The demands of the Puritans seem to modern minds very limited indeed: That there should be a new correct Translation of the Bible (granted), and increased zeal in teaching (omitted); That ‘lay impropriations’ (tithes snatched from the old Church by laymen) might be made to yield a ‘seventh part’ of their amount, towards maintaining ministers in dark regions which had none (refused); That the Clergy in districts might be allowed to meet together, and strengthen one another’s hands as in old times (refused with indignation);—on the whole (if such a thing durst be hinted at, for the tone is almost inaudibly low and humble), That pious straitened Preachers, in terror of offending God by Idolatry, and useful to human souls, might not be cast out of their parishes for genuflexions, white surplices and suchlike, but allowed some Christian liberty in mere external things: these were the claims of the Puritans;—but his Majesty eloquently scouted them to the winds, applauded by all bishops, and dignitaries lay and clerical; said, If the Puritans would not conform, he would ‘hurry them out of the country’;—and so sent Puritanism and the Four Doctors home again, cowed into silence for the present. This was in January 1604.[1] News of this, speech enough about it, could not fail in Robert Cromwell’s house among others. Oliver is in his fifth year,—always a year older than the Century.
In November 1605, there likewise came to Robert Cromwell’s house, no question of it, news of the thrice-unutterable Gunpowder Plot. Whereby King, Parliament, and God’s Gospel in England, were to have been, in one infernal moment, blown aloft; and the Devil’s Gospel, and accursed incredibilities, idolatries, and poisonous confusions of the Romish Babylon, substituted in their room! The eternal Truth of the Living God to become an empty formula, a shamming grimace of the Three-hatted Chimera! These things did fill Huntingdon and Robert Cromwell’s house with talk enough, in the winter of Oliver’s sixth year. And again, in the
- ↑ Neal’s History of the Puritans (London, 1754), i. 411.
