THE

HISTORY OF THE PURITANS IN ENGLAND,

UNDER THE REIGNS OF THE

TUDORS AND STUARTS.

BOOK I.

THE ENGLISH REFORMERS THE PRECURSORS OF THE PURITANS.

CHAPTER I-INTRODUCTION.

CHAP. 1

THE PURITANS occupy too large a space in the public BOOK 1 affairs of England, during the two most eventful centuries of her history, to require any apology for attempting to bring the men and their proceedings before the public on avowedly catholic principles. Not only the ecclesiastical, but the political, annals and institutions of this country, are most intimately concerned in such an inquiry. It is by resistance to oppression, by struggles for the removal of grievances, by manly controversy, and by strenuous action or patient suffering for truth and freedom, that England has slowly risen to her present rank among the nations; and he is but an unenlightened patriot, and a narrow-minded churchman, who has not traced the steps of that advancement.

The materials of a history of the English Puritans are immeasurably more copious than any person could imagine, whose attention has not been specially directed to them. They are scattered through all our general histories, both Catholic and Protestant. They abound in separate memoirs of statesmen and ecclesiastics of all parties; in collections of pamphlets in prefaces and notes to controversial works; in

B

BOOK I.

various writings on law, literature, and government; in the CHAP. I. dispatches of ambassadors, and letters of private persons; and in large collections of manuscripts, laid up in public libraries, or preserved by the pious industry of individuals, whose connexions, or whose tastes, have prompted peculiar interest in such studies.

The charac ter of previ

ous histories

of the Puri

taus.

The greater part of the works which have formally narrated the lives, or discussed the opinions or characters, of the Puritans, are naturally tinged with party views, and with party views of more descriptions than one: since political, no less than religious, sentiments and interests are involved in such statements and discussions. For this there is one remedy. It is but fair to read what has been written on all sides. To do this with calmness and impartiality, though confessedly difficult, is not impossible. It has been done by men whose hereditary or conventional prejudices are in opposite directions. The habit of so doing is one of the advantages which have sprung from the disputes of former generations, and from the broader views and more independent modes of thinking, which have accompanied the progress of society in knowledge, virtue, and social freedom. It is not now necessary that a man should be a bigot before he can discern the faults of the Puritans, or that he should be one of their followers, in order to appreciate their abilities, their learning, and their piety. Without blind partisanship on either one side or the other, it is in the power of sensible readers to conclude, on the evidence of facts, whether, on the whole, the Puritans were right or wrong; and—whether they are considered as having been right or wrong-it must be worth every man's while to know, as far as he can, what sort of men they were; how they lived and died; and what lasting effects, for good or evil, or both, they have left behind them.

To present ordinary readers of all parties with a faithful account of the Puritans, drawn from divers sources, and conof the work. fined within moderate limits, is the design of the present

The design

volume.

It may not be amiss to say, that, under the denomination Puritans, are included numbers of learned and good men, who never separated, and never desired to separate, from the Established Church of England; as well as large numbers,

BOOK I

CHAP. I.

the term

Puritan.

believed to have been equally learned and good, who were separated, by authority, from that church, for persisting in certain scruples: to both of which classes are to be added not a few, who objected to the constitution and discipline with which all the others were conscientiously satisfied. The designation PURITANS, was at first a term of re- Origin of proach. It was the revival of an ancient nickname, and was intended to mark those to whom it was applied, as pretenders to greater purity of religious worship than that which was fixed by the majority in the convocation of 1562. The ridicule associated with the name in modern times is founded, partly, on the fact that much precision and austerity were exhibited by many of the Puritans; but, still more, on the misrepresentations which have been perpetuated by the prejudices of the ignorant. The only principle in which all the English Puritans agreed, was their Protestantism. Differing in one or more points of doctrinal belief, church government, and modes of worship; on the relation of the church to the state; on tolerating or suppressing popery; and on many questions of public policy; they were uniformly decided in their rejection of the authority of the Church of Rome.

ners of the

The position of the Puritans of England can be but im- The forerunperfectly understood, if their history is not viewed in con- Puritas. nection with the general state of Europe at the time when they arose. It was the beginning of Modern History in England, the dawn of a new era to Europe, when "all those events happened, and all those revolutions began, that have produced so vast a change in the manners, customs, and interests, of particular nations, and in the whole policy, ecclesiastical and civil, of these parts of the world."* There were causes at work in Europe generally, and particularly in England, which must not be overlooked, if we are to understand this part of our history. The dispersion of learned men, and the increased attention to books, which followed the destruction of the Eastern Empire by the Turks at the taking of Constantinople, prepared the way for the invention of printing, the use of the compass, the discovery of America, the decline of feudal institutions, the increasing

*Bolingbroke's Letters on the Study and Use of History Letter VI