Books Condemned to be Burnt

The year following the burning of these books the House of Commons directed its vengeance against certain statutes passed by the Republican government. On May 17th, 1661, a large majority condemned the Solemn League and Covenant to be burnt by the hangman, the House of Lords concurring. All copies of it were also to be taken down from all churches and public places. Evelyn, seeing it burnt in several places in London on Monday 22nd, exclaims, "Oh! prodigious change!" The Irish Parliament also condemned it to the flames, not only in Dublin, but in all the towns of Ireland.

A few days later, May 27th, the House of Commons, unanimously and with no petition to the King, condemned to be burnt as "treasonable parchment writings":

1. "The Act for erecting a High Court of Justice for the trial of Charles I."

2. "The Act declaring and constituting the people of England a Commonwealth."

3. "The Act for subscribing the Engagement."

4. "The Act for renouncing and disannulling the title of Charles Stuart" (September 1656).

5. "The Act for the security of the Lord Protector's person and continuance of the Nation in peace and safety" (September 1656).

Three of these were burnt at Westminster and two at the Exchange. Pepys, beholding the latter sight from a balcony, was led to moralise on the mutability of human opinion. The strange thing is that, when these Acts were burnt, the Act for the abolition of the House of Lords (1649) appears to have escaped condemnation. For its intrinsic interest, I here insert the words of the old parchment: —

"The Commons of England assembled in Parliament, finding by too long experience that the House of Lords is useless and dangerous to the people of England to be continued, hath thought fit to ordain and enact, and be it ordained and enacted by this present Parliament and by the authority of the same: That from henceforth the House of Lords in Parliament shall be and is hereby wholly abolished and taken away; and that the Lords shall not from henceforth meet and sit in the said house, called the Lords' House, or in any other house or place whatsoever as a House of Lords; nor shall sit, vote, advise, adjudge, or determine of any matter or thing whatsoever as a House of Lords in Parliament: Nevertheless, it is hereby declared, that neither such Lords as have demeaned themselves with honour, courage, and fidelity to the Commonwealth, nor their posterities (who shall continue so), shall be excluded from the public councils of the Nation, but shall be admitted thereunto and have their free vote in Parliament, if they shall be thereunto elected, as other persons of interest elected and qualified thereunto ought to have. And be it further ordained and enacted by the authority aforesaid, That no peer of this land (not being elected, qualified, and sitting as aforesaid) shall claim, have, or make use of any privilege of Parliament either in relation to his person, quality, or estate any law, usage, or custom to the contrary notwithstanding."16

How true a presentiment our ancestors had of the incompatibility between an hereditary chamber and popular liberty is conspicuously shown by the next book we read of as burnt; and indeed there are few more instructive historical tracts than Locke's Letter from a Person of Quality to his Friend in the Country, which was ordered to be burnt by the Privy Council; and wherein he gave an account of the debates in the Lords on a Bill "to prevent the dangers which may arise from persons disaffected to the Government," in April and May 1675. It was actually proposed by this Bill to make compulsory on all officers of Church or State, and on all members of both Houses, an oath, not only declaring it unlawful upon any pretence to take arms against the King, but swearing to endeavour at no time the alteration of the government in Church and State. To that logical position had the Royalist spirit come within fifteen years of the Restoration; Charles II., according to Burnet, being much set on this scheme, which, says Locke, was "first hatched (as almost all the mischiefs of the world have been) amongst the great churchmen." The bishops and clergy, by their outcry, had caused Charles's Declaration of Indulgence (March 17th, 1671) to be cancelled, and the great seal broken off it; they had "tricked away the rights and liberties of the people, in this and all other countries, wherever they had had opportunity.. that priest and prince may, like Castor and Pollux, be worshipped together as divine, in the same temple, by us poor lay-subjects; and that sense and reason, law, properties, rights, and liberties shall be understood as the oracles of those deities shall interpret."

There seems no doubt that the extinction of liberty was as vigorously aimed at as it was nearly achieved at the period Locke describes, under the administration of Lord Danby. But the Bill, though carried in the Lords, was strongly contested. Locke says that it occupied sixteen or seventeen whole days of debate, the House sitting often till 8 or 9 p. m., or even to midnight. His account of the speakers and their arguments is one of the most graphic pages of historical painting in our language; but it is said to have been drawn up at the desire, and almost at the dictation, of Locke's friend, Lord Shaftesbury, who himself took a prominent part against the Bill. Fortunately, it never got beyond the House of Lords, a dispute between the two Houses leading to a prorogation of Parliament and so to the salvation of liberty. But the whole episode impresses on the mind the force of the current then, as always, flowing in favour of arbitrary government throughout our history, as well as a sense of the very narrow margin by which liberty of any sort has escaped or been evolved, and, in general, of wonder that it should ever have survived at all the combinations of adverse circumstances against it.

It has been shown in the account of books burnt in the time of the Rebellion, how freely in the struggle between Orthodoxy and Free Thought – between the dogmas, that is, of the strongest sect and the speculations of individuals – fire was resorted to for the purpose of burning out unpopular opinions. These, indeed, were often of so fantastic a nature, that no fire was really needed to insure their extinction; whilst of others it may be said that, as their existence was originally independent of actual expression, so the punishment inflicted on their utterance could prove no barrier to their propagation.

But besides the war that was waged in the domain of theology proper, between opinions claiming to be sound and opinions claiming to be true, a contest no less fierce centred for long round the very organisation of the Church; and between the Establishment and Dissent that hostile condition of thrust and parry, which has since become chronic, and is so detrimental to the cause professed by both alike, is no less visible in the field of literature than in that of our general history. Associated with the literary side of this great and bitter conflict – a side only too much ignored in the discreet popular histories of the English Church – are the names of Delaune, Defoe, Tindal, on the aggressive side, of Sacheverell and Drake on the defensive; each party, during the heat of battle, giving vent to sentiments so offensive to the other as to make it seem that fire alone could atone for the injury or remove the sting.

The first book to mention in connection with this struggle is Delaune's Plea for the Nonconformists; a book round which hangs a melancholy tale, and which is entitled to a niche in the library of Fame for other reasons than the mere fact of its having been burnt before the Royal Exchange in 1683. The story shows the sacerdotalism of the Church of England at its very worst, and helps to explain the evil heritage of hatred which, in the hearts of the nonconforming sects, has since descended and still clings to her.

Dr. Calamy, one of the King's chaplains, had preached and printed a sermon called Scrupulous Conscience, challenging to, or advocating, the friendly discussion of points of difference between the Church and the Nonconformists. Delaune, who kept a grammar school, was weak enough to take him at his word, and so wrote his Plea, a book of wondrous learning, and to this day one of the best to read concerning the origin and growth of the various rites of the Church. Thereupon he was whisked off to herd with the commonest felons in Newgate, whence he wrote repeatedly to Dr. Calamy, to beg him, as the cause of his unjust arrest, to procure his release. Delaune disclaimed all malignity against the English Church, or any member of it, and, with grim humour, entreated to be convinced of his errors "by something more like divinity than Newgate." But the Church has not always dealt in more convincing divinity, and accordingly the cowardly ecclesiastic held his peace and left his victim to suffer.

It is difficult even now to tell the rest of Delaune's story with patience. He was indicted for intending to disturb the peace of the kingdom, to bring the King into the greatest hatred and contempt, and for printing and publishing, by force of arms, a scandalous libel against the King and the Prayer-Book. Of course it was extravagantly absurd, but these indictments were the legal forms under which the luckless Dissenters experienced sufferings that were to them the sternest realities. Delaune was, in consequence, fined a sum he could not possibly pay; his books (for he also wrote The Image of the Beast, wherein he showed, in three parallel columns, the far greater resemblance of the Catholic rites to those of Pagan Rome than to those of the New Testament) were condemned to be burnt; and his judges, humane enough to let him off the pillory in consideration of his education, sent him back to Newgate notwithstanding it. There, in that noisome atmosphere and in that foul company, he was obliged to shelter his wife and two small children; and there, after fifteen months, he died, having first seen all he loved on earth pine and die before him. And he was only one of eight thousand other Protestant Dissenters who died in prison during the merry, miserable reign of Charles II.! Of a truth, Dissent has something to forgive the Church; for persecution in Protestant England was very much the same as in Catholic France, with, if possible, less justification.

The main argument of Delaune's book was, that the Church of England agreed more in its rites and doctrines with the Church of Rome, and both Churches with Pagan or pre-Christian Rome, than either did with the primitive Church or the word of the Gospel – a thesis that has long since become generally accepted; but his main offence consisted in saying that the Lord's Prayer ought in one sentence to have been translated precisely as it now has been in the Revised Version, and in contending that the frequent repetition of the prayer in church was contrary to the express command of Scripture. On these and other points Delaune's book was never answered – for the reason, I believe, that it never could be. After the Act of Toleration (1689) it was often reprinted; the eighth and last time in 1706, when the High Church movement to persecute Dissent had assumed dangerous strength, with an excellent preface by Defoe, and concluding with the letters to Dr. Calamy, written by Delaune from Newgate. Defoe well points out that the great artifice of Delaune's time was to make the persecution of Dissent appear necessary, by representing it as dangerous to the State as well as the Church.

The mention of two other books seems to complete the list of burnt political literature down to the Revolution of 1688.

One is Malice Defeated, or a brief relation of the accusation and deliverance of Elizabeth Cellier. The authoress was implicated in the Dangerfield conspiracy, and, having been indicted for plotting to kill the King and to reintroduce Popery, was sentenced at the Old Bailey to be imprisoned till she had paid a fine of £1,000, to stand three times in the pillory, and to have her books burnt by the hangman. I do not suppose that, in her case, literature incurred any loss.

The other is the translation of Claude's Plaintes des Protestants, burnt at the Exchange on May 5th, 1686. After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, people like Sir Roger l'Estrange were well paid to write denials of any cruelties as connected with that measure in France; much as in our own day people wrote denials of the Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria. The famous Huguenot minister's book proved of course abundantly the falsity of this denial; but, as Evelyn says, so great a power in the English Court had then the French ambassador, "who was doubtless in great indignation at the pious and truly generous charity of all the nation for the relief of those miserable sufferers who came over for shelter," that, in deference to his wishes, the Government of James II. condemned the truth to the flames. Nothing in that monarch's reign proves more conclusively the depth of degradation to which his foreign policy and that of his brother had caused his country to fall.

CHAPTER VI.

Book-Fires of the Revolution

THE period of the Revolution, by which I mean from the accession of William III. to the death of Queen Anne, was a time in which the conflict between Orthodoxy and Free Thought, and again between Church and Dissent, continued with an unabated ferocity, which is most clearly reflected in and illustrated by the sensational history of its contemporary literature, especially during the reign of Queen Anne. I am not aware that any book was burnt by authority of the English Parliament during the reign of William, but to say this in the face of Molyneux's Case for Ireland, which has been so frequently by great authorities declared to have been so treated, compels me to allude to the history of that book, and to give the reasons for a contrary belief.

It is first stated in the preface to the edition of 1770 that William Molyneux's Case for Ireland being bound by Acts of Parliament in England, first published in 1698, was burnt by the hangman at the order of Parliament; and the statement has been often repeated by later writers, as by Mr. Lecky, Dr. Ball, and others. Why then is there no mention of such a sentence in the Journals of the Commons, where a full account is given of the proceedings against the book; nor in Swift's Drapier Letters, where he refers to the fate of the Case for Ireland? This seems almost conclusive evidence on the negative side; but as the editor of 1770 may have had some lost authority for his remark, and not been merely mistaken, some account may be given of the book, as of one possibly, but not probably, condemned to the flames.17

Molyneux was distinguished for his scientific attainments, was a member of the Irish Parliament, first for Dublin City and then for the University, and was also a great friend of Locke the philosopher. The introduction in 1698 of the Bill, which was carried the same year by the English Parliament, forbidding the exportation of Irish woollen manufactures to England or elsewhere – one of the worst Acts of oppression of the many that England has perpetrated against Ireland – led Molyneux to write this book, in which he contends for the constitutional right of Ireland to absolute legislative independence. As the political relationship between the two countries – a relation now of pure force on one side, and of subjection on the other – is still a matter of contention, it will not be out of place to devote a few lines to a brief summary of his argument.

Before 1641 no law made in England was of force in Ireland without the consent of the latter, a large number of English Acts not being received in Ireland till they had been separately enacted there also. At the so-called conquest of Ireland by Henry II., the English laws settled by him were voluntarily accepted by the Irish clergy and nobility, and Ireland was allowed the freedom of holding parliaments as a separate and distinct kingdom from England. So it was that John was made King (or Dominus) of Ireland even in the lifetime of his father, Henry II., and remained so during the reign of his brother, Richard I. Ireland, therefore, could not be bound by England without the consent of her own representatives; and the happiness of having her representatives in the English Parliament could hardly be hoped for, since that experiment had been proved in Cromwell's time to be too troublesome and inconvenient.

Molyneux concluded his argument with a warning that subsequent history has amply justified – "Advancing the power of the Parliament of England by breaking the rights of another may in time have ill effects." So, indeed, it has; but such warnings or prophecies seldom bring favour to their authors, and the English Parliament was moved to fury by Molyneux' arguments. Yet the latter, writing to Locke on the subject of his book, had said: "I think I have treated it with that caution and submission that it cannot justly give any offence; insomuch that I scruple not to put my name to it; and, by the advice of some good friends, have presumed to dedicate it to his Majesty… But till I either see how the Parliament at Westminster is pleased to take it, or till I see them risen, I do not think it advisable for me to go on t'other side of the water. Though I am not apprehensive of any mischief from them, yet God only knows what resentments captious men may take on such occasions." (April 19th, 1698.)

Molyneux, however, was soon to know this himself, for on May 21st his book was submitted to the examination of a committee; and on the committee's report (June 22nd) that it was "of dangerous consequence to the Crown and people of England, by denying the authority of the King and Parliament of England to bind the kingdom and people of Ireland," an address was presented to the King praying him to punish the author of such "bold and pernicious assertions," and to discourage all things that might lessen the dependence of Ireland upon England; to which William replied that he would take care that what they complained of should be prevented and redressed. Perhaps the dedication of the book to the King restrained the House from voting it to the flames; but, anyhow, there is not the least contemporary evidence of their doing so. Molyneux did not survive the year of the condemnation of his book; but, in spite of his fears, he spent five weeks with Locke at Oates in the autumn of the same year, his book surviving him, to attest his wonderful foresight as much as later events justified his spirited remonstrance.

There is, however, no doubt about the burning of a book for its theological sentiments at this time, though it was no Parliament but only an university which committed it to the fire. Oxford University has always tempered her love for learning with a dislike for inquiry, and set the cause of orthodoxy above the cause of truth. This phase of her character was never better illustrated than in the case of The Naked Gospel, by the Rev. Arthur Bury, Rector of Exeter College (1690).

A high value attaches to the first edition of this book, wherein the author essayed to show what the primitive Gospel really was, what alterations had been gradually made in it, and what advantages and disadvantages had therefrom ensued. Bury, many years before, in 1648, had known what it was to be led from his college by a file of musketeers, and forbidden to return to Oxford or his fellowship under pain of death, because he had the courage in those days to read the prayers of the Church. So he had some justification for ascribing his anonymous work to "a true son of the Church"; and his motive was the promotion of that charity and toleration which breathes in its every page. The King had summoned a Convocation, to make certain changes in the Litany, and, if possible, to reconcile ecclesiastical differences; he even dreamt of uniting the Protestant Churches of England and of the Continent, and his Comprehension Bill, had it passed Parliament, might have made the English Church a really national Church; and it was from his sympathy with the broad ideas of the King that Bury wrote his pamphlet, intending not to publish it, but to present it to the members of Convocation severally. Unfortunately he showed or presented a few copies to a few friends, with the natural result that the work became known, the author admonished for heresy and driven from his rectorship, and the book publicly burnt, by a vote of the university, in the area of the schools (August 19th, 1690). He should have reflected that it is as little the part of a discreet man to try to reconcile religious factions as to seek to separate fighting tigers.

The unexpected commotion roused by his book led the author to republish it with great modifications and omissions; a fact which much diminishes the interest of the second edition of 1691. For instance, the preface to the second edition omits this passage of the first: "The Church of England, as it needs not, so it does not, forbid any of its sons the use of their own eyes; if it did, this alone would be sufficient reason not only to distrust but to condemn it." Nevertheless both editions alike contain many passages remarkable for their breadth of view no less than for their admirable expression. What, for instance, could be better than the passage wherein he speaks of the priests cramming the people with doctrines, "so many in numbers that an ordinary mind cannot retain them; so perplexed in matter that the best understanding cannot comprehend them; so impertinent to any good purpose that a good man need not regard them; and so unmentioned in Scripture that none but the greatest subtlety can therein discover the least intimations of them"? Or again: "No king is more independent in his own dominions from any foreign jurisdiction in matters civil, than every Christian is within his own mind in matters of faith"? What Doctor of Divinity of these days would speak as courageously as this one did two hundred years ago? So let any one be prepared to give a good price for a first edition copy of The Naked Gospel, and, when obtained, to study as well as honour it.

History is apt to repeat itself, and therefore it is of interest to note here that about a century and a half later (March 1849) Exeter College was again stirred to the burning point, and that in connection with a book which, apart from its intrinsic interest, enjoys the distinction of having been actually the last to be burnt in England. In the Morning Post of March 9th, 1849, it is written: "We are informed that a work recently published by Mr. Froude, M.A., Fellow of Exeter College, entitled the Nemesis of Faith, was a few days since publicly burned by the authorities in the College Hall." The Nemesis, therefore, deserves a place in our libraries, and many will even prize it above its author's historical works, as the last example of the effort of the ecclesiastical spirit to crush the discussion of its dogmas. It is owing to this attempt that the Nemesis is now so well known as to render any reference to its contents superfluous.

We now pass to the reign of Queen Anne, when Toryism became the prevalent power in the country, and manifested its peculiar spirit by the increased persecution of literature.

Among strictly theological works one by John Asgill, barrister, claims a peculiar distinction, for it was burnt by order of two Parliaments, English and Irish, and its author expelled from two Houses of Commons. This was the famous Argument Proving that According to the Covenant of Eternal Life, revealed in the Scriptures, Man may be Translated from Hence into that Eternal Life without Passing Through Death, although the Human Nature of Christ Himself could not be thus Translated till He had Passed Through Death (1700). In this book of 106 pages Asgill argued that death, which had come by Adam, had been removed by the death of Christ, and had lost its legal power. He claimed the right, and asserted his expectation, of actual translation; and so went by the nickname of "Translated Asgill." He tells how in writing it he felt two powers within him, one bidding him write, the other bobbing his elbow; but unfortunately the former prevailed, as it generally does. His printer told him that his men thought the author a little crazed, in which Asgill fancied the printer spoke one word for them and two for himself. Other people agreed with the printer, to Asgill's advantage, for, as he says, "Coming into court to see me as a monster, and hearing me talk like a man, I soon fell into my share of practice": which I mention as a hint for the briefless. This was in Ireland, where Asgill was elected member for Enniscorthy, for which place however he only sat four days, being expelled for his pamphlet on October 10th, 1703. Shortly afterwards Asgill became member for Bramber, in Sussex, but this seat, too, he lost in 1707 for the same reason, the English House, like the Irish, though not by a unanimous vote, condemning his book to the flames. Asgill's debts caused him apparently to spend the rest of his days in the comparative peace of the Fleet prison.