A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



the bishops might be taken away. The actual signatures appended to the 

 petition are only eighteen ; they include the names of Richard Knightley, 

 Erasmus Dryden, John Cartwright, and Richard Samwell.' 



Matters speedily ripened in the direction desired by these petitioners. 

 Parliament, after a very thorough fashion, had taken over the royal supremacy 

 before the petition was presented, and had made itself the supreme judge in 

 the affairs of the Church. Northamptonshire (so far as can be ascertained), 

 was the very first county to have a local committee for dealing conjointly with 

 sequestrations and scandalous ministers. This committee was in working 

 order and commenced operations as early as May, 1641." In compliance, 

 also, with petitions from Northampton and elsewhere, the bishops were 

 excluded from voting during the session of 164 1. In December of that year 

 twelve of the bishops were sent to the Tower and imprisoned for making a 

 protest against the validity of Acts of Parliament passed during their absence 

 from the House of Lords. John Towers, who had left the deanery of Peter- 

 borough for the bishopric of the diocese in 1638, was one of the number. 

 On his release he joined the king at Oxford. In February, 1642, the bishops 

 were excluded by statute from Parliament. In 1643, the Solemn League and 

 Covenant was accepted by the Commons, as the condition of military assis- 

 tance from the Scots, and Episcopacy was abolished. On 19 March, the 

 Covenant was taken by the town and garrison of Northampton. During 

 1645-6 Parliament abolished the Book of Common Prayer, substituted the 

 ' Directory for the Publique Worship of God,' and ordered the establishment 

 of presbyteries throughout the kingdom.' Henceforth, for fifteen years, the 

 form of state religion was in the eyes of the law Presbyterian, and the Epis- 

 copal Church of England was not only destitute of legal rights, but the 

 exercise of its liturgy was subject to legal penalties. 



The elaborate scheme of a parish presbytery, a classical assembly and a 

 provincial synod for all the counties of England, was never thoroughly carried 

 out: in some districts it only existed in a more or less skeleton form, and in 

 others dwindled away after a few years' trial, through hostility to the disci- 

 pline. In London, Lancashire, and Derbyshire,* it retained a fairly strong 

 hold to the last, but in Northamptonshire (where the classis was most popular 

 during the reign of Elizabeth) it seems never to have taken root. At all 

 events no proof is forthcoming of the definite establishment and continuance 

 of a single classis, or of Presbyterian ordination throughout the whole of the 

 shire.' This absence of rally to a Presbyterian form of church government 

 in Northamptonshire possibly arose from that county being the centre of the 



' The petition was printed, together with two to the like effect from the county of Kent. B.M. Pam- 

 phlet, E 135 (36). 



' We are indebted to Mr. Alderman Wetherell of Northampton for the loan of a valuable MS. record of 

 the proceedings of the Committee for Sequestrations in Northamptonshire. There are a few instances in 1 64 1, 

 and several undated ones : from 8 May, 1644,10 17 Dec. 1644 the entries are full and regular. The pro- 

 ceedings were methodical, and the committee met several times each week. 



' At the end of the parish register of Great Doddington, Northants, is the following note: 'We whose 

 names are underwritten have made the Protestation framed and made by the House of Commons. Antho. 

 Warters. cler.' Then follow seven signatures and the marks of forty-nine persons who were unable to write. 



' Joum. of Derby. Arch. Soc, vol. ii, (1879), wherein is an annotated transcript of the Minute Book of the 

 Wirksworth classis, and full details of religious worship under the Commonwealth, by Rev. Dr. Cox. 



* Mr. Shaw states in his exhaustive History of the English Church during the Civil Wars and under the Common- 

 toealth (1900), that he has not found a single Northamptonshire illustration of Presbyterianism in all the docu- 

 ments he has consulted. 



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