ministers, who still remained in jail.* The church formed by Jacob, also, had been compelled to hold its meetings as secretly as possible, moving from one place to another as caution dictated; and on venturing to act with less discretion than usual, was persecuted by Laud, in 1632. About sixty of its members had assembled on the 29th of April in the house of Mr. Humphrey Barnet, a brewer's clerk, at Blackfriars. Mr. John Lathorp, who had succeeded Jacob as pastor, was with them; and in the midst of their worship, a party of officers, headed by Tomlinson the bishop's pursuivant, broke in upon them. A few escaped in the confusion; but forty-two were apprehended, their pastor being one. They were all committed to prison, some in the Clink, some in the New Prison, and some in the Gatehouse; and in prison they all remained for two tedious years. At the expiration of that term, they were released on bail, with the exception of Mr. Lathorp, who was refused bail. He afterwards petitioned the king for liberty to depart the kingdom, and on obtaining permission went to New England, accompanied by about thirty of his congregation.+

*Brewer, Fenner, and Turner, are the names of the parties referred to. How long the last two remained in prison cannot be determined. Brewer was brought before the High Commission in 1626; some time after, "slipt out of prison;" was captured and committed to prison again; and remained in prison from that period to the time of the Long Parliament. Brook's Lives of the Puritans, ii. 444; Price's History of Nonconformity, ii. 53, 54.

† According to Crosby, (Hist. of English Baptists, i. 148) Lathorp's church was divided by a baptist movement, while he was in prison, which terminated in a secession and the formation of a baptist church in 1633. The residuary church renewed their covenant after this diminution, and are spoken of as being so steady to their vows, that hardly an instance can he produced of one that deserted to the church by the severest persecutions." Neal, i. 663.

66

Besides these, multitudes were persecuted for various offences, and in various degrees. Conformist or non-conformist, churchman or puritan, it was all the same to the court bishops. Wherever implicit obedience was not yielded to their authority, punishment immediately followed. Some were called to account for preaching against popery; others, for preaching against Arminianism and idle ceremonies; and others, even bishops, though of inferior degree, for "touching upon the point of predestination."* Some were deprived by the High Commission, without any specific charge brought against them; some were fined heavily for taking glass windows, stained with monstrous pictures, out of their parish churches, and substituting others of a more becoming kind; some were robbed, imprisoned, deprived, whipped, kept to hard labour as felons, and fed on starving diet, for preaching against decorations and images in churches.+

The worst case, however, that comes into notice during the present period is that of Dr. Alexander Leighton, a Scotch divine, and father of the celebrated archbishop of that name. In October, 1828, he had printed, it could scarcely be said published, a book entitled, "An Appeal to the Parliament: or, Sion's Plea against the Prelacy; the sum whereof is delivered in a Decade of Positions, in the handling whereof, the Lord Bishops and their appurtenances are manifestly proved both by Divine and human laws, to be Intruders upon the privileges of Christ, of the King,

* Dr. Davenant, bishop of Salisbury, for example. Neal, i. 546, 547.

† See the cases of Crowder, Sherfield, Hayden, and others, in Neal, i. 554-558.

and of the Common-weal; and therefore, upon good evidence given, she heartily desireth a Judgment and Execution." The title is sufficiently significant of the aim of the writer. The work, however, had been printed for the use of the parliament only, and when Leighton ascertained that it had been dissolved before his work was ready to be put into the hands of the members, he suppressed the copies he had procured to be printed in Holland. Notwithstanding this precaution, a copy found its way to some members of the government, who immediately instituted proceedings against him. On a warrant from the High Commission he was seized, loaded with irons, thrust into a loathsome dungeon in Newgate, and after confinement for fifteen weeks, arraigned in the Star Chamber, on the 4th of June, 1630. The charge against him, was for "framing, publishing, and scattering, a scandalous book against king, peers and prelates." The charge was true, because the statements made in the book were scandalously true. He wrote of the prelates and of the hierarchy as he and others had found them. His words were not courteous; but neither the prelates, nor the hierarchy had been over courteous towards those who had differed from them. His figures were not the most choice; but they were much less objectionable than the actions of those against whom his book was written.* And if his crime was heinous, in venturing to cry out against

*He called the bishops, "men of blood;" the queen a daugh. ter of Heth;" and referring to the hierarchy he used a strong figure, "smite that Hazael under the fifth rib ;"-which Heylin and Lawson, with the ingenuity of special pleaders, have interpreted literally as an incentive to assassination, and construed into a justification of all that was, without a figure, done to poor Leighton.

the intolerable evils under which liberty and religion groaned, it must be admitted that his punishment was more than proportionably severe, as the following statement, furnished by a contemporary writer, will evince.

*

"On the 26th of November, 1630," says Ludlow, "this censure was executed in a most cruel manner. His ears were cut, his nose slit, his face branded with burning irons; he was tied to a post, and whipped with a treble cord to that cruel degree, that he, himself, writing the history thereof, ten years after, affirmed that every lash brought away the flesh, and that he should feel it to his dying day. He was lastly put in the pillory, and kept there nearly two hours in frost and snow; and then after this most barbarous usage, not permitted to return to his quarters in the Fleet in a coach provided to carry him, but compelled in that sad condition and severe weather, to go by water. After this he was kept ten weeks in dirt and mire, not being sheltered from rain and snow. They shut him up most closely twenty-two months; and he remained a prisoner ten or eleven years, not suffered to breathe in the open air, until the parliament of 1640 most happily delivered him.”+

In consequence of these severities-which became more general as the king became more arbitrary, until it grew into a kind of fashion among the bishops to

* According to the sentence, he was to be "branded in the face with a double S.S., for a sower of sedition."

+ Ludlow's Letters (1812) p. 45. The same authority states, that when sentence-the sentence thus executed-was pronounced on Leighton, "Laud pulled off his cap, and, holding up his hands, gave thanks to God who had given him victory over his enemies."

persecute-great numbers left the kingdom for other lands.* Some fled to Holland; but the greater number to New England, where great success had attended the persevering industry of the early settlers. Since the May-flower's first voyage with the pilgrims from Leyden and England, many had gone over in successive emigrations; and intelligence had been received from time to time of the prosperity and peace of the infant colonyt. On this account many were prepared to leave their native land, and embark their all in similar enterprizes. It so happened that in 1620, king James had signed a patent of incorporation in favour of the Duke of Lenox, the Marquisses of Buckingham and Hamilton, the Earls of Arundel and Warwick, Sir Francis Gorges, with thirty-four others, and their successors, by which they were constituted "The Council established at Plymouth, in the county of Devon, for the planting, ruling, ordering, and governing of New England in America." This patent became the civil basis of all the grants and patents by which New England was afterwards colonized; and

* Respecting this state of things, Milton writes in 1641:-" Let the astrologer be dismayed at the portentous blaze of comets, and impressions in the air, as foretelling troubles and changes to states: I shall believe there cannot be a more ill-boding sign to a nation, (God turn the omen from us!) than when the inhabitants, to avoid insufferable grievances at home, are enforced by heaps to forsake their native country." Of Reformation, &c.

† In 1622, was published in London, a "Relation or Journall" of the beginnings of the "Plimouth" plantation; and in 1624, "Good Newes from New England," containing the after history. Other accounts were published in successive years, mentioning the names of the ships, and sometimes of the passengers that arrived there. The remainder of the Leyden church got safely over.