came upon men in the decline of their age, they who were now growing into old age, became lazy and negligent in all the true concerns of the church."*

From this time, says bishop Kennet, the presbyterians began to prepare for the cry of persecution, and not without reason, for March 23, Mr. Zach. Crofton, minister of Aldgate, was sent to the Tower for writing in favor of the covenant; where he lay a considerable time at great expence, and was at last turned out of his parish without any consideration, though he had a wife and seven children, and had been very zealous for the king's restoration. Mr. Andrew Parsons, rector of Wem in Shropshire, a noted loyalist, was fetched from his house in the month of De, cember by six soldiers, for seditious preaching, and nonconformity to the ceremonies; for which he was fined two hundred pounds, and to continue in prison till it was paid.

* Dr. Grey endeavors to shew, that bishop Burnet's representation, quoted above, was founded in a mistake: and, with this view, he states the benefactions and charities of some of the bishops, deans and chapters. According to his authorities, besides the expenditures of bishop Duppa, which we have mentioned before, Dr. Juxon, archbishop of Canterbury, gave to various purposes and publié works 48,000l. and abated in fines 16,000l. Dr. Sheldon, while bishop of London, expended 40,000l. and abated to his tenants 17,000l. Dr. Frewen, archbishop of York, disbursed in public payments, besides abatements to tenants, 15.000l. Dr. Cosins, bishop of Durham's, expenditures in building and repairing public edifices and in charities amounted to 44,000l. Dr. Warner, bishop of Rochester, though his fines were small, gave in royal presents, benevolences and subsidies and redeeming captives 25,000l. The liberalities of various deans and chapters made the sum of 191,300). These expenditures bespeak munificence and generosity; and they appear to take off much of the edge of bishop Burnet's censure. He allows, that "some few exceptions are to be made: but so few," he adds, "that if a new set of men had not appeared of another stamp, the church had quite lost her esteem over the nation." The reader will also refleet, that the proportion not of the number of dignitaries only, who made a display of charity, or liberality, but of the sums they expended to the accession of wealth, is to be taken into the account. The above sums fall more than a million short of the amount of the fines that were raised to these must be added the annual incomes of the ecclesiastical estates to which they were preferred. Grey's Examination, vol. iii. p. 269-274. Burnet's History, vol. i. p. 271. Ed.

‡ Kennet's Chron. p. 397. Conf. Plea, p. 84.

Spies were sent into all the congregations of presbyteri ans throughout England, to observe and report their beha viour to the bishops; and if a minister lamented the degeneracy of the times, or expressed his concern for the ark of God, if he preached against perfidiousness, or glanced at the vices of the court, he was marked for an enemy to the king and government. Many eminent and loyal presbyterians were sent to prison upon such informations, among whom was the learned and prudent Mr. John Howe, and when they came to their trials, the court was guarded with soldiers, and their friends not suffered to attend them. Many were sequestered from their livings, and cited into the ecclesiastical courts, for not using the surplice and other ceremonies, while the discipline of the church was under a kind of suspension. So eager were the spiritual courts to renew the exercise of the sword; and so fiercely was it brandished against the falling presbyterians!

The convention parliament passed sundry acts with relation to the late times, of which these following deserve to be remembered: An act for the confirming and restoring of ministers, which enacts, among other things, "that every sequestered minister, who has not justified the late king's murder, or declared against infant baptism, shall be restored to his living before the 25th of December next ensuing, and the present incumbent shall peaceably quit it, and be accountable for dilapidations, and all arrears of fifths not paid." By this act some hundred of nonconformist ministers were dispossessed of their livings, before the act of uniformity was penned. Here was no distinction between good or bad; but if the parson had been episcopally ordained, and in possession, he must be restored, though he had been ejected upon the strongest evidence of immorality or scandal.

The act for confirmation of marriages was very expedient for the peace of the kingdom, and the order and harmony of families. It enacts, "that all marriages since May 1, 1642, solemnized before a justice of peace, or reputed justice; and all marriages since the said time, had or solemnized according to the direction of any ordinance, or reputed act or ordinance of one or both houses of parliament, shall be adjudged and esteemed to be of the same

force and effect, as if they had been solemnized according to the rites and ceremonies of the church of England."

An act for the attainder of several persons guilty of the horrid murder of his late sacred majesty King Charles I. and for the perpetual observation of the 30th of January.* This was the subject of many conferences between the two houses, in one of which chancellor Hyde declared, that the king having sent him in embassy to the king of Spain, charged him to tell that monarch expressly, "that the horrible murder of his father ought not to be deemed as the act of the parliament, or people of England, but of a small crew of wretches and miscreants who had usurped the sovereign power, and rendered themselves masters of the kingdom;" for which the commons sent a deputation with thanks to the king. After the preamble, the act goes on to attaint the king's judges, dead or alive, except colonel Ingoldsby and Thomson, who for their late good services were pardoned, but in their room were included colonel Lambert, Sir Harry Vane, and Hugh Peters, who were not of the judges. On the 30th of Jan. this year, the bod

* The service for this day, it has been remarked, was framed on the jure divino plan; consequently on principles inconsistent with those of the revolution. It was drawn up by archbishop Sancroft, whose influence procared it to be adopted and published by the king's authority, though another of a more moderate strain was at first preferred to it. When Sancroft himself was laid aside for adopting or adhering to principles suitable to his style, what had we to do any longer with Saneroft's office? Letters and Essays in Favor of Public Liberty, vol. i. p. 32. Ed.

This plea, it has been observed by a late writer, would have been precluded, had the parliament of 1641 proceeded against the king by way of attainder, about the time that Strafford and Laud were impeach ed. For then they were constitutionally invested with the legislative and judicial powers of a national representative: and they had sufficient overt acts before them to convict him of the blackest treason against the majesty of the people of England. Memoirs of Hollis, vol. ii. p.

591. Ed.

Dr. Grey observes, on the authority of lord Clarendon, that the case of colonel Ingoldsby was singular. He was drawn into the army about the time when he came first of age by Cromwell, to whom he was nearly allied. Though appointed to it, he never sat with the judges of the king and his signature to the warrant for the king's death was obtained by violence; Cromwell seized his hand, put the pen between his fingers, and with his own hand wrote Richard Ingoldsby, he making all the resistance he could. Clarendon's History, vol. iii. p. 763. Ed. VOL. IV.

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ies of Oliver Cromwell, Bradshaw, and Ireton, were taken out of their graves, and drawn upon hurdles to Tyburn, where they were hung up from ten in the morning till sunset of the next day, after which their heads were cut off, and their trunks buried all together in one hole under the gallows. Colonel Lambert was sent to the isle of Jersey, where he continued shut up a patient prisoner almost thirty years; nineteen made their escape beyond sea; seven were made objects of the king's clemency; nineteen others, who surrendered on the king's proclamation of June 6, had their lives saved after trial; but underwent other penalties, as imprisonment, banishment, and forfeiture of estates; so that ten only were executed in the month of October, after the new sheriffs were entered upon their office, viz. Col. Harrison, Mr. Carew, Cook, Hugh Peters, Mr. Scot, Clement, Scroop, Jones, Hacker, and Axtel.

Bishop Burnet says, "the trials and executions of the first that suffered, were attended by vast crouds of people. All men seemed pleased with the sight; but the firmness and shew of piety of the sufferers, who went out of the world with a sort of triumph in the cause for which they suffered, turned the minds of the populace, insomuch that the king was advised to proceed no further." The prisoners were rudely treated in court; the spectators with their noise and clamor endeavoring to put them out of countenance. None of them denied the fact, but all pleaded not guilty to the treason, because, as they said, they acted by authority of parliament; not considering, that the house of commons is no court of judicature: or if it was, that it was packed and purged before the king was brought to his trial. Those who guarded the scaffold, pleaded that they acted by command of their superior officers, who would have cashiered or put them to death, if they had not obeyed. They were not permitted to enter into the merits of the cause between the king and parliament, but were condemned upon the statute of the 25th Edward III. for compassing and imagining the king's death.

*This was done, says Dr. Grey, upon a 30th of January; a circumstance which Mr. Neal might probably think below his notice. Ed. Kennet's Chron. p. 367. § Vol. i. p. 234.

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