ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



It was, however, a very hard time for all the less distinguished of the 

 ejected clergy. As late as 1655 an edict was issued prohibiting any ejected 

 minister from keeping a school, or acting as tutor ; whilst the punishment 

 for using the Book of Common Prayer, or performing any rite of the church, 

 however privately, was banishment from the realm. 



With 1660 came the restoration of the monarchy, and with it the re- 

 establishment of episcopacy. The numerous ecclesiastical acts of the govern- 

 ment of the interregnum were regarded as invalid, and not even honoured by 

 any formal repeal. Northamptonshire had been one of the first counties to 

 insist upon Parliament completing the reformation of religion by the abolition 

 of the episcopacy ; and now she was among the very first to present to 

 Charles II an address begging for the restoration of episcopal government. 

 On 20th June the brief address of the noblemen, gentlemen, and freeholders 

 of the county of Northampton was presented to the king at Whitehall.' 



The bishops at once resumed the control of their dioceses without await- 

 ing any specific request or injunction. But several of the ejected bishops had 

 meanwhile died, including Bishop Tower, of Peterborough. Benjamin Laney, 

 dean of Rochester, who had attended Charles II in exile, was consecrated as 

 his successor. 



The legal re-establishment of episcopacy proceeded apace, and the 

 bishops took possession of the endowments of their sees without any fresh 

 legislation. An Act of Parliament of 1660 restored those of the parish 

 clergy who had been ousted from their livings during the Commonwealth, 

 and in the following year the bishops were replaced in the House of Lords 

 and a complete restoration was made to the Episcopalians of the church 

 property held at the beginning of the Civil War. 



The Savoy Conference failed to reunite the different schools of religious 

 thought, and was not favoured by the bishops, the king, or Clarendon. The 

 Prayer Book was revised, and the new Act of Uniformity, making it the only 

 legal service book in England, became law in 1662. All ministers were 

 obliged to use it in their churches after St. Bartholomew's Day, and at the 

 same time to repudiate the covenant and to declare it unlawful to take up 

 arms against the king. This led to the resignation or ejection of nearly 2,000 

 ministers on 24 August, 1662. The number was not so large as those who 

 lost their livings in the Commonwealth period ; but it excluded from the 

 national church a large number of men of high character and attainments. 

 Among the most prominent of those who resigned their benefices in this 

 county rather than conform to the new Act were Vincent of Wilby, Cawdry 

 of Little Billing, Maidwell of Kettering, and Whiting of Aldwinkle.^ Here 

 as elsewhere there were not a few clergy who passed from Episcopacy to 

 Presbyterianism, and back again to Episcopacy as the times changed, and 

 many others who, having been beneficed under the Commonwealth, now 

 decided to conform, and hence, of course, had to submit to episcopal 

 ordination. 



The Acts promoted by militant support of Episcopacy which followed 

 upon the Act of Uniformity with the object of stamping out those forms of 



' Printed broadside, 669, fol. 25 (B.M.). 



' For an account of the ejected ministers arranged in counties see Calamy, Life of Baxter, vol. ii (17 13), 

 and his volumes of the amended lists issued in 1727. 



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