IV. The father of the Church of England, under the authori ty of the protector Seymour, duke of Somerset, was confessedly Thomas Cranmer, whom Henry VIII. raised to the archbishopric of Canterbury; of whom it is difficult to say, whether his obsequiousness to the passions of his successive masters, Henry, Seymour, and Dudley, or his barbarity to the sectaries who were in his power, was the more odious. There is this circumstance, which distinguishes him from almost every other persecutor, that he actively promoted the capital punishment, not only of those who differed from him in religion, but also of those who agrees with him in it It is admitted by his advocates,* that he was instrumental, during the reign of Henry, in bringing to the stake the Protestants, Lambert, Askew, Frith, and Allen, besides condemning a great many others to it, for denying the corporal presence of Christ in the sacrament, which he disbelieved himself;† and it is equally certain, that during the reign of the child Edward, he continued to convict Arians and Anabaptists capitally, and to press for their execution. Two of these, Joan Knell and George Van Par, he got actually burnt preventing the young king, Edward, from pardoning them, by telling him, that "princes being God's deputies, ought to punish impieties against him." The two next most eminent fathers of the English church were, unquestionably, bishop Ridley, and bishop Latimer, both of them noted persecutors, and persecutors of Protestants to the extremity of death, no less than of Anabaptists and other sectaries. Upon the second establishment of the Protestant religion in England, when Elizabeth ascended the throne, it was again buttressed up here, as in every other country, where it prevailed, by the most severe, persecuting laws. I have elsewhere shown, from authentic sources, that above two hundred Catholics were hanged, drawn and quartered during her reign, for the mere profession or exercise of the religion of their ancestors for almost one thousand years. Of this number fifteen were condemned for denying the queen's spiritual supremacy, one hundred and twenty-six for the exercise of their priestly functions, and the rest for being reconciled to the Catholic church, for hearing mass, or aiding and abetting Catholic priests. Fox, Acts and Monum. Fuller's Church Hist. b. v. + See Letters to a Freb. p. 206. Burnet's Ch. Hist. p. ii. bi. See the proofs of these facts collected from Fox, Burnet, Heylin, and Collier, in Letters to a Preb. Let. V. Certain opponents of mine have publicly objected to me, that these Catholics suffered for high treasm: true; the laws of persecution declared When to these sanguinary scenes are added those of many hun dreds of other Catholics, who perished in dungeons, who were driven into exile, or who were stripped of their property, it wil' appear, that the persecution of Elizabeth's reign, was far more grievous than that of her sister Mary; especially when the proper deductions are made from the sufferers under the latter.* Nor was persecution confined to the Catholics; for, when great umbers of foreign Anabaptists, and other sectaries, had fled nto England, from the fires and gibbets of their Protestant brethren in Holland, they found their situation much worse here, as they complained, that it had been in their own country. To silence these complaints, the bishop of London, Edwin Sandys, published a book in vindication of religious perse. cution In short, the Protestant church and state concurred to their extirpation. An assembly of them, to the number of twenty-seven, having being seized upon in 1575, some of them were so intimidated as to recant their opinions, some were scourged, two of them, Peterson and Terwort, were burnt to death in Smithfield, and the rest banished Besides these foreigners, the English Dissenters were also grievously persecuted. Several of them, such as Thacker, Copnine C tenwood, Barrow, Penry, &c. were put to death, which rigours they ascribed principally to the bishops, particularly to Parker, Aylmer, Sandy's, and Whitgift. The last named, they accused of being the chief author of the famous inquisitorial court called the Star Chamber, which court, in addition to all its other vexations and severities, employed the rack and torture, to extort confession. The doctrines and practice of persecu tion, in England, did not end with the race of Tudor. James I, though he was reproached with being favourable to the Catholics, nevertheless signed warrants for twenty-five of them to be hanged and quartered, and sent one hundred and twentyeight of them into banishment, barely on account of their religion, besides exacting the fine of 20l. per month from those who did not attend the church service. Still he was repeatedly called upon by parliament to put the penal laws in force with greater rigour; in order, say they, "to advance the glory of so: but their only treason consisted in their religion. Thus the Apostles and other Christian martyrs, were traitors in the eye of the Pagan law; and the chief priests declared, with respect to Christ himself; we have a lau and according to that he ought to die. * See letters to a Prebendary, pp 149, 150. † Ger. Brandt, Hist. Reform. Abreg. vol. i. p. 234. 199. Brandt, vol. i. p. 234 Hist. of Churches of Eng and Scotl. vol. ii. p § Ibid. 99 Almighty God, and the everlasting honour of your majesty' and he was warned by archbishop Abbot, against tolerating Catholics, in the following terms: "Your majesty hath propounded a toleration of religion. By your act you labour to set up that most damnable and heretical doctrine of the church of Rome, the whore of Babylon; and thereby draw down upon the kingdom and yourself God's heavy wrath and indignation."t in the mean time the Puritans complained loudly of the persecution, which they endured from the court of High Commission, and particularly from archbishop Bancroft, and the bishops Neale, of Litchfield, and King, of London. They charged the former of these, with not only condemning Edward Wightman for his opinions, but also, with getting the king's warrant for his execution, who was accordingly burnt at Lichfield; and the latter, with treating, in the same way, Bartholomew Legat, who was consumed in Smithfield. The same unrelenting spirit of pesecution prevailed in the addresses of parliament, and of many bishops to Charles I, which had disgraced those presented to his father: one of these, signed by the renowned archbishop Usher, and eleven other Irish bishops of the establishment, declares, that "to give toleration to Papists, is to become accessary to superstition, idolatry, and the perdition of souls; and that, therefore, it is a grievous sin."§ At length the Presbyterians, and Independents, getting the upper hand, had an opportunity of giving full scope to their characteristic intolerance. Their divines, being assembled at Sion college, condemned, as an error, the doctrine of tolera tion, "under the abused termn," as they expressed it, "of liberty of conscience." Conformably with this doctrine, they procured from their parliament a number of persecuting acts, from those of fining, up to those of capital punishment. The objects of them were not only Catholics, but also church of England men, Quakers, Seekers, and Arians. In the mean time, they frequently appointed national fasts to atone for their pretended guilt, in being too tolerant.** Warrants for the exe cution of four English Catholics, were extorted from the king, while he was in power, and near twenty others were publicly executed under the parliament and the protector. This hypo Rushworth's Collect. vol. p. 141. + Rushworth's Collect. Chandler's Introduct. to Limborche's Hist. of Inquis. p. 80. Neal's Hist. of Purit. vol. ii p. 96. § Leland's Hist. of Ireland, vol. ii. p. 482. Neal's Hist. vol. ii p. 169 Hist. of Churches of Eng. and Scotl. vol. iii. Ibid. Neas Hist. Ibid. critical tyrant after wards invading Ireland, and being bent on exterminating the Catholic population there, persuaded his soldiers, that they had a divine commission for this purpose, as the Israelites had to exterminate the Canaanites.* To make an end of the clergy, he put the same price upon a priest's as upon a wolf's head. Those Puritans who, previously to the civil war, had sailed to North America, to avoid persecution, set up a far more cruel one there, particularly against the Quakers, whipping them, cropping their cars, boring their tongues with a hot iron, and hanging them. We have the names of four of these sufferers, one of them a woman, who were executed at Boston.‡ IV. The Catholics had behaved with unparalleled loyalty to the king and constitution, during the whole war which the Puritans waged against these. It has even been demonstrated, that three-fifths of the noblemen and gentlemen who lost their lives on the side of royalty, were Catholics, and that more than half of the landed property, confiscated by the rebels, belonged to the Catholics; add to this, that they were chiefly instrumental in saving Charles II, after his defeat at Worcester : hence there was reason to expect, that the restoration of the king and constitution, would have brought an alleviation, if not an end of their sufferings: but the contrary proved to be the case for then all parties seem to have combined to make them the common object of their persecuting spirit and fury. In proof of this, I need allege nothing more than that two different parliaments voted the reality of Oates's Plot! and that eighteen innocent and loyal Catholics, one of them a peer, suffered the death of traitors, on account of it: to say nothing of seven other priests, who, about that time, were hanged and quartered for the mere exercise of their priestly functions. Among the absurdities of that sanguinary plot, such as those of shooting the king with silver bullets, and invading the island with an army of pilgrims from Compostella, &c. it was not the least to pretend, that the Catholics wished to kill the king at all; that king whom they had heretofore saved in Staffordshire, and whom they well knew to be secretly devoted to their religion; but any pretext was good which would serve the purposes of a persecuting faction. These purposes were to exclude Catholics not only from the throne, but also from the smallest degree of political power, down to that of a constable, and to shut the * Anderson's Royal Geueal. quoted by Curry, vol. ii. p. 11. + Ibid. p. 63. Neal's Hist. of Churches 1. Echard's Hist Lord Castlemain's Catholic Apology. doors of both houses of parliament against hem. The faction succeeded in its first design by the Test Act, and in its second. by the act requiring the Declaration against Popery; both obtained at a period of national delirium and fury. What the spirit of the clergy was, at that time, with respect to the oppressed Catholics, appeared at their solemn procession at sir Edmundbury Godfrey's funeral, and still appears in the three folio volumes of invective and misrepresentation then published, under the title of A Preservative against Popery. On the other hand, such was the unchristian hatred of the Dissenters against the Catholics, that they promoted the Test Act with all their power, though no less injurious to themselves than to the Catholics; and on every occasion, they refused a toleration which might extend to the latter There is no need of bringing down the history of persecution in this country to a later period than the revolution, at which time, as I observed before, a Catholic king was deposed, because he would not be a persecutor. Suffice it to say, that the number of penal laws against the professors of the ancient religion, and founders of the constitution of this country, continued to increase in every reign, till that of his present majesty. In the course of this reign most of the old persecuting laws have been repealed, but the two last mentioned, enacted in a moment of delirium, which Hume represents as our greatest national disgrace, I mean the impracticable Test Act, and the unintelligible Declaration against Popery, are rigidly adhered to under two groundless pretexts. The first of these is, that they are necessary for the support of the established church and yet it is undeniable, that this church had maintained its ground, and had flourished much more during the period which preceded these laws, than it has ever done since that event. The second pretext is, that the withholding of honours and emoluments is not persecution. On this point, let a Protestant dignitary of first rate talents be heard: "We agree, that persecution, merely for conscience sake, is against the genius of the gospel: and so is any law for depriving men of their natural and civil rights, which they claim as men. We are also ready to allow, that the smallest negative discouragements, for uniformity's sake, are so many pesecutions. An incapacity by law for any man to be made a judge or a colonel, merely on point of conscience is a nega tive discouragement, and, consequently, a real persecution,' &c. North's Exam. Echard. Neal's Hist. of Puritans, vol iv. Hist. of Churones, vol. ii. * Ibid. § Dean Swift's works, vol. viii. p. 56. |