Miscellaneous'
NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.
The Baptists are evidently determined to make this new society of theirs one of permanent usefulness. At their recent session the Society formed the first matter of business, and this second number carries out all the promise of the first. Two papers indicate with what care some Baptist churches keep their records. The first, entitled 'May a Minister take State Pay?' shows that the church at Whitchurch in Hants possessed 67 documents, giving a fairly consecutive body of facts from 1690 till 1852. These are now lodged at the Baptist College, Regent's Park. At Bromsgrove the church dates its first record from 1670, and gives a fairly accurate sketch of what a Baptist church was in the troublous years of the Restoration period. In 1672 there were only thirteen members, "doubtless accounted for by the fact that the previous six years had covered a period of painful persecution." "Fines were enforced upon those who did not attend the parish church, the proceeds being applied to apprenticing local parish lads"; but by 1683 the numbers had increased to 87, many of them belonging to influential families. "So when another episcopal enquiry was set on foot in 1676, the results of which for the province of Canterbury are enshrined in a handsome volume at the Salt Library, Stafford, Bromsgrove stands out not only as the largest town in the diocese of Worcester, but as the very capital of dissent." Mr. James Ford, who has carefully collected the facts for this article, states that "it is not a little startling to find that no meeting-house existed through all these years; the people met in 'Ye place appointed by ye church,' which most likely meant the houses of its members." It was not until 1700 that the house of Humphrey Potter, a generous deacon, was registered, according to the requirements of the Toleration Act, as the Baptist meeting-house.
Dr. Whitley contributes an article on Leonard Busher, Dutchman, who in 1611 was a leader of Anabaptists in Amsterdam, and, remarkable to relate, took an extraordinary interest in the Jews who abounded in that city. He came to London, being one of the latest of those Dutch refugees who for conscience' sake found an asylum here for a while. In 1614 he became a citizen, and was the author of an address to King James, 'Religious Peace; or; a Plea for Liberty of Conscience.' In another paper, 'Baptist Literature till 1688,' it is stated that a small group of Baptists hold that the Fourth Commandment remains in its original force, and these "Seventh-day Baptists" still meet in Canonbury every Saturday. Under 'Notes and Queries' we find a query in reference to Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act of 1754, by which no marriage could be legally celebrated in any Dissenting chapel. This remained in force till 1836. The question is how far the customs among Baptists between 1660 and 1754 were legal. The parties to be married would call together their relations and friends, and "having usually some of our ministry present with them, the parties concerned declare their contract formerly made between themselves, and the advice of their friends, if occasion require it; and then, taking each other by the hand, declare that they from that day forward, during their natural lives together, do enter into the state of marriage, using the words of the marriage service in the service book, acknowledging the words to be very fit for that purpose. And then a writing is signed by the parties married to keep in memory the contract and covenant of their marriage." Entries of these marriages may be seen in old Baptist Church Books. Rippon quotes from his six such entries, but "the legality of these proceed- is rather doubtful. Blackstone commented that till 1754 any contract of marriage made in words of the present tense was deemed valid marriage for many purposes. An appeal case to the House of Lords found the lords equally divided on the question whether the marriage was good enough to legitimate children or to ensure the descent of property, though they agreed that for other purposes it was a good and indissoluble marriage." While there was a strong feeling among some Baptists against their marriages being solemnized by the Established Church, the majority preferred to be married at their parish church. When members of Rippon's church were so married, it was, we have reason to know, his custom on the following Sunday to place his hands on the newly married couple and ask for a blessing upon their marriage.
"The object of this book is to present an account of the development of the teaching in the English Grammar Schools from the time of the Invention of Printing up to 1660." The author further defines his aim as to give "a history of the practice of the schools, of their curricula, and of the differentiated subjects of instruction" on a bibliographical basis. It is the exhaustive study of a specialist who has made this department of knowledge his own, and carried it out with a thoroughness which deserves all praise.
There is no species of book which more completely passes out of remembrance into the land of oblivion than the antiquated schoolbook; and it is seldom that a popular phrase like "according to Cocker" keeps even the name of one of them alive in after ages. With this obsolete class of literature and with pre-Restoration school methods Prof. Watson possesses an unrivalled acquaintance which qualifies him to speak with authority. Schoolmasters who take their profession seriously, and the still larger number of people who are interested in the history of education, will find in his paces valuable information which they will not easily procure elsewhere, e.g., his account of the evolution of textbooks and the increased study of mathematics as resulting from the Renascence, with its re-discovery of the classical writers. Grammar Schools, it seems, do not, as has often been thought, owe their inception to the Reformation; they existed in more than germ long before in the chantry schools attached to mediæval churches. The chapter (xxiii.) on 'Vocabularies and Dictionaries' is one of general interest, as also the notice of Baptista Mantuanus, from whose 'Bucolica seu Adolescentia' (1573) came the Latin line
