92 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
THE FOUNDERS OF CHAELES CHURCH. 
BY MR. E. G. BENNETT. 
(Read December 22nd, 1881.) 
In dealing with my subject I cannot carry you back, as has been 
so ably done for St. Andrew, into the dim distance of ages gone by, 
and fail to identify the time when the Church of Plymouth was 
not there ; and yet, on the other hand, I shall not succeed in the 
object of my lecture if you go away from this hall with the idea 
that Charles Church is so recent that there is nothing about it and 
its founders worth telling. The time when the Church was founded 
is a period full of interest to us Englishmen, for then it was that 
the principles of civil government and ecclesiastical polity came to 
be regarded as a science which, worked at and elaborated by brave 
men, earnest thinkers, and devotees, have developed themselves into 
the institutions of modern England, and placed her in the van of 
civilization and progress. 
In order to enter into the spirit of the times, I have to ask you 
to carry yourselves in fancy back to the Plymouth of 250 years 
ago, when she had shot ahead of the rival towns of Dartmouth and 
Fowey, and was the principal centre for the Royal Navy west of 
Portsmouth. 
The masterly picture of Macaulay, of the state of England in 1685, 
contained in his history, gives an idea of somewhat later times 
than those I am dealing with; but at the opening of the seven- 
teenth century the spirit of maritime adventure had in a measure 
done its work in opening the eyes of the nation to the fact that 
there was as glorious and arduous work to be done in carrying the 
flag of England to lands beyond the seas, for the purpose of found- 
ing there New Englands, as in preceding times was found in the 
dazzling, though happily fruitless, task of invading France, and 
seeking to annex it to the English crown. In those scenes and 
