Part 38 (2/2)

Scarcely a pet.i.tion was presented, which did not, among other things, pray for the reformation of the courts of justice; and the house, after several long debates, acquiesced[a] in a measure, understood to be only the forerunner of several others,[b] that the law books should be written, and law proceedings be conducted in the English language.[1] 3. So enormous were the charges of the commonwealth, arising from incessant war by sea or land, that questions of finance continually engaged the attention of the house. There were four princ.i.p.al sources of revenue; the customs, the excise, the sale of fee-farm rents,[2] of the lands of the crown, and of those belonging to the bishops, deans, and chapters, and the sequestration and forfeiture of the estates of papists and delinquents. The ordinances for the latter had been pa.s.sed as early as the year 1643, and in the course of the seven succeeding years, the harvest had been reaped and gathered.

Still some gleanings might remain; and in 1650, an act was pa.s.sed[c] for the better ordering and managing such estates; the former compositions were subjected to examination; defects and concealments were detected; and proportionate fines were in numerous cases exacted. In 1651, seventy individuals, most of them of high rank, all of opulent fortunes, who had imprudently displayed their attachment to the royal cause, were condemned[d] to forfeit their property,

[Footnote 1: Journals, May 10, Nov. 22. Whitelock, 478-483.]

[Footnote 2: The clear annual income from the fee-farm rents amounted to seventy-seven thousand pounds. In Jan. 1651, twenty-five thousand three hundred pounds of this income had been sold for two hundred and twenty-five thousand six hundred and fifty pounds.--Journals, Jan. 8.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Nov. 8.]

[Sidenote b: A.D. 1650. Nov. 22.]

[Sidenote c: A.D. 1651. Jan. 22.]

[Sidenote d: A.D. 1651. July 16.]

both real and personal, for the benefit of the commonwealth. The fatal march of Charles to Worcester furnished grounds for a new proscription in 1652. First[a] nine-and-twenty, then[b] six hundred and eighty-two royalists were selected for punishment. It was enacted that those in the first cla.s.s should forfeit their whole property; while to those in the second, the right of pre-emption was reserved at the rate of one-third part of the clear value, to be paid within four months.[1]

4. During the late reign, as long as the Presbyterians retained their ascendancy in parliament, they enforced with all their power uniformity of wors.h.i.+p and doctrine. The clergy of the established church were ejected from their livings, and the professors of the Catholic faith were condemned to forfeit two-thirds of their property, or to abjure their religion. Nor was the proof of recusancy to depend, as formerly, on the slow process of presentation and conviction; bare suspicion was held a sufficient ground for the sequestrator to seize his prey; and the complainant was told that he had the remedy in his own hands, he might take the oath of abjuration.

When the Independents succeeded to the exercise of the supreme power, both the persecuted parties indulged a hope of more lenient treatment, and both were disappointed. The Independents, indeed, proclaimed themselves the champions of religious liberty; they repealed the statutes imposing penalties for absence from church; and they declared

[Footnote 1: Journals, 1651, July 16; 1652, Aug. 4, Nov. 18. Scobell, 156, 210. If any of the last were papists, and afterwards disposed of their estates thus redeemed, they were ordered to banish themselves from their native country, under the penalty of having the laws against popery executed against them with the utmost severity.--Addit. Act of Nov. 18, 1652.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1652. August 4.]

[Sidenote b: A.D. 1652. Nov. 18.]

that men were free to serve G.o.d according to the dictates of conscience.

Yet their notions of toleration were very confined: they refused to extend it either to prelacy or popery, to the service of the church of England, or of the church of Rome. The ejected clergymen were still excluded from the pulpit, and the Catholics were still the victims of persecuting statutes.

In 1650, an act was pa.s.sed[a] offering to the discoverers of priests and Jesuits, or of their receivers and abettors, the same reward as had been granted to the apprehenders of highwaymen. Immediately officers and informers were employed in every direction; the houses of Catholics were broken open and searched at all hours of the day and night; many clergymen were apprehended, and several were tried, and received[b] judgment of death. Of these only one, Peter Wright, chaplain to the marquess of Winchester, suffered. The leaders shrank from the odium of such sanguinary exhibitions, and transported the rest of the prisoners to the continent.[1]

But if the zeal of the Independents was more sparing of blood than that of the Presbyterians, it was not inferior in point of rapacity. The ordinances for sequestration and forfeiture were executed with unrelenting severity.[2] It is difficult to say which suffered from them most cruelly--families with small fortunes who were thus reduced to a state of penury; or husbandmen, servants, and mechanics, who, on their refusal to take the oath of abjuration, were deprived

[Footnote 1: Challoner, ii 346. MS. papers in my possession. See note.

(G).]

[Footnote 2: In 1650 the annual rents of Catholics in possession of the sequestrators were retained at sixty-two thousand and forty-eight pounds seventeen s.h.i.+llings and threepence three farthings. It should, however, be observed that thirteen counties were not included.--Journ. Dee. 17.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1650. Feb. 26.]

[Sidenote b: A.D. 1651. May. 19.]

of two-thirds of their scanty earnings, even of their household goods and wearing apparel.[1] The sufferers ventured to solicit[a] from parliament such indulgence as might be thought ”consistent with the public peace and their comfortable subsistence in their native country.” The pet.i.tion was read: Sir Henry Vane spoke in its favour; but the house was deaf to the voice of reason and humanity, and the prayer for relief was indignantly rejected.[2]

[Footnote 1: In proof I may be allowed to mention one instance of a Catholic servant maid, an orphan, who, during a servitude of seventeen years, at seven n.o.bles a year, had saved twenty pounds. The sequestrators, having discovered with whom she had deposited her money, took two-thirds, thirteen pounds six s.h.i.+llings and eightpence, for the use of the commonwealth, and left her the remainder, six pounds thirteen and fourpence. In March, 1652, she appealed to the commissioners at Haberdashers' Hall, who replied that they could afford her no relief, unless she took the oath of abjuration. See this and many other cases in the ”Christian Moderator, or Persecution for Religion,

condemned by the Light of Nature, the Law of G.o.d, and Evidence of our own Principles,” p. 77-84. London, 1652.]

[Footnote 2: Journals, 1652, June 30. The pet.i.tion is in the Christian Moderator, p. 59.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1652. Jun. 30.]

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