words, &c.; into enormities, disturbances, misbehaviours, frays, &c. committed in any church, chapel, or churchyard; to order, correct, reform, and punish any persons wilfully and obstinately absenting themselves from church, and such Divine service as by the Laws and Statutes of the Realm is there appointed to be said. The penalties prescribed for such misdemeanours by the Act of Uniformity, to be levied by the Churchwardens for the benefit of the poor of their respective parishes; to punish incests, adulteries, fornications, disorders in marriages, &c. Power is given to the Commissioners to fine and imprison offenders; the obstinate to be visited with excommunication, and other ecclesiastical censures; bond or recognizance to be taken for the appearance of offenders; the oath of supremacy prescribed by the first of the four Statutes recited is to be tendered; the refusal by any individual to take such oath to be certified to the Court of King's Bench. To all processes, orders, &c. issued by the Commissioners, or any three of them, a seal is to be affixed, engraved with the rose surmounted by the crown, the letters E. R. on either side the same, and round the circumference this legend, Sigil: Com'issar : Reg: Ma: ad cas': Eccli'ast.

Original documents have been selected to shew how

* We have taken the liberty to pass over without entire transcription many of these documents; among them several informations taken by Sir William More respecting sectaries, which shew that, as most human measures, essentially good, are subject to some alloy of evil, so schism and fanaticism began early to assail the English Reformed Church. The most active fanatical sects of the day were, we believe, those styled the Family of Love and the Anabaptists. We have selected, from a string of absurd and ridiculous tenets recorded in the MSS.

these powers were acted upon; and in this place it may be observed that no comparison can justly be drawn by those who are disposed to pronounce the above measures of a severe and persecuting character, between the times when true religion had just emancipated herself from the shackles of a tyrannous superstition, rooted by ancient usage most strongly in the hearts of many, and those in

the following as specimens. A cobbler of Deepden, the author of a fruitful schism, taught " that there ought not to be any prescript form of prayer, but that at every assembly the minister must devise a new order; that the prayers in the book of Common Prayer were generally wicked; that the thing preached in England was not the Gospel; that it was not lawful to seek the reformation of these things by her Majesty, the Parliament, or the Bishops, but that the common people may and must reform by their own authority." Democratical principles in our own days could go no further. Another information reports, that any person received as a member of the sect was to have all his goods in common with the rest of his brethren. When they assembled before their elder for hearing the Scriptures read and expounded, he addressed them thus: "All you that are but weak, and not come to perfection, withdraw yourselves, and pray that you may be made worthy," &c. upon which these "weaklyngs" retired. "When a questyon is demanded of anye of them, they doo of ordre staye a great whyle ere they do aunswere, and comonlye theyre fyrst worde shall be Surelye, or So!" Evidently the rudiments of the Yea and Nay of Quakerism. men to be infants under thirty years of age. infant should be baptized, "they say Yea," meaning that until that period they are yet in their infancy. One of the most amusing and probably well-founded charges against them, was, "that their bishops, elders, or deacons, doe increase in welthe, but theyr dyscyples become poor."

They decree all
If asked if an

which she has been long cherished by equal laws, confirmed by a grateful experience of the blessings she has conferred, and when a confidence in her just merits has induced her to relinquish much of her political ascendancy, in the generous endeavour to conciliate men of all opinions. May such concession never be successfully perverted to weaken her influence, to introduce anarchy under the form of liberality, and to make that anarchy the anvil on which to reforge fetters for the body politic! for it must ever be remembered that true religion, united with just and vigorous government, is the only source of real and rational liberty, and that the licentiousness of infidels, of libellers, and seditious demagogues, subject the good and loyal for the time to the most bitter of persecutions, and end at the last in the establishment of arbitrary power. History points at Cromwell and Napoleon as apt illustrations of the axiom.

Confinement of Henry Wriothesley, second Earl of Southampton of that name, at Loseley, as a suspected Papist.

On the 16th of June, 1570, Lord William Howard, Sir Francis Knowles, and Sir William Cecill, addressed letters, as Lords of the Council, to Mr. Becher, Sheriff of London, signifying that the Queen's Majesty, having cause given her to conceive some displeasure towards the Earl of Southampton, had thought proper to commit him to his the Sheriff's custody; that he was to cause him to be lodged in some convenient place within his house, and to allow him to have conference with none save such his domestic attendants as he should have selected to wait on

him; that he should neither write or receive any letters which should not be subjected to the Sheriff's inspection; that he might be allowed to walk in the Sheriff's garden in the absence of strangers, provided that gentleman, or one of his trusty servants, were with him.

On the 15th of July following, the plague then raging in London, the Council signified to the Sheriff the Queen's gracious pleasure that the Earl, not being in very good health, should be removed from his custody, and transferred to that of Mr. More, of Loseley, who received orders to repair to London, and take the Earl into his custody, a charge of no small personal trouble and confinement to Mr. More, who was at the same time instructed to bring him to conform to the use of the Common Prayer.

The reports of Mr. More to the Council on this subject, are curiously minute. The uniting in the Common Prayer was considered at that period a sort of test of the loyalty of suspected persons. Southampton had married the daughter of Anthony Browne, Viscount Montague. This nobleman exerted all his influence to obtain the release of his son-in-law; nevertheless he remained in durance at Loseley for three years, when he was permitted to remove to the seat of the Viscount at Cowdray, in Sussex, with permission occasionally to inspect the progress made in a seat which he was erecting for himself in Hampshire, provided he were absent for only one night at a time. Southampton's confinement at Loseley was made as agreeable to him as circumstances might admit. His lordship, after his enlargement, continued on the most friendly terms with Mr. More, afterwards Sir William. In 1573 he announces to him, in a letter dated from Cowdray, his lady's delivery of "a goodly boy," who became afterwards the heir of his title, and the munificent patron of Shakspeare.

(87.)

The Earl of Southampton to Mr. More. He is anxious
to be removed from London,

MR. MORE,

;

After my ryght harty come'dacions, I have by this berer sent unto you the counsells letters, wherby you shall p'ceyve that I am apoynted to continue wth you for a time. I assure your geste (guest) cumeth wth no very good will, having rather to be at my house, if it so plesed them but sins it is ther plesur, that I were owght (out) of the town,* otherwise I ame glad they have placed me wth so honest a gentleman and my frend; and so desiring you to cum to morowe, I bid you farwell wth harty comendacions to yor wife. Fro' Londo', the 16th of July, 1570. Yr loving ffrend,

To my loving ffrend

H. SOUTHAMPTON.

Mr. More gev this.

* On account of the infectious disease then prevailing, Mr. Becher, the Sheriff of London, to whose custody the Earl had at first been committed, informs Mr. More, in a letter dated 10th of August 1570, "that the sickness of plague had incroached nearer his house, being in Cornhill and Lombard Street;" that it was of the nature of a burning ague, but that few died of it. It is therefore probable that the disease so frequently recurring in London, to which the name of plague is assigned by the compilers of ancient chronicles, was in many instances but an epidemic fever, varying in its degree of malignity.