BAPTISTS AND FIFTH MONARCHY MEN,* THIS admirable piece of research,
which sheds light on a very obscure side of Commonwealth history, is one of the prize essays of the American Historical Association. Miss Brown has made a diligent use of all available authorities, and any one who knows that period will remember how confusing and multitudinous those authorities are. The two sects in question were the chief thorns in Cromwell's side during his uneasy reign. They were "poor people of God," and he had not the heart to deal with them hardly ; but as they professed a creed which made civil government impossible he had frequently to suspend their activities in the interests of public order. Miss Brown's study shows the gradual tendency of Cromwell's mind to conservatism under the stern pressure of facts, and it enables us to realize how easily Monk effected the Restoration. Up till the very eve of it England seemed a botch-potch of warring sects, its chief concern the exact interpretation of certain passages in the Book of Daniel ; and then in a month or two the ordinary man loses patience and reasserts himself, and the sects disappear from national history.
The spiritual forefathers of the English Baptists were the Anabaptists of Holland, and the first actual Church in England was made up of dissenters from the English Separatist Church in Amsterdam. They never acknowledged the name of Anabaptist, and had no connexion with John of Leyden and his theories, being a remarkably decorous and peaceable body. They all believed in adult baptism and the voluntary principle in Church government, and they were divided into General Baptists, who believed in universal redemption, and Particular Baptists, who held Calvinistic views on that subject. Their organization was so democratic as to cease almost to be an organization, and male and female had the liberty of prophesying. They were submissive to existing governments, and in their public confessions asserted that magistracy was an ordinance of God and that Church members should hold civil office. They maintained, however, that a magistrate must allow liberty of con- science, otherwise he had no right to the obedience of the faithful. The Baptists deserve all credit as among the earliest apostles of toleration in England. Most of them, it is true, excluded non-Christian faiths and popery from this principle, but many of the General Baptists would have extended it to all men. They were mostly humble folk, but, besides the immortal Bunyan, they included in their ranks
• The Political Activities of the Baptista and Fifth Monarchy Men in England during the interregnum, By Loire Fargo Brown, Ph.D. London: Henry Frowde. [6s. 6d. net.]
Henry Lawrence, the president of Cromwell's Council of State; William Steele, who was Chancellor of Ireland; and the famous Praise-God Barbone. The Fifth Monarchy men came both from Baptist and Independent Churches, but the greater number of their preachers were Baptists. They based their creed upon Daniel's vision of the four beasts, which they interpreted as the four great Empires, Assyrian, Persian; Greek, and Roman. They argued from the Thirty Years' Wan that the Roman Monarchy was near its end, and that the Fifth Monarchy, with Christ at its head, was approaching. Men liko Thomas Harrison kept alive the spirit which had conquered at Naseby and Worcester. The Fifth Monarchy men were very precise in their anticipations. One of their preachers, after a careful comparison of Daniel with Revelation, fixed the date for the conversion of the Jews at 1650 or 1656, and for the coming of Christ about 1700. Norfolk was the cradle of the move- ment, and East Anglia and London were its chief strongholdsi Its votaries looked at every incident, domestic and foreign, from the point of view of their peculiar calendar. The " little horn" on the head of the fourth beast in Daniel gave rise to different interpretations—William the Conqueror, the Stuarts; Charles I., and the Papacy being various explanations. The last was the most popular, and, since the "little horn" had to be destroyed before the Fifth Monarchy could begin, there was no time to be lost in unseating the Pope. Hence they cordially welcomed the Dutch war as giving them a foothold. on the Continent for the purpose, and they were grievously disappointed when peace was made. They had a heavy programme before them, for one of their tasks was to trans- port the Jews back to their own country. " We shall gather home the Jews out of the Isles first, for those are they shall, first be called, and the ships of Tharsis shall do it." It could- not be long before they came into conflict with the sorely harassed Lord Protector.
The Fifth Monarchy men cordially approved of Cromwell'a treatment of the dregs of the Long Parliament, and they welcomed Barbone's Parliament as an instalment of govern- ment by the saints, " because of the lowness and innocency of the title, having little of earthly glory about it." But their demands soon brought them into antagonism with the Pro- tector, for one of the first points in their programme was the abolition of the existing laws of England and the aubstitutiort of the laws of God as laid down in the Scriptures. They quarrelled not only with the moderate Commonwealth mesa but with the Levellers, for "while the ideal of the Leveller& was government by the people, that of the Fifth Monarchists- was government by the elect, and while the Levellers longed. for a full and free Parliament, the Fifth Monarchy men. longed for a dispensation from Heaven." The situation very soon became impossible; the experiment came to an end, and Harrison and his little band had to be removed by a file of soldiers. Then followed the Protectorate, which the Fifth. Monarchists violently objected to as government by a single person. Their preachers in Blackfriars and elsewhere poured upon Cromwell a flood of Apocalyptic abuse. He was the" vile person" referred to in Daniel xi. 21, and presently he was elevated to the position of the "little horn" which was to make war upon the saints, but which the saints would' ultimately destroy. The more moderate Baptists held aloof from these attacks, and the new Parliament, which had a distinct Presbyterian bias, gave them no support. Cromwell, who was slowly being forced to the belief that an unorganized church, like an unorganized State, meant anarchy, spoke out frankly on the subject. He talked of the "mistaken notion of the Fifth Monarchy :—
"A notion 1 hope we all honour, wait, and hope for, that Jesus. Christ will have a time to set up His reign in our hearts, by sub- duing those corruptions and lusts and evils that are there, which reign now more in the world than I hope in due time they shall. do. . . . But for men to entitle themselves on this principle, that. they are the only men to rule kingdoms, govern nations, and give laws to people, . . . truly, they had need give clear manifestation of God's presence with them, before wise men will submit to their- conclusions."
The violence of the preachers compelled him to issue an ordinance against treason, and this led to endless difficulties.
He was very averse from putting honest fanatics to death, and consequently he was compelled to keep them in prison without, a trial. This not only made his attempt at repression a farce, but it gave a powerful cry to every opponent of the Cromwellian regime. The prisons were filled with turbulent preachers who.
testified at all seasons, to the immense discomfort of their gaolers. The failure of the Hispaniola expedition was con- sidered a judgment of God on Cromwell's backslidings ; "Apostate, Covenant-breaker, Usurper, and Persecutor " were the mildest terms levelled at the bead of the State, who was also publicly accused of "pride, luxury, and lasciviousness." Risings like that of Venner the tanner came to little, but the strife of the sectaries made all Cromwell's serious attempts at reconstruction impossible, including his own assumption of a crown. Baptists and Levellers in the army began to weaken the Lord Protector's chief support, and he was actually com- pelled to issue an edict in Scotland against Baptists holding any public appointments. In Ireland the discreet rule of Henry Cromwell—an exceptionally able administrator— effectually suppressed Baptist activity. He had not the tolerance of his father, but he bad all his plainness of speech. "Is it a dangerous error," we find him asking, "that dominion is founded on grace when it is held by the Church of Rome, and a sound principle when it is held by the Fifth Monarchy?" After Oliver's death the Presbyterian element reasserted itself in the transient Conventions, but the real power lay with the army—or, rather, it lay with the people at large, who were growing very tired of all factions, and with the men who could read aright the popular desires. Even the sectaries began to despair and became silent; all except a few zealous Fifth Monarchists, who still proclaimed an approaching Armageddon.
It is impossible in reading this story to withhold a certain admiration for the extremists who carried to their logical conclusion the principles of Puritanism. Men like Harrison had a wild elevation of purpose and a poetic fire which make them stand out, like some of Blake's mystical figures, from the ordinary ranks of humanity. One must marvel, too, at the superhuman patience of the great Oliver. It was the anomaly of his career that he, the most tolerant man of his age, should be perpetually at war with those bodies which advocated the widest religions liberty. He never lost either his faith in human nature or his Christian charity, and we to-day can share the emotions of his friends who in his last hours wondered at " those ejaculatory breathings of his smile for the blessings of love and union among the servants of God, . . . particularly praying for those that were angry with him."
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