1

if there came to the number of fifty persons or upward.' The expression of his hope preceded its fulfilment by only five months. Dermer noticed the ravages of the recent pestilence. "I passed along the coast, where I found some ancient plantations, not long since populous, now utterly void." He was severely wounded in a skirmish with the Indians of Martha's Vineyard, and soon afterwards died in Virginia.2

1 Letter of Dermer, of June 30, 1620, in Deane's Bradford, 96.

2 Gorges, Briefe Narration, &c., Chap. XV.

CHAPTER III.

A RELIGIOUS impulse accomplished what commercial enterprise, commanding money and court favor, had attempted without success. Civilized New England is the child of English Puritanism.

The spirit of Puritanism was no creation of the sixteenth century. It is as old as the truth and manliness of England. Among the thoughtful and earnest islanders the dramatic religion of the Popes had never struck so deep root as in Continental soil.1 They had been coerced into unquestioning conformity as often as the state of public affairs had made it necessary for the Crown to court the Church; but the government of princes strong in the goodness of their title and in the popular regard had often been illustrated by manifestations of discontent with the spiritual despotism which had overspread Western Europe.

Free spirit

of the early English

A succession of Saxon versions of the Bible, from almost the beginning of the Heptarchy to the Norman Conquest, attests the demand of the times for Scriptural knowledge; and, in the Anglo-Saxon Church. ritual of the Mass, the Gospel and the Epistle were read in the vernacular tongue. Under the early princes of the

1 Hume describes England as "the kingdom which of all others had long been the most devoted to the Holy See." (History, Chap. XXX., A. D. 1532.) But his "long" must be interpreted of the time which began with the Lancastrian dynasty. Elsewhere he says, that "the ancient and almost uninterrupted opposition of interest between the laity

and clergy in England, and between the English clergy and the court of Rome, had sufficiently prepared the nation for a breach with the Sovereign Pontiff." (Chap. XXXI., A. D. 1534.) 2 Lingard, Antiquities of the AngloSaxon Church, Chap. VI. § 2.— Sharon Turner, History of the Anglo-Saxons, Book X. Chap. III.

1076.

Norman line, the Church, as the natural ally of the people against their lords, easily conciliated the popular sentiment to an acquiescence in its claims. But, on the other hand, the occasional contumacy of the kings in their relations to the papal power laid up a lesson for the people's use in later times; while cases were not wanting in which English ecclesiastics themselves, on questions of the privileges of their order, were found practising a doubtful submission to the successor of St. Peter.1 William the Conqueror had come near to a quarrel with the Holy See, when he forbade his bishops to obey its citation to Rome, and required spiritual causes to be tried in the hundred or the county courts. With the right on his side and the good wishes of his people, Henry the Second appeared to have a fair prospect of ultimate success in his struggle with the clergy, when he lost his advantage by the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The progress made by the lay judges, in the time of the rash but feeble Henry the Third, in narrowing the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical tribunals, emboldened the spirit of the people, while it extended their legal securities. The barons of Edward the First had no scruples as to repelling, in the most positive language, the claim of supremacy set up at Rome in the dispute about the crown of Scotland; and his Statute of Mortmain was an efficient measure of protection against priestly and monkish cupidity.

1170.

1301.

2

National revolutions, religious or political, are never sudden. When they appear to have been so, it is because the agencies that had been preparing them have been at work, where they are most powerful, beneath the surface.

1 The larger and better portion of the clergy had wives in the reign of Henry the First, and this with the monarch's approval. (Lyttelton, History of the Life of King Henry the Second,

III. 42, 328.) There were married priests in England as late as the fif teenth century. (Wilkins, Concilia, III. 277.)

2 Rymer, Fœdera, II. 873.

with eccle

A mine does swifter execution than a battery, and takes more time to construct. The English mind, in the first three centuries after the Norman Conquest, was Discontent not eminently apt for speculation of any sort; but siastical it had had some training to practical wisdom, and abuses. its constitutional love of reality and right had not been broken down. The movement connected in history with the name of Wickliffe had its origin in the reflections and resentments of earlier times. The scandal and discontent occasioned by priestly and monastic licentiousness and arrogance had naturally been aggravated by the jealousy felt by Englishmen of Continental interlopers. A palpable cause of offence was supplied when it was known that year by year immense sums were drawn from England into the coffers of Italian ecclesiastics.1 The local clergy, who bore a large share of the burden, themselves sympathized in the disaffection. The rough hand of Edward the First redressed some of the existing abuses. hostility to church usurpation excited by his courageous policy was strong enough to live through the distractions which followed in the reign of his son. And the spirit of the nation had been raised to its highest tone by the victories of Edward the Third in France, when Wickliffe. Wickliffe came forward to direct against the false doctrine of the Church of Rome the indignation which had been provoked by its rapacious and domineering practice. The circumstances and sentiments of the time secured him a hearing. Rather, the time had educated him to utter its own voice.

The

With all his energy and talent, Wickliffe, like Cranmer in later times, was not more the leader than the follower of the king, court, and people, in the movement which is called by his name. He was still an obscure young scholar at Oxford when the famous Statute of Provisors asserted for the English Church, in an

1 Matthew Paris, Historia, I. 666-668, 698-702.

1351.

1366.

important particular, independence of the see of Rome.1 He was known only for the courage with which he had conducted a local controversy with some monks, when, on a demand from the Pope for an annual tribute which had been promised by King John, the Lords and Commons in Parliament, in the fortieth year of Edward the Third, unanimously disallowed the claim, and pledged to the monarch the resources of the nation "to resist and withstand, to the utmost of their power."2 A tract published by Wickliffe on the question, while it presently made him famous, had its influence on his subsequent career. Like Luther afterwards, by increasing opposition he was impelled to extended inquiries, and by these to new discoveries and convictions. Determined by political considerations, the favor of the court harmonized with that good-will of the people which is sometimes won by a bold assault upon social wrong; and Wickliffe went on for ten years in a course of study and of controversy, which brought him with each succeeding year to a wider departure from the orthodox standard. He asserted the sufficiency of the Scriptures as a rule of faith. He denied the Pope's supremacy, the real presence in the eucharist, the validity of absolution and indulgences, and the merit of penance and monastic vows. He protested against the ecclesiastical ceremonies, festival days, prayers to saints, and auricular confession. Finally, he denounced the canonical distinction between priests and bishops, and the use of set forms of prayer.

Wickliffe had found an effectual security in the friendship of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who, in his father's declining years, had administered the kingdom. With the fall of that prince from power at the accession of his young nephew, the Reformer was thrown more upon the protection of the people, the native clergy, and the Parliament; a defence which did not fail him, though

1 Parliamentary History of England, I. 118.

2 Ibid., 130.