Sabine Baring-Gould - Cornish Characters and Strange Events

When Mary came to the throne there was an immense outburst of enthusiasm, the time of the Protestant protectorates was looked back on as a bad dream. In spite of the fact that England was under an interdict, the Mass was restored, and no rector or vicar cared a straw for the Papal bull, nor indeed did Mary, who heard Mass in the chapel of the Tower, and afterwards in S. Paul's.

If Mary had only accepted the advice tendered to her by Charles V, she would have reigned as a popular monarch, and have settled the condition of the Church of England on lines that commended themselves to nobles, commons, and clergy alike, Catholic but not Papal. But she had looked too long to the see of Peter as her support, and she managed completely to alienate the affections of her people. The fires of Smithfield brought the fanatics who had been discredited in the former reign into favour once more; and when Elizabeth came to the throne, and had been deposed by Pope Pius V, and her subjects released from allegiance to her, and plots formed for her assassination, under favour of the Pope, the religious sentiment in England was cleft as with a hatchet – some who loved the religion of their fathers were constrained against their will and consciences to become Papists, and others became wild and reckless fanatics in a Puritan direction. Between these two parties sat the vast bulk of the English people, looking this way, that way, and deeming all religion foolishness, and self-interest the only thing to be sought after. All the foundations of the religious world were out of course. The via media is all very well in theory and when well trodden, but when it is experimental, and one road to the right leads to Rome and that to the left to Geneva, the via media may be taken to lead nowhere, and those who tread it have to do so uncertainly. A session between two stools is precarious, and the Church of England had been forced by the folly of Mary to adopt this position. The consequence was that in the reigns of Elizabeth and James and Charles I there was no enthusiasm in the clergy of the Church. The bishops were grasping, self-seeking worldlings. Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, was the best among an ignoble crew. When he died, says Froude, "he left behind him enormous wealth, which had been accumulated, as is proved from a statement in the handwriting of his successor, by the same unscrupulous practices which had brought about the first revolt against the Church. No Catholic prelate in the old easy times had so flagrantly abused the dispensation system. Every year he made profits by admitting children to the cure of souls, for money. He used a graduated scale in which the price for inducting an infant into a benefice varied with the age, children under fourteen not being inadmissible, if the adequate fees were forthcoming." 2 2 Froude, Hist. of England , X, p. 410.

The great majority of the nobility and gentry of England clung to the doctrine and ceremonies of the ancient Church, and yet were united in determination to oppose the Papal claims. Benefices in their presentation were held by priests who said the Communion Service, which was but the Mass in English, with the ancient vestments and ritual; and others, next door, were held by men who could hardly be compelled to wear even the surplice, and who celebrated the Eucharist but once in the year.

The Church was a hodgepodge of conflicting doctrines and ceremonial. As Froude says: —

"So long as a single turn of the wheel, a violent revolution, or the Queen's death, might place a Catholic (Papist) on the throne, the Established Church held a merely conditional existence. It had no root in the nation, for every earnest man who was not a Puritan was a Catholic; and its officers, for the most part, regarded their tenures as an opportunity for enriching themselves, which would probably be short, and should in prudence be made use of while it remained. Benefices were appropriated to laymen, sold, or accumulated upon favourites. Churches in many places were left unserved, and cobblers and tailors were voted by the congregations into the pulpits. 'The bishops,' said Cecil, 'had no credit either for learning, good living, or hospitality.' The Archbishop of York had scandalized his province by being found in bed with the wife of an innkeeper at Doncaster. Other prelates had bestowed ordination 'on men of lewd life and corrupt behaviour.' The Bishop of Lichfield had made seventy 'lewd and unlearned ministers, for money,' in one day." 3 3 Ibid. , XI, 471-2.

Bishop Barlow, of S. David's, had torn the lead roof off his palace and the castle at Lawhadden to provide dowers for his daughters, and would have unroofed his cathedral had he not been prevented by Elizabeth, because in it was the monument of Edmund, Earl of Richmond, the father of Henry VII. When translated to Bath and Wells he destroyed the lady chapel, the finest Perpendicular building in the West of England, surpassing even Sherborne and Bath, and sold it – lead, roof, stones, and all. Some of the clergy were mere temporizers, without convictions, taking their colour from their patrons, and ready to believe or pretend to believe this or that, as suited their pockets. The majority were indifferent – ignorant – not knowing where they stood. Many had thrust their way into Holy Orders for the sake of the loaves and fishes that might be obtained in the Established Church, with no work to do, without education, without zeal, without convictions, and consequently totally without the least enthusiasm, without any fixed principles.

Laud and the Star Chamber sought to produce conformity by cutting off ears and slitting noses. But what Laud failed to see was that the only men in religious England who knew their minds, who had any fixed principles in religion, were the Papists and the Puritans. What they should have done, but what probably they could not do, was to inspire the clergy of the Church with zeal and enthusiasm. But the clergy could not catch the fire from off the altar; they had entered Orders for the sake of a rectory, a glebe and tithe, and cared for nothing else. If one half – nay, one quarter – of the charges brought against them by the Tryers be true, they were a most unworthy set. In Elizabeth's reign there had been a difficulty in filling the benefices, and any Jack and Tom who could gratify the bishop and could read was ordained and appointed to a benefice. And these were the men to maintain the doctrine of the Universal Church and Apostolic tradition against fiery enthusiasts on one side who took their own reading of Scripture for divine inspiration, and on the other against the Papists who set their back against the Rock of Peter.

With churches picked bare, with sermons without fire, services performed without dignity, often with indecorum, without religious instruction from teachers who did not know what to teach, it is no wonder that the people turned away to hot-gospellers and tub-thumpers who, if they could not kindle in them love and charity, could set them on fire with self-righteousness and religious animosities.

At Rotterdam Peters threw over creed and liturgy of the Church of England, and leaving the English chapel, became co-pastor with Dr. William Ames of an Independent meeting-house at Rotterdam, and Ames died there in his arms. In Holland Peters made the acquaintance of John Forbes, Professor of Divinity in the University of Aberdeen, a great Hebraist. In a pamphlet published by Peters in 1646 he says: "I lived about six years near that famous Scotsman, Mr. John Forbes, with whom I travelled into Germany, and enjoyed his society in much love and sweetness constantly; from whom I received nothing but encouragement, though we differed in the way of our 'churches.'"

After Peters had spent six years in the United Provinces, he suddenly threw up his pastoral charge and departed for New England, with five hundred pounds in his pocket, which his friends furnished, and a young waiting-maid, Mary Morell, whom he shortly after married to one Peter Folger.