Page:History and characteristics of Bishop Auckland.djvu/171

FRIENDS* MEETING HOUSE. The beginning of the seventeenth century was remarkable for having been a time of great dissention respecting religion in this country. Many persons had been dissatisfied with the settlement of the Church of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and various societies of Dissenters had accordingly arisen, some of whom evinced their sincerity by generous suflFerings imder the intolerance of those who governed Church affairs at that tima In the year 1665, the Corporation Act, the Act of Uniformity) the Conventicle Act, and the Five Mile Act, were all passed. The Corporation Act required all persons holding offices in municipal corporations to take the sacrament of the Lord s Supper according to the rites of the Church of England, to renounce the solemn League and Covenant, and to swear that they believed it unlawful to take up arms upon any pretence whatever against the King. The Act of Uniformity required all clergymen to declare their assent to everything contained in the Prayer Book, and all school- masters were obliged to have a license from the Bishop. The Conventicle Act declared all meetings of more than five persons, except the household, for religious worship — ^not according to the Prayer Book — ^seditious ; and all persons above sixteen years old who attended, for a first offence were to be fined or imprisoned for three months ; for a second, fined or imprisoned for six months; and for a third, transported for seven years. The Five Mile Act required all dissenting ministers to take an oath similar to that imposed by the Corporation Act, and in case of refusal, they were not to approach within five miles of any borough or place where they had ever preached, nor to act as schoolmasters, under a penalty of £40 and six months' imprisonment From the following extract from a letter written by Mr, Edward Arden (house steward to Bishop Cosin), and dated from Auckland Caatle, March 27th, 1663, it would appear that our town had in some measure partaken of the troubles of those times : — " My Lord is now, and was yesterday examining several Anabaptists, who have a witness come in against some of them, that upon oath sweares, that they at their meetings entered iuto a solemne oathe upon the Bible to destroy the Parlement, the Bishops, and Clergie, and the Centre too, if they oppose them. Wee have now horse and foot, but no great number heare in towne, and at Durham in readiness," &c. In the account rolls of Bishop Cosin, under date August 23rd, 1665, we find the following: — - " To Darlington foot post that brought letters about the Quakers, 2s." From what has already been said in the previous pages of this work, it will be evident to the reader that the Quakers were amongst the first to make themselves amenable to the above enactments, and to introduce dissent into what would then have been thought the exclusive domain of the Established Church — ^Bishop Auckland having been from the earliest times one of the principal residences of the Bishops of Durham, and many of the inhabitants of the town would, no doubt, be in a great measure dependent upon the Bishop and those who surrounded him for their daily bread. In the year 1662, John Longstaff, of Bishop Auckland, became a convert to Quakerism, and the persecuting spirit of the age seems to have reached the town about the same time, inasmuch as in 1666 (as has abeady been stated) Edward Lannerson, yeoman, Anthony Hodgson, and Emanuel Grice were transported by the Court of Quarter Sessions at Durham, for meeting at his house for the purpose of following and practising the religious rites of the Society of Friend& This circum- stance seems to have taken place about fifteen years subsequent to the first ministrations of George Fox, its founder, from which we may infer that our town was one of the first places into which the religion of Quakerism made an inroad ; but, unfortunately, in consequence of the loss of an early minute book, we have not been able to gather much information respecting its early history, or the exact date of the building of the first chapeL Tradition has, however, handed down a Digitized by Google