note), "been one cause of the extreme scarcity of the puritanical
])amphlets." The censorship of the entire literature of the time was
l)ractically in tlie hands of tlie Primate and tlie Bishop of London.
Seep. 158.

^ Carlyle's Letters and S'peeches of Crumicell, \o\. i. p. 231).



RISE OF INDEPENDENCY 11: J

certain class of writers may be gathered from a remark
by Mr. Maskell in his History of the Martin- Marpr elate Con-
troversy. " I do not think that we must listen to objections
from the Elizabethan Puritans in the same temper as we
would to other men's ; neither can we allow them to
have the same weight." ^

The beginnings of Separatism and Independency.

— " The martyrs of the primitive Churches of old,"
says John Owen, " lost more of their blood and lives
for their meetings and assemblies than for personal
profession of the faith ; and so also have others done
under the Eoman apostasy." We have evidence as to
the prevalence of secret meetings and assemblies long
before the beginning of the Keformation in England.
" There were secret multitudes," says Foxe, " who tasted
and followed the sweetness of God's holy w^ord, and whose
fervent zeal may appear by their sitting up all night in
reading and hearing." The number of these appears to
have increased during the Marian persecution ; and even
with the fires of Smithfield blazing, as it were, before their
very eyes, they forsook not the assembling of themselves

^ A History of the Martin- Marprelate Controversy,])}' tlie Rev.AVilHam
Maskell, M.A., p. 116. The extent to which unconscious jji-ejudice
niay inliuence the minds of writers who make the "epitomised
synopsis of rumour," to use Carlyle's phrase, do duty for history, is
well illustrated in the two short articles on " Roljert Browne," and
" The Brownists," which appears in the last (ninth) edition of the
Enmjclo'pcedia Britannica. A statement like this, " The occasion of
the Brownists' separatism was not any fault they found with the
faith, but only with the discipline and forms of government of the
other Churches in England," should either have been omitted, or it
should have been amplified and explained.



124 PURITANISM

together. On New Year's Day 1555, we hear of certam
honest men and women of the city (of London), to the
number of thirty, taken, as they were at the communion
in a house in Bow Churchyard, and carried off to prison.
On the death of Mary and the accession of Elizabeth
these secret meetings continued to be held less or more
openly. Thomas Lever, one of the returned exiles, writing
to his friend Bullinger in 1559, says: "There had been
a congregation of faitliful persons concealed in London
during the time of Mary, among whom the gospel was
always preached, with the pure administration of the
sacraments ; but during the rigour of the persecution
of that Queen they carefully concealed themselves,
and on the cessation of it under Elizabeth they openly
continued in the same congregation. . . . Large
numbers flocked to them, not in churches, but in
private houses."

The Church of Richard Fitz. — In tlie year 1567 a
number of people — about two liundred — were in the habit
of meeting in London, in what was known as Plumbers'
Hall. They had chosen as their pastor one Eicliard
Fitz. " Some London citizens have openly separated from
us," says Bishop Grindal, writing to Bullinger, "and
sometimes in private houses, sometimes in fields, and
occasionally even in ships, they have held meetings
and administered the sacraments. Besides this, they
have ordained ministers, elders, and deacons, after their
own way. The Privy Council have lately committed the
heads of this faction to prison." Tlie latter refers to a
meeting at Phunbers' Hall, held in connection with some



EISE OF INDEPENDENCY 125

marriage festivity, which was surprised by the vigilance
of the authorities, broken up, and the incriminated
persons hailed off to Bridewell Prison. This little com-
pany, with Eichard Fitz as their pastor, is sometimes, but
incorrectly, described as the first Independent Congrega-
tional Churcli, if, indeed, it could be called, in any strict
liistorical sense, an Independent Church at all. It
seems more probable that it was a resumption or con-
tinuation of the previously existing band of Separatists
already mentioned as composed of " certain honest men
and women of the city, to the . number of thirty." ^
" These humble men really believed that Jesus Christ
established His empire upon the consent, not the fears, of
men, and trusted Himself defenceless among mankind," -
and, so far, the little Church was founded upon the Con-
gregational idea ; but much more is needed to show that
it was modelled upon the Congregational system. In his

1 The claim of this little Church, which had Eichard Fitz as its
pastor, to be considered an Independent or Congregational Church,
and also (for both claims have been made for it) the first Independent
or Congregational Church in England, has been very much debated.
The opinion to which the present writer inclines w^ill be gathered
from what follows in the text. A careful and interesting statement
of the case will be found in a paper entitled, " Congregationalism :
Old and New," in a little work on the JEarhj Indejyeiidents, by Rev.
John BroAvn, D.D. ; also in TJie Story of the English Separatists, pp.
41-45, by Rev. A. Mackennal, D.D. Both these works were pub-
lished in 1893 by the Congregational Union of England and Wales,
and present in the smallest compass — and far more effectively than
many bulky works — a clear, concise, and altogether admirable
history of the period to which they relate.

2 Dr. Stoughton's History of Religion in England, vol. i. p. 343, new
and revised edition. Dr. Stoughton's statement, that " a Congrega-
tional Church existed in London so early as 1568," calls for some
revision in the light of what has l)een already advanced.



126 PURITANISM

work on The Congregationalism of the last Three Hnnclred
Yea7's, p. 115, we think Dr. Dexter very forcibly deals
with this contention, and shows that while the little
company of Separatists held some good Congregational
principles, yet these " scarcely more touched the question
of pure polity than the pile, driven deep below the
foundations of a building, suggests whether it is to be
Gothic, Grecian, or pure Yankee in its fagade." His figure
implies a much less complete approximation to Inde-
pendent polity than that actually made by the little
company ; but certainly to speak of them as being the
founders of Independency is, we must hold, historically
inaccurate. That honour, however the necessity may
be regretted, has to be accorded to one of a very
different temper from Richard Fitz or any of his little
flock.

Robert Browne.^ — No account of Independency
would be complete wdiich did not embrace extended and
due reference to Eobert Browne, the founder of the
Brownists, the name which has since been given to the

1 " While they (the English Independents) seek the original war-
rant for their views in the New Testament and in the practice of the
primitive Church, and while they maintain, also, that the essence
of tliese views was rightly revived in old English Wyclifism, and
])erhaps in some of the speculations which accompanied Luther's
Refcjrmation on the Continent, they admit that the theory of Inde-
])endency had to be worked out afresh by a new process of the
Englisli mind in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and they
are content, I believe, that the crude immediate beginning of that
process should be sought in the opinions propagated l)etween 1580
and 1590 Ijy the erratic Robert Browne, a Rutlandshire man, l)red
at Cambridge, who had become a i)reacher at Norwich," — Professor
Masson's Life of Milton^ \(>1. iv. p. 530.



KISE OF INDEPENDENCY 127

followers of Independency. This remarkable man, extra-
ordinary both for the force of his personality and character,
was the son of Anthony Browne of Tolthorp, in Eutland-
shire, and was born in 1550. His grandfather, by a
charter of Henry viii., had acquired the singular dis-
tinction of being allowed to wear his cap in- the King's
])resence. After he had taken his degree at Cambridge,
he became, according to Strype, private chaplain to the
Duke of Norfolk. He was cited to appear before the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners on a charge of disseminating
seditious doctrines ; and had not that nobleman befriended
him and taken his part, he would doubtless have become
acquainted with the inside of a prison much earlier than he
did.^ At the age of twenty-two he became a schoolmaster,
and afterwards a lecturer and preacher, though without
a licence ; and it would appear that about this time he
adopted the opinions with which his name has been since
identified. Neal says he was " a fiery, hot-headed young
man, and went about the countries inveighing against the
discipline and ceremonies of the Church, and exhorted
the people by no means to comply with them." In 1580
he removed to Norwich, where his preaching was the
means of attracting a numerous congregation, which com-
prised, probably, a considerable number of Dutch refugees,
who at that time formed more than half the population
of Norwich. Among these were doubtless not a few
Anabaptists and other sufferers in the cause of liberty

1 This intervention, however, on the part of the Duke of Norfolk,
and the statement that Browne was chaplain to that nobleman, ap-
pears to be an error on the part of Strype. See note appended to Dr.
Dale's "Lecture on tlie Early Independents" in Jubilee Lectures, p. 55.



128 PURITANISM

and conscience.^ In the year 1582 he published a book
entitled, The Life and Manners of True Christians, to
which is prefixed " A Treatise of Keformation without
tarrying for any, and of the wickedness of those preachers
which will not reform themselves and their charge, because
they will tarry till the magistrate command and compel
them."

Browne seems to have been the first to protest against
multitudinism in the Church, or what is better known by
the term, promiscuous communion. " The kingdom of
God," he says, " was not to be begun by whole parishes,
but rather of the worthiest, be they never so few." The
Church must be constituted of sincere God-fearing Chris-
tian men and women. This is his definition of a Church :
" The Church planted or gathered in a company or number
of Christians or believers, which, by a willing covenant
made with their God, are under the government of God
and Christ, and keep His laws in one holy communion.
The Church government is the lordship of Christ in the
communion of His offices, whereby His people obey His
will, and have mutual use of their graces and callings to
further their godliness and welfare."

" For Browne, as before for Cartwright, the voice of
the people was literally the voice of God. Christ was
the King. As His will was revealed equally to all, all
had an equal right to interpret it. He reigns ; the com-
munity governs in His name. Tlius fhe Puritans, hy

1 " The Independents of England and the Congregationalists of
America are to-day in lineal descent from that little Ncn-wicli cliurch
of two Imndred and ninety-six years ago." — Dexter's Cowjreijational-
ism as seen in its Literature, p. 1 14, ]»ul)lislied in 1879,



RISE OF INDEPENDENCY 129

means of their idea of monarcliy itself, arrivecl ]jractie(dly
at (lemocracy. They 'proclaiined a hind, of Divine Right
Democraey." ^

Holding the views he did, lie could have no communion
with the Church of England, nor could he acknowledge
her " to be a true Church, or her ministers true ministers."
He exhorted his hearers to separate from the parish
churches, and " seek the Church of God wheresoever." ^
Such extreme views, and the endeavour to embody them
by the formation of a separate congregation, naturally
exposed Browne and his followers to the severity of the
Queen and her bishops, and he was obliged to leave the
kingdom. He and several of his friends found in Holland
the freedom which was denied them in their own country,
and, by permission of the authorities, a Church, which
may properly be described as an Independent Church,
was formed in Middelburg, in Zealand. This Church at
Middelburg included not a few who afterwards became
eminent for their zeal and piety and learning. The unan-
imity that at first prevailed was, however, soon broken,
and the Church split up into two sections, the one insist-
ing with Browne upon the duty of absolute separation
from the Church of England, and the other favouring a
more modified nonconformity. This latter section, under
Eobinson, took the name Independents. These became
growingly strong and influential, and the Brownists soon

^ " Puritanism and the English Kevolution," p. 34, chap. i. of the
Rise of Modern Democracy in Old and New England, by Charles
Borgeaud, Member of the Faculty of Law, Geneva. Translated by
Mrs. Birkl^eck Hill, with a preface by C. H. Firth, M.A., Balliol
College, Oxford.

2 See, however, pp. 185-6.
9



130 PUKITANJSM

faded out of view, and gave place to the Independents.
As the breach between his associates and himself
became wider, and troubles increased, Brow^ne found his
position intoleral)le. He determined to try Scotland, to
see if that would furnish more congenial and fruitful soil
for the grow^th of his free Church principles. But if he
had little to hope for from Episcopacy, he soon found
that he had still less to expect from Presbyterianism.
King James said : " They " (meaning Browne and Penry)
" have come to Scotland to sow their popple amongst us."
The next thing we find is that Browne w^as cited to
appear before the Archbishop of Canterbury to answer
for one of his publications. He was delivered from this
dilemma by the friendly interposition of his kinsman,
Lord Burghley. After this, Browne found an asylum
under his father's roof, and here apparently everything
was done that parental solicitude could suggest to induce
him to change his opinions and conform to the estab-
lished religion. But, says Fuller, " it seems Browne's
errors w^ere so inlaid in him, no conferences with divines
would convince him to the contrary, w^hose incorrigible-
ness made his ow^n father weary of his company. Men
may wish, God only can work, children to be good. The
old gentleman would own him for his son no longer than
his son owned the Church of England for his mother,
desiring to rid his hands of him."

Concerning the closing period of Browne's life, it is
very difficult to ascertain correctly what the facts are.
"We have only the testimony of men like Fuller, who was
intensely prejudiced against the man and his views, and
whose statements therefore must be received with the



RISE OF IXDErENDEXCY lol

utmost caution. It seems, however, impossible to acquit
liim of gross inconsistency and tergiversation. . Weary of
enduring " the sHngs and arrows of outrageous fortune," he
accepted a living in Xorthamptonshire, and found rest, or
such rest as was possible to so turbulent a spirit, in the
})osom of the Church which he had so unsparingly assailed
and denounced. For this act no apology can be offered
but his ungovernable temper, and the fact that he was
an old man soured by disappointment and broken by
reverses. " One may justly wonder," says Fuller, '' when
many meaner accessories in this schism were arraigned,
condemned, and executed, how this Browne, the principal,
made so fair an escape, yea, enjoyed such preferment.
Yet he came off at last both with saving his life and
keeping his living (and that none of the meanest —
Achurch in ISTorthamptonshire) until the day of his
death."

" More probable it is that the promise of his general
compliance with the Church of England (so far forth as
not to make future disturbance therein) met with the
archbishop's courteous acceptance thereof, both which
effectually improved by the countenance of Thomas Cecil,
Earl of Exeter (Browne's near kinsman and patron), pro-
cured this extraordinary favour to be indulged unto him."

But though Browne consented to eat the bread of the
Church of which he had been so unsparing an assailant,
it is quite clear that his compliance w^as merely outward
and formal, and represented no change of principle or
conviction. Strype says of him : " He continued still
very freakish " ; while Fuller says : " I will never
believe that he ever formally recanted his opinions,



132 PURITANISM

either by \yord or writing, as to the main of what he
maintained." ^

Browne, in what sense the founder of Independ-
ency. — It is assumed by adverse critics of Independency
that the relation between it and Browne is Hke that
which exists between the stream and its source, and,
consequently, if they can show the impurity of the one,
they can demonstrate the impurity of the other. This
assumption is, however, unfounded and gratuitous.

Browne was the founder of Independency only in the
sense that he was the first (so far as we know) to grasp
its fundamental contention and principle, and give it
practical and visible embodiment. He saw clearly
enough that the primitive Church was very different
from the Church of England, that its most characteristic
features had been obliterated, its simplicity superseded
and overlaid by an elaborate ritual, by a graded hierarchy,
l;)y ceremonies and customs which had no existence,
and could have had no sanction in the apostolic age.
Xow as then, it was w^ithin the right of any number of
Christians to form themselves into a separate congre-
gation, elect their own officers, arrange for the conduct
of worship, the observance of ordinances, and the main-
tenance of discipline, free from all external authority and
control ; and acting upon this conviction, he took steps
to gather a Church founded upon these principles.
Browne's part in the movement was simply that of
the discoverer who gives to some new fruitful idea its
initial impulse and shape, leaving it to others to expand
1 See Fuller's Church Hutunj, vol. x. p. G8,



KISE OF INDEPENDENCY 133

and develop. But as the worth of a discovery, either in
science or morals, is not affected by the discoverer's
personal character or manner of life, so it is no deroga-
tion to Independency to say that his reputation for piety
and consistency was decidedly damaged. But if Browne
had been a much worse man than he was, it would not
invalidate or impugn his claim to have originated and
struck out a most fruitful idea, nor yet to have demon-
strated its practical^ility as the basis of a free democratic
Church system. In gatliering the first separate congrega-
tion, Browne had, at least, the courage of his convictions.
This quality was certainly not lacking in one who boasted
that for preaching against bishops, ceremonies, etc., " he
had been committed to thirty-two prisons, in some of
which he could not see his hand at noonday."

It is no part of our brief to defend the character of
Eobert Browne, and we confess that if it were, we should
shrink from essaying the task. Let those, however, who
are desirous to see what apology can be constructed for
liis later errors, turn to Dr. Dexter's account of him.^
Dr. Dexter is a convinced and ardent believer in tlie
genuineness of his character and the honesty of his
religious convictions. Whatever be thought of his final
judgment in regard to him, no one can consider the evi-
dence he brings forward, and examine carefully what he has
to say regarding it, without admitting the groundlessness
of the charge that Eobert Browne was " an ambitious
bigot in his earlier, and a contemptible sneak in his
later years ; witli the easy, if not inevitable, inference

^ Dexter's Congregationalism as seen in its Literature, Robert Browne
and his Co-\vorkers, ]ip. 116-128.



134 PURITANISM

that he must have been a hypocrite through all." Dr.
Baxter's deliverance is summed up in the words, that he was
"a long maligned, eccentric, infirm, and probably insane, yet,
I must think, a mainly good and singularly clever man."

Browne and the Brownists. — In his adndraljle
lectun' un the early Independents, Dr. Dale says : " I
have never been able, however, to satisfy myself as to the
ground on which the Congregationalists of the latter
years of Elizabeth's reign so bitterly resented identifica-
tion with the Brownists." ^ But we submit that this is
sufficiently explained by the suspicion and odium which
Browne naturally incurred by his tergiversation, and also by
the reputation he had previously acquired by his imperious
and fiery temper. If Browne's personal character had been
such as to command unhesitating confidence and respect,
there is no reason to suppose that the later Independents
would have shown any indisposition to bear his name, or
ha^e shrunk from avowing themselves his followers. The
Brownists — the name afterwards given to liis followers
— carried his principles to a most extreme length. They
denied the Church of England to be a true Church, and
maintained that its rites and discipline were popish, anti-
clnistian, and corrupt. The constitution of the existing
ecclesiastical hierarchy seemed to them too bad to be
mended, the very pillars of it were rotten, and the only
h()])e of reforming it lay in razing it to the ground and
beginning to build anew.

' "No Independent will take it well at any man's hand to bo
ealled a Broiniist.'^ — Hanhury's Historical Memorials relating to the
InrJi'pcndents, vol. iii. p. 132,



EISE OF INDEPENDENCY 135

Neal the historian, and, as some aver (we think on
insufficient grounds), the unsparing panegyrist of the
Puritans and all their doings, admits that the Brownists
were involved in frequent quarrels and divisions. " Their
chief crime," he said, " was their uncharitableness in
unchurching the whole Christian world, and breaking oft
all manner of communion in hearing the word, in public
prayer, and in the administration of the sacraments, not
only with the Church of England, but with all foreign
reformed churches, w^hich, though less pure, ought cer-
tainly to be owned as Churches of Christ." John Cotton,
one of the organising minds of Xew England, and to whom
the credit specially belongs of reducing Independency
to a working system, energetically repelled the imputa-
tion of Brownism, or, as he expressed it, the " disclaiming
the Churches in England to be no Churches, but as limbs
of the devil " ; adding, that for using such violent
language as this, Eoger Williams was censured and
condemned.^

Twenty thousand Brownists in England. — Obnoxi-
ous as Brownism was, not less, perhaps, to Cartwright and
the Puritans at large than to the ruling powers, it is clear
from contemporary evidence it had grown even under



1 Dr. Dexter says Brownism has been misunderstood by the great
mass of Congregationalists, who have been wont to associate with this
term the thought of narrowness and exclusion. Thus lie sa\'S
Cotton calls Brownism the " way of rigid separation." But by
Brownism, Dr. Dexter evidently means tlie opinions of Browne
himself. "\Ye suspect that Cotton is here speaking, not of Browne,
but of his followers, who certainly went further in the way of
narrowness and exclusion.



136 PURITANISM

the primacy of Whitgift to considerable dimensions,
and become a force that had to be reckoned with.
" In my conceit," said Sir Walter Ealeigh, in a speech
lie delivered in Parliament in 1580, "the Brownists are
worthy to be rooted out of the Commonwealth ; but what
danger may grow to ourselves if this law pass, it were
fit to be considered. For it is to be feared that men not
guilty w^ill be involved in it. . . . If two or three
thousand Brownists meet at the sea, at whose charge
shall they be transported, or whither will you send them ?
I am sorry for it. / am afraid there are near twenty
thousand of them in England, and when they be gone
who shall maintain their wives and children ? " ^

Dissenters and Separatists. — A certain degree
of confusion on the part of those who have treated of
the germinal upspringings of Independency would, we
think, have been avoided if they had kept more clearly
before their minds the fact that during and after the
Eeformation (and to some extent, as we have seen, even
before) there were three classes of Dissenters or Sepa-
ratists.

1st. Those who dissented from the Established Church
because of its corruptions, but still clung to it in the
hope that the leaven of its apostasy might be purged away.

2nd. Those who dissented from the Church for the
same reason, but had abandoned all hope of possible