CONGREGATIONAL Church existed in London so early as 1568. It consisted of poor people, numbering about 200, "of more women than men," who openly separated from the Establishment, and sometimes in private houses, sometimes in fields, and occasionally even in ships, held meetings, and administered the sacraments. Some of these early Independents were sent to Bridewell. In a declaration signed by Richard Fitz, the pastor, occurs the following brief statement of principles: First and foremost, the glorious Word and Evangel preached, not in bondage and subjection, but freely and purely; secondly, to have the sacraments ministered purely only, and altogether according to the institution and good word of the Lord Jesus, without any tradition or invention of man; and, last of all, to have, not the filthy canon law, but discipline only, and altogether agreeable to the same heavenly and almighty word of our good Lord Jesus Christ."2 In these quaint words of

Letter from Grindal to Bullinger, June 11th, 1568. Zurich Letters, First Series.

2 This is extracted from p. 12 of a small volume entitled Historical

Papers, First Series, Congregational Martyrs, published by Elliot Stock. The document bears internal signs of genuineness, but it is not said where the original may be found.

Richard Fitz, and his obscure brethren, lie folded up the great truth that the Christian religion is simply a moral power, based on a Divine foundation, not asking, because not needing, support from political governments, or aid from physical force. These humble men really believed that Jesus Christ established His empire upon the consent and not the fears of man, "and trusted Himself defenceless among mankind." Not caring for earthly sanctions, they threw themselves on the world with only Heaven for their protector. Through Christian faith they did what at the time they could not comprehend, being utterly unconscious of the importance of the act which they performed.

This Church in London existed before the well-known Robert Browne appeared as the advocate of advanced Nonconformist views. In 1571 he was cited on that account before the commissioners at Lambeth; and ten years later the Bishop of Norwich, in a letter to Lord Burleigh, referred to him as a person "to be feared, lest if he were at liberty he would seduce the vulgar sort of the people, who greatly depend on him."

Burleigh said in reply:

2

"I understand that one Browne, a preacher, is by your lordship and others of the Ecclesiastical Commission committed to the custody of the Sheriff of Norfolk, where he remains a prisoner, for some matters of offence uttered by him by way of preaching; wherein I perceive, by sight of some letters, written by certain godly preachers in your lordship's diocese, he hath been dealt with, and by them dissuaded from that course he hath taken. Forasmuch as he is my kinsman, if he be son to him whom I take him to be, and that his error

1 Ecce Homo, 16.

2

April 21st, 1581.

seemeth to proceed of zeal, rather than of malice, I do therefore wish he were charitably conferred with and reformed; which course I pray your lordship may be taken with him, either by your lordship, or such as your lordship shall assign for that purpose. And in case there shall not follow thereof such success as may be to your liking, that then you would be content to permit him to repair hither to London, to be further dealt with, as I shall take order for, upon his coming; for which purpose I have written a letter to the sheriff, if your lordship shall like thereof." 1

Sir Robert Jermyn, in a letter to Burleigh (1581), alludes to Browne as a man who "had many things that were godly and reasonable, and, as he thought, to be wished and prayed for, but with the same there were other things strange and unheard." He further begged the Lord Treasurer to advise Browne to be more careful in his conduct, and to threaten him with sharp censure as an example to others, since he was but a mere youth in age and experience. The Bishop of Norwich, also, writing to the Lord Treasurer about this troublesome clergyman, observed "that Mr. Browne's late coming into his diocese, and teaching strange and dangerous doctrine in all disordered manner, had greatly troubled the whole country, and brought many to great disobedience of all law and magistrates-that yet, by the good aid and help of the Lord Chief Justice, and Master Justice Anderson, his associate, the chiefest of such factions were so bridled, and the rest of their followers so greatly dismayed, as he verily hoped of much good and quietness to have thereof ensued, had not the said Browne returned again contrary to his expectation, and greatly prejudiced

1 Fuller's Church Hist., iii. 62.

those their good proceedings, and having private meetings in such close and secret manner that he knew not possibly how to suppress the same."1 Browne, at length, through the influence of his illustrious relative, succumbed to the ecclesiastical authority which before he had daringly resisted, and became master of St. Olave's Grammar-school, in Southwark. His subsequent career covered him with disgrace. He had a wife with whom for many years he never lived, a church in which he never preached, and the circumstances of his death, like the scenes of his life, were stormy and turbulent.2 Whatever sympathy with some of Browne's principles might be felt by the Independents of the next age, they repudiated any connection with Browne's name, and held his character and history in the utmost abhorrence.

Browne's influence told considerably in the Eastern Counties, where a strong leaven of ultra-Protestantism has existed ever since the Lollard days. Even Kett's rebellion, often treated as a Roman Catholic outbreak, looks more like a peasants' war in aid of the Reformation than anything else. Bury St. Edmunds, where Brownism flourished, witnessed the death of Copping and Thacker, two Congregational martyrs, hanged in 1583. In Essex, a movement which looked like Congregationalism won some measure of sympathy from the upper classes, and even the wife of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, attended meetings held in Rochford Hall by Mr. Wright, who had been ordained in the Netherlands. Writing to Lord Burleigh, that lady observed, "I hear, them in their public exercises, as a chief duty com

manded by God to be done, and also I confess, as one that hath found mercy, that I have profited more in the inward feeling knowledge of God his holy will, though but in a small measure, by such sincere and sound opening of the Scriptures by an ordinary preaching within these seven or eight year, than I did by hearing odd sermons at Paul's well nigh twenty year together."1

It is a curious circumstance to find Lord Bacon's mother connected with a minister who maintained, as Wright did, that every pastor was a bishop, and that he should be chosen by his own congregation, opinions which constitute the essence of modern Congregationalism. From these opinions the ecclesiastical authorities sought to convert him by imprisonment; and with that forcible argument another was associated, which is so original that we cannot resist the temptation of quoting it. Mr. Barwick, a conforming clergyman, commended to Wright the Church of England as a church most admirable on account of its being free from the two opposite extremes of Popery and Puritanism. "God delights in mediocrity," says this logician, and the logic is worth being noted for its curiosity: "Man was put in the midst of Paradise ; a rib was taken out of the midst of man; the Israelites went through the midst of the Red Sea, and of Jordan; Samson put firebrands in the midst, between the foxes'

1 Lansdowne M.S., 115, art. 55. Lord Keeper Bacon had a chaplain of Puritan tendencies. See Strype's Parker, ii. 69. Lady Bacon shewed her learning and Protestant zeal by translating Jewel's Apology, —Ibid., i. 354.

The Rev. Thomas Hill, late of Cheshunt, informs me :-"It is undeniable that there was a congregation of Separatists as early as the

days of Elizabeth, in the neighbourhood of Theobalds. One or more of the ministers suffered persecution and imprisonment, but I do not think it improbable that the influence of Cecil, Lord Burleigh, who then resided at Theobalds, may have afforded some degree of protection to the Nonconformists of the neighbourhood."