The special business which had brought Cromwell to London was, in fact, but a metaphor of the general business then occupying the English nation. Whether a pragmatical Presbyterian Scot should regulate the discipline of an English Parliamentarian army, and whether the Westminster Assembly should establish a Presbyterian Inquisitorship over the whole mind of England, were but forms of the same question. Little wonder, then, that Cromwell, finding himself in London on the smaller form of the business, resolved to move also in the larger. And he did. "This day," writes Baillie on Friday the 13th of September 1644, "Cromwell has obtained an Order of the House of Commons to refer to the Committee of both Kingdoms the accommodation or toleration of the Independents—a high and unexpected Order!" Three days afterwards Baillie is still full of the subject. "While Cromwell is here," he says, "the House of Commons, without the least advertisement to any of us [Scottish Commissioners], or of the Assembly, passes an Order that the Grand Committee of both Houses, Assembly, and us, shall consider of the means to unite us and the Independents, or, if that be found impossible, to see how they may be tolerate. This has much affected us." On turning to the Commons Journals we find the actual words of the Order: "Ordered, That the Committee of Lords and Commons appointed to treat with the Commissioners of Scotland and the Committee of the Assembly do take into consideration the differences in opinion of the members of the Assembly in point of Church- government, and do endeavour a union if it be possible; and, in case that cannot be done, do endeavour the finding out some ways how far tender consciences, who cannot in all things submit to the common Rule which shall be established, may be borne with, according to the Word, and as may stand with the public peace, that so the proceedings of the Assembly may not be so much retarded." Mr. Solicitor St. John appears as the reporter of the Order. Cromwell, in fact, had quietly formed a little phalanx of the right men to carry the thing through. The younger Vane was one of them. Even Stephen Marshall, the Presbyterian and Smectymnuan, had to some extent aided in the contrivance, without consulting any of his brethren of the Assembly.
The Order came upon the Presbyterians like a thunder-clap. For, as they rightly interpreted, it was nothing less than a design to carry in Parliament a Toleration-clause to be inserted in the Bill for establishing Presbytery before that Bill was ready to be drafted. Of this Baillie and his friends complained bitterly. Was it not unfair to Presbyterianism thus to anticipate so ostentatiously that there would be many whom it would not satisfy? Was not this framing of a Toleration- clause, to be inserted into a Bill before the Bill itself was in being, like a solicitation to the English people to prefer the clause to the body of the Bill, and so to continue dubious about Presbytery, instead of cultivating faith in its merits? So argued Baillie and the Presbyterians. But, indeed, they saw more behind the Accommodation Order. The Toleration it sought to provide might seem, from the wording, only a moderate Toleration in the interest of the Independents of the Assembly and their immediate adherents. From what Baillie says, one infers that Mr. Solicitor St. John and Mr. Marshall had been drawing up the Order in this moderate form, and that Cromwell and Vane would fain have had more. "The great shot of Cromwell and Vane," says Baillie, "is to have a liberty for all religions, without any exceptions." And of Vane he distinctly says that he was "offended with the Solicitor" for putting only differences about Church-government into the Toleration Ordinance, and not also differences "about free grace, including liberty to the Antinomians and to all Sects." At all events, he had recently, in the presence of the Scottish Commissioners themselves, been reasoning "prolixly, earnestly, and passionately" for universal Toleration. Probably Cromwell and Vane were content in the meantime with what the long-headed Solicitor saw he could pass. It could be stretched when necessary. The form was St. John's, but the deed was Cromwell's. [Footnote: The authorities for the interesting facts related in this paragraph which seem to have slipped out of view of most modern writers on the history of the period are Baillie, II 226, 229, 231, and 236, 237, and Commons Journal, Sept 13, 1644.]
After the check of this Accommodation Order of Sept. 13, 1644, the Presbyterians of the Assembly seem to have proceeded somewhat more temperately. Not that they gave up the fight. Their preachers before Parliament still followed in the strain of Hill and Palmer. In a Fast-day Sermon before the two Houses on Sept. 12, the day before the Order, the Smectymnuan, Matthew Newcomen, had again had a slap at Toleration; on Sept. 25 Lazarus Seaman was again at it, and actually named in his sermon four dangerous books for Liberty of Conscience, including Goodwin's and Williams's—the burning of which lest did not seem enough to the Rabbi, for "the shell is sometimes thrown into the fire when the kernel is eaten;" the respected Calamy, also a Smectymnuan, is at it again, Oct. 22, telling the Parliament that, if they do not put down Anabaptism, Antinomianism, and Tolerationism of all religions, thentheyare the Anabaptists, the Antinomians, the Tolerationists; Spurstow, a third of the Smectymnuans, is not done with it on Nov. 5. [Footnote: My notes from a volume of the Parliamentary Sermons of 1644, kindly lent me by Mr. David Laing] In the Assembly itself also the question of heresy, blasphemy, and their suppression, occasionally turned up. Oct. 17, for example, there was officially before the Assembly the case of a John Hart, who had been making a reputation for himself in Surrey by this hideous joke:—"Who made you? My Lord of Essex.—Who redeemed you? Sir W. Waller.—Who sanctified and preserved you? My Lord of Warwick." This led to a conversation in the Assembly on the increase of blasphemy, and to a new remonstrance to Parliament on the subject.[Footnote: Lightfoot's Notes at date named] Again, on the 22nd of November, there was a report to the Assembly of some fresh "damnable blasphemies," more of the doctrinal kind, and savouring of Mortalism and Clement Wrighter. [Footnote: Lightfoot's Notes at date named.] Nor had the Assembly agreed to let even ordinary Anabaptism and Antinomianism alone; for they had again memorialized Parliament on the subject, and had had a rather satisfactory response from the Commons, Nov. 15, in the form of a promise to consider the whole matter, and an order meanwhile that no person should be permitted to preach unless he were an ordained minister in the English or some other Reformed Church, or a probationer intending the ministry and duly licensed by those authorized by Parliament to give such licence. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Nov. 15, 1644.] On the whole, however, from September 1644 onwards through October and November, to the end of the year, there was rather an abatement of the inquisitorial zeal of the Assembly.
In those months, indeed, the Assembly was unusually active over its main work. For, though we have seen chiefly the spray of its miscellaneous interferences with affairs, it must be remembered that it had been called together for a vast mass of substantial work, and that it had been steadily prosecuting that work, in Committees, Sub-committees, and the daily meetings of the whole body. The work expected by Parliament from the Assembly consisted of (1) the compilation of aConfession of Faith, orArticles of Religion, which should supersede the Thirty-nine Articles, and be the Creed of the new National Church of England about to be established; (2) the composition of aCatechismorCatechisms, which should be a manual or manuals for the instruction of the people, and especially the young, in the theology of the Articles; (3) the devising of aFrame of Discipline or Church-government, to come in lieu of Episcopacy, and form the constitution of the new National Church; and (4) the preparation of aDirectory of Worship, which should supplant the Liturgy, &c., and settle the methods and forms to be adopted in worship, and on such occasions as baptisms, marriages, and funerals. Here was a mass of work which, at the ordinary rate of business in ecclesiastical councils, might well keep the Assembly together for two or three years. What amount of progress had they made at the date at which we have now arrived?
Naturally, on first meeting, they had begun with the business of the new Articles, or Confession of Faith. The particular form in which, by the order of Parliament, they had addressed themselves to this business, was that of a careful revision of the Thirty-nine Articles. With tolerable unanimity (antè, pp. 5, 6 and 18,19), they had gone on in this labour for three months, or till Oct. 12,1643; by which time they had Calvinized fifteen of the Articles. [Footnote: Whoever wants to compare the Westminster Assembly's Calvinized Version of the first fifteen Articles with the original Articles will find the two sets printed conveniently in parallel columns inHistory of the Westminster Assembly of Divines(1842), published at Philadelphia, U.S., by the "Presbyterian Board of Publication."] Then, however, they had been interrupted in this labour. The Scottish League and Covenant having come into action, and the Scottish Commissioners having become an influence at the back of the English Parliament, the Assembly had been ordered to proceed to what seemed the more immediately pressing businesses of the new Model of Church-government and the new Directory of Worship. The business of a Confession of Faith thus lying over till it could be resumed at leisure, the Assembly had, for more than a year, been occupied with the Church-government question and the Directory. What tough and tedious work they had had with the Church-government question we have seen. Still, even in this question they had made progress. Beating the Congregationalists by vote on proposition after proposition, the Presbyterian majority had, by the end of October 1644, carried all the essentials of Presbytery through the Assembly, and referred them confidently to Parliament. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 232.] Add to this that a new Directory of Worship had been drawn up. The Congregationalist Brethren had been far more acquiescent in this business; and, though many points in it had occasioned minute discussion, the Assembly were able, on the 2lst of November, to transmit to Parliament, unanimously, a Directory, in which everything in the shape of Liturgy or Prelatic ceremonial was disallowed, and certain plain forms, like those of the Scottish Presbyterian worship, prescribed instead. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 240 and 242-3] By the end of 1644, therefore, the Westminster Assembly had substantially acquitted itself of two out of four of the pieces of work expected from it by Parliament—theNew Directory of Worshipand theNew Frame of Church-government; and it only remained for Parliament to sanction or reject what the Assembly had concluded under these two heads. During November and December 1644, and January 1644-5, accordingly, there was much discussion in both Houses of all the points of Religion and Church-government which the new Directory and the new Frame were to settle. The debates of the Houses during these months, indeed, were very much those of the Assembly over again—the Lords and Commons, though laymen, examining each proposition and each clause for themselves, and insisting on proofs from Scripture and the like. January 1644-5 was the great month. On the 4th of that month an Ordinance from the Commons passed the Lords, abolishing the use of the Prayer-book, adopting and confirming the new Westminster Directory, and ordering it to be printed. On the 23rd of the same month, the following Resolutions were adopted by the Commons:—
"Resolved: That there shall be fixed Congregations—that is, a certain company of Christians to meet in one Assembly ordinarily for public worship: when believers multiply to such a number that they cannot conveniently meet in one place, they shall be divided into distinct and fixed Congregations, for the better administration of such ordinances as belong to them, and the discharge of mutual duties.
"Resolved: That the ordinary way of dividing Christians into distinct Congregations, and most expedient for edification, is by the respective bounds of their dwellings.
"Resolved: That the minister and other Church-officers in each particular Congregation shall join in the government of the Church in such manner as shall be established by Parliament.
"Resolved: That these officers shall meet together at convenient and set times for the well-ordering of the affairs of that Congregation, each according to his office.
"Resolved: That the ordinances in a particular Congregation are Prayer, Thanksgiving, and Singing of Psalms; the Word read, though there follow no immediate explication of what is read; the Word expounded and applied; Catechising; the Sacraments administered; Collection made for the Poor; Dismissing of the people with a Blessing.
"Resolved: That many particular Congregations shall be under one Presbyterial government.
"Resolved: That the Church be governed by Congregational, Classical, and Synodical Assemblies, in such manner as shall be established by Parliament.
"Resolved: That Synodical Assemblies shall consist both of Provincial and National Assemblies."
Dry and simple as these Resolutions look, they were the outcome of fifteen months of deliberation, and they were of immense significance. They declared it to be the will of Parliament that England thenceforth should be a Presbyterian country, like Scotland. Just as Scotland was a little country, with her 1,000 parishes or so, the inhabitants of each of which were understood to form a particular congregation, meeting statedly for worship, and taught and spiritually disciplined by one Minister and certain other church-officers called Lay Elders, so England was to be a large country of some 10,000 or 12,000 parishes and parochial congregations, each after the same fashion. As in Scotland the parishes or congregations, though mainly managing each its own affairs, were not independent, but were bound together in groups by the device of Presbyteries, or periodical courts consisting of the ministers and ruling elders of a certain number of contiguous parishes meeting to hear appeals from congregations, and otherwise exercise government, so the ten times more numerous parishes of England were similarly to be grouped into Presbyteries or Classes (Classes was the more favourite English term), each Classis containing some ten or twelve congregations. Thus in London alone, where there were about 120 parishes, there ought to be about twelve Classes or Presbyteries. Finally, the Presbyteries were to be interconnected, and their proceedings supervised, as in, Scotland, by periodical Synods of the ministers and ruling elders of many Presbyteries—say of all the Presbyteries of one large shire, or of several small shires taken as a convenient ecclesiastical district. In Scotland the practice was for all the ministers and ruling elders within the bounds of a Provincial Synod to attend the Synod personally; but in England, on account of her size, the plan of Synods of elected representatives might be advisable—which, however, would not affect the principle. In any case, the annual National Assembly of the whole Church, which, under the new Presbyterian system, would be to England the same Ecclesiastical Parliament that the General Assembly in Edinburgh was to Scotland, must necessarily, like that Assembly, be constituted representatively. Nothing less than all this was implied in the eight Resolutions of the Commons on Friday, Jan. 23, 1644-5. By an order of Monday the 27th, however, Mr. Rous, who had been commissioned to report the Resolutions to the Lords, was instructed to report only four of them,—the 3rd, the 6th, the 7th, and the 8th. The answer of the Lords on the following day was "That this House agrees with the House of Commons in all the Votes now brought up concerning Church-government." In refraining from sending up all the eight Votes, the Commons appear to have thought it best not yet positively to determine against the Congregationalists on one or two points, including that of strict parochialism. But in the four Votes sent up to the Lords and agreed to by them, all the essentials of Presbytery were involved; so that from the 28th of January 1644-5 it stood registered in the Acts of Parliament that England should, be Presbyterianized. [Footnote: Commons and Lords Journals of dates given.]
At this stage of the proceedings we may leave the Westminster Assembly for a while. On the 26th of December, Johnstone of Warriston and Mr. Barclay had left it, in order to be present at the Scottish Convention of Estates, which was to meet at Edinburgh on the 7th of January; [Footnote: Baillie, II. 251.] and on the 6th of January Baillie and Gillespie left it, on a weary horse-journey, in order to be present at the General Assembly of the Scottish Kirk, which was to meet at the same place on the 22nd. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 250.] Henderson and Rutherford remained in London. What tidings were carried by the Scottish Commissioners to Edinburgh of the great things which the Lord had up to that time done for the cause of Presbytery and true Religion in England may be read to this day in the records of the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish General Assembly of 1645. Baillie's exulting speech in the Assembly is really worth reading. [Footnote: It is given in Baillie's Letters, II. 255-257. But see also Letter of Scottish Commissioners and Letter of Westminster Assembly to the Scottish General Assembly, both of date Jan. 6, 1645, in Acts of General Assembly of the Kirk.] Suffice it to say here that there was great rejoicing in Edinburgh and in all Scotland; that the General Assembly unanimously ratified the Westminster Directory of Worship (Feb. 3) and the Westminster Frame of Presbyterial government (Feb. 10); and that the Scottish Parliament (Feb. 6) approved and established, for Scotland, the Directory already established for England. Let us add that Baillie had a pleasant holiday, revisited his wife and family in Glasgow, and would fain have been allowed to remain in his own country thenceforth. But this could not be. Both he and Gillespie had to obey orders, and prepare, with sighs, for a return to London in March.
During the six months the transactions of which, as far as the Westminster Assembly was concerned, we have thus presented in summary (Sept. 1644-March 1645), the hurry of more general events in England had been very marked. Of what use was the preparation of a Presbyterian Form of Church-government, and a Presbyterian Directory of Worship, for England, so long as it remained uncertain whether England might not be once again the King's, and the Parliament under his feet? And, really, there was this danger. Marston Moor had been a great blow to the King: it had spoilt his cause in the whole of the North. But Essex's defeat in Cornwall (Sept. 1) had come as a terrible set-off, In the confidence of that victory, the King was on the move out of the West back to Oxford (Sept. 30), sending proclamations before him, and threatening a march upon London itself. The taking of Newcastle by the Scots under Leven (Oct. 19) was a return of good fortune for the Parliament at the right moment; at least it provided the Londoners again with their long-missed coals. But it had come now to be a contest between the King's main force and the combined forces of Parliament in the South-English midlands. In the second Battle of Newbury (Sunday, Oct. 27) the issue was tried—the Earl of Manchester's army, with Cromwell second in it, having been joined to the recruited armies of Essex and Waller in order to resist the King. Manchester and Waller were the real Parliamentary commanders, Essex being ill. It was a severe battle. The King had, on the whole, the worst; but he got off, as Cromwell and others thought, less thoroughly beaten than he ought to have been. [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 721-730; Carlyle's Cromwell (ed. 1857), I. l59.] From the date of this second Battle of Newbury, accordingly, Cromwell became the spokesman of a dissatisfaction with the military and political conduct of the cause of Parliament as deep and as wide-spread throughout England as that dissatisfaction with the conduct of the religious question of which he had made himself the spokesman six weeks before.
What Cromwell had thought when he moved the Accommodation Order of Sept. 13 had been virtually this: "Here are you discoursing about strict Presbytery and what differences from it may be tolerated, when the real question is whether we shall have a free England for Presbytery or anything else to exist in, and how we can carry with us all honest men who will fight to make such a free England." And now, when, after the second Battle of Newbury, he again reappeared in Parliament, it was in this prolongation, or profounder state, of the same mood:—"The time has come when I must speak out. We, of this nation, must turn over a new leaf. We have been fighting the King now for more than two years, and we are very much as we were when we began. And why? Because the men who command our armies against the King do not want really to beat him; because they want only toseemto be beating him; because the picture they love to look on, as their heaven on earth to come, is a picture of their gracious sovereign, after he has been beaten no more than could be helped, surrounded by themselves as his reconciled and pardoned ministers and chatting pleasantly with them over the deeds of the campaigns. I say nothing personally of my Lord of Essex, or of Sir William Waller: they are most honourable men. But I speak generally as I feel. If the King is to be beaten, it can only be by generals who want to beat him, who will beat him to bits, who will use all means to beat him, who will gladly see in their armies the men who have the rightspiritin them for beating him. Are these the Presbyterians only? I trow not. I know my men; and I tell you that many of those that you call Independents, that you call Anabaptists, Sectaries, and what not, are among the stoutest and godliest in England, and will go as far as any. Some weeks ago I complained to you of Major-general Crawford, because he would trouble these men, and would have no soldiers of Parliament in my Lord Manchester's army that did not agree with his own notions of Religion and Church-government.NowI complain of my Lord Manchester himself. In this last Battle of Newbury, I tell you, the King was beaten less than he might have been. He was allowed to get off. I advised pursuing him, and my Lord Manchester would not. It was that over again which has been from the first. And now I speak out what has long been in my mind, and what brave men in thousands are thinking. Before the Lord, we must turn over a new leaf in this War. We must have an Army of the right sort of men, and men of the right sort to command that Army."
This is a purely imaginary speech of Cromwell's; but it is an accurate expression of several months of English history. The shrewdest of men at all times, and also the most sincere, he was yet always the most tempestuous when the fit time came, and it was the characteristic of his life that he carried everything before him at such times by his bursts and tempests. There can be no doubt that, after the second Battle of Newbury, Cromwell was in one of his paroxysms. Of his vehemence against Manchester at that time, and of Manchester's recriminations on him, one may read at large in Rushworth and elsewhere. [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 732-736; Carlyle's Cromwell (ed. 1857), I. 159, 160.] The brief account of Baillie, who had not yet left London, and was in the centre of the whole affair, will be sufficient here. "Lieutenant-general Cromwell," writes Baillie, Dec. 1, "has publicly, in the House of Commons, accused my Lord of Manchester of the neglect of fighting at Newbury. That neglect indeed was great; for, as we now are made sure, the King's army was in that posture that they took themselves for lost all-utterly. Yet the fault is most in justly charged on Manchester: it was common to all the general officers then present, and to Cromwell himself as much as to any other. Always my Lord Manchester has cleared himself abundantly in the House of Lords, and there has recriminate Cromwell as one who has avowed his desire to abolish the nobility of England; who has spoken contumeliously of the Scots' intention in coming to England to establish their Church-government, in which Cromwell said he would draw his sword against them; also against the Assembly of Divines; and has threatened to make a party of Sectaries, to extort by force, both from King and Parliament, what conditions they thought meet. This fire was long under the emmers; now it's broken out, we trust, in a good time. It's like, for the interest of our nation, we must crave reason of that darling of the Sectaries [i.e.bring Cromwell to a reckoning], and, in obtaining his removal from the army—which himself by his over-rashness has procured—to break the power of that potent faction. This is our present difficile enterprise: we had need of your prayers." [Footnote: Baillie, II. 243-245.] In this account Baillie mixes up the proceedings in the Commons on the 25th of November when Cromwell exhibited his charge against Manchester, and in the Lords a few days after when Manchester gave in his defence and countercharge, with current gossip, apparently true enough, of Cromwell and his awful sayings in private. Evidently Baillie thought Cromwell had ruined himself. Even the hero of Marston Moor could not beard all respectable England in this way, and it should not be the fault of the Scottish Commissioners if he did not find himself shelved! Little did Baillie know with what great things, beyond all Scottish power of resistance or machination, Cromwell's fury was pregnant.
While Baillie was writing the passage above quoted, the Scottish Commissioners, along with the Lord-general Essex, and some of Essex's chief adherents, including Denzil Holles and Sir Philip Stapleton, were consulting how they might trip Cromwell up. At a conference late one night at Essex-house, to which Whitlocke and Maynard were invited, the Scottish Chancellor Loudoun moved the business warily in a speech which Whitlocke mischievously tries to report in its native Scotch—"You ken vary weele that Lieutenant-general Cromwell is no friend of ours," &c. "You ken vary weele the accord 'twixt the twa kingdoms" &c. Loudoun wanted to know, especially from the two lawyers, whether the Scottish plan of procedure in such cases would have any chance in England, in other words whether Cromwell could be prosecuted as anincendiary; for "you may ken that by our law in Scotland we clepe him anincendiarywhay kindleth coals of contention and raiseth differences in the State to the public damage." Whitlocke and Maynard satisfied his lordship that the thing was possible in law, but suggested the extreme difficulty there would be in proof, represented Cromwell's great influence in the Parliament and the country, and in fact discouraged the notion altogether. Holles, Stapleton, and others were still eager for proceeding, but the Scots were impressed and thought delay would be prudent. And so, Whitlocke tells us, the Presbyterian intriguers parted at two in the morning, and he had reason to believe that Cromwell knew all that had passed before many hours were over, and that this precipitated what followed. [Footnote: Whitlocke's Memorials (edit. Oxford, 1853), I. 3l3et seq.]
On Wednesday the 9th of December, at all events, the Commons having met in grand committee on the condition of the kingdom through the continuance of the war, there was for a time a dead silence, as if something extraordinary was expected, and then Cromwell rose and made a short speech. It was very solemn, and even calm, but so hazy and general that the practical drift of it could not possibly have been guessed but for the sequel. Almost the last words of the speech were, "I hope we have such true English hearts, and zealous affections towards the general weal of our mother-country, as no members of either House will scruple todeny themselves,and their own private interests, for the public good." The words, vague enough in themselves, are memorable as having christened by anticipation the measure for which Cromwell, as he uttered them, was boring the way. For, after one or two more had spoken in the same general strain, Mr. Zouch Tate, member for Northampton, did the duty assigned him, and opened the bag which contained the cat. He made a distinct motion, which, when it had been seconded by young Vane, and debated by others (Cromwell again saying a few words, and luminous enough this time), issued in this resolution, "That no member of either House of Parliament shall during the war enjoy or execute any office or command, military or civil; and that an ordinance be brought in to that effect." This was on the 9th of December; and on the 19th of that month the ordinance itself, having gone through all its stages, passed the Commons. All London was astounded. "The House of Commons," writes Baillie, Dec. 26, "in one hour has ended all the quarrels which was betwixt Manchester and Cromwell, all the obloquies against the General, the grumblings against the proceedings of many members of their House. They have taken all office from all members of both Houses. This, done on a sudden, in one session, with great unanimity, is still more and more admired by some, as a most wise, necessary, and heroic action; by others as the most rash, hazardous, and unjust action that ever Parliament did. Much may be said on both hands, but as yet it seems a dream, and the bottom of it is not understood." To the House of Lords theSelf-denying Ordinancewas by no means palatable. They demurred, conferred with the Commons about it, and at last (Jan. 15) rejected it. Their chief ground of rejection being that they did not know what was to be the shape of the Army to be officered on the new principle, the Commons immediately produced their scheme in that matter. The existing armies were to be weeded, consolidated, and recruited into one really effective army of 21,000 men (of which 6,000 should be horse in ten regiments, 1,000 should be dragoons in ten single companies, and 14,000 should be foot in regiments of not less than 1,200 each), the whole to cost 44,955_l_. per month, to be raised by assessment throughout the kingdom. This army, it was farther resolved by the Commons (Jan. 21), should be commanded in chief by the trusty and popular Sir Thomas Fairfax, who had done so well in the North, and, under him, by the trusty and popular Major-general Skippon, whose character for bull-headed bravery even the disaster in Cornwall had only more fully brought out. [Footnote: I find, from the Commons Journals, that there was a division on the question whether Fairfax should be appointed commander-in-chief of the New Model—the state of the vote beingYeas101 againstNoes69, or a majority of 32forthe appointment. The Tellers for the majority were the younger Vane and Cromwell; for the minority, Denzil Holles and Sir Philip Stapleton. There was a subsequent division, Feb. 7, on the question whether Fairfax's choice of officers under him should be subject to Parliamentary revision. Cromwell was one of the Tellers for theNoes—i.e.he wanted Fairfax to have full powers. The other side, however, beat this time by a majority of 82 against 63. After all it was arranged satisfactorily between Fairfax and Parliament.] On the 28th of January theNew Modelcomplete passed the Commons. The Lords hesitated about some parts of it, and were especially anxious for a provision in it incapacitating all from being officers or soldiers in the new army who should not have taken the Covenant: there were conferences on this point, and a kind of compromise on it by the Commons; and on the 15th of February theOrdinance for New Modelling of the Armywas finally passed. TheSelf-denying Ordinancewas then re-introduced in a changed form, and it passed the Lords, April 3, 1645. It ordained that all members of either House who had since November 20, 1640, been appointed to any offices, military or civil, should, at the end of forty days from the passing of the Ordinance, vacate these offices, but that all other officers in commission on the 20th of March, 1644-5, should continue in the posts they then held.
Thus the year 1645 (beginning, in English reckoning, March 25) opened with new prospects. Essex, Manchester, Waller, and all the officers under them, retired into ordinary life, with thanks and honours—Essex, indeed, with a great pension; and the fighting for Parliament was thenceforward to be done mainly by a re-modelled Army, commanded by Fairfax, Skippon, and officers under them, whose faces were unknown in Parliament, and whose business was to be to fight only and teach the art of fighting.
It was high time! For another long bout of negotiations with the King, begun as early as Nov. 20, 1644, and issuing in a formal Treaty of great ceremony, called "The Treaty of Uxbridge," had ended, as usual, in no result. Feb. 22, it had been broken off after such a waste of speeches and arguments on paper that the account of the Treaty occupies ten pages in Clarendon and fifty-six folio pages in Rushworth. It was clear that the year 1645 was to be a year of continued war. [Footnote: For this story of the Self-denying Ordinance and the New Modelling of the Army authorities are—Rushworth, VI. 1-16; Baillie, II. 247; Carlyle's Cromwell (ed. 1857), I. 160-163. The Uxbridge Treaty is narrated in Clarendon's Hist. (one-volume ed. 1843), pp. 520-530, and in Rushworth, V. 787-842.]
Ere we pass out of the rich general history of this year 1644, the year of Marston Moor, we must take note of a few vengeances and deaths with which it was wound up. The long-deferred trial of poor Laud, begun March 12, 1643-4, after he had been more than three years a prisoner in the Tower, and they might have left him there in quiet, had straggled on through the whole of 1644. The interest in it had run, like a red thread, through the miscellany of other events. The temper of the people had been made fiercer by the length of the war, and there was a desire for the old man's blood. The Presbyterian ministers of the Assembly, I find, fostered this desire. In that very sermon of Herbert Palmer's before Parliament (Aug. 13) in which he had called for the extirpation of heresy and schism, and denounced Milton, there was an express passage on the duty of "doing justice upon Delinquents impartially and without respect of persons." [Footnote: Palmer's Sermon, p. 48.] Calamy in his sermon, Oct. 22, followed, and told the Parliament, "All the guilty blood that God requires you in justice to shed, and you spare, God will require the blood at your hands." [Footnote: Calamy's Sermon, p. 27.] Mr. Francis Woodcock, preaching Oct. 30, was even more decided. His sermon, which was on Rev. xvi. 15, is a very untastefully-worded discourse on the propriety of always being on the watch so as not to be taken by surprise without one's garments; and, among the rather ludicrous images which his literal treatment of the subject suggests, we come upon a passage describing one of four pieces of raiment which the State ought never to be caught without. He calls it the "Robe of Justice," and adds, "Would God this robe were often worn, and dyed of a deeper colour in the blood of Delinquents. It is that which God and man calls for. God repeats it,Justice, Justice; we, echoing God, cryJustice, Justice; and let me say, perhaps we should not see other garments so much rolled in blood, did we not see these so little." [Footnote: Woodcock's Sermon, pp 30, 31.] Baillie, I am glad to think, was more tender-hearted. There was, indeed, one Delinquent for whom Baillie would have had no mercy—Dr. Maxwell, the Scottish ex-Bishop of Ross, who had published at Oxford, in the King's interest, "a desperately malicious invective" against Scottish Presbytery and its leaders. "However I could hardly consent to the hanging of Canterbury himself, or of any Jesuit," Baillie had written, July 16, 1644, after his first indignant sight of this book, "yet I could give my sentence freely against that unhappy liar's [Maxwell's] life." But, indeed, the Scottish Commissioners and the Scottish nation were conjoined as parties with the English Presbyterians and the English Parliamentarians generally (Prynne ruthlessly busy in getting up the evidence) in the long prosecution of Laud. It was all over on the 10th of January, 1644-5. On that day Laud, aged 72, laid his head upon the block on a scaffold in Tower Hill. Hanging had been commuted, with some difficulty, to beheading. He died brave, raspy, and High-Church to the last. [Footnote: Rushworth's main account of the trial and last days of Laud is in Vol. V. pp, 763-786. The "History of the Troubles and Tryal of William Laud," edited by Wharton, in two vols. folio, appeared in 1695- 1700.]—Minor executions about the same time were those of Hugh Macmahon and Lord Maguire for their concern in the Irish rebellion and massacre, Sir Alexander Carew for treachery at Plymouth, and the Hothams, father and son, for treachery at Hull. One Roger L'Estrange, a younger son of a Norfolk family, had been condemned to be hanged in Smithfield for an underhand attempt to win the town of Lynn for the King; but he was reprieved, lay in Newgate for some years, and lived for sixty years longer, to be known, even in Queen Anne's time, as Sir Roger L'Estrange, the journalist.
Ever since August 1643, when Milton had published his extraordinaryDoctrine and Discipline of Divorce, but more especially since Feb. 1643-4, when he had published the second and enlarged edition of it, with his name in full, and the dedication to Parliament and the Westminster Assembly, his reputation with orthodox English society had been definite enough. He was one of those dreadful Sectaries! Nay he was a Sectary more odious than most; for his was amoralheresy. What was Independency, what was Anabaptism, what was vague Antinomianism, compared with this heresy of the household, this loosening of the holy relation on which all civil society depended? How detestable the doctrine that, when two married people found they had made a mistake in coming together, or at least when the husband could declare before God and human witnesses his irreconcilable dissatisfaction with his wife, then it was right that the two should be separated, with liberty to each to find a new mate! True, it was an able man who had divulged this heresy, one who had brought applauses from Cambridge, who was said to have written beautiful English poems, who had served the cause of Parliament by some splendid pamphlets for Church-reformation and against Episcopacy, and who had in these pamphlets encountered even the great Bishop Hall. All this only made the doctrine more dangerous, the aberration more lamentable. This Mr. Milton must be avoided, and denounced as a Sectary of the worst kind! Some said it was all owing to the conduct of his wife, a rank Royalist, who had deserted him and gone back to her friends! If that were the case, he was to be pitied; but perhaps there were two sides to that story too!
There must have been much gossip of this kind, about Milton and his Divorce Treatise, in the booksellers' shops near St. Paul's, and even round the Parliament in Westminster, in the early months of 1644. The gossip may have affected Milton's relations with some of his former friends and acquaintances. If Bishop Hall, when he first saw the treatise, and perceived its literary ability, "blushed for his age" that so "scandalous" a thing should have appeared, and if even Howell the letter-writer, in his prison, thought it the impudent production of "a poor shallow-brained puppy," what could Milton's orthodox and reverend Smectymnuan friends—Marshall, Calamy, Young, Newcomen, and Spurstow— think or say about it? Shocked they must have been; and, knowing Milton's temper, and with what demeanour he would front any remonstrances of theirs, they probably left him alone, and became scarcer in their visits to Aldersgate Street. It would not do to keep up the Smectymnuan connexion too visibly after what had happened. Or, if Young could not break off so easily, but would still call to see his old pupil, and to talk with old Mr. Milton about the Bread Street days, how the good man must have yearned to speak sometimes when the old gentleman was out of the way, and he and Milton were alone. "O my dear Mr. Milton, how much we are all concerned about that pamphlet! I am not going to argue it with you; I know you too well, and how little influence my reasonings could have with you now in any such matter; and it is my comfort at least to be able to tell some of my Assembly friends that, if they knew you as well as I do, they would be sure that nothing you do but is done in a great spirit and with a high intention. But, dear me! it is a terrible opinion you have broached!" To something like this Milton may have listened, more or less patiently; or he may have imagined it in Young's mind, if it was not uttered. The mutual regard between Young and his old pupil did not suffer so much from the trial but that we find Milton still willing to acknowledge publicly the connexion that had subsisted between them.
On the whole, it is certain that one consequence of the outcry about Milton's treatise among the London Presbyterians, and especially among the city clergy and the Divines of the Assembly, was to drive Milton more arid more into the society of those who had begun to dislike and to dread the ascendancy of the Presbyterians. Finding himself, almost from the first publication of the treatise, as he tells us, in "a world of disesteem" on account of it, he naturally held intercourse more and more with those who, though they may not have approved ofhisparticular heresy, yet, as being themselves voted heretics on other accounts, were more easy in their judgments of all extreme opinions. I believe, in fact, that, could Milton's acquaintanceships in London from the winter of 1643- 4 onwards be traced and recovered, they would be found to have been chiefly among the Independents, Anabaptists, Antinomians, Seekers, and other Tolerationists. What were the religious opinions of the Lady Margaret Ley, that "woman of great wit and ingenuity," and her husband Captain Hobson, "a very accomplished gentleman," with both of whom he was so intimate about this time, and who, as Phillips tells us, "had a particular honour for him and took much delight in his company," must be left to conjecture. [Footnote: It has been in my mind whether the Captain Hobson who was the Lady Ley's husband, and whom Dagdale describes as "… Hobson of… in the Isle of Wight, Esq.," can by possibility have been the same person as the Baptist preacher, Paul Hobson, who was also a Captain in the Parliamentary Army, and who figures much in Edwards'sGangrænaand in other books of the time, under the express name of "Captain Hobson," as a leading Sectary, though Edwards will have it that he was originally "a tailor from Buckinghamshire" (antè, p. 148). The supposition seems so absurd that I hardly like to mention that I spent hours in turning over Paul Hobson's published sermons and Baptist treatises in case I might come on any confirmation of it—which I didnot.]
From Milton's Sonnet to the Lady Margaret one may safely infer at least that she was a woman of liberal principles as well as wit. Probably her house was the resort of a good many of what would now be called the "advanced" or "strong-minded" Christians of both sexes then in London; and Milton may there have extended his acquaintance with such, and have even been an object of peculiar interest to some of one sex, as "that handsome, fair gentleman, now talking to Lady Margaret, who is a great scholar and a poet, and whose wife has left him shamefully, so that he wants to be divorced from her, and has written a book which quite proves it." Milton's acquaintance with Roger Williams, at all events, is almost certainly to be dated from Williams's visit to England in 1643-4, when he was writing hisBloody Tenent; and if Milton, at the same time, did not become acquainted with John Goodwin of Coleman Street, it would be a wonder.
We must, I am sorry to say, descend lower in the society of London, in and about 1644, than the Lady Margaret Ley's drawing-room, or the level of marked men like Williams and Goodwin, if we would understand how Milton's Divorce opinion had begun to operate, and with what consequences of its operation his name was associated. The reader may remember a Mrs. Attaway, mentioned by us among both the Baptists and the Seekers, and as perhaps the most noted of all the women-preachers in London (antè, pp. 149, 153). She was, it seems, a "lace-woman, dwelling in Bell Alley in Coleman Street," and preaching on week-day afternoons in that neighbourhood, with occasional excursions to other parts of the city where rooms could be had. Sometimes other "preaching-women" were with her, and the gatherings, though at first of her own sex only, soon attracted curious persons of the other. From the descriptions of what passed in some of them, it would appear that, though the meetings were for worship, and there were regular discourses by Mrs. Attaway and others, free talk and criticism was permitted to all present, so that the conventicle took on sometimes the aspect of a religious debating society. Well, Mrs. Attaway, among others, had got hold of Milton's Divorce Treatise, and had been reading it. "Two gentlemen of the Inns of Court, civil and well-disposed men," who had gone "out of novelty" to hear her, afterwards toldGangrænaEdwards of some "discourse they had had with her." Among other passages she "spoke to them of Master Milton'sDoctrine of Divorce, and asked them what they thought of it; saying "it was a point to be considered of, and that she, for her part, would look more into it, for she had an unsanctified husband, that did not walk in the way of Sion, nor speak the language of Canaan." Edwards does not give the date of this conversation with Mrs. Attaway; and, though presumably in 1644, it may have been later. He evidently introduces it, however, in order to implicate Milton in the subsequent break-down, which he also reports, of the poor woman morally. For, if Mr. Edwards is to be believed, Mrs. Attaway did "look more into" Milton's doctrine, and at length acted upon it. Some time in 1645 she abjured her "unsanctified husband" Mr. Attaway, who, besides being unsanctified, was then absent in the army, leaving her alone in her lace-shop, and transferred herself to a man named William Jenney, an occasional preacher, who was much more sanctified, and was also on the spot. Mr. Jenney had, unfortunately, a wife already, some children by her, and one expected; but ho too had been meditating on the Divorce Doctrine, and had used his Christian liberty. Mr. Edwards had been most particular in his investigations. He had actually procured from a sure hand the copies of two letters-taken from the original letters, and compared by a minister with the originals—one of William Jenney to his wife since he went away with Mistress Attaway, the other of Mistress Attaway to William Jenney before his going away." He refrains from printing the lettersverbatim, as they were too long; but he gives extracts. "I thought good to write to you these few lines," writes Jenney to the deserted Mrs. Jenney, Feb. 15, 1645, "to tell you that, because you have been to me rather a disturber of my body and soul than to be a meet help for me—— but I silence! And, for looking for me to come to you again, I shall never come to you again any more. I shall send unto you never no more concerning anything." If this actually was Jenney's letter, Mrs. Attaway was worth ten of him, and deserved a better second. "Dearest friend and well-beloved in the Lord," so she had begun the letter sent to him while he was still Mrs. Jenney's, and which had got into Mrs. Jenney's hands, "I am unspeakably sorry in respect of thy sufferings, I being the object that occasioned it." The sufferings were Mrs. Jenney's bastings of him because he was always with Mrs. Attaway. In good time, Mrs. Attaway goes on to say, he would be delivered from these. "When Jehoshaphat knew not what to do, he looked to the Lord. Letuslook to Him, believing confidently in Him with the faith of Jesus; and no question but we shall be delivered. In the mean season I shall give up my heart and affections to thee in the Lord; and, whatsoever I have or am in Him which is our Head, thou shalt command it." The event, according to Edwards, was that Mr. Jenney and Mrs. Attaway eloped together, Mrs. Attaway having persuaded Jenney that she should never die, but that, in obedience to a heavenly message, they must go to Jerusalem, and repair that city in anticipation of the bringing of all the Saints to it in ships to be sent from Tarshish. I suspect they went only to Jericho. [Footnote: This story of Mrs. Attaway is from Edwards'sGangræna, Part II. pp. 31, 32, 113- 115;Fresh Discovery, appended to Second Part ofGangræna, p. 9; and Third Part ofGangræna, pp. 25-27 and 188. See also Baillie'sDissuasive, Part II. pp. l00 and 123-4.]
All this on the faith of Mr. Edwards's statements in theGangræna. But really one should not judge of even a poor enthusiastic woman, dead two hundred years ago, on that sole authority. Never was there a more nauseous creature of the pious kind than this Presbyterian Paul Pry of 1644-46. He revelled in scandals, and kept a private office for the receipt of all sorts of secret information, by word of mouth or letter, that could be used against the Independents and the Sectaries. [Footnote: Richard Baxter, as he himself tells us, sent communications from the country to Edwards. His correspondents were legion, but he concealed their names.] Yet there was a kind of coarse business-like conscientiousness in the toad; and, though he was credulous and unscrupulous in his collections of scandal, I do not believe he invented documents or lied deliberately. I do not doubt, therefore, that Mrs. Attaway, whether she went ultimately to Jericho or to Jerusalem, did know of Milton's Divorce Doctrine, and had extracted suggestions from it suitable to her circumstances. For, indeed, the Doctrine was likely to find not a few whose circumstances it suited. Mr. Edwards's book is strewn with instances of persons who had even found out a tantamount doctrine for themselves—men who had left their wives, or wanted to do so, and wives who had left their husbands, and who, without having seen Milton's treatise, defended their act or their wish on grounds of religion and natural law. Nay, in the frenzy of inquiry which had taken possession of the English mind, everything appertaining to Marriage and the Marriage-institution was being plucked up for fundamental re- investigation. There were actually persons who were occupying themselves intently with questioning the forbidden degrees of Consanguinity and Affinity in marriage, and who had not only come to the easy conclusion that marriage with a deceased wife's sister is perfectly legitimate, but had worked out a general theologico-physiological speculation to the effect that the marriage of near relatives is in all cases peculiarly proper, and perhaps the more proper in proportion to the nearness of the relationship. This, I imagine, was a very small sect. [Footnote: But, unless Edwards and Baillie were both wrong, therewassome such sect. SeeGangræna, Part III. p. 187, and, more particularly, Baillie'sDissuasive, Part II. pp. 100 and 122-3.]
Let us re-ascend into more pleasant air. There was one rather notable person in London, of the highly respectable sort, though, decidedly among the free opinionists, whose acquaintance Milton did make about this time, if he had not made it before, and who must be specially introduced to the reader. This was SAMUEL HARTLIB.
Everybody knew Hartlib. He was a foreigner by birth, being the son of a Polish merchant, of German extraction, who had left Poland when that country fell under Jesuit rule, and had settled in Elbing in Prussia in very good circumstances. Twice married before to Polish ladies, this merchant had married, in Prussia, for his third wife, the daughter of a wealthy English merchant of Dantzic; and thus our Hartlib, their son, though Prussian-born and with Polish connexions, could reckon himself half-English. The date of his birth was probably about the beginning of the century,i.e.he may have been eight or ten years older than Milton. He appears to have first visited England in or about 1628, and from that time, though he made frequent journeys to the Continent, London had been his head-quarters. Here, with a residence in the City, he had carried on business as a "merchant," with extensive foreign correspondences, and very respectable family connexions. One of his aunts (sisters of his mother) had married a Mr. Clark, the son of a former Lord Mayor of London, and afterwards a Sir Richard Smith, Knight and Privy Councillor, and again a Sir Edward Savage. The other aunt had married a country gentleman, named Peak. A cousin of Hartlib's, the daughter of the first and wealthier aunt, Lady Smith, became the wife of Sir Anthony Irby, M.P. for Boston in the Long Parliament. But it did not require such family connexions to make Hartlib at home in English society. The character of the man would have made him at home anywhere. He was one of those persons, now styled "philanthropists" or "friends of progress," who take an interest in every question or project of their time promising social improvement, have always some iron in the fire, are constantly forming committees or writing letters to persons of influence, and altogether live for the public. By the common consent of all who have explored the intellectual and social history of England in the seventeenth century, he is one of the most interesting and memorable figures of that whole period. He is interesting both for what he did himself and also on account of the number and intimacy of his contacts with other interesting people. [Footnote: Memoir of Hartlib by H. Dircks, pp 2-6, where there are extracts from an autobiographical letter of Hartlib to Worthington, written in 1660. "The Diary and Correspondence of Dr. John Worthington," edited by James Crossley, Esq., F.S.A. (Chetham Society), contains many letters from Hartlib to Worthington, between 1655 and 1662, but not this one. Mr. Crossley's Diary and Correspondence of Worthington, so far as it has gone, is one of the best edited books known to me, the footnotes being very nuggets of biographical lore; and it is to be regretted that the connected notices of Worthington, Hartlib, and Durie, postponed by Mr. Crossley until the work should be completed, have not yet appeared.]
An early friend of Hartlib, associated with him long before the date at which we are now arrived, was that John Durie of whom, and his famous scheme for a union of all the Protestant Churches of Europe, we have already had to take some account (Vol. II. pp. 367-8 and 517-8). Their intimacy must have begun in Hartlib's native town of Elbing in Prussia, where, I now find, Durie was residing in 1628, as minister to the English company of merchants in the town, and where, in that very year, I also now find, Durie had the great idea of his life first suggested to him by the Swedish Dr. Godeman. [Footnote: The proof is in statements of Hartlib's own in a Tract of his published in 1641 under the title of "A Briefe Relation of that which hath been lately attempted to procure Ecclesiasticall Peace amongst Protestants."] Among Durie's first disciples in the idea must certainly have been Hartlib; and it does not seem improbable that, when Hartlib left Prussia, in or about 1628, to settle in England, it was with an understanding that he was to be an agent or missionary for Durie's idea among the English. That he did so act, and that he was little less of an enthusiast for Durie's idea than Durie himself, there is the most positive evidence. Thus, in a series of letters, preserved in the State Paper Office, from Durie abroad to the diplomatist Sir Thomas Roe, of various dates between April 1633 and Feb. 1637-8, there is incessant mention of Hartlib. In the first of these letters, dated from Heilbron April 2/12, 1633, Durie, among other things, begs Roe "to help Mr. Hartlib with a Petition of Divines of those quarters concerning an Edition of a Body of Divinity gathered out of English authors, a work which will be exceeding profitable, but will require divers agents and an exact ordering of the work." In a subsequent letter Durie speaks of having sent Roe, "by Mr. Hartlib, whose industry is specially recommended," an important proposition made by the Swedish Chancellor Oxenstiern; and in still later letters Roe is requested by Durie to show Hartlib not only Durie's letters to himself, but also letters about the progress of his scheme which he has enclosed to Roe for the Archbishop of Canterbury (Abbot) and the Bishop of London (Laud). At this point, accordingly, July 20, 1633, there is a letter of Roe's to the Archbishop, from which it appears that Hartlib was made the bearer of Durie's letter to his Grace. Roe recommends the blessed work in which Durie is engaged, says that it seems to him and Durie that "there is nothing wanting but the public declaration of his Majesty and the Church of England" in its favour, and beseeches the Archbishop "to give his countenance to the bearer," described in the margin as "Mr. Hartlib, a Prussian." As Abbot was then within fifteen days of his death, nothing can have come of the application to him; and, as we already know, his successor Laud was a far less hopeful subject for Durie's idea, even though recommended by Roe and explained by Hartlib. In fact, he thought it mischievous moonshine; and, instead of giving Durie the encouragement which he wanted, he wrote to the English agent at Frankfort, instructing him to show Durie no countenance whatever. Durie felt the rebuff sorely. In England, he writes, he must depend now chiefly on Roe, who could still do much privately, apart from Laud's approbation. "Mr. Hartlib will send anything to Durie which Roe would have communicated to him in a secret way." So in June 1634; and fourteen months later (Aug. 1635) Durie, who had meanwhile removed to the Hague, again writes to Roe and again relies on Hartlib. The Dutch, he says, are slow to take up his scheme; and he can think of nothing better in the circumstances than that Roe in England should collect "all the advices and comments of the best divines of the age" on the subject, and have them printed. His very best agent in such a business would be Hartlib, "a man well known, beloved and trusted by all sides, a man exceeding painful, diligent and cordially affected to these endeavours, and one that for such works had lost himself by too much charity." On independent grounds it would be well to find him "some place suitable for his abilities, which might rid him of the undeserved necessities whereunto his public-heartedness had brought him;" but in this special employment he would be invaluable, being "furnished with the Polish, Dutch, English, and Latin languages, perfectly honest and trusty, discreet, and well versed in affairs." In the same strain in subsequent letters. Thus, from Amsterdam Dec. 7/17, Roe is thanked for having bestowed some gratuity on Hartlib, and Hartlib is described as, next to Roe, "the man in the world whom Durie loves and honours most for his virtues and good offices in Durie's cause." At the same time Durie "prays God to free Hartlib from his straits and set him a little on horseback," and adds, "His spirit is so large that it has lost itself in zeal to good things." Again, from Amsterdam Jan 25/Feb 4, 1635-6, Durie writes to Roe and encloses a letter to be sent to his (Durie's) diocesan in Hartlib's behalf. "Mr. Hartlib," Durie says to Roe, "has furnished his lordship (the diocesan) with intelligence from foreign parts for two or three years, and has not yet got any consideration. Perhaps his lordship knows not how Hartlib has fallen into decay for being too charitable to poor scholars, and for undertaking too freely the work of schooling and education of children. If Hartlib and Roe were not in England, Durie would despair of doing any good." The diocesan referred to is probably Juxon, Bishop of London; but, two years later, we find Roe recommending Durie's business and Hartlib personally to another prelate, Bishop Morton of Durham. Writing from St. Martin's Lane, Feb. 17, 1637-8, Sir Thomas "presents the Bishop with a letter from Mr. Durie, and one from Durie to the writer, from which the Bishop may collect his state, and his constant resolution to pursue his business as long as God gives him bread to eat. Such a spirit the writer has never met, daunted with nothing, and only relying upon Providence. … Sir Thomas in Michaelmas term sent the Bishop a great packet from Samuel Hartlib, correspondent of Durie, an excellent man, and of the same spirit. If the Bishop like his way, Hartlib will constantly write to him, and send all the passages both of learning and public affairs, no man having better information, especiallyin re literariâ." [Footnote: The quotations in this paragraph are from the late Mr. Brace's accurate abstracts of Durie's and Roe's letters (sixteen in all) given in the six volumes of Calendars of the Domestic State Papers from 1633 to 1638.]
These letters enable us to see Hartlib as he was in 1637, a Prussian naturalized in London, between thirty and forty years of age, nominally a merchant of some kind, but in reality a man of various hobbies, and conducting a general news-agency, partly as a means of income and partly from sheer zeal in certain public causes interesting to himself. His zeal in this way, and in private benevolences to needy scholars and inventors, had even outrun prudence; so that, though he could reckon his means at between 300_l_. and 400_l_. a year, [Footnote: This appears from the letter of his to Worthington, of date Aug. 3, 1660, quoted in Dircks's Memoir (p. 4), where he says, "Let it not seem a paradox to you, if I tell you, as long as I have lived in England, by wonderful providences, I have spent yearly out of my own betwixt 300_l._ and 400_l._ sterling a year."] that had not sufficed for his openhandedness. Durie's great project for a reconciliation of the Calvinists and Lutherans, and a union of all the Protestant Churches of Europe on some broad basis of mutual tolerance or concession, had hitherto been his hobby in chief. He had other hobbies, however, of a more literary nature, and of late he had been undertaking too freely some work appertaining to "the schooling and education of children."
This last fact, which we learn hazily from Durie's letters and Roe's, we should have known, abundantly and distinctly, otherwise. There are two publications of Hartlib's, of the years 1637 and 1638 respectively, the first of a long and varied series that were to come from his pen. Now, both of these are on the subject of Education. "Conatuum Comenianorum Præludia, ex Bibliothecâ S. H.: Oxoniæ, Excudebat Gulielmus Turnerus, Academia Typographus, 1637" ("Preludes of the Endeavours of Comenius, from the Library of S. H.: Oxford, Printed by William Turner, University Printer, 1637")—such is the general title of the first of these publications. It is a small quarto, and consists first of a Preface "Ad Lectorem" (to the Reader), signed "Samuel Hartlibius," and then of a foreign treatise which it is the object of the publication to introduce to the attention of Oxford and of the English nation; which treatise has this separate title:—"Porta Sapientiæ Reserata; sive Pansophiæ Christianæ Seminarium: hoc est, Nova, Compendiosa et Solida omnes Scientias et Artes, et quicquid manifesti vel occulti est quod ingenio humano penetrare, solertiæ imitari, linguae eloqui, datur, brevius, verius, melius, quam hactenus, Addiscendi Methodus: Auctore Reverendo Clarissimoque viro Domino Johanne Amoso Comenio" ("The Gate of Wisdom Opened; or the Seminary of all Christian Knowledge: being a New, Compendious, and Solid Method of Learning, more briefly, more truly, and better than hitherto, all Sciences and Arts, and whatever there is, manifest or occult, that it is given to the genius of man to penetrate, his craft to imitate, or his tongue to speak: The author that Reverend and most distinguished man, Mr. John Amos Comenius"). So far as I have been able to trace, this is the first publication bearing the name of Hartlib. Copies of it must be scarce, but there is at least one in the British Museum. There also is a copy of what, on the faith of an entry in the Registers of the Stationers' Company, I have to record as his second publication. "Oct. 17, 1638: Samuel Gillebrand entered for his copy, under the hands of Mr. Baker and Mr. Rothwell, warden, a Book calledComenii Pansophiæ Prodromus et Didactica Dissertatio(Comenius's Harbinger of Universal Knowledge and Treatise on Education), published by Sam. Hartlib." [Footnote: My notes from Stationers' Registers.] When the thing actually appeared, in small duodecimo, it had the date "1639" on the title-page.
The canvas becomes rather crowded; but I am bound to introduce here to the reader "that reverend and most distinguished man, Mr. John Amos Comenius," who had been winning on Hartlib's heart by his theories of Education and Pansophia, prepossessed though that heart was by Durie and his scheme of Pan-Protestantism.
He was an Austro-Slav, born in 1592, at Comnia in Moravia, whence his name Jan Amos Komensky, Latinized into Joannes Amosius Comenius. His parents were Protestants of the sect known as the Bohemian or Moravian Brethren, who traced their origin to the followers of Huss. Left an orphan in early life, he was poorly looked after, and was in his sixteenth year before he began to learn Latin. Afterwards he studied in various places, and particularly at Herborn in the Duchy of Nassau; whence he returned to his native Moravia in 1614, to become Rector of a school at Prerau. Here it was that he first began to study and practise new methods of teaching, and especially of grammatical teaching, induced, as he himself tells us, by the fame of certain speculations on that subject which had recently been put forth by Wolfgang Ratich, an Educational Reformer then very active in Germany. From Prerau Comenius removed in 1618 to Fulneck, to be pastor to a congregation of Moravian Brethren there; but, as he conjoined the charge of a new school with his pastorate, he continued his interest in new methods of education. Manuscripts of schoolbooks which he was preparing on his new methods perished, with his library, in a sack of Fulneck in 1621 by the Spaniards; and in 1624, on an edict proscribing all the Protestant ministers of the Austrian States, Comenius lost his living, and took refuge in the Bohemian mountains with a certain Baron Sadowski of Slaupna. In this retreat he wrote, in 1627, a short educational Directory for the use of the tutor of the baron's sons. But, the persecution waxing furious, and 30,000 families being driven out of Bohemia for their Protestantism, Comenius had to migrate to Poland It was with a heavy heart that lie did so: and, as he and his fellow-exiles crossed the mountain-boundary on their way, they looked back on Moravia and Bohemia, and, falling on their knees, prayed God not to let His truth fail utterly out of those hinds, but to preserve a remnant in them for himself. Leszno in Poland was Comenius's new refuge. Here again he employed himself in teaching; and here, in a more systematic manner than before, he pursued his speculations on the science of teaching and on improved methods for the acquisition of universal knowledge. He read, he tells us, all the works he could find on the subject of Didactics by predecessors or contemporaries, such as Ratich, Ritter, Glaumius, Wolfstirn, Cæcilius, and Joannes Valentinus Andreæ, and also the philosophical works of Campanella and Lord Bacon; but he combined the information so obtained with his own ideas and experience. The results he seems mainly to have jotted down, for future use, in various manuscript papers in his Slavic vernacular, or in German, or in Latin; but in 1631 he was induced by the curators of the school at Leszno to send to the press in Latin one book of a practical and particular nature. This was a so-called "Janua Linguarum Reserata," or "Gate of Languages Opened," propounding a method which he had devised, and had employed at Leszno, for rapidly teaching Latin, or any other tongue, and at the same time communicating the rudiments of useful knowledge. The little book, though he thought it a trifle, made him famous. "It happened, as I could not have imagined possible," he himself writes, "that that puerile little work was received with a sort of universal applause by the learned world. This was testified by very many persons of different countries, both by letters to myself congratulating me earnestly on the new invention, and also by translations into the various popular tongues, undertaken as if in rivalry with each other. Not only did editions which we have ourselves seen appear in all the European tongues, twelve in number—viz. Latin, Greek, Bohemian, Polish, German. Swedish, Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Hungarian; but it was translated, as we have learnt, into such Asiatic tongues as the Arabic, the Turkish, the Persian, and even the Mongolian."
The process which Comenius thus describes must have extended over several years. There are traces of knowledge of him, and of hisJanua Linguarum Reserata, in England as early as 1633. In that year a Thomas Home, M.A., then a schoolmaster in London, but afterwards Master of Eton, put forth a "Janua Linguarum" which is said by Anthony Wood to have been taken, "all or most," from Comenius. An actual English translation or expansion of Comenius's book, by a John Anchoran, licentiate in Divinity, under the title of "The Gate of Tongues Unlocked and Opened: or else A Summary or Seed-Plot of all Tongues and Sciences," reached its "fourth edition much enlarged" in 1639, and may be presumed to have been in circulation, in other forms, some years before. But the great herald of Comenius and his ideas among the English was Samuel Hartlib. Not only may he have had to do with the importation of Comenius'sJanua Linguarumand the recommendation of that book to such pedagogues as Home and Anchoran; but he was instrumental in extracting from Comenius, while that book and certain appendices to it were in the flush of their first European popularity, a summary of his reserved and more general theories and intentions in the field of Didactics. The story is told very minutely by Comenius himself.
TheJanua Linguarum Reseratawas only a proposed improvement in the art of teaching Language or Words; and ought not a true system of education to range beyond that, and provide for a knowledge of Things? This was what Comenius was thinking: he was meditating a sequel to his popular little book, to be called "_Janua Rerum Reserata" or "Gate of Things Opened," and to contain an epitome or encyclopædia of all essential knowledge, under the three heads of Nature, Scripture, and the Mind of Man. Nay, borrowing a word which had appeared as the title of a somewhat meagre Encyclopædia of the Arts by a Peter Laurenbergius, Comenius had resolved onPansophia, orPansophia Christiana("Universal Wisdom," or "Universal Christian Wisdom"), as a fit alternative name for this intendedJanua Rerum. But he was keeping the work back, as one requiring leisure, and could only be persuaded to let the announcement of its title appear in the Leipsic catalogue of forthcoming books. By that time, however, Hartlib of London had become so dear a friend to Comenius that he could refusehimnothing. Whether there had been any prior personal acquaintance between Hartlib and Comenius, by reason of their German and Slavic connexions, I cannot say. But, since the publication of theJanua Linguarum, Hartlib had been in correspondence with Comenius in his Polish home; and, by 1636, his interest in the designs of Comenius, and willingness to forward them, had become so well known in the circle of the admirers of Comenius that he had been named as one of the five chief Comenians in Europe, the other four being Zacharias Schneider of Leipsic, Sigismund Evenius of Weimar, John Mochinger of Dantzic, and John Docemius of Hamburg. Now, Hartlib, having heard of the intendedJanua RerumorPansophiaof Comenius, not only in the Leipsic catalogue of forthcoming works, but also, more particularly, from some Moravian students passing through London, had written to Comenius, requesting some sketch of it. "Being thus asked," says Comenius, "by the most intimate of my friends, a man piously eager for the public good, to communicate some idea of my future work, I did communicate to him in writing, in a chance way, what I had a thought of prefixing some time or other to the work in the form of a Preface; and this, beyond my hope, and without my knowledge, was printed at Oxford, under the title ofConatuum Comenianorum Præludia." Here we have the whole secret of that publication from the Oxford University press, in 1637, which was edited by Hartlib and announced as being from his Library. It was not a reprint of anything that had already appeared abroad, but was in fact a new treatise by the great Comenius which Hartlib had persuaded the author to send him from Poland and had published on his own responsibility. He had apologized to Comenius for so doing, on the ground that the publication would "serve a good purpose by feeling the way and ascertaining the opinions of learned and wise men in a matter of such unusual consequence." Comenius was a little nettled, he says, especially as criticisms of the Pansophic sketch began to come in, which would have been obviated, he thought, if he had been allowed quietly to develop the thing farther before publication. Nevertheless, there the book was, and the world now knew of Comenius not only as the author of the littleJanua Linguarum, but also as contemplating a vastJanua Rerum, or organization of universal knowledge on a new basis.—In fact, the fame of Comenius was increased by Hartlib's little indiscretion. In Sweden especially there was an anxiety to have the benefit of the counsels of so eminent a theorist in the business of education. In 1638 the Swedish Government, at the head of which, during the minority of Queen Christina, was the Chancellor Oxenstiern, invited Comenius to Sweden, that he might preside over a Commission for the revision and reform of the schools there. Comenius, however, declined the invitation, recommending that the work should be entrusted to some native Swede, but promising to give his advice; and, at the same time (1638), he began to translate into Latin, for the behoof of Sweden and of other countries, a certainDidactica Magna, or treatise on Didactics at large, which he had written in his Bohemian Slavic vernacular nine years before. Hartlib had an early abstract of this book, and this abstract is part of theComenii Pansophiæ Prodromus et Didactica Dissertatiowhich he edited in London in the same year, and published in duodecimo in 1639. [Footnote: Bayle's Dictionary: Art.Coménius (Jean-Amos); "Geshichte der Pädagogik," by Karl von Raumer (Stuttgart, 1843), Zweither Theil, pp. 46-49; "Essays on Educational Reformers," by Robert Hebert Quick (1868), pp. 43-47; Wood's Ath. III. 366, and II. 677. The general sketch of Comenius in Bayle, and those by Raumer and Mr. Quick, are very good; but details in the text, and especially the particulars of Hartlib's early connexion with Comenius, have had to be culled by me from the curious autobiographical passages prefixed to or inserted in Comenius's various writings as far as 1642. These form Part I. of his large Folio,Opera Didactica Omnia, published by him at Amsterdam in 1657; and the passages in that Part which have supplied particulars for the text will be found at columns 3-4, 318, 326,403,442—444,454-459. Comenius, like most such theoretic reformers, had a vein of egotism, and a strong memory for details respecting the history of his own ideas and their reception.]