ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



solely in the aftermath. For in no domain did the Restoration mark so 

 profoundly vital a change in the national life as it did in the religious 

 domain. After an interim of negotiation and agitation — a period during 

 which many of the royalist clergy either quietly or by mere course of law 

 resumed their former livings — the settlement imposed by the Uniformity 

 Act definitely closed the doors of the national church to the Nonconformist, 

 Presbyterian and Independent alike. From that moment there ceased to be 

 in England even in theory a single all-embracing national church. Up to 

 that moment, in the eye of the constitutional lawyer, the Church of England 

 had covered every extreme of opinion whether of Roman Catholic recusant 

 on the one hand or of Puritan Nonconformist on the other. The Erastian 

 conception which underlay the English Reformation of the sixteenth century 

 had endured till the seventeenth — the conception, namely, that the nation and 

 the church were one in their extent and one in their subjection to the civil 

 power. The mere fact that Separatist, Brownist, or other congregations on 

 the one hand, or Roman Catholic missions on the other, actually existed (in 

 secret) never for a moment shook the Tudor or Stuart conception of eccle- 

 siastical unity. One and all they were considered to be as much within the 

 church as they were within the civil state, and they were made to know it. 

 From 1662, however, such merely statesman's conception of unity was relin- 

 quished, and a wider conception took its place, one which no longer made the 

 nation and the church co-terminous, one which recognized that civil or 

 national unity could be achieved without ecclesiastical unity. Henceforth the 

 history of the Church of England no longer covers the whole of the ground, 

 becoming the story of merely such portions of the community as elect to be 

 of its membership ; and such as do not so elect occupy each their own ground 

 and have each their separate history. What has hitherto been a single 

 thread of history is divided henceforth into strands, each leading far asunder. 

 Of course such a result was not achieved in a night. The actual concrete 

 institution or formula was everywhere achieved in practice long before the 

 conception itself was nakedly expressed or accepted. It is perhaps natural 

 too that the Church of England itself should have been the last and slowest 

 in the process of conversion. 



Postponing for a moment the story of the Episcopal Church, a few 

 words are necessary to guide us through the maze of later Dissenting and Free 

 Church history. Two merely incidental starting points are afforded us in 

 the ejections in 1662 and the licences granted in 1672. Some seventy 

 ejections are recorded up to and including 1662, but not all for Noncon- 

 formity. For this cause the principal sufferers were Nathaniel Heywood 

 of Ormskirk, Edmund Jones of Eccles, Richard Goodwin of Bolton, 

 William Bell of Huyton, Henry Finch of Walton, Robert Yates of 

 Warrington, and Isaac Ambrose of Garstang.*" Some were ejected by 

 force or by mere process of law before the Act of Uniformity, Many 

 were merely curates of chapels of ease, without any endowment at all, or 

 with but a scanty revenue ; many of them, as John Angier at Denton, 

 appear to have been allowed to minister in their old chapels without any 



*" Among the more curious cases are those of James Starkie of North Meols, who retained his rectory 

 and yet is reckoned among Nonconformists ; of Charles Hotham of Wigan ; as also of Joseph Thompson of 

 Sefton, who gave way to the lawful rector in 1660, and afterwards acted as his curate. 



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