THE RELIGIOUS CENSUS AN INQUIRY INTO ITS HISTORICAL VALUE, BY THOMAS RICHARDS, M.A., D.LITT., Librarian, University College of North Wales, Bangor. LONDON: THE HONOURABLE SOCIETY OF CYMMRODORION, NEW STONE BUILDINGS, CHANCERY LANE. 1927. EDITORIAL NOTE. The article on "The Religious Census of 1676” which appears here, was intended to be read at one of the sessional meetings of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion during the winter of 1925-26. As this could not be conveniently arranged, the Editor deems it desirable that the prepared paper should be published as a "Supplement" to the Transactions for the year, so as to give the members of the Society the advantage of early publication. To those acquainted with modern Welsh Literature, the author, Dr. Thomas Richards, formerly of Maesteg, will be favourably known as the writer of three important volumes dealing with the History of the Puritan Movement in Wales (1639-1653) and the Religious Developments that followed (1654-1662 and 16621687), which were recently published by the National Eisteddfod Association. The present essay deals with one of the by-paths of the same subject and throws a welcome light on the strength of Welsh Dissent, both Protestant and Papist, during the latter half of the reign of Charles the Second. To Dr. Richards the members of the Cymmrodorion Society are already indebted for previous interesting contributions. They have noted with satisfaction his appointment to the position of Librarian of the University College of North Wales—a position that will enable him to extend those literary and historical enquiries, the result of which have already gained for him the commendation of highly competent critics. On behalf of the Council, E. VINCENT EVANS, Honorary Secretary and Editor. THE RELIGIOUS CENSUS OF 1676: AN INQUIRY INTO ITS HISTORICAL VALUE, MAINLY IN REFERENCE TO WALES. BY THOMAS RICHARDS, M.A., D.LITT., ARCHBISHOP Gilbert Sheldon had been the chief architect of the Anglican settlement after the Restoration of 1660, and the inexorable opponent of any compromise with Dissenters, be they Papist or Protestant. Even before he became archbishop he had early in 1663 thwarted the King's desires to soften down some of the severer clauses of the Act of Uniformity: indeed, what else was to be expected of a man who regretted that the very narrow portals of that Act had not been made straiter than they were? He was behind the scenes helping to forge the Frank Bate: Decl. of Indulgence, p. 25. 1 B Conventicle enactments of 1664 and 1670; it was he also, in his capacity of metropolitan, who had set on foot the inquiries of 1665 and 1669—the one asking, amongst other things, for the whereabouts of nonconformist ministers, the other demanding the fullest information about the secret meetings of Dissenters just at that auspicious juncture when the lapse of the first Conventicle Act had tempted nonconformists to the open and made them easier prey for the informers. The assertion of Charles' dispensing power by the issue of the Indulgence in 1672 was anathema to Sheldon, inasmuch as it laid a mortmain on the repressive policy he had so resolutely advocated for ten years as evidences of this hostility comes the futile effort of a Lambeth official to stop a licence being given to Oliver Heywood of Halifax', and the Church opposition to the licensing of unused or vacant "chapels" for Nonconformist worship. The archbishop went so far as to order the clergy to preach up the power of Parliament as a counterpoise to the fatal use of the dispensation, a proceeding which drew upon his head the anger of Charles. Sheldon's turn of fortune came when the financial difficulties of the Dutch war made the King to summon Parliament again, and when that ultra-Anglican assembly forced him in turn to cancel on 7 March, 1673, the Great Seal on the Declaration published the year before. The licences themselves were not finally revoked till the beginning of 1675.3 It is not difficult to picture the Primate sitting at the board of the King's Council which ordered the revocation and to hear him marshalling anew his well-worn arguments in favour of uniformity. Almost needless to add, this order for revocation contained an injunction that "effectual care be taken for the suppressing of conventicles". Yet the short-lived period of freedom had given an enormous impetus to the Nonconformist cause; even the archdeacon of Canterbury had to admit in 1676 that "many left the Church upon the late Indulgence, who 1 St. Pap. Dom., Chas. II, 320, No. 211 (Ralph Snowe to Sir Joseph Williamson, 30 Apr., 1672). 2 Dr. W. T. Whitley: Hist. British Bapt. (1923), p. 123. 3 Daniel Neal: Hist. of Puritans, ed. Toulmin (1796), iv, 545. The Order made the King say that "all his licences were long since recalled", probably referring to the breaking of the Great Seal on the Declaration in 1673. before did frequent it". A Cavalier squire in Yorkshire and an Anglican diarist said in almost the same words that the Indulgence was the greatest blow to the Church since the Restoration. Almost concurrently with the cancelling of the Declaration a bill for the ease of Protestant Dissenters-by granting them certificates to preach through the justices at Quarter Sessions-passed through all its stages in the Commons only to be lost through the influence of Sheldon and the bishops in the Upper House. What lends piquancy to this situation is that a MS. at the Bodleian Library which contains a draft of this abortive bill was penned by the hand of Dr. William Sancroft, then Dean of St. Paul's and before long Sheldon's successor at Lambeth. It was the growing danger of Roman Catholicism, and not any desire to please the King, that made the Commons give a sympathetic ear to the bill of ease. A very few years later, in 1675, these same fears proved a fructifying soil for "accommodation" between moderate Anglicans and moderate Nonconformists -even a canon of Canterbury (like Dr. John Tillotson), and a newly-appointed canon of St. Paul's (like Dr. Edward Stillingfleet), are found holding conferences with the comprehensionist Baxter and the Presbyterian "dons" of the capital. On 11 April, however, Tillotson had to tell Baxter that further effective progress was impossible until they could secure the support of a considerable part of the bishops, "which at present I see little reason to expect". It was unnecessary for him to refer to the attitude of the Archbishop. But in that same year of 1675 one member of the bench of bishops, Croft of Hereford, published (anonymously, it is true) a pamphlet called Naked Truth", which contained a powerful plea for healing counsels, and dogmatically put it on p. 24 that to refuse to abandon one ceremony or one line of the Prayer Book in order to gain thousands of Nonconformists was the utmost of sectarianism and fanaticism. The divisions among Protestants, thought the Bishop, were 66 1 Lambeth MS. 639, f. 168b. 2 Memoirs and Travels of Sir John Reresby, ed. Ivatt, p. 150; Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn, ed. Bray, ii, 71. 3 Tanner MS. 43, f. 189. 4 Edward Cardwell: Docty. Annals, ii, Doct. clvi, 288-289 (footnote). 5 Neal: Hist. of Puritans (ed. Toulmin), iv, 546-547. |