The events of January 1649 form a truly revolutionary moment in English history. The abolition of monarchy, the termination of the House of Lords, the closely linked disestablishment of the Church of England and of the principle that all Englishmen and women ought to be members of a single national Church eroded the fabric of English society. These episodes represent the destruction of those very institutions around which men and women organized their view of the natural order in the world. Despite these victories, one issue remained unsolved. In 1652, John Milton reminded Cromwell that the chief end for which the Civil War had been fought, to gain religious liberty, had not yet been reached.
With the Church of England disestablished, questions over its successor proliferate. Once Parliament had been purged of the elements most hostile to the army and once the king had been executed, little prevented the implementation of the army’s desire for some form of religious toleration for Protestants. In September 1650 the Rump, in the Act for the Relief of Religious and Peaceable People, repealed the Elizabethan Act of uniformity and the Act for the punishing of persons willfully refusing to come to Church. With this, Parliament relieved citizens from the legal obligation of attending their parish Churches.
Therefore I beseech you, have u care of the whole flock! Love the sheep, love the lambs; love all, tender all, cherish and countenance all, in all things that aw good. And if the poorest Christian, the most mistaken Christian, shall desire to live peaceably and quietly under you – I say, if any shall desire to lead a life of godliness and honesty, let him be protested.
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Despite the successes of the Parliament in the opening months of the Interregnum, Cromwell resembled a frustrated figure. It became clear by early 1650s that the most significant threat to religion was a lack of order and government in the Church. Thus, when Cromwell became Lord Protector in 1653, no problem seemed graver to him than that of restoring order in the Church. From the onset, though, the Protector was met with mounting difficulties. The Directory was not universally used. The sacrament of the Eucharist was rarely administered because of the disagreement over who had the power of excommunication. As for baptism, the misgivings of the Calvinists over who should be baptized, and the refusal of the Baptists to administer the rite to any except Godly adults, resulted in the fact that even that sacrament was no longer dispensed. Furthermore, Cromwellian officials continued to clash with the sectaries, Roman Catholics, and those wishing to preserve the disestablished practices of the Church. Roman Catholics persisted in their ways, as their priests benefited by the chaotic conditions spurred on by disordered nature of the Interregnum.
How broad a toleration Cromwell favored is not clear, but from his speeches and writings, he appears as a strict Calvinist who was an Erastian in so far as he advocated for the responsibility of the state to maintain order in the Church. The Instrument of Government, which brought Cromwell to power in 1653, centered on the provision that the supreme legislative authority should be shared by “a single person” (albeit a Lord Protector, not a monarch) and “the people assembled in Parliament.” The Instrument also outlined decrees relating to the matter of religious toleration. The 37th Clause of the Instrument, for instance, declared:
That such as profess faith in God by Jesus Christ-though differing in judgment from the doctrine, worship, or discipline publicly held forth-shall not be restrained from, but shall be protected in, the profession of the faith and exercise of their religion; so as they abuse not this liberty to the civil liberty of others and the actual disturbance of the public peace on their parts; provided this liberty be not extended to Popery or prelacy, nor to such as, under the profession of Christ, hold forth and practice licentiousness.
Furthermore, the Christian religion, as contained in the Bible, was to be “the public profession of these Nations,” and provision was to be made for its maintenance. However, no one was to be forced to attend the established Church. All who “professed faith in God by Jesus Christ shall be protected in the profession of their faith and exercise of their religion in any place except such as shall be set apart for the public worship.”
Cromwell constantly strove to promote unity in his promoting of toleration, often promoting harmony between Presbyterian, Independent and Baptist clerics by discussing matters of common religious concern. He firmly believed that the duty of the State was to give adequate maintenance for its clergy. From early in the Civil War, with the establishment of the Committee for Plundered Ministers, Parliament had taken pains that loyal ministers should receive an adequate recompense. Moreover, when from 1649 the State began to sell episcopal and capitular lands, Cromwell had set aside certain income to produce a considerable fund to augment poorer livings.
Under these circumstances, a Commonwealth parish minister could hope to obtain grants to bring his annual income to about £100 a year; one incumbent who recorded the payment of his augmentation was the diarist Ralph Josselin. In addition to the maintenance of the clergy, two other Cromwellian innovations were implemented in the form of “tryers” and “ejectors,” both of which developed from suggestions first made by members of the Rump in 1652. Both innovations appeared as a framework in Cromwell’s Church. The tryers who met in London to examine all men looking to enter the ministry of the national Church. Characteristically Cromwell persuaded Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists to act on his board of tryers. His measure for removing immoral clergymen out of the Church, above most of his acts, has been misrepresented and condemned. For some, however, Cromwell’s actions were lauded. Richard Baxter, an adversary of Cromwell, even acknowledged the extent and value of their activities:
They saved many a congregation from ignorant, ungodly, drunken teachers that sort of men who intend no more in the ministry than to say a sermon, as readers say their common prayers… so that, though they were many of them somewhat partial for the Independents, Separatists, Fifth Monarchy men and Anabaptists, and against the Prelatists and Arminians, yet so great was the benefit above the hurt which they brought to the Church, that many thousands of souls blessed God for the faithful ministers whom they let in, and grieved when the Prelatists afterward cast them out again.
The ejectors, in contrast, were organized on a county basis to remove unworthy ministers still in possession of livings, resembled the work of earlier Parliamentary committees. This body, it must be noted, was chosen by Parliament, not by Cromwell. The grounds for ejection were explicitly counted, ranging from immoral actions to use of the Book of Common Prayer, from cynicism to the government to the encouraging of maypoles.
On 3 September 1654, Oliver Cromwell addressed the First Protectorate Parliament at its inaugural meeting. The Lord Protector prefaced his speech to Parliament with a passionate yearning for an atmosphere of absolute religious toleration.
Again, is not Liberty of Conscience in religion a fundamental? So long as there is liberty of conscience for the supreme magistrate to exercise his conscience in erecting what form of Church-Government he is satisfied he should set up, why should not he give it to others? Liberty of conscience is a natural right… All the money of this nation would not have tempted men to fight upon such an account as they have engaged, if they had not had hopes of liberty, better than they had from Episcopacy, or than would have been afforded them from a Scottish Presbytery, or an English either… This, I say, is a Fundamental.
Throughout the planning and framing of the Cromwellian Church, the Protector continued to debate with Parliament on matters relating to the divine. When Cromwell’s first Parliament met in September 1654, it fully encompassed Members of the Rump, “Commonwealthmen,” angered by his dissolution of their government. They impeded proceedings over the next months as they discussed little else but plans to change the Instrument to the advantage of Parliament. Cromwell dissolved this Parliament, which failed to pass any laws during its entire sitting, in January 1655. In a fiery speech aimed at the dissolution, he explained his dream of a national Church and rebuked Parliament because it had failed to help him achieve it. “Such good and wholesome provisions for the settling of such matters in things of Religion,” should have been made “as would have upheld and given Countenance to a Godly Ministry,” and yet would have given “a just liberty to men of different judgments.” He spoke with approval of the godly sectarians, the Independents and “many under the form of Baptism,” and, by implication, the Presbyterians.
He further addressed the issue of toleration, asserting that “profane persons, blasphemers, such as preach sedition; the contentious revilers, evil speakers” should be punished. He insisted that men in “disputable things” should be left to “their own consciences.” The Instrument of Government, he declared, had instigated provisions for toleration, and Parliament ought to have acted in accordance to these arrangements. Now that Parliament had failed, in his estimation, to support the government of the new national Church, he proceeded to rule it according to his ideas. Thus, the faith of Conformists rested with Cromwell himself.
