2. The Act of Uniformity and Its Results
It was the passing of the Act of Uniformity in 1662 that brought about the Great Ejection. It was pushed through Parliament by an intensely Royalist party who were intent on revenge for all that they had suffered during the Civil War and afterwards. Even Clarendon, Charles II’s chief minister, acknowledged that “every man, according to his passion, thought of adding somewhat [to it which] might make it more grievous to somebody whom he did not love”.2 The Act was to come into force on St Bartholomew’s Day, August 24, which must have sent out uncomfortable echoes of the massacre of thousands of French Protestants on that day 90 years previously.
The Act made a number of demands on ministers of the Church of England
1The first article presented the background to the events of 1662.
2Stoughton, History of Religion in England, vol 3, p 247.
which most of the godly ministers could not submit to. First, it required them to be re-ordained if they had not been previously ordained by a bishop. This was unacceptable because it would mean rejecting their actual ordination, which they rightly considered to be absolutely valid in the sight of God. Second, ministers were required to express their unfeigned assent to everything in the Prayer Book.
The first difficulty for ministers was that the new Prayer Book was printed only three weeks before August 24, so that it was impossible to have copies circulated to the more distant parts of the country – even Lancashire, for instance – by that date. One ejected minister pointed out afterwards that he was silenced for not declaring his consent to a book which he had not seen, and could not have seen. Wholehearted Puritans could not subscribe to a book which, for instance, taught baptismal regeneration and required ministers (1) to use the sign of the cross in baptism, (2) to reject from the Lord’s Supper all who would not receive it kneeling (a posture that implied worship of the elements), (3) to believe that God has appointed bishops, priests and deacons as three distinct orders in the Church, (4) to declare that all those they buried were regenerate (unless unbaptized, excommunicated or suicides), (5) to use readings from the Apocrypha.
Further, ministers were to swear obedience to their Bishop according to the canons of the Church, and 72 of these canons, dating back to 1603-04 were directed against Puritan positions. A minister was condemned by Canon 4, for instance, if he suggested that the Prayer Book contained “anything repugnant to the Scriptures”; by Canon 7 if he affirmed that “the government of the Church of England by archbishops, bishops, deans etc is repugnant to the Word of God”. Canon 58 declared that “every minister, when officiating, is required to wear a surplice, under pain of suspension” (the surplice is a tunic with wide sleeves which the Puritans rejected because of its Roman Catholic associations and because it had no authority from Scripture). And Canon 68 required ministers “to baptize all children without exception”.
Then there was the matter of the Solemn League and Covenant, which many ministers had subscribed; now they were required to declare: “I do hold there lies no obligation upon me, or any other person, from the oath commonly called, The Solemn League and Covenant, to endeavour any change or alteration of government either in church and state; and that the same was in itself an unlawful oath, and imposed upon the subjects of this realm against the known laws and liberties of this kingdom”. Even some who had never taken this covenant could not in conscience take such an oath as was now being demanded of them. Besides, all ministers were required to make the following political statement: “I . . . do declare that it is not lawful,
upon any pretence whatsoever, to take arms against the King; and that I do abhor that traitorous position of taking arms by his authority against his person, or against those that are commissionated by him”.3 This was not a mere profession of loyalty, which might have been easy enough to take; it was a condemnation of all who had taken Parliament’s side in the Civil War.
On a practical level, the choice of date for enforcing the Act of Uniformity had a cruel twist about it. Had the Ejection been left until Michaelmas, in late September, the ministers would have received the tithes for the year; as it was, they lost out on their entire remuneration for some 11 months. It must have caused great hardship to many, and it was done deliberately. Yet on 24 August 1662 nearly 2000 men believed it was their duty to leave the ministry rather than submit their consciences to an Act which, they knew, was completely contrary to the mind of God.
Among them was Edward Lawrence, a Shropshire minister, who pointed to his “11 arguments for conformity”, meaning his wife and 10 children. But there was an altogether stronger argument on the other side, and that argument he found irresistible: “Christ hath said, ‘Whoso loveth wife or children more than Me is not worthy of Me’. Someone asked him how he expected to maintain them all; Lawrence replied that his family must live on the sixth chapter of Matthew: “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on”.4
Some good men did comply, including William Gurnall, author of The Christian in Complete Armour, and over 172 ejected ministers conformed at a later date. Few of the ejected – Philip Henry was one of the exceptions – were wealthy; some took to secular work to support themselves, but one obvious calling, to teach in a school, was forbidden them, by the Act of Uniformity which sent them from the pulpits. We get a sense of the Anglican spirit towards the Puritans from Archbishop Sheldon’s response to the comment of a Dr Allen: “It is a pity the door is so strait” (in the sense of narrow). Sheldon’s reply was unflinching, without a flicker of mercy for those whom he clearly considered his out-and-out enemies: “It is no pity at all; if we had thought so many of them would have conformed, we would have made it straiter”.5
Oliver Heywood had been minister at Coley, near Halifax, and was harassed for a whole year before the Great Ejection took place. “At the close of one Sabbath,” he wrote, “we can scarcely reckon on another . . . and yet danger is kept off by God’s hand.” Heywood, conscious that the providence of God
3History of the Presbyterians in England, pp 385-6.
4Quoted in Iain H Murray, “The Last Summer”, in The Banner of Truth, issue 26, p 14.
5J B Marsden, The History of the Later Puritans, Tentmaker Publications reprint, 2002, p 459.
overruled all the events of his life, asked himself: “But why does God delight to keep us at uncertainties in our spiritual allowances?” And he answers his own question thus: “Surely it is to convince us of His sovereignty, to train us up in the life of faith, to prevent our building tabernacles here, and make us think highly of our mercies from the danger of losing them; finally, it may be to stir up in our hearts a longing desire for celestial glory, where we shall never lose the enjoyment of God.”6
It was a sore trial for Heywood to be ejected from his church. When his wife died not long before then, he described his loss as “sharper than any trial I have met with before”. Yet he described his ejection as “more bitter” still. He went on to describe the conditions imposed by the Act of Uniformity as “too hard to be accepted”, and he added, “Woe be to us if we preach not the gospel! But a double woe to us if we enervate the gospel by legal ceremonies. Our people’s souls are precious, and we ought to take care of them; but our own souls are precious also, and we must not destroy them under pretence of saving those of others. Our work is dear to us; but God is dearer, and we must not do the least evil to obtain the greatest good.
“There are worldly advantages enough to sway us to conformity, if conscience did not answer all the pleas of flesh and blood. Should we forsake our Christian liberty and put our necks under such a yoke as neither we nor our fathers were able to bear? Should we build again what we have destroyed and make ourselves transgressors? Should we violate solemn covenants, leave the work of reformation and return to Egypt? It is surely better to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. The bargain would be too hard, to provide our livelihood by making shipwreck of faith and a good conscience. God can advance His work without our sinful shifts, and rear up monuments to His glory without our complying prevarications; suffering may benefit the gospel as much as service, when God calls to it. . . . It is no pleasure for us to be idle; fain would we be labouring in the Lord’s vineyard; but alas we are hindered, and woe be to them by whom the offence comes!” Then Heywood quotes the verse: “Verily there is a reward for the righteous: verily He is a God that judgeth in the earth”.7
Joseph Alleine had been minister, from 1655, of Taunton in Somerset. His wife Theodosia gives an account of his thoughts about how he should act in the changed circumstances following the Restoration and goes on to describe his subsequent activity: “Before the Act of Uniformity came forth, my husband was very earnest day and night with God that his way might be plain to him, that he might not desist from such advantages of saving souls, with
6The Whole Works of Oliver Heywood, London, 1827, vol 1, pp 87-8.
7Works, pp 92-3.
any scruple upon his spirit. In which, when he saw these clauses [in the Act] of assent and consent, and renouncing the Covenant, he was fully satisfied [about his duty].
“But he seemed so moderate before that both myself and others thought he would have conformed: he often saying he would not leave his work for small and dubious matters. But seeing his way so plain for quitting the public station that he held, and being thoroughly persuaded of this, that the ejection of the ministers out of their places did not disoblige them from preaching the gospel, he presently took up a firm resolution to go on with his work in private, both of preaching and visiting from house to house, till he should be carried to prison or banishment.”
She tells that “multitudes flocked into the meeting . . . either by day or night” as he went about preaching, visiting and catechising. He also travelled to other places whose ministers were no longer preaching, and “wherever he went, the Lord was pleased to grant him great success: many were converted and the generality of those [were] animated to cleave to the Lord and His ways”.8 Pondering a time when it might no longer be possible for him to preach in England, he considered the possibility of going to China with the gospel. But it was never a real possibility; he died in 1668, aged just 34.
Immediately after the Act of Uniformity became law, the King encouraged the nonconformists to petition him to protect them from its full force. Charles was keen to add to his power, but his Council opposed him, and the efforts of the petitioners came to nothing; Bishop Sheldon of London, later Archbishop of Canterbury, was particularly adamant in his opposition.
Three reasons have been given for Sheldon’s hatred of nonconformists: “As a man of the world, he was averse to the profession of spiritual religion, being totally unable to understand it – looking at it, as he did, through the medium of prejudices which caricatured its nobler qualities. And he was also exasperated at what he deemed a pharisaical assumption on the part of Christians who advocate . . . evangelical views, and who insist upon . . . purity of communion. As a Royalist, Sheldon identified his opponents with the cause of Republicanism and believed, or professed to believe, that they were all bent upon doing to Charles II what some of them, or their predecessors, had done to Charles I. And lastly as an Episcopalian, who had himself suffered from Presbyterians and Independents, he determined to pay back in full what he owed, both capital and interest.”9 And he was no doubt typical of many among the clergy.
8R Baxter, Life & Letters of Joseph Alleine, Reformation Heritage Books reprint, 2003, p 66-67.
9Stoughton, History of Religion in England, vol 3, pp 460-61.