On April 25, 1660 the Convention Parliament met,
and on May 1 they voted to restore Charles Stuart,
who was proclaimed King in London one week later.
Charles II returned to London on May 29, his 30th birthday.
He had learned from his father’s experience
and was very adaptable.
The next day his first Privy Council included royalists,
Presbyterians, and former officers of the Commonwealth.
On June 1 the Convention proclaimed itself a Parliament
that would sit until December 29.
They included Anglicans, Presbyterians, and independents
and confirmed all legal proceedings during the Interregnum,
but they could be appealed.
Their Act of Indemnity and Oblivion on August 29
pardoned all but 57 persons.
Thirty were condemned to death for having beheaded
his father Charles I in January 1649,
but only thirteen were executed.
The realm had a large debt, and they disbanded the army.
They restored confiscated property of the Crown
and the Church, which had land valued at £2,400,000,
but wealth within the Church was distributed rather unequally.
Royalists who lost land could petition to get it back,
but not those who sold it to pay debts.
The officers of the Commonwealth and Puritan merchants
who purchased such land even at low prices
held on to their property.
In the Restoration era rich men with land
grew richer while the poor became poorer.
They continued to enclose lands as they had since 1630.
Debt forced Charles II to sell most of his land
or to grant feudal rights.
In 1660 when annual revenue was about £1,000,000,
the kingdom’s debt was £3,000,000.
The Convention Parliament voted for taxes to pay for the
arrears in soldiers’ pay that cost almost £1,000,000.
The Court of Wards was abolished, ending the King’s right
to sell wardships of minor inheritors.
In compensation the Commons authorized customs
and excise taxes on ale, beer, tea, and coffee which raised
annual revenues to an average of £1,200,000
for the next four years.
In November 1660 the Royal Society was founded in London
with a grant from Charles II to improve natural knowledge.
The original committee of twelve was mathematician
William Brouncker, physicist and chemist Robert Boyle,
merchant-treasurer Abraham Hill, economist William Petty,
architect Christopher Wren, physician Jonathan Goddard,
Anglican minister John Wilkins, the Scots Alexander Bruce
and Robert Moray, and astronomers William Ball,
Paul Niele, and Lawrence Rooke.
On March 6, 1665 they began publishing the world’s first
scientific journal, Philosophical Transactions.
Boyle pioneered chemistry and published
The Skeptical Chymist in 1661, and in 1662 he showed
that air is necessary for respiration, combustion,
circulation of blood, and the transmission of sound.
On January 6, 1661 the wine-cooper Thomas Venner led
about fifty Fifth Monarchy Men in a brief uprising
that tried to make Jesus king, but it was easily suppressed.
Most were killed, and ten were captured;
two weeks later fifteen were executed.
This led to the appointment of George Monck as
Captain-General for life and Duke of Albemarle,
and his troops later became known
as the Coldstream Guards.
John Evelyn (1620-1706) kept a diary from 1641 to 1697,
but it was not printed until 1818.
In 1661 he published Fumifugium with his plan for dispersing
the smoke from coal and other fires from London.
He complained that the air in London was not healthy
for the lungs and noted that many factories
were burning large amounts of coal.
He advised planting trees and shrubs
and suggested moving industries outside the city.
Navy administrator Samuel Pepys also kept a diary from
January 1, 1660 to May 31, 1669 that was published in 1825.
On October 25, 1660 Charles II declared religious freedom
for all practicing Christians, and from April 5, 1661 to July 23
Anglican and Presbyterian leaders met at Savoy Palace
to see if they could agree on religious matters.
An election created the Cavalier Parliament that opened
on May 8, 1661 and was dominated by revived Anglicans
with less than sixty Presbyterians.
William Petty estimated that less than 2,000 active men
controlled the Parliamentary elections, and he also noted
that the division of labor reduces the cost of production.
On May 20 the House of Commons established the
Church of England and took its sacraments,
and they ordered the Solemn League and Covenant burned.
The House of Lords was also restored
with the bishops on June 30.
None of the peers convicted of murder
in the next 42 years would be punished.
The House of Commons insisted on initiating all money bills
and would not let the Lords amend them.
King Charles appointed thirty men to his Privy Council,
and twelve of them had fought against his father.
The Committee for Trade and Plantations formed in July 1660
had ten members, but only two were Royalists.
The King’s Bench replaced the
jurisdiction of the Star Chamber.
In 1661 the Act against Tumultuous Petitioning banned
collecting more than twenty signatures on
a political petition to the King or Parliament.
Militia Acts of July 1661 and 1662 gave
the King control over those soldiers.
The Press Act of 1662 required licenses for printing,
and a hearth tax of two shillings on each fireplace or stove
added that March was unpopular.
The Younger Henry Vane was a Parliamentarian during
the Civil War and then worked closely with
Oliver Cromwell during the Commonwealth.
Parliament put him on trial for treason,
and he was not allowed a proper defense.
A partisan jury convicted him,
and he was beheaded on June 14, 1662.
Charles II appointed his conservative advisor Edward Hyde
as Chancellor and made him Earl of Clarendon.
A series of new laws attempted to unite the nation
with an established religion.
On December 20, 1661 the Corporation Act excluded
municipalities that refused to renounce the Covenant
and take the sacrament of the Church of England.
The Book of Common Prayer was revised by December,
and in April 1662 Parliament approved.
In May the Act of Uniformity imposed use of this
prayer-book and included the Quaker Act which required
subjects to swear allegiance to the King.
That year about 1,300 Quakers were in prison.
Uniformity required clergy to assent to the new liturgy
or renounce their livings by Bartholomew’s Day (August 24)
when 1,909 dissenting clergy lost their parishes.
The new Archbishop of Canterbury William Juxon
and the Bishop of London
were put in charge of licensing printing.
Margaret Cavendish, who had married the royalist
Duke of Newcastle in 1645, and while in exile in Paris
had written her autobiography, poetry, and natural philosophy,
published Orations of Diverse Person in 1662.
In her essays she argued that women
can be stronger than men because of love.
She also wrote on science, and with her romantic novel,
The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing World,
an early work of science fiction, she included her
Observations upon Experimental Philosophy.
Also in 1662 she had 14 of her plays published
and some more in 1668, but none of them
were produced before her death in 1673.
More laws aimed at dissenters
were called the “Clarendon Code.”
Charles published his first Declaration of Indulgence in
December which was written by the new Secretary of State
Henry Bennet, but it’s tolerance angered the
House of Commons and had little effect.
They passed the Conventicle Act in 1664 that was aimed at
nonconformists and prohibited any religious assembly of more
than five people that was conducted not in accordance
with the Book of Common Prayer.
In October 1665 the Five-Mile Act banned nonconformists
from preaching or teaching within five miles of a town
and all ejected clergy from living in or visiting
within five miles of their former parish.
Nonconformists were also excluded
from universities for many years.
The Triennial Act passed in 1641 had required Parliament
to meet at least every three years,
but the Cavalier Parliament repealed it in April 1663.
Judges remained in office during good behavior,
and in 1665 a law required jurors to own freehold land
worth at least £20.
Enforcement of the Conventicle Act decreased,
and it expired in March 1669.
In October 1660 Clarendon’s daughter Anne Hyde was
pregnant and declared that the King’s brother James,
Duke of York, was the father and that
they were secretly married in her father’s house.
James tried to deny it at first; but the truth came out,
and he recognized her as the Duchess of York.
On June 23, 1661 Charles agreed to a marriage treaty
with Portugal and promised to defend the Portuguese
against Spain and in the East Indies in exchange for
the dowry of princess Catarina de Bragança
whom he married on May 21, 1662.
Her dowry included two million Portuguese crowns
(£300,000), Tangier, and Bombay.
She made drinking tea popular,
but they would have no children.
Yet Charles had so many mistresses that
he recognized fourteen children borne by them.
On October 27 England sold Dunkirk for £400,000 to France
because it cost £120,000 a year to defend and could get
England involved in a war on the continent.
In 1663 the first turnpike tolls were collected in England.
On March 23, 1663 Charles rewarded eight nobles,
who had helped him gain the throne,
by giving them land in the American colony of Carolina.
Lord Ashley was included, and his friend, John Locke,
wrote a constitution for the colony that would grant
nobility to anyone who could purchase 3,000 acres.
On July 8 the King granted a charter to Rhode Island
protecting freedom of religion.
Four days later Parliament passed the second Navigation Act
that required all goods from British colonies
to be transported in British ships from British ports.
The result would be that the smuggling already
used to avoid restrictions would increase.
On March 22, 1664 Charles gave his brother James,
Duke of York, extensive land west of the Connecticut River
and east to Delaware Bay which had belonged to the Dutch.
By 1664 the King’s debts had risen to £1,250,000.
While the monarchy was restored,
the power of the Parliament was ending feudalism.
Gilbert Sheldon succeeded as Archbishop of Canterbury
and agreed that clergy should be taxed
at the same rate as the laity.
The Royal Society appointed the
Georgicall Committee to study agriculture.
In 1665 Robert Hooke discovered that plants take in
and expel air and contain living cells.
That year the King’s physician Peter Chamberlen
invented forceps for use by midwives.
In 1667 Hooke urged that weather be systematically recorded,
and the next year he published his Discourse on Earthquakes.
Also in 1668 John Wilkins offered An Essay towards a Real
Character, and a Philosophical Language in which
he proposed a universal language to replace Latin
and a decimal (metric) system for measurements.
The Convention Parliament had passed a Navigation Act
in September 1660 that required all goods imported be
in English ships or in ships from the nation
where the goods originated.
Although the Dutch and the English had agreed to a treaty
in September 1662, the Staple Act passed on July 27, 1663
limited English colonists to imports of European goods
only from England in English ships.
On January 10, 1663 Charles II granted a charter
to the Royal African Company.
In April 1664 the House of Commons favored another
commercial war against the Dutch that broke out that summer.
Charles borrowed £200,000 from the City of London and
approved a privateering expedition by Captain
Robert Holmes
against the Dutch East India Company in West Africa.
Col. Nicolls with three ships took over
New Netherlands in America.
War was declared on February 22, 1665, and Parliament
in October authorized £1,250,000 for the war,
which eventually cost £5,367,000.
On June 3 (OS) in a naval battle off Lowestoft the English
destroyed 17 Dutch ships and killed at least 2,000
and captured another 2,000
while losing only one ship and about 400 men.
In 1666 France and Denmark allied with the Dutch,
and in early June at a battle in the Channel the
English lost 8,000 men, two admirals, and twenty ships,
though the English were victorious
at the mouth of the Thames on July 25.
On June 18, 1667 Dutch ships led by Admiral de Ruyter
sailed up the Thames and burned four English ships in the
Medway and towed away the Royal Charles.
Peace was restored with the Treaty of Breda on July 21.
England gained the colonies that became New York,
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware,
and the Dutch gained a worldwide monopoly on nutmeg.
Meanwhile England had made a commercial agreement
with Spain in May 1667.
About two-thirds of London’s 460,000 people left town
when the Great Plague of London began spreading
in April 1665; it lasted through 1666,
taking about 100,000 human lives.
This was later understood to be a bubonic disease
spread by fleas from rats.
The poor with the disease were locked in their houses
and given food by constables.
Only about one in ten victims survived
as many physicians left England.
The London Gazette began publishing from Oxford
on November 16, 1665 and transferred
to London on February 1, 1666.
On September 2, 1666 a fire began in a bakery and in five
days wiped out most of the wooden buildings in the old city,
destroying 13,200 houses, 89 churches,
50 community buildings, and goods worth £3,500,000.
Charles II ordered London rebuilt using bricks and stones
instead of wood and appointed architect Christopher Wren
director of the rebuilding including St. Paul’s cathedral.
New laws were enacted to clean the streets.
England’s revenues fell to £700,000 in 1665 and 1666.
In the winter of 1666-67 riots broke out in many parts
of England because of unemployment and high taxes.
Charles II agreed to a secret treaty
with Louis XIV in March 1667.
Parliament impeached the Earl of Clarendon in October;
he fled to France in November,
and in December they banished him for life.
Henry Bennet had been Secretary of State
since October 1662, was made Baron Arlington in 1665,
and took charge of foreign policy.
James Howell was the son of a Welsh rector
and was elected a fellow at Oxford in 1623.
When the Civil War broke out in 1642, he was imprisoned
for eight years, possibly for having been a royalist spy.
He had traveled and learned many languages and wrote letters,
fiction, and histories while in prison.
In 1660 he published his Lexicon Tetraglotton,
which was a dictionary for English, French, Italian, Latin,
Spanish, and Portuguese, and that year
he became the first royal historiographer-royal for £100 a year.
Thomas Fuller (1608-61) spent twenty years researching
and writing his Worthies of England
which was published in 1662.
He had satirized revolutionary leaders in
Andronicus, or the Unfortunate Politician in 1646
and reflected on those trying times in his
Cause and Cure of a Wounded Conscience in 1647.
He published his Church-History of Britain in 1655.
In 1659 he wrote The Appeal of Injured Innocence,
and in 1660 An Alarum to the Counties of England
and Wales recommended a free parliament.
In 1660 he was appointed chaplain to Charles II.
Henry More (1614-87) was a Cambridge Platonist
and published The Immortality of the Soul in 1659
and The Grand Mystery of Godliness in 1660.
His Enchiridion Ethicum had seven editions from
1667 to 1711, and was translated into English as
An Account of Virtue in 1691.
This book synthesized Aristotle’s ethics with Christian love.
In January 1668 King Charles II made another treaty
with the Dutch and then made it
a triple alliance with Sweden in April.
Parliament approved and voted the King
a subsidy of £800,000 and a new excise.
The mother of Charles was the sister of France’s Louis XIII,
and during his exile before becoming king
Charles had lived for many years in France.
His sister Henrietta married Louis XIV’s brother
Duke Philippe of Orléans on March 31, 1661.
In early 1669 his brother and heir James, Duke of York,
informed Charles, Thomas Clifford, and Henry Bennet
(later Earl of Arlington) that he had converted to Catholicism.
The Parliamentary Commission of Public Accounts issued
a report exposing luxury and immorality at court and
maladministration of the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665-67).
In the two sessions ending in December 1669 they supplied
the King with only £300,000, and in October 1669
Charles announced that it was all spent on the Navy.
In August 1669 France’s Louis XIV sent Colbert’s brother
Charles Albert de Croissy as ambassador
to London to propose an alliance.
Parliament met again in February 1670, and Charles agreed
to a new Conventicle Bill in exchange for funds.
In this session that ended in April and another the next year
Parliament imposed new duties on wine,
legal proceedings, and another excise.
While deciding whether to put a tax on theaters
they discussed the prostitution among actors.
John Coventry asked if the King’s pleasure
lay with the men or the women.
Charles was so upset that he sent his guards
to slit Coventry’s nose to the bone.
After a sword fight they did so, and the House of Commons
banished them and removed the King’s power to pardon them.
On May 2, 1670 Charles II granted a royal charter
to the Hudson’s Bay Company.
On May 22 during Henrietta’s visit Charles II made a secret
treaty with France at Dover in which he promised to declare
himself a Roman Catholic, and Louis XIV granted him
£150,000 and soldiers to enforce the conversion of England.
The treaty was signed by four ministers
who died as Catholics including Arlington and Clifford.
They also agreed to attack Holland despite England’s 1667
peace treaty with the Dutch, and Louis promised
England £225,000 a year and 6,000 troops.
Ashley approved of this, and Buckingham was sent to Paris
to conclude the “simulated treaty” that affirmed the alliance
against the Dutch that was signed by England’s
five chief advisors on December 21.
The third Anglo-Dutch War would begin in March 1672.
On January 2, 1672 Charles II owed £1,328,526,
and the Exchequer stopped making payments on the loans
to London bankers, causing bankruptcies.
He offered to pay his creditors the interest on his debts
but renounced his obligation to repay the principal.
This was the beginning of England’s national debt.
A new economic council was formed with Ashley Cooper
as President and John Locke as secretary.
In March the King made Scottish John Maitland
Duke of Lauderdale, Henry Bennet Earl of Arlington,
Thomas Clifford a baron,
and Ashley Cooper the Earl of Shaftesbury.
On March 15 Charles issued a Declaration of Indulgence that
suspended all penal laws against nonconformists and Catholics,
legalizing private worship for Catholics
and licenses for public worship by Protestant dissenters.
Two days later he declared war on the Dutch.
On May 28 (June 7 NS) Dutch forces led by De Ruyter
fought off the English and French fleets at Southwold Bay.
In the previous three years Parliament had granted
only £660,000, and the government’s debt
was now over two million.
Also in 1672 the English Guinea Company merged with
the Royal Africa Company which was given
a charter and a monopoly on the slave trade.
After a hiatus of 21 months Parliament met in February 1673
and granted to the King £1,260,000 over 18 months.
In exchange Charles on March 8 cancelled the
Declaration of Indulgence and approved the Test Act
requiring all civil and military officers to accept
the sacrament of the Church of England.
As a result in June prominent people such as James, Clifford,
and Shaftesbury resigned their offices
and were exposed as Catholics.
Prince Rupert had a prominent role in the last two Dutch wars
and succeeded James as supreme commander.
When an army of 10,000 men gathered at Blackheath
near London in the summer to invade Holland,
some English became uneasy.
James, Duke of York, married by proxy on September 30
the 15-year-old Catholic princess Mary Beatrice of Modena,
grand-niece of Cardinal Mazarin.
Two-thirds of the Parliament reacted and tried
to annul the marriage, but the King prorogued them
on November 4 and five days later removed
Shaftesbury from the chancellorship.
The Dutch spread propaganda that Charles had allied with
France because he wanted to spread Catholicism in England.
Although Charles II was making his own foreign policy
decisions, a rumor spread that a Cabal of five advisors
was exerting great influence.
The initial letter of their names spelled “cabal.”
They were Treasurer Clifford, Secretary of State Arlington,
Duke of Buckingham, Chancellor of the Exchequer Ashley,
and secretary for Scotland Lauderdale.
The Commons persuaded the King to dismiss Buckingham
and Lauderdale from his Council.
Shaftesbury urged Charles to divorce his childless
Catholic wife, but he refused and dismissed Shaftesbury
from his office as chancellor on November 9.
In 1673 more papists were convicted in Wiltshire
than in the previous twelve years.
English and French ships had blockaded Dutch ports,
but the naval battle off Texel in August
forced them to abandon that.
The Plantation Duty Act of 1673 prohibited trading sugar,
cotton, and tobacco between colonies and required payment
of duties to England, thus giving British merchants
an advantage over colonists.
William Coventry published the pamphlet
England's appeal from the Private Cabal at Whitehall to
the Great Council of the Nation by a true Lover
of his Country which had five editions.
Parliament met again on January 7, 1674.
Both houses of Parliament urged Charles II to make peace,
and William Coventry considered it a war against Protestantism.
Members from the country especially opposed the war.
On February 9 Shaftesbury and the peace party persuaded
the King to withdraw England from the war by signing
the treaty at Westminster that affirmed prewar conditions,
and the Dutch promised to pay an indemnity of £180,000.
In a secret article some English troops commanded
by his natural son, the Duke of Monmouth,
remained with the French army.
James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, had been borne by his
mother Lucy Walter on April 9, 1649, and rumors persisted
that she and Charles had been secretly married.
Although the French gave Charles about £740,000
over six years, the Third Dutch War
had cost much more than that.
Commons members wanted to reform elections and make
sure the Duke of York’s children were being brought up
as Protestants; but Charles prorogued them
on February 24 until November.
In Wales only about one book per year had been published
in Welsh since 1546, but 139 Welsh books
were printed between 1670 and 1700.
A few families increased their hold on the land of Wales
and dominated the elections which favored Tories.
In the period 1660-1714 in sixteen general elections only
40 of 432 election returns were determined by voting
because most were decided privately by landowners.
After the restoration in 1660 Quakers were persecuted
in Wales, and by 1700 most of the Friends had emigrated
to the Holy Experiment in Pennsylvania.
In 1674 the cleric Thomas Gouge, who had been ejected
in 1662, left London to teach children in Wales using English
devotional books, and by 1681 some 3,000 students
had enrolled in the Welsh Trust schools.
Thomas Osborne replaced Clifford as Lord Treasurer in
June 1673, and he was made the Earl of Danby one year later.
He promoted the Church of England, persecuted Protestant
and Catholic dissenters, and opposed the alliance with France.
Parliament had supplied £1,800,000 for the war against the
Dutch, but total military expenditures
surpassed this by £443,000.
Yet the depression of the 1660s was over,
and the economy improved greatly in the 1670s.
In September 1671 the government took over the
administration of customs from the tax farmers,
and so the trade duties went directly into the Royal Exchequer.
Danby had been treasurer of the Navy
and increased this ordinary revenue.
Yet the extravagance of King Charles II
still meant increasing debt.
Danby used bribery to try to influence Parliament.
In the fall of 1675 pensions on the excise tax of £10,000 a year
were paid to about thirty members of Parliament (MPs),
and others were customs commissioners
or officials of Irish revenue.
Danby tried to suppress the spread of dissent
in coffee houses, but that effort failed.
In the fall of 1674 Danby met with bishops,
and in February 1675 the Privy Council approved measures
to strengthen the monopoly of the Anglican Church.
He released the plans for the rebuilding of St. Paul’s Church.
Charles proclaimed his zeal for the Church of England in April,
and two days later Danby asked the Lords to pass a Test Bill
requiring MPs and officials to swear loyalty to the established
government and Church by declaring that resistance against
them is unlawful; but this was opposed by Shaftesbury,
Buckingham, and George Savile,
Marquis of Halifax, in a long debate.
That spring the House of Commons tried without success
to remove Scottish Secretary Lauderdale
and to impeach Danby.
In the fall they appropriated
only £300,000 for twenty warships.
Charles II made two more agreements in August 1675
and in February 1676 with Louis XIV
who agreed to pay him a subsidy of £112,000.
In November 1675 Shaftesbury published the
Letter from a Person of Quality to his Friend
in the Country, warning of plans by bishops
to form an absolute monarchy.
The King prorogued Parliament on November 22
and did not summon them until February 1677.
Thomas Traherne, whom Samuel Johnson called one of the
twelve metaphysical poets, published only Roman Forgeries
(a dialog between a Protestant and a Catholic) before his death
in September 1674, but the next year his Christian Ethics
was published emphasizing the infinite love of God.
Also in 1675 John Flamsteed equipped
the observatory established at Greenwich.
In December the retail sales of coffee, tea and chocolate
were prohibited, but within two weeks
the order was changed to mere regulation.
Sugar was used to sweeten these drinks.
In 1665 England had imported only 88 tons of sugar,
but by 1700 they would bring in 10,000 tons.
In 1674 physician Thomas Willis discovered sugar in the urine
of diabetics and diagnosed that it was a blood disease.
In 1676 Thomas Sydenham published his
Observations of Medicine.
He found that opiates were the most effective
means of relieving suffering.
His medical textbook would be used for two centuries.
The English Parliament met on February 15, 1677,
and Charles II informed them of the alliance
with the Dutch against the French.
Shaftesbury, Buckingham, Salisbury, and Lord Wharton
complained that it was illegal to prorogue for more than a year,
and the Lords sent them to the Tower.
Danby managed to get an assessment for seventeen months
that would bring in £585,000 to build thirty ships,
and he persuaded the Commons to urge Charles to defend
the Spanish Netherlands from the French;
but he adjourned the Parliament on May 28.
In October the King agreed to the betrothal of his brother
James’ oldest daughter Mary to the
hunchbacked Willem of Orange.
She wept for a day and a half,
but the people celebrated with bonfires.
Laurence Hyde was sent to negotiate
an alliance with the Dutch.
Charles made a third agreement with King Louis in August,
promising not to recall Parliament
for a year in exchange for a subsidy.
Willem and Mary married in November.
England and Holland agreed to a peace treaty in December,
and English troops paid by the French were recalled.
Louis XIV stopped paying Charles
who then summoned Parliament.
On January 10, 1678 Laurence Hyde signed a treaty
for a defensive alliance with the Netherlands.
Charles II asked Parliament for money in January,
and in March the Commons voted to raise 30,000 soldiers
and equip ninety ships with a poll tax
that would bring in £300,000.
At the same time they prohibited imports from France,
and this lasted until 1685.
Charles II made another secret agreement with Louis XIV
in May for about £500,000,
but no English minister would sign the treaty.
Many feared that the army would be used against the
Parliament instead of France,
and Andrew Marvel published his
Account of the Growth of Popery
and Arbitrary Government.
In early June news of an armistice between the Dutch
and the French reached London.
Then the Commons voted £200,000 to pay off the soldiers
and disband the army, though this was put off until
the Treaty of Nijmegen on July 31 formally ended the war.
William Temple was the English ambassador in Holland,
and he negotiated an alliance with the Dutch on July 26.
Parliament was prorogued on July 15, 1678, and some feared
the army of 30,000 might try to impose popery.
About 60,000 Catholics were only about one percent of
England’s population, but their gentry were about 7%
of those in England and Wales.
Titus Oates was an Anglican cleric but had been indicted
for perjury in 1675 and escaped from Dover Castle.
He had attended English Jesuit colleges
at St. Omer in France and at Valladolid in Spain.
The information he gained enabled him to make
plausible charges against English Catholics.
He was assisted by Israel Tonge
who had a doctorate degree from Oxford.
On August 13 King Charles was informed of the Popish Plot.
Oates and Tonge produced 81 articles of charges based on
a Jesuit plan to assassinate Charles to trigger
a Catholic uprising in Ireland and England.
On October 16 the Dublin government banished all
Catholic bishops, Jesuits, and regular clergy from Ireland,
and they closed all the convents.
Two weeks later they prohibited Catholics from owning
or carrying firearms unless they had
a license from the Lord Lieutenant.
The Justice of the Peace Edmund Berry Godfrey
in Westminster received their papers on September 28
and took their depositions.
Oates presented accusations to the Privy Council on October 6.
On the 17th Godfrey was found dead
by strangulation and with a sword in his body.
People suspected that he was silenced by Catholics,
and on the 21st the Cavalier Parliament warned of the danger.
Investigation indicated he may have committed suicide
because the sword had been run through his body after death.
On November 21 Chief Justice William Scroggs sentenced
the banker William Staley to death for treason.
One week later Oates accused Queen Catherine of treason.
The Catholic courtier Edward Colman had been secretary
to the Duke of York and his duchess, and he and three others
were also executed by the end of the year.
Colman had corresponded with the confessor to Louis XIV
and had received money in England.
Scroggs sentenced 21 men to death including seven Jesuits,
and 14 others were also tried and executed
for this alleged plot by 1680.
In July 1679 Oates accused the Queen’s physician
George Wakeman of poisoning the King, and only then
did Scroggs question the evidence of Oates,
influencing the jury to acquit Wakeman.
Scroggs persecuted Catholics, and in April 1681
the King dismissed him with an ample pension.
He also made money on his book about his thirteen state trials.
Shaftesbury had been released from the Tower in
February 1678, and in November in the House of Lords
he demanded that James, Duke of York, be removed from
the Privy Council, but the Lords excepted James
from the 1673 Test Act.
Charles declared that James, Duke of Monmouth,
was his illegitimate son, and the King’s brother James,
Duke of York, went to Flanders.
In September the Duke of Monmouth fled to Holland,
and the Duke of York returned to govern Scotland.
When Parliament met in October, they sent five Catholic peers
to the Tower and impeached them, and on November 30
they banned Catholics from both houses of Parliament.
After this no Catholics would sit in Parliament until 1829.
Ralph Montagu was England’s ambassador in Paris,
but Danby got him removed in June 1678.
Montagu found letters written by Danby in early 1678
exposing negotiations for the secret subsidy from Louis XIV.
On March 25 Danby had asked Louis for six million livres.
Montagu presented these to the House of Commons
on December 19, and two days later
the Commons began impeachment proceedings.
On December 30 Charles prorogued the session.
Then on January 24, 1679 he dissolved the Cavalier
Parliament which had lasted 18 years
and had 150 members favoring the King.
Ralph Cudworth (1617-88) was
one of the Cambridge Platonists.
He taught Hebrew and worked to readmit Jews
into England during the Commonwealth.
He published The True Intellectual System of the Universe
in 1678, arguing for the existence of God, the natural basis
of moral laws, and the reality of freedom.
In the new Parliament that met from March 6, 1679 to May 27
Charles had 30 members at the most.
They were determined to exclude the Catholic James
from the throne as the excluders outnumbered
the court supporters by almost two to one.
Danby faced the charges, and a Bill of Attainder
against him failed; but he spent five years in the Tower.
Parliament passed the Habeas Corpus Amendment Act
that required judges to bring prisoners to trial within
a specified time, and it prohibited
imprisoning someone again for the same offense.
Charles made Shaftesbury president of his Privy Council
in April and included other opponents
such as Secretary of State Sunderland.
During the elections a Baptist printer Benjamin Harris
connected to John Bunyan and Shaftesbury began publishing
the biweekly Domestick Intelligence which became
The Protestant Domestic Intelligence,
and the Court party put out the True Domestick Intelligence.
Henry Clare satirized Catholics in
The Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome.
Press surveyor Roger L’Estrange could no longer control
publishing with licenses, and in 1680 his Cit and Bumpkin
condemned petitions as against institutions.
Chief Justice Scroggs fined Harris £500 and pilloried him
for publishing An Appeal from the Country to the City.
The first Exclusion Bill was introduced on May 15, 1679
and it passed 207-128.
On May 27 Charles prorogued and then dissolved the
Parliament, and he did so again soon after it met on October 7.
Then the King dismissed Shaftesbury, and William Temple,
Essex, and Halifax resigned and were replaced
by the Tory ministers Godolphin, Hyde, and Sunderland.
The famous diarist Samuel Pepys worked as an able
administrator for the Navy but was removed
because of the Popish Plot.
New pamphlet titles in England increased from 800 in 1677
to about 1,800 in 1680, and more than five million copies
of political pamphlets were circulating by 1681.
Charles Blount warned about Popish malice in his
Appeal from the Country in 1679, and that year
John Temple’s popular history, The Irish Rebellion,
which was first published in 1646, was reprinted.
In 1680 Henry Neville published his Plato Redivivus
and suggested that the increasing number of property owners
deserved a wider distribution of political power.
In 1681 Whigs described A Prospect of a Popish Successor.
That year the first bank checks were issued in England,
and Stephen Fox persuaded Charles II
to found Chelsea Hospital to serve wounded soldiers.
Charles II became seriously ill at the end of August 1679,
and his opponents warned of the dangers of his
Catholic brother James, Duke of York, becoming king.
Charles recovered in September and sent the two James rivals
into exile, and York insisted that Monmouth resign all his
military offices before going to the Netherlands
for having conspired with York’s enemies.
Mass demonstrations burning pope effigies were peaceful
on November 5 and 17, 1679 and in 1680.
Thomas Player printed petition forms and in January 1680
presented Charles with two petitions containing about
90,000 signatures from London and Wiltshire.
Laurence Hyde replaced Danby as Treasurer
in November 1679 and became
Earl of Rochester three years later.
He persuaded Charles to limit his expenditures.
On June 10, 1680 Charles II made a treaty with Spain.
Those opposing the Royal Court led by Shaftesbury formed
the Country party that eventually evolved into the Whigs
while the Court party became the Tories.
The Country party dominated the Parliaments that began
on October 21, 1680 with King Charles asking for money
to defend Tangiers and advising an alliance with Spain.
He was willing to protect Protestants
if the succession was preserved.
On November 15 the Lords defeated
the second Exclusion Bill by the vote 63-30.
In April 1681 the Tory L’Estrange began publishing
The Observator three times a week while the printer
of the Whig Protestant (Domestick) Intelligence
was imprisoned during most of 1681 and 1682.
In those two years independent John Owen
and Scottish Robert Ferguson were
fined about £10,000 for illegal preaching.
By April 1680 every county in England and Wales
had a new commission of peace,
and 272 justices of the peace were removed.
By 1683 Charles had removed the earls of Suffolk,
Manchester, and Essex
from the lieutenancy and the commission of peace.
In 1681 John Dryden published his play
Absalom and Achitophel which satirized Shaftesbury
as hungry for power and without principles.
In February about 400 gentry welcomed Monmouth.
Parliament met at Oxford on March 21;
but after one week he dissolved them again.
King Charles had no intention of calling elections.
To explain himself he issued his
Declaration to all his loving subjects and required
Anglican clergy to read it from their pulpits.
The Country party needed Parliament meeting,
and they were also hurt by laws denying legal advice
and prior notice of the charges or the list of witnesses
to those charged with treason and felonies.
Three weeks later Shaftesbury was arrested.
A London jury acquitted him of treason;
but he fled to Holland in November
and died on January 21, 1683.
Stephen College was executed in 1681,
and Oates was banned form the Council chamber.
In 1684 Oates would be fined £300,000 for sedition
and kept in the King’s Bench prison
because he could not pay.
On July 12, 1683 a grand jury found cause to offer
a reward of £300 for the capture of Monmouth.
He went to his mistress Henrietta Wentworth
and surrendered on November 25,
and his confession was printed in the London Gazette.
Legal proceedings were ended,
and he went into exile in the Spanish Netherlands.
In 1682 John Bunyan published The Holy War that discussed
the Catholic succession, and Thomas Shadwell supported
the Whigs with The Lancashire Witches.
The Tories had Thomas Otway’s play Venice Preserved,
and Aphra Behn criticized the Whigs and dissenters
with her play, The Roundheads or, the Good Old Cause.
The Marquis of Halifax described the moderates
in his Character of a Trimmer as balancing a boat
endangered by extremists on each side.
The supposed Rye House Plot to kill the King
while he was going to or coming from the races resulted
in the execution of William lord Russell on July 21, 1683
and of Algernon Sidney on December 7.
On July 13 that year before his trial Arthur Capell,
Earl of Essex, committed suicide in the Tower,
though some accused Charles or James of murder.
Charles II also used quo warranto writs to take control
of municipal corporations including
the London city corporation in June 1683.
The mayor and police helped the Tories win the elections,
and the Whigs challenged them in court and refused
to recognize the new sheriffs or the mayor.
By that year 37 towns had new charters,
and in the first three months of James II
another 47 new charters were granted.
By the last year of the reign of Charles II the annual revenue
had increased to £1,370,750.
On July 28, 1683 Princess Anne, daughter of James,
married Prince George, the younger brother
of Kristian V of Denmark.
In his last years Charles also appointed magistrates
who persecuted dissenters.
Despite the Triennial Act no more Parliaments were summoned
by Charles, and he put James back on his Privy Council
and released Danby from the Tower in 1684.
That winter was extremely cold with the Thames freezing,
and ice skates were invented.
Also in 1684 the East India Company was given permission
to trade with China at Canton after years of
trading for silks, porcelain, and tea at Java.
After bank failures in 1682 a depression began in 1684
that would last through 1687.
Charles II suffered a stroke on February 1, 1685.
He fulfilled his promise to Louis XIV by accepting
the Catholic faith before his death five days later.
On December 13, 1659 Irish officers and gentry led by
Theophilus Jones took over Dublin Castle
and proclaimed a parliament.
Charles Coote and Lord Broghill secured
the garrisons in Connacht and Munster.
They purged the radicals and called for an Irish Convention
which met at Dublin on February 27, 1660.
They proclaimed King Charles II on May 14, and
in November he issued his ideas for settling the Irish issues.
That year Charles donated the library of Bishop Ussher
to Trinity College in Dublin, but the Dublin
Philosophical Society included only one Catholic.
On January 22, 1661 he outlawed all meetings and ordinations
by Catholics, Presbyterians, independents, and separatists.
Only eight bishops had survived the Commonwealth in Ireland,
but twelve were consecrated in 1661.
That year the Marquess of Ormonde was made a duke,
and he served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland 1662-68.
In March, 1662 they imposed the hearth tax.
On April 10 Charles II granted all the rights forfeited
during his father’s reign, and the Act of Settlement that summer
authorized the King to reorganize the confiscated land in Ireland.
Of owners who claimed they were innocent 566 decrees
were issued to Catholics and 141 to Protestants.
Charles also took about 170,000 acres from regicides
and gave them to his brother James,
and Lord Lieutenant Ormonde
also greatly increased his estates.
Also in 1662 the English Parliament made it
a felony to export Irish wool.
In the spring of 1663 Lt. Thomas Blood and
Col. Alexander Jephson with some nonconformist ministers
tried to seize Dublin Castle and fortresses at Cork, Limerick,
Waterford, and Clonmel to secure
the English interest against popery, but they failed.
About seventy men were captured and imprisoned,
and Jephson and two others were executed on July 15.
Jephson was a member of Parliament,
and seven other MPs were expelled.
The Act of Explanation in 1665 required soldiers
and adventurers to give one-third of their land to the
dispossessed Catholics, and it was returned in 1666.
Catholics regained their civil rights except to sit in Parliament.
In 1666 the Irish Parliament passed the Irish Act of Uniformity
which imposed use of the Common Book of Prayer
and required all clerics and teachers
to renounce the Solemn League and Covenant.
In the fall the Irish Cattle Act restricted the export of Irish beef,
and the price in Ireland fell from 40s to 12s.
The government was centralized in Dublin,
and the Parliament was not summoned again until 1685.
English Navigation Acts in 1663 and 1670 required all Irish
goods going to America to be carried in English ships,
and most Catholic merchants left Ireland.
By 1670 only about 7,500 ex-soldiers
had their land confirmed by King Charles II.
That year a general synod of
Catholic bishops was held in Dublin.
Sheep replaced many cattle, and the wool trade increased.
Baron John Berkeley was Lord Lieutenant
of Ireland 1670-72 and favored Catholics.
In 1672 William Petty published
The Political Anatomy of Ireland and estimated that
Ireland had 800,000 Catholics, 200,000 English,
and 100,000 Scots.
In 1676 he calculated that labor wages in England
were twice those in Ireland.
Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex, became Lord Lieutenant
in May 1672 and supported the King’s Declaration
of Indulgence; but after Charles II withdrew this
in March 1673, Catholics in Ireland were oppressed again.
Essex also supported Catholic merchants, lawyers,
and priests which angered Irish Protestants.
Ormonde governed Ireland again from 1677 to 1685.
The Catholic Oliver Plunket, Archbishop of Armagh,
was accused of trying to raise 70,000 Catholics
to cooperate with a French invasion and kill the Protestants.
He was convicted by a jury of Protestants in June 1681
and was hanged on July 1.
In 1683 William Molyneux founded the
Dublin Philosophical Society,
and Petty was the first president.
On May 14, 1660 Scots in Edinburgh celebrated
the proclamation that Charles II was King.
The English Navigation Act of 1660
excluded Scots from the colonial trade.
On January 1, 1661 the Scottish Parliament met with
Commissioner John Middleton, and on the 19th
the 9th Earl of Glencairn became Chancellor of Scotland.
On March 28 the Rescissory Act rescinded all laws
passed by Parliament in the 1640s.
They had the 8th Earl of Argyll put on trial, and after evidence
presented by those who had served Cromwell
he was beheaded on May 27, 1661.
Five days later James Guthrie was executed
for having written Causes of the Lord’s Wrath.
Samuel Rutherford had died in prison in March,
and the only other Scot executed was the author of the
National Covenant, the Earl of Wariston,
who was put to death in July 1663.
The Parliament passed 393 acts in six months
making the King almost absolute.
The Episcopal Church created by the grandfather and father
of Charles II was imposed on Scotland.
Charles required all office holders to declare
the two Covenants illegal and seditious.
In the years 1661-62 about three hundred women and men
were put to death for witchcraft in Scotland.
An Act of Indemnity was passed in September 1662,
and 700 people were excluded from its provisions
and were subjected to fines.
The Episcopal Ordination Act prohibited Presbyterian
assemblies, and 400 ministers were ejected.
After Middleton criticized the King’s Secretary for Scotland
Lauderdale, Charles recalled the Commissioner in 1663.
In July of that year Parliament required all Scots
to attend their parish church or pay a heavy fine.
A rebellion of Galloway men on November 15, 1666
was put down, and 33 of fifty prisoners were hanged.
On June 7, 1669 Charles allowed the Scottish Privy Council
to restore ministers, who had lived peacefully, to their former
parish churches or to other vacancies,
and 42 Presbyterian ministers were reinstated.
Then in October the Scottish Supremacy Act subordinated
the bishops to the Crown, and this was enforced
against the Covenanters by James Sharp,
Archbishop of St. Andrews and primate of Scotland.
On the same day the Scottish Militia Act enabled Charles II
to send 20,000 Scottish soldiers
to serve in Scotland, England, or Ireland.
Secretary Lauderdale presided over the Scottish Parliament
in November 1673 and blamed
the Earl of Shaftesbury for “tampering.”
The Parliament was prorogued
and was not summoned again until 1681.
On June 18, 1674 Charles ordered the Scottish Council
to require that inheritors have their tenants promise
not to violate the Conventicle Act;
if tenants refused, inheritors must eject them or be punished.
Within three years eleven landlords in Renfrewshire
were fined £368,000.
On December 11, 1677 Charles II ordered the Highland Host
in Scotland raised to make the Presbyterian heartlands obedient,
and 8,000 soldiers at Stirling forced the landlords of Fife
to submit on January 24, 1678.
The King withdrew the Highlanders in February
and other forces in April.
After the troops left, the field conventicles resumed.
In May at Whitekirk the King’s forces tried to make people
disperse, and one soldier was killed;
James Learmont had shouted instructions
to armed men and was executed,
and Temple was banished for wearing a sword.
In Ayrshire in August nonconformist ministers led by John Welsh
preached to about 7,000 people gathered for a three-day
conventicle, and some 14,000 armed gentry
met near Dumfries in November.
On May 3, 1679 Archbishop James Sharp of St. Andrews
was dragged from a coach and murdered
by Scottish Covenanters who fled to the west.
On May 29, when the King’s birthday was celebrated,
the militant Conventicler Robert Hamilton led eighty armed
men to Rutherglen where they burned copies of oppressive
Acts and nailed a “Declaration and Testimony”
to the Mercat Cross denouncing Covenant violations.
The royalist John Graham of Claverhouse commanded
dragoons, and they pursued Hamilton
and his men who eluded them.
On June 1 thousands gathered
for a conventicle at Loudoun Hill.
As Claverhouse’s dragoons were approaching,
the women and children withdrew.
On Drumclog Moor about 1,500 armed men defeated
the attacking dragoons, killing 36 soldiers
and taking seven prisoners.
The Covenanters pursued the fleeing dragoons to Glasgow.
The Covenanters argued over the
Rutherglen Declaration for three weeks.
The Cameronians followed Richard Cameron and were
most extreme and violent, believing in “preventive murder.”
Robert Welch led those who wanted a free Presbyterian Kirk
under a lawful king and a free Parliament and Assembly.
A smaller group followed
the pacifist minister John Blackadder.
On June 22 James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, with an army
of 15,000 defeated about 6,000 rebels at Bothwell Bridge.
About 800 Covenanters were killed with 1,400 captured.
The next day Monmouth was replaced by General Tam Dalyell.
He randomly hanged five prisoners
for the murder of Archbishop Sharp.
Those who signed a bond of good behavior were released.
The amnesty excepted 65 leaders of whom 35 rebels
lost their estates, and two were executed.
Of the 340 sentenced to be transported to Barbados
250 were put on an unseaworthy ship that was
wrecked off the Orkneys with 200 below the hatches dying.
Monmouth’s popularity increased, but he went into exile
in the Netherlands in September.
Charles II appointed his brother James to govern Scotland,
and the Duke of York and his wife Mary
arrived on November 24 and were welcomed
by Chancellor Rothes and 38 privy councilors.
After Lauderdale’s exclusions York’s policies
were accommodating, but he left in February 1680.
On June 22 Cameron and twenty armed Society People
entered the Sanquhar market cross and posted the
Declaration and Testimony of the True Presbyterian,
Anti-prelatic, Anti-erastian, Persecuted Party in Scotland.
On July 22 in a small skirmish on a field Cameron was killed.
Covenanter Donald Cargill had fled to Holland,
and in October he excommunicated the King,
the Duke of York, and some Scottish politicians.
A reward was offered for his capture,
and Cargill was executed in Edinburgh on July 27, 1681.
The Duke of York returned in October and stayed
in Scotland for eighteen months,
becoming royal commissioner in July 1681.
To improve the Scottish economy he canceled taxes
on imported raw materials and exported manufactured goods.
He encouraged Covenanters to start colonies in Perth,
New Jersey and Stewart’s Town on a South Carolina island.
He tried to persuade Presbyterians to accept bishops.
James Dalrymple, Lord Stair, published
The Institutions of Law of Scotland to help lawyers,
and the Clerk Register Thomas Murray Glendoick
printed the Acts of Parliament since 1424.
James summoned a parliament, and he promoted a Test Act
that required officials, clergy, teachers, and soldiers
to affirm the power of the king
in all civil and ecclesiastical matters.
The 9th Earl of Argyll was convicted of treason and imprisoned
in Edinburgh Castle, but he escaped dressed as a woman.
In April 1684 four Scots who had fled were tried in absentia,
convicted, and had their estates confiscated.
The 9th Earl of Argyll already had been condemned to death.
Scots suspected of the Rye House Plot imprisoned in England
were transferred to Scotland.
On June 14 Charles II authorized the use of torture including
the thumbscrew that generals
Dalzell and Drummond brought from Moscow.
In Scotland habeus corpus did not apply,
and they could be tortured if accused of a capital offense.
Application of thumbscrews to William Spence caused him
to confirm that Argyll, Viscount Stair, and other Scots
were involved in a plot to raise an army in Scotland.
Many continued to be fined for not attending church.
In February 1684 husbands had begun to be fined
for the recusancy of their wives,
and a record in August showed that landlords
in Roxburghshire were fined £274,737.
On November 8 James Renwick and the Society People
posted the Apologetical Declaration and Admonitory
Vindication of the True Presbyterians on several market
crosses and churches and two weeks later the Council
resolved that anyone who refused to renounce the
Apologetical Declaration before two witnesses
should be executed.
On January 13, 1685 the Council ordered
men hanged and women drowned.
During what was called “the killing times” as many as
a hundred people may have been put to death.
Most of the killing ended in May, but the Cameronian Renwick
was captured and hanged on February 17, 1688.
These times were portrayed from the viewpoint of a moderate
by Walter Scott in his novel The Tale of Old Mortality in 1816.
With the restoration of the monarchy in 1660
George Fox was again arrested without good reason.
He wrote a letter to Charles II telling the King that he was
the very opposite of a disturber of the peace.
The suspicion that he would plot
an armed rebellion was ridiculous.
He denied drawing any carnal weapon against the King
or the Parliament or any man on Earth;
but rather he said he was a witness against all murderers
and did not have it in his heart to have any man destroyed.
He asserted that he loved everyone including his enemies
and attempted to awaken the love of the King for the truth.
While in custody of soldiers at Whitehall he preached
the gospel of loving one another and asked them
why they wore swords and when they would break them
and come to the gospel of peace.
He also referred to the light in consciences
that makes no covenant with death,
to which light he spoke and in which he was clear.
Fox exhorted all Friends to live in peace;
he declared that those who use carnal weapons
throw away spiritual weapons,
and those who do not love one another and love enemies
are out of Christ’s doctrine.
In 1660 Fox and eleven others signed “A Declaration from
the harmless and innocent people of God, called Quakers,
against all plotters and fighters in the world.”
They stated that their principle is,
and their practices always have been, to seek peace
and follow justice and the knowledge of God
for the welfare of all.
Warfare results from the lust and desire
to have men’s lives and estates.
Pertinent passages from the Bible are quoted,
but more importantly they honestly could declare that
they practiced the ways of peace and suffered
persecution for the sake of justice
and had not done violence against anyone.
They suffered in obedience to God, having been
despised, beaten, stoned, wounded, stocked,
whipped, imprisoned, haled out of synagogues,
cast into dungeons and noisome vaults
where many have died in bonds,
shut up from our friends,
denied needful sustenance for many days together,
with other the like cruelties.1
Hundreds of Friends had suffered these things,
few more than George Fox.
Yet they refused to swear or to fight.
Often they remained in jail after their sentence
because they refused to pay the jail keeper;
they did not recognize that they had committed a crime.
They pleaded to the King so that
he would end this useless suffering.
In his Journal Fox described how this declaration cleared
away the darkness so that the King proclaimed that
no soldiers should search a house without a constable
and that Friends in jail should be set at liberty
without having to pay the fees.
Yet during the reign of Charles II (1660-1685)
13,562 Quakers were imprisoned in England;
338 died in prison or were killed in the assaults
on their meetings; and 198 were exported as slaves.
In 1664 Margaret Fell was summoned to the March Assizes
and accused of having an illegal meeting in her house.
She refused to take the oath and would not promise
to stop holding Quaker meetings.
She was sentenced to life in prison and was put in
Lancaster Castle where George Fox already resided.
She was released by order of the King and his Council
in the summer of 1668.
While in prison in 1666 Fell wrote
Women’s Speaking Justified to defend female preaching.
In 1667 Fox traveled to set up monthly and quarterly meetings,
and in October 1669 he married the 55-year-old widow
Margaret Fell and went to Ireland.
When the Conventicle Act was renewed in 1670,
Margaret was imprisoned again.
The King had her released in April 1671.
That year Fox organized the Women’s Monthl
and Quarterly Meetings at the same time as the men’s.
By 1670 in addition to local meetings
the Friends gathered monthly and quarterly.
Fox and other missionaries went to
the West Indies and America in 1671 to convince
others of the truth of the inner Light.
Fox preached to the Indians, whom he treated as equals,
and he urged humane treatment of African
and their eventual release from slavery.
He returned to England in 1673
and was imprisoned for the eighth time.
Fox dictated to Thomas Lower an account of his life
that was published in 1694 edited by Thomas Ellwood
as The Journal of George Fox.
He traveled to Europe in 1677
and returned to Holland seven years later.
Fox continued to preach and clarify the doctrines
of the inner Light until he died in 1691;
during all this time he was the
generally acknowledged leader of the Quakers.
Robert Barclay was born in Scotland in 1648
and followed his father into the Society of Friends in 1667.
He studied theology, married a Quaker, and defended
the Christian divinity of the Quakers
in his writings published in the late 1670s.
George Whitehead was only 16 when he left home to preach.
He was often arrested for doing so.
In 1661 he joined with some Friends to argue against
the proposed Act of Uniformity in the House of Commons.
During the plague of 1665 that killed nearly 100,000 people
in London he prayed at the bedside of dying Quakers.
Whitehead was arrested again in 1668 at a meeting
with Friends, but they managed to persuade Charles II
to issue the Royal Declaration of Indulgence
that released 490 people from jails in England.
Whitehead also led a group that influenced
King William III to create the Bill of Rights of 1689.
The second great Quaker leader, William Penn,
was born in London on October 14, 1644.
His father William was an admiral, fought for Parliament
in the Civil War, and retired to estates in Ireland
that had been granted him
n the Cromwellian Settlement of 1652.
Suspected of communicating with Charles II,
Admiral Penn led the unauthorized conquest of Jamaica
for Cromwell in May 1655.
He was knighted by Charles II
and made a commissioner for the Navy.
After showing courage in battle against the Dutch in 1665,
he was bequeathed a claim on the government for £16,000.
He was hopeful that his son would become prominent
in the court and provided him with a fine education.
Young William Penn studied at Christ’s Church College
in Oxford, where John Locke was teaching;
but he was fined and expelled for refusing
to attend church and for religious nonconformity.
William may have first heard a Quaker sermon
by Thomas Loe as early as 1660.
Disgruntled by his son’s pious seriousness,
the Admiral sent him off to France in 1663,
and the father was glad when William returned the next year
a good French scholar with the bearing of the courtly life.
He advised his son then to study law at Lincoln’s Inn,
but after a year a great plague hit London in 1665.
While in Ireland managing his father’s estates,
young Penn turned toward religion again;
he was convinced by Thomas Loe when he spoke about
“a faith that overcomes the world.”
Penn recalled how the Lord had appeared to him
since the age of twelve, the debauchery of Oxford
and his persecution there,
and the “irreligiousness” of the world’s religions.
At the Quaker meeting the Lord visited him again,
and he testified about the mocking and scorn
he had experienced, the displeasure of his parents,
the invective from priests, but most of all his resisting
and watching his own vain affections and thoughts.
Uncertain about whether to give up his fine clothes,
it is said that Penn asked George Fox
if he must stop wearing a sword.
Fox replied, “Wear it as long as thou canst.”
In September 1667 Penn was arrested at a meeting of Friends.
The mayor, noticing his aristocratic dress, offered to free him
on his promise to behave; but the 23-year-old refused
and was sent to prison with eighteen others.
As he went to prison,
Penn gave up his sword and never wore it again.
Penn wrote that religion was his crime and made him a prisoner
to a mayor’s malice at the same time it made him a free man.
In this letter to the Earl of Orrery
he pleaded for religious toleration.
The arrest brought the conflict between
William and his father to a head.
His father wanted him to conform to the ways of the world
and attain a position of honor,
but the son pleaded that he must listen to his conscience.
Finally his father threatened to disinherit him;
he asked that his son only uncover his head
before the king, the duke, and himself.
William prayed and fasted to know the heavenly will;
but this only strengthened his resolution,
and he was thrown out of the house.
Penn became an active promoter of Quaker ideas
by writing numerous pamphlets.
After he wrote “The Sandy Foundation Shaken” to refute
the doctrines of the trinity and the eternal damnation of souls,
he was put in prison, not for his ideas
but because he had no license from the Bishop of London.
He was given pen and paper and was told to recant;
but he wrote his father he would die in prison
before he would budge.
A royal chaplain was sent to mediate,
and he persuaded Penn to write another pamphlet
explaining his views.
Penn wrote “Innocency with her Open Face”
and was released.
Also while in the Tower of London in 1668 and 1669
he wrote the first edition in about a hundred pages
of his most famous book, No Cross, No Crown,
which was expanded to nearly six hundred pages by 1682.
In 1670 Penn and William Meade were arrested for preaching
in the street on a warrant signed by Mayor Samuel Starling,
who told Penn he would have his hat pulled off
and berated his father.
In the trial the prisoners appeared
before twelve judges and twelve jurors.
Penn challenged the legality of the indictment and would not
plead without seeing a written copy;
since this was not given, he pleaded not guilty.
The next day the prisoners were fined forty marks
for failing to remove their hats.
Penn cited Coke on common law and the rights
in the Great Charter (Magna Carta).
The recorder charged the jury to bring in a verdict of guilty.
Four jurors dissented, and they were sent back.
After the jury found them guilty of speaking in the street
but refused to add the words “in an unlawful assembly,”
the magistrates ordered them
“locked up without meat, drink, fire, and tobacco”
as Penn called to them not to give up
their rights as Englishmen.
The charge that unarmed worshipers
had riotously broken the peace was absurd.
Yet the result was that
Penn and all twelve of the jury were sent to prison.
Someone, probably Penn’s father, paid the fines,
and they were discharged.
Penn recently had been reconciled with his dying father,
who passed away nine days later.
The jurors, released on a writ of habeas corpus,
sued the mayor and recorder, winning their case before the
Court of Common Pleas in a historic decision that conceded
judges “may try to open the eyes of the jurors,
but not to lead them by the nose.”
In 1671 Chief Justice Vaughan established the rights of juries
so that no jurors could be punished for their verdicts.
Penn wrote a pamphlet with an appendix citing numerous
precedents since the Magna Carta of 1215.
This trial became famous and showed that the arbitrary
and oppressive proceedings of the courts badly needed reform.
Again the next year Mayor Starling had Penn arrested
for preaching without taking an oath,
even though the Conventicle Law was only for those
in holy orders, which Penn was not.
He was sent to Newgate prison for six months
and occupied his time writing pamphlets.
He also sent a protest to the sheriffs of London
about prison conditions and an address
to Parliament against the Conventicle Act.
Later in 1671 Penn went with Fox to see him and his
companions off to America from Gravesend.
This stimulated Penn to undertake
a missionary trip to Holland and Germany.
In the Netherlands his communications foreboded
the miseries of the wars brought about by Louis XIV.
In 1673 Penn went to court to secure a writ of habeas corpus
to release George Fox from Worcester prison.
Fox had been in prison for more than a year;
but Judge Matthew Hale found so many errors
in the indictment that he discharged Fox.
Probably because of Penn’s influence with
the last two Stuart kings, Fox was never arrested again.
Penn wrote “A Treatise of Oaths” in 1675 so that Quakers
would not be imprisoned for refusing
to take an oath of allegiance or to swear in court.
He cited 122 authorities from Pythagoras
to Willem of Orange on the folly of exacting oaths.
Penn’s many pamphlets arguing for religious tolerance such as
“The Great Case of Liberty of Conscience Debated,”
“Examination of Liberty Spiritual,”
and “A Persuasive to Moderation” finally bore fruit in 1689
when the Toleration Act was passed.
Many believed that his writings
brought about the release of 1,300 Quakers from jail.
In 1677 Penn wrote the “Concessions and Agreements”
for West New Jersey proprietors of the first Quaker colony
in America, calling for annual elections by ballot for the assembly,
which shall have power to make, alter, and repeal laws,
including taxation; every adult male free of crime was eligible
to vote and hold office; the legislature should choose
ten commissioners for executive power;
judges and constables were elected by the people;
trial by jury was unrestricted;
and freedom of conscience
and religious worship were protected.
Before Penn’s father died, he gave his son his blessing.
The crown of England owed £16,000, interest,
and back salary to the late Admiral Penn,
and in 1680 his son asked for a grant of American land
west of the Delaware.
The land he received in a charter on February 24, 1681
may be the largest piece of property
ever owned by a commoner.
Penn wanted to call it Sylvania for its forests,
but Charles II insisted that Penn be added,
making it Pennsylvania.
Although Penn was sole proprietor and therefore governor,
he wanted this holy experiment as a pacifist society
to be a haven for religious toleration
and representative government.
Of course it was to be a home for the Quakers,
but others were welcome also.
About 400 Quakers were prosecuted as conventiclers in 1683.
That year in Bristol alone 191 Quakers paid £16,440 in fines,
and in May 1685 Quakers in Suffolk were charged £33,300
for failing to attend church.
When James II became king,
a Quaker petition complained that
1,360 Friends were in prison.
John Milton lost his government salary in early 1660
and also £2,000 he had invested in the Commonwealth.
He tried to get his daughters to serve as readers
and amanuenses but found it difficult.
He had more success working with sons of prominent men
who were eager to learn from him.
His second wife Katherine Woodcock had died in childbirth
in February 1658, and five years later
he married 24-year-old Elizabeth Minshull.
They left London during the Great Plague of 1665.
In February 1667 the first edition of his
epic poem Paradise Lost was published in ten books,
and the second edition revised into twelve books
came out in 1674.
In Paradise Lost the poet aims to tell the story of mankind’s
initial disobedience that caused Man to be expelled from Eden,
and he hopes to show the eternal providence
and to justify the ways of God.
The first book begins in hell where Satan and the angels
following him have been cast after trying to take over heaven.
Pride and desire for revenge
were the causes of the angels’ rebellion.
They chose to make war against all-powerful God
and were sent to bottomless perdition.
Satan says they study revenge and hatred
because they will never submit.
He urges them to wage war by force or deceit.
He believes that the mind can make a heaven out of hell,
and now they are free.
He would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven.
Moloch used human sacrifices.
Spirits can assume either sex.
Satan notes that force can only overcome half one’s foe.
If they are not to submit, the war must be resolved.
He summons a council in his palace of Pandemonium.
In the second book the fallen angels
debate what they should do.
Moloch advises open warfare without delay.
If they are divine and eternal, they cannot cease to be.
Even if they are not victorious, they can get revenge.
Belial disagrees, warns how war will be bad for them,
and so he recommends peace.
Mammon agrees with that and suggests they work
to improve their situation and live by themselves
in freedom rather than in servile vassalage.
Beelzebub has a different idea and tells them that a new
race of similar creatures to them is about to be created,
and they could seduce them to join their party.
Everyone there votes for that.
Satan volunteers to undertake this mission alone.
He goes to the gate of hell and finds it is locked;
but his daughter Sin and his son Death
help him unlock the gate, and he sets off for the Earth.
God speaks to his Son about how Satan is going to pervert
humans who are free to choose temptations.
God explains that divine justice requires
that death is punishment for sin;
but they can be redeemed
if someone takes responsibility for their sins.
The Son volunteers, and God the Father accepts
and ordains him for incarnation.
Satan approaches the Earth and lands on Mount Niphates.
He sees the gate to heaven and pretends to be a mere cherub
as he consults with the Archangel Uriel
who tells him how to find Eden.
Satan on the Tree of Life learns from Adam and Eve
that they are forbidden to eat from the Tree of Knowledge.
Uriel perceives that the cherub has changed
and warns Archangel Gabriel, guardian of Eden,
who sends his angels to search.
Two find him tempting Eve with a dream about
the Tree of Knowledge.
Gabriel confronts Satan, does not believe him,
and threatens to take him back to hell.
Satan sees a sign in heaven and flees.
God sends Raphael to advise Adam and Eve,
and Adam welcomes him into his lodge.
Raphael tells them how God put his Spirit into them,
giving them reason by which they can rule over other creatures;
but he warns them that they must obey God.
Adam asks why anyone would disobey God,
and Raphael tells how Lucifer resented the Son
sitting next to God the Father, and so
he led a revolt in heaven and is now called “Satan.”
Raphael describes the war in heaven.
Michael with his sword wounds Satan temporarily,
but as angels they have no bodies and cannot die.
Satan uses devilish weapons, but after setbacks
Michael and his angels use mountains to overwhelm them.
God proclaims there must be no more fighting in heaven
and sends his Son to win the victory.
He drives the enemies against a wall
and into an abyss prepared for their punishment.
Raphael warns Adam that Satan in revenge
may tempt them to sin against God.
Raphael describes how God through his Son
created the world in six days and rested on the seventh.
God’s only command to Adam and Eve
is not to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.
Raphael advises Adam not to seek
celestial and astronomical knowledge.
Instead Adam tells the angel what he remembers
about how he was taught by God
who gave him dominion over creation.
Adam has noticed that animals are male and female,
and he asks for a companion.
God then creates Eve from his rib,
and he and Eve immediately love each other.
Raphael counsels Adam to refrain from carnal passion
and urges him to develop spiritual love.
In Book 9 Satan returns to Earth and enters a serpent’s body.
Eve has chosen to work separately from Adam who recognizes
her freedom of choice and ability to use reason.
Satan is envious of Adam and Eve in Paradise and flatters her.
She asks how he knows language, and Satan says he ate fruit
from a tree that gave him speech and reason.
She asks to go to this tree and sees it is
the forbidden Tree of Knowledge.
Satan offers her its fruit and says
eating this will make them like the gods.
She tries the fruit and likes it.
She takes some fruit to Adam and persuades him to taste it
because it has made her more aware.
Realizing she is lost, he eats the fruit because of his love for her,
even though he believes that he too will die.
Suddenly they desire each other and engage in sexual activity.
After sleeping they are ashamed
and cover their genitals with leaves.
They blame each other and quarrel as they experience
the passions of anger, hatred, mistrust, suspicion, and discord.
Learning what has occurred, the guardian angels
leave Paradise and return to heaven.
God tells the angels that he did not try to stop Satan.
He sends his Son to judge the couple,
and he helps them find clothes.
The Son curses snakes.
Women will have to give birth in pain
and submit to their husbands,
and men will have to hunt and work the land for food.
The Son goes back to heaven, and Satan returns
to Pandemonium where his speech is hissed.
Sin and Death and have made a bridge from hell to Earth
and begin their work on Earth.
God says they will stay there until Judgment Day.
God has his angels change conditions on the Earth.
Heat and cold create seasons, and animals fight each other.
Adam does not want to see mankind suffer for his sin,
and he wants to die.
Eve tries to comfort him, but he blames her.
She asks his forgiveness and begs him to stay with her.
She offers to die with him,
but he says they must repent and go on.
They pray together.
The Son of God tells his father of their prayers.
God accepts them but sends Michael and cherubim to take
the couple out of Paradise so that
they will not eat from the Tree of Life.
Adam and Eve are sad that they have to leave,
but Michael puts Eve to sleep and takes Adam to a peak
where he shows him what will happen to mankind
until the great flood and Noah’s family.
Then he tells about the tower of Babel, Abraham, Moses,
Joshua, David, the Babylonian captivity, and the mission
of the Messiah who will be put to death
in Jerusalem and be resurrected.
People will be comforted by the Spirit within them;
but superstitions and traditions will taint,
and secular power will interfere with the spiritual.
Finally the Savior will appear in the clouds and renew the Earth.
When they add deeds to their knowledge with faith, virtue,
patience, temperance, and love,
they will have a paradise within them.
Then Michael escorts Adam and Eve out of Paradise.
Milton intended to emulate the epic poems of Homer and Virgil,
and in doing so he elaborated on the founding myths
of the Judeo-Christian religions by adding
the Son of God to the creation stories in Genesis.
As in myths of other religions, these stories contain symbolic
wisdom and reflect the current knowledge of their originators.
In the 17th century reason and freedom are playing larger roles,
and the beginnings of modern science are starting to make
literal interpretations of these ancient stories look foolish.
Milton’s poem Paradise Regained was licensed
on July 2, 1670 and was registered along with
Samson Agonistes on September 10,
and the two poems were published together in 1671.
In 1673 Milton published Of True Religion, Heresy,
Toleration, and the Growth of Popery.
Milton wrote his theological ideas in De Doctrina Christiana,
but the long book was not discovered until 1825
and was published in 1826.
In that work he wrote that in the kingdom of Christ
external force should never be employed
because the Christ uses only spiritual means.
Milton died on November 8, 1674.
Paradise Regained begins with John baptizing Jesus
while Satan is an invisible witness.
Jesus is led by the Spirit into the desert where he goes
forty days without eating.
Satan has decided to tempt him and suggests that
the Son of God could turn stones into bread.
Jesus recognizes Satan and replies that he lives
by the words that come from the mouth of God.
Jesus also says,
God hath now sent his living Oracle
Into the World, to teach his final will,
And sends his Spirit of Truth henceforth to dwell
In pious Hearts, an inward Oracle
To all truth requisite for men to know. (I:460-464)
Satan consults a council of war, and Belial suggests
they use women to test Jesus; but Satan rejects that tactic.
Next Satan appears to Jesus with a table of scrumptious food
and invites him, but he declines.
Next Satan notes that Jesus is from a poor family
and will need followers.
He offers him wealth so that
he can purchase power but to no avail.
Neither does Jesus want to be a glorious conqueror
except to reign over his own passions, desires, and fears.
His goals are not attained by ambition, war, or violence
but by works of peace, wisdom, patience, and temperance.
He notes that Socrates was poor,
but his teaching made him famous.
Reason can be used to show the goodness of God
by communicating with every soul freely.
Satan urges him to rule right away; but Jesus replies that
he may have to suffer and obey humbly first,
and he warns his adversary that his rise will be Satan’s downfall.
Satan suggests that Jesus could become King of Israel
and need not fear Rome and Caesar.
Jesus says he will leave it to providence for the right time.
Jesus also refuses to take over one kingdom to destroy another,
but his kingdom will come about in peace,
though it will break up all other monarchies in the world.
After giving Jesus frightening dreams, they travel to Jerusalem
and from the top of the temple.
Satan suggests that the Son of God could throw himself
down without being hurt; but Jesus responds
that it is written one should not tempt God.
This causes Satan to fall, and angels take Jesus to
a fertile valley and a table with ambrosial food.
Then Jesus returns to his mother’s house.
Milton wrote Paradise Regained after
the Quaker Thomas Ellwood asked him
about a “paradise found.”
Milton’s response presents a more uplifting story than
the previously victorious Satan in Eden
as his temptations are overcome by Jesus.
Although this episode in the life of Jesus is mythic,
it fits in with his historical teachings.
Milton’s Samson Agonistes is based on Judges 13-16
and is written like a Greek tragedy with a chorus of Hebrews
and taking place in one day.
Blind Milton naturally identifies with the eyeless and imprisoned
Samson, but the poetic tragedy not performed in his time
has the same misogyny and violence found in the Biblical tale.
Set about 1100 BC in Gaza the Philistines, who may have
come to Canaan from Crete about the same time as
the Hebrews arrived from Sinai,
were governing the occupied Hebrews.
Samson believes his strength comes from his long hair,
and he has killed many Philistines before he told that secret
to the seductive Dalila who then shaved his head,
enabling the Philistines to get revenge by gouging out his eyes
and making him work as a slave in a mill.
In the poetic play Samson’s hair has grown back.
His father Manoa tries to ransom him from prison,
and on a holiday Samson is allowed to go to a Philistine
temple where he pulls down the pillars to murder
even more than the thousand people he had already killed.
Milton’s poem celebrates this suicidal and terrorist
achievement because Samson was on the side of the Hebrews.
John Bunyan was born in 1628 near Bedford
and was baptized on November 30.
He was the oldest son in a poor family and attended school
for a while before taking up his father’s profession
as a brazier or tinker.
He studied the King James Version of the Bible,
Fox’s Book of Martyrs, and books by Puritans.
After the death of his mother in June 1644
and of his sister in July,
he joined the Parliamentary army in November
which brought him into contact
with many dissenting preachers.
He was released from his regiment in July 1647
and was married by 1649.
For the next six years he experienced a spiritual crisis.
In 1650 his daughter Mary was born blind,
and that year John joined the open communion
of the Bedford Baptists.
In 1655 he was baptized in Bedford’s Independent church
and soon began preaching.
The next year he criticized Quakers
in Some Gospel-Truths Opened.
His wife died in 1658, and the next year he married
18-year-old Elizabeth and published
The Doctrine of the Law and Grace Unfolded.
After the restoration of Charles II in 1660 the Bedford church
was considered nonconformist and met secretly.
Bunyan was arrested in January 1661 for preaching without
a license at an illegal conventicle
and was sentenced to three months in the Bedford jail.
Then he was ordered not to preach
but did so and was returned to jail.
He made shoelaces to support his family
and published the poem “Profitable Meditations.”
Objecting to the mandatory use of
The Book of Common Prayer,
he wrote I Will Pray with the Spirit in 1662.
In 1665 he published his millenarian vision in The Holy City,
and in 1666 he completed and published the first edition
of his spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding.
He was released for a few months,
but more preaching sent him back to jail once more.
In January 1672 the Bedford congregation
elected John Bunyan their pastor.
In March the Second Declaration of Indulgence to the
Nonconformists by Charles II ended his imprisonment,
and in May he got his license to preach.
Bunyan became a popular preacher
and wrote many books about his Christian faith.
He spent six more months in prison from December 1676
to June 1677, and he published
The Pilgrim’s Progress in 1678.
To show the opposite life of a sinner he wrote
The Life and Death of Mr. Badman and published this dialog
between Mr. Wiseman and Mr. Attentive in 1680.
Two years later he published another allegorical novel entitled
The Holy War Made by King Shaddai Upon Diabolus,
to Regain the Metropolis of the World.
In 1684 Bunyan published
The Second Part of the Pilgrim’s Progress.
The next year he put all his property in the name of his wife
in order to protect his family from punishment directed at him.
John Bunyan became ill after a ride in the rain
to London and died on August 31, 1688.
At the beginning of the The Pilgrim’s Progress From This
World to That Which Is To Come is
“The Author’s Apology for his Book” in rhymed couplets.
The prose novel is a recounting of a dream
about a man named Christian.
The preacher Evangelist warns him to flee from God’s wrath
and go to the City of Zion because his town
is going to be destroyed.
Christian urges his family and neighbors to go with him,
but they think he is mad and decline.
Dressed in rags, he leaves his home with a Bible
and a burden on his back.
He first meets Pliant and Obstinate, who refuses to go
with them, and they fall into a bog of despondency
where the sins on his back weigh Christian down.
Help comes along and shows them the steps out,
and Pliable goes home.
Christian meets Mr. Worldly Wiseman
who lives in Carnal Policy.
Worldly criticizes Evangelist’s advice and urges him to
avoid dangers by seeking Safety, Friendship, and Content.
Worldly suggests he go to Morality where
he will find Legality and his son Civility.
Christian runs into Evangelist who persuades him to go
to the Wicket Gate because Worldly is deceitful.
Goodwill opens the gate, comforts him,
and directs him on his way.
Christian comes to the house of the Interpreter who explains
the meaning of a picture and introduces his children
Passion and Patience, who waits for the best things.
Patience laughs at Passion and comes last but is lasting.
Interpreter says that visible things are temporary,
but the invisible things are eternal.
A former professor tells them he is in despair like an iron cage
because Lusts, Pleasures, and Profits
are now gnawing at him like a burning worm.
Christian feels hope and fear, and God brings joy to his heart.
He sees Simple, Sloth, and Presumption sleeping,
and he talks with Formalist and Hypocrisy.
He arrives at the hill of Difficulty and meets Mistrust
and Timorous, confessing he was sleeping.
They see Beautiful by the highway,
and Porter asks Christian why he is late.
He talks with Piety and Prudence.
Christian recalls his wife and children and weeps.
He enters the chamber of Peace
and is shown the Delectable Mountains.
He is armed and goes forward accompanied by Discretion,
Piety, Charity, and Prudence
because they are going down to the Valley of Humiliation.
There Christian confronts the monster Appolyon
who flatters and undervalues the Christ.
Appolyon tries to dissuade him and angrily wounds
Christian’s Understanding, Faith, and Conversion,
but Christian is victorious.
Christian goes on with his sword to the Valley of the
Shadow of Death where he is joined by Faithful
who is assaulted by Adam the First and his daughters
Lust and Pride and by Discontent.
His friends include Arrogance, Self-Conceit, and Worldly Glory.
Faithful is also attacked by Shame.
Talkative discourses with them, but he does not do anything.
Knowledge is not a sign of Grace unless it is True Knowledge.
After much talking they are joined by their friend Evangelist
who advises them to be ready for troubles at Vanity Fair.
Christ visited the fair but bought nothing.
They are arrested and hear testimony from Envy, Superstition,
and Pickthank, and Faithful defends himself.
The jury is Blindman, No-good, Malice, Love-lust,
Live-loose, Heady, High-mind, Enmity, Liar,
Cruelty, Hate-light, and Implacable.
They find Faithful guilty of Death, and he is taken away.
Christian still has Hopeful, but By-ends leaves him.
Other pilgrims are Hold-the-World, Money-love,
and Save-all, and they were taught by
Gripe-man and Love-gain in the county of Coveting.
Christian and Hopeful see the hills of Lucre and Silver-mine
but avoid temptation and sleep in a meadow.
They join with strangers and fall into the pit of Vain-Confidence.
Christian repents for misleading Hopeful,
and they sleep on the grounds of Giant Despair.
They awake, and the Giant drives them
into the dungeon of the Doubting-Castle.
Despair beats them and urges them to kill themselves,
but Hopeful comforts Christian who finds the key Promise
inside himself, and they erect a pillar
and go to the Delectable Mountains.
The shepherds Knowledge, Experience, Watchful, and Sincere
welcome them and show them the Mountains
of Error and Caution.
Ignorance came from the country of Conceit
and talks with Christian.
Turn-away is from Apostasy, and Christian tells him
how his companion Little-Faith was robbed
by Faint-Heart, Mistrust, and Guilt.
Little-Faith had to beg and is pitied.
Christian talks about Esau, Great-Grace, and Job’s horse.
The Flatterer catches Christian and Hopeful in a net,
and a Shining One with a whip convicts them of forgetfulness.
They are whipped and released.
Christian and Hopeful meet the Atheist, reason together,
and keep awake by talking about their conversions.
Christian and Hopeful pray, and Christ is revealed to them.
They talk with young Ignorance
about hope and good thoughts.
Christian and Hopeful discuss
why ignorant people stifle convictions.
Angels guide us through death from this world to Glory.
The Second Part of the Pilgrim’s Progress is another dream
which tells how Christian’s wife Christiana and their children
make a dangerous journey but arrive at the desired country.
In 1680 John Bunyan published The Life and Death of
Mr. Badman Presented to the World in a Familiar Dialogue
Between Mr. Wiseman and Mr. Attentive.
Although the author argues in his preface to the reader
and in his novel that the punishment of sins is eternal in hell,
the novel also shows that bad actions bring bad consequences,
showing that evil is its own punishment in this life as well.
I contend that a just God does not punish temporal sins
with eternal punishment but that all souls are part of God
and eventually return to an awareness of their oneness
with God, though this may take many lifetimes to learn
from the consequences of one’s actions on Earth.
At the beginning of the novel Attentive expresses his concern
about the badness of the times to the Wiseman who agrees
that the times are bad because of bad men.
Attentive is afraid they will get worse before they improve,
but he hopes that God will give long life to the good.
He asks the Wiseman to tell him about
the bad man who just died.
Wiseman believes that the damned continue to have
sense and reason which increase their torment after death.
Wiseman tells how the child was bad
and lied to his parents to gain a little profit.
The boy also began to steal from his father.
Soon he preferred to be with his companions rather than
his parents, and he looked forward to their deaths.
He robbed orchards and other things, and he did not like
Sundays because of religion.
Badman also liked to swear and curse.
In swearing he took the name of God in vain because
he often swore falsely or really did not mean what he said.
Wiseman explains that anyone who swears to a lie
believes that God is as wicked as he is.
The profane curse out of rage, envy, pride, scorn,
and madness, wishing bad things on others.
False swearing and cursing are both sins against
the Light of Nature, and they bring negative consequences.
Badman ignored instruction, sermons, and good examples.
His companions were villains who taught him more sins.
They frequent taverns, and the bad effects of drunkenness
are being impoverished, diseases,
other sorrows, and a shorter life.
As an apprentice he cheated and stole
from his master to pay for his drinking.
One of his companions introduced him
to whoring referred to as “uncleanness.”
Some women are made whores by the promise of marriage.
The master and apprentice come to hate each other,
and the young Badman runs away
and soon finds a master like himself.
They find many reasons to quarrel as he attempts to debauch
his daughters and ruins his commodities.
Bad masters beat their bad servants, condemning themselves.
The Badman puts up with it for a while
but then goes home to his father.
His mother is upset that she has an ungodly son.
He runs away again and finds new companions
who flatter him, and his behavior deteriorates.
He wants a rich wife, tells her he loves her, and promises
that he has a good trade.
After they are married, she soon finds out what he is like.
His creditors appear, and his wife’s money is used to pay
for his whoring and feasting before they were married.
Badman goes back to his old companions
and discourages good people from visiting his wife.
He goes to whores, rails at his wife,
scorns her religion, and mocks her.
He tries to keep her from going out with good company,
but she sneaks out.
She repents and complains, believing her marriage is unequal.
He and his wife fight over their children,
and he would threaten her to make her obedient.
Badman delights in his lying, drinking,
wenching, and defrauding.
He borrows money and sweet-talks his creditors.
Eventually he is bankrupt.
He uses deceptive weights and scales,
but God requires a just balance.
He cheats and tries to hide his cheating,
and he even pretends to be religious.
Servants see what he does, and he turns to extortion.
He becomes a huckster and tries
to sell poor goods at high prices.
When people tell him of his faults, he laughs.
He does not like to be told he is proud,
for the wicked do not like having their vices exposed.
He becomes angry and envious.
While drunk he breaks his leg and swears.
He prays for help, but after healing he is just as bad.
He becomes sick and cries out again,
but his atheistic views do not help him.
He seems to change, and his wife is comforted;
but as soon as he recovers, he goes back to his old ways.
The Wiseman believes sick-bed repentance
is suspect as it shows desperation.
His wife becomes sick and converts
one of their children before she dies.
Badman goes back to whoring and after a while marries again;
but she is like he is, and so they punish each other.
They decide to part, and he suffers from
painful diseases before dying impenitent.
The Wiseman presents many arguments
why the Badman will go to hell;
but my viewpoint is that he has already suffered much
for his sins and that such people will eventually
learn their lessons and improve themselves in future lives.
Thomas Tryon (1634-1703) was from a poor family
and worked as a hatter and became an Anabaptist in 1654.
Influenced by Jakob Boehme’s writings,
he listened to his inner “voice of wisdom”
and became a vegetarian and avoided luxuries.
He went to Barbados seeking more religious freedom
and was horrified by the slavery on the plantations.
He returned to London in 1669 and in 1682 felt guided
to write books to promote a healthy and economic lifestyle
that included not eating animals
and abstinence from alcohol and tobacco.
In the last twenty years of his life Tryon published 27 books.
The first was Health's Grand Preservative; or,
The Women's Best Doctor in 1682, and the second edition
as The Way to Health, Long Life and Happiness
in 1691 was reprinted five times.
The writer Aphra Behn tried his vegetarian diet,
and he advised that eating boiling meat
is more healthy than frying.
In 1683 he published A Dialogue Between an East-Indian …
and a French Gentleman, contrasting the peaceful Brahmin’s
philosophy and way of life to the Europeans
who kill animals and sometimes people.
Tryon hoped that a healthy relationship with animals
would transform society to the peace of Eden.
Tryon also advocated religious tolerance and noted that
the Mughal’s jezia policy of taxing non-Muslims
enabled them to practice their religion
and might be better than Christian intolerance.
Also in 1683 Andrew Sowle in
The Upright Lives of the Heathen
described how Brahmins are peaceful vegetarians.
Vegetarians save money on food, and the word “frugal”
comes from frux, the Latin word for fruit.
Tryon was interested in magic and studied
Three Books of Occult Philosophy by
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535)
which had been translated into English in 1651
and recommended the vegetarian diet
of Pythagoras and the Hindu Brahmins.
John Evelyn (1620-1706) is famous for his long diaries
and included at his estate 38 vegetable plots and 300 fruit trees,
unlike his friend Samuel Pepys who was an avid meat-eater.
Both Evelyn and Pepys condemned the
baiting of bears, bulls, and badgers.
In 1658 Evelyn translated The French Gardener
by Nicolas de Bonnefons, and in 1664
he wrote Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees,
urging landowners to plant trees for timber
because the burgeoning iron industry was deforesting England.
In 1699 he published Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets
to explain how to grow, prepare, and eat salads.
Henry More (1614-87) was a Cambridge Platonist
who admired Pythagoras and hated cruelty to animals
whom he believed were part of the world soul.
In 1677 Baron Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont (1618-98)
and the Christian Knorr von Rosenroth with the help of rabbis
published the Kabbala Denudata
that including writings by Isaac ben Solomon Luria (1534-72)
and Chaim Vital (1543-1620) on reincarnation.
The book also included an essay by More in which he wrote,
Every spirit found in a bit of gravel
is liable to be transformed into a plant,
and from the plant into an animal,
from the animal to a human being,
and from the human being to an angel,
and from the angel to God himself.2
Helmont persuaded the Quaker George Keith that
by reincarnation souls could become Christians
and therefore be saved.
Keith’s views became so controversial that a crowd
in Philadelphia destroyed his podium with axes,
and later the Society of Friends expelled
Keith because of transmigration.
Joseph Glanville was a Platonist at Oxford, and in 1662
he published Lux Orientalis, Or an Enquiry into the Opinion
of the Eastern Sages, Concerning the Pre-existence of Souls,
and he cited not only Indian Brahmins but also Persian Magi,
Egyptian Gymnosophists, Jewish Rabbis, Greek philosophers,
and Christian Fathers such as Origen.
More and Helmont were also friends with the philosopher
Anne Conway (1631-79), and in her Principles published
anonymously by Helmont in 1690 she argued that
animals are continually improving and would become human
and that a man who had a brutish life might be punished
temporarily by entering the body of a beast.
She believed that God created all species to love each other.
Isaac Newton was born on December 25, 1642 and attended
some schools before his widowed mother
asked him to manage their farm.
In 1661 he entered Trinity College at Cambridge and studied
mathematics and mechanics while working
for his expenses doing menial service.
He studied astrology and geometry, and he was inspired
by Descartes to work in mathematics.
Newton earned his bachelor degree in 1665 and discovered
the binomial theorem and began working secretly on his
method of fluxions, which Leibniz also discovered
and called “differential calculus.”
During the great plague in 1665 Newton went back
to the farm and while experimenting with light
he saw how a prism divides light into colors.
He loved to eat apples and thinking about an apple falling
from a tree he considered that even the moon
might be influenced by the force of gravity.
He returned to Trinity College in 1667 and was elected a fellow.
He taught mathematics and built a reflecting telescope in 1668
which he presented to the Royal Society in December 1671.
He became a fellow two months later,
and his theory of light started a controversy.
By explaining the precession of the equinoxes
he added more evidence to prove the heliocentric solar system.
In 1684 Newton explained to Edmond Halley how gravity
shaped the orbits of the planets.
He wrote his famous
Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica
(Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy)
in 1685 and 1686.
Halley financed its publication
which first appeared on July 5, 1687.
By using inductive logic Newton discovered his law of
universal gravitation which is that every particle of mass in the
universe attracts and is attracted to every other particle
by a force that is directly proportional to their masses
and inversely proportional to the square
of the distance between them.
For large spherical masses such as planets, stars, and moons
it is as though all the mass is concentrated in their centers.
Newton’s Principia also included three laws of motion.
The third law has been translated
“To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction:
or the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other
are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.”
This physical law has ethical implications when it is
compared to the Hindu and Buddhist concept of karma,
which literally means “the measure or consequence of action”
and is the principle that every individual
is responsible for the consequences of one’s actions.
Although Newton may not always have been a vegetarian,
the physician George Cheyne used him as an example
of the benefits of a meatless diet.
Some have argued that Newton may have eaten meat
at times because he suffered from gout,
which is associated with much meat-eating.
Newton did not like hunting and preferred
to live on vegetables and fruit.
Voltaire explained that Newton had discovered a universal law
of the physical world, and in his theological studies
he posited that the golden rule to love others as yourself
is a universal law of the spiritual world.
In 1675 Newton was going to resign his Trinity fellowship
rather than submit to compulsory ordination
in what he considered to be a corrupt Anglican Church;
but he was allowed to remain
if he would not express his theological ideas.
Based on his ideas and interests, Newton was likely
influenced by the Rosicrucians, though he never
admitted publicly that he was a member.
Newton wrote The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms
Amended which was published a few months after his death.
In this book he argued that the world was created by one
supreme God who governs, and he believed that the
oldest religion is loving God,
“honoring parents and loving our neighbors as ourselves
and being merciful even to beasts.”
Newton noted that in 521 BC Hystaspes, father of King Darius,
with followers of Zarathushtra led the monotheistic reform
that brought Egyptian ideas preserved in Babylon
together with the ancient Brahmins.
In the 1680s Newton worked on a book entitled
The Philosophical Origins of Gentile Theology.
In “Irenicum, or Ecclesiastical Polyty tending to Peace”
he wrote that the precepts of Noah were
“to abstain from murder, theft, fornication, and all injuries;
not to feed on the flesh or drink the blood of a living animal,
but to be merciful even to bruit beasts.”3
Newton was elected a member of Parliament in January 1689.
After a serious illness in 1692 and 1693 he worked for the
government, and in 1695 he became
Master of the Mint until his death.
He published Optics in 1704 and a second edition
of the Principles in 1713.
He never married and is believed to have died a virgin.
Newton was first elected president of the Royal Society in 1703
and was annually re-elected and served until his death in 1727.
1. The Journal by George Fox, p. 212.
2. Quoted in The Bloodless Revolution:
A Cultural History of Vegetarianism from 1600 to Modern Times by Tristram Stuart, p. 90.
3. Ibid., p. 111.