to wrest the scriptures into witnesses that the sovereign was an irresponsible personage-and their threats of what must follow if there were any questioning of his right divine to govern, even in spite of law and precedent. Even in the Long Parliament, which assembled in November, 1640, one of the earliest votes of the Commons was a resolution that none should sit in their House but such as would receive the communion according to the usage of the Church of England. In the country too there was little or no nonconformity, except that sort of primitive Puritanism which consisted in aversion to some of the rites and ceremonies of the Church. So late as 1642 petitions from thirteen English and five Welsh counties largely signed were, so Hallam (Const. Hist. vol. i. p. 535) has shown, presented to Parliament, deprecating the abolition of Episcopacy and the liturgy. But at last the nation and the House of Commons were worried and driven wild by the pedantries and formalities of Laud, and the King's insincerity. Not only did the King put forth his prerogative to the overthrow of the old charters and laws of the land, and was supported in this by his clerical defenders, he also departed from his word once given in a way which no English gentleman could endure. The most conspicuous members of the House of Commons, stern, undemonstrative Englishmen, ashamed of betraying their feelings, actually burst into tears, we are told, on the great day of remonstrance when the King trafficked with words in a double sense, and they felt that they must put themselves in direct opposition to him. Men such as Lord Falkland, the patriotic member for Newport, I. W., tried to steer a middle course between two extremes. The leaders both of the Royalist and Parliamentary parties, unable to attain that calm and wise statesmanship which the crisis demanded, were hurried away into violent courses. Losing temper, they lost their heads also. The sword was drawn. With the breaking out of civil war, the Parliament bade farewell to all equitable consideration for those who were encouraging the party which had taken up arms against the House of Commons. On the day before Laud was illegally condemned for high treason an ordinance passed both Houses for the establishment of the new Puritan Directory, that is, of the

Presbyterian form of discipline and worship in England, and the use of the Book of Common Prayer was forbidden. By a law enacted soon after the Directory was enforced it was made penal to use the Book of Common Prayer even in household worship. The penalty was five pounds for the first and a hundred pounds for the third offence. This was in 1645, and from that date through the whole of the Protectorate to the restoration of Charles II in 1660 the Church had no existence, except in the persons of scattered and oppressed members who still clung to their proscribed faith and liturgy. The Church of the Puritans succeeded to the silenced Church of England, which, as Evelyn said of it, was 'reduced to a chamber and a conventicle,' and for fifteen years Puritanism as the established religion of England was supreme.

Lord Macaulay (Hist. of England, vol. i. p. 160), speaking of this period of bitter persecution, says, 'It was a crime in a child to read by the bedside of a sick parent one of those beautiful collects which had soothed the griefs of forty generations of Christians.' It was a legal crime, but religious persecution by law rarely gets all its own way. Infractions of the law are winked at. There is ground for supposing that even in Cromwell's own family the Prayer Book was not a forbidden book to Lady Claypole, the Protector's favourite daughter. Cromwell himself, more generous than his party, protected a few churchmen. Archbishop Usher was still permitted to preach in London. Evidence also has been brought forward to show that in remote country parishes the clergy, though silenced, performed such ministrations as reading the burial and even the wedding services. Cromwell, who cared little about systems of Church government, was resolute in preserving the union of the Puritan Church with the State. As might be expected, many irregularities found their way into the ecclesiastical arrangements of the newly established Puritan Church. All manner of men were intruded into the vacated benefices, some of them very illiterate, and the mark of Arthur Okely, Rector of West Mersea, testifies that one of them at least could not write his name. Cromwell, a born ruler of men, could not brook such disorders. His aim was to combine Church and State in

one, or, as he himself called it, to set up a kingdom of God in England in matters both ecclesiastical and civil in place of the Stuart government which had been put down. Secure in the support of his soldiery, Cromwell, without the consent of the House of Commons, for which he had the utmost contempt, of his own authority framed an ordinance of Church government which was practically workable. The details of this scheme may be read in Carlyle's Cromwell (vol. iii. p. 56). By this ordinance of council in 1653 a board of 'triers,' as they were called, was appointed, to which was given without any restriction or limitations whatever the power of examining and approving or rejecting all persons that might thereafter be presented, chosen, nominated, or appointed to any living. As the 'triers' consisted of Presbyterians, Independents, with a few Baptists, it was tantamount to dividing the Church among these three religious bodies, so as to comprehend them all. Cromwell, however, held forth his measure as restrictive, and designed to restrain the excessive liberty that had previously existed, when any one who could might set up as a preacher, and so give himself a chance of obtaining a Church benefice.

At this point the documents which are preserved among the muniments of Queen's College, Oxford, come in. Herewith is a transcript of this roll of papers, for which I am indebted to the kindness of the present Provost of that College.

1-6. Documents about the obtaining the College rents in the Isle of Wight.

7. Apparently a list or description of three old deeds.

8, 9. The appointment of two different parties to collect the tithes of Carisbrooke and Northwood during the vacancy, owing to the death of Alexander Rosse, the last incumbent, dated Newport, June 26, and Hampton, June 29, 1654.

10. An undated petition from parishioners of Carisbrooke for a minister in the place of Mr. Alexander Rosse, deceased. II. Ditto from Newport for an orthodox minister,' wee having at this time none other but one, wee conceive infested with schism, as appeareth by his frequent seditious sermons,' &c.

12. One labelled May 10, 1654, the Vice-Chanc., Dr.

Owen, certificate on behalf of Mr. Crofts, of Carisbrooke, and running as follows:-'This is to certify yt whereas Mr. Crofts, who had for some season been preacher at Carisbrooke in ye Yle of Whight, was recommended to ye Commissioners appointed for ye approbation of publike preachers by sundry persons of honor, integrity, and godlinesse, as a man of holy and exemplary life and conversation, I did myself examine ye said Mr. Crofts before the Commissioners, and upon ye account given of himself and his abilitys, he was approved by us all, nemine contradicente, as a fit and able person for ye work of publike preaching ye gospel. Signed, JOHN OWEN.

'These are to certify whom it may concern that the provost and schollars of Queen's College in the University of Oxon, patron of the Vicaridge of Carisbrooke, with Newport and Norwood in the Isle of Wight, now voyd by the death of Alexander Rosse, late incumbent there, have constituted and appointed Mr. John Crofts, of Carisbrooke, aforesaid, to demand and receive all and all manner of tithes, which of right ought to be payd to the Vicar of the sayd church by the inhabitants of Carisbrooke aforesayd, and have grown due at any time since the death of the sayd Alexander Rosse, or shall hereafter become due in the time of the vacancy of the sayd church, so long as he, the sayd Mr. John Crofts, shall continue to descharge the cure there. In witness whereof, we, the Provost and Bursars of the sayd Colledge, have hereunto set our hands, June 26th, 1654. Signed at Newport, in the presence of Gerard Langbaine, Provost.'

'Memorandum. That it is not intended by this grant that Mr. Crofts shall have any power or right to receive or intermeddle with the tithes arising or due from any of the inhabitants of Newport or Norwood, or the chapells there, which are hereby excepted and reserved. N.B.-The persons appointed to receive the tithes of Norwood are John Lovell of Werror, Richard Taylor, now Churchwarden of Norwood, together with William Kurvill of the same, who were out of the sayde tithes to make a competent and proportionable allowance to Mr. Sparkes for his pains in descharge of the cure there, in the time of the vacancy, and to be accountable for the same to the next incumbent.'

These entries from the College records so illustrative of the period to which they relate are given in full because of their historical value. I had hoped to have made some remarks upon them, but my letter has already extended to such a length that, at any rate for the present, I offer them without any further comment to such of my readers as feel interested in that very remarkable epoch in English historythe Puritan ascendency.

January 30, 1886.

LORD COLEPEPER, GOVERNOR OF THE ISLE OF WIGHT, A.D. 1660-1667.

MR. JOHN RICHARD GREEN, who has done much good service in making English history popular, has observed that 'no event ever marked a deeper or more lasting change in the temper of the English people than the entry of Charles II into Whitehall. With it modern England begins.' This is an exaggeration. There is no such gulf fixed between the statesmen of the period before the Restoration and those of our times as Mr. Green supposes. We have learnt that there is an orderly sequence of events in all human history. Everything is more or less the result of what has gone before. What Sir Isaac Newton said of the physical world, that Nature does not love leaps,' is true also of the moral world. It is convenient for certain purposes to divide history into ancient and modern, to distinguish between the Middle Ages and later constitutional history, and to mark the mighty change which was worked in the National Church of England as it existed before the Reformation and after the Reformation. But as the Church of England did not begin with the Reformation, no more does modern England begin with the Restoration. We cannot put our finger on any epoch in history when a new order of things may be said to begin, seeing that there is an order in all events, and a connexion between cause and effect. Men now living who