Page:VCH Bedfordshire 1.djvu/398

A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE Bedfordshire clergy as strictly as Hugh Reeve or Giles Thorne. His case is chiefly interesting because the accusation is given in detail ; he ' adored the altar, having his eye fixed upon a crucifix in the east win- dow over it ' ; he insisted on a woman coming up to the altar rails to be churched; and he prayed for the departed. 1 How the county really fared during the Presbyterian regime it is not easy to say ; the witnesses on both sides are so prejudiced that it is hard to arrive at truth between them. Thus, Thomas Holden, who was appointed temporarily to St. Mary's in the place of Giles Thorne, was asked for by the parishioners as a ' godly and painful minister ' ; while Thorne from his prison petitioned the Parliament to commit his flock to a better man than Holden, who was ' ridiculously ignorant ' and incapable of discerning truth from error. 2 But it is clear that there was a large majority ready to conform to the new order ; most of the Puritans among the clergy would naturally welcome it, and others would accept it from the same necessity which always wins a certain measure of conformity. Nominally the whole country became Presbyterian ; but so long as the majority of the clergy were men who had been trained in the old ways, it is likely that in many places the order of service, the words of the extempore prayers, had a strong affinity with the ancient liturgy. There is no more striking evidence of the little change of which the less in- structed were aware than that which is found in the autobiography of John Bunyan. ' At this time,' he says, ' I was so overrun with the spirit of superstition,' that ' I adored and that with great devotion ' all things in the church — ' High Place, Priest, clerk, vestment and what else ' — ' counting all things holy that were therein contained.' 3 What other frame of mind could Laud himself have wished ? Yet this was in 1649-50, when the ' high place ' must have been bare enough ; when the only vestment Bunyan could have seen for six or seven years was the Geneva gown. The popular phrase itself — ' high place ' — is not with- out interest ; it seems out of keeping with days when the altar was nothing but a table which was moved according to the convenience of the minister and congregation. Two things at any rate may be placed to the credit of the Presby- terians. One was the stand they made against plurality ; even those who 1 Walker, Sufferings of the C/ergy, p. 1 54. In connection with these prosecutions for ritual it should however be noted that they were made by men who objected equally to other points of church custom which no churchmen have ever since attacked. The lists of ' innovations ' drawn up by the committee which sat at the Bishop of Lincoln's house in 1641 is very instructive. There the ' turning of the table altarwise,' compelling the communicants to come up to the rails to receive, standing for the hymns and glorias, reading the litany in the body of the church, are set side by side with the adornment of the altar with crucifix, candlesticks and curtains, bowing to it, turning to the east at the creed, using a credence table, etc., and could only be condemned by those who wished not merely to reform, but to break altogether with the church and all its traditions. The fact that all these things could be called 'innovations' throws light backwards over the previous half-century, and shows how wonderfully successful the Puritans had been in opposing royal and episcopal authority. 2 Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 100. Holden was only a short time at St. Mary's (Add. MS. 1 5671, f. 104). On 19 July 1647 certain parishioners were again appointed to take the tithes, and pay Mrs. Thome's fifth, until a fit person was appointed. 8 Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (Clar. Press ed. p. 301). 340