^. EGACY 
 
 " ARSONS.
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 \2>'/^
 
 COBBETrS LEGACY TO PAliSOl^S.
 
 COBBETT'S 
 LEGACY TO PARSONS; 
 
 HAVE THE CLEEGY OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH AN 
 
 EQUITABLE RIGHT TO THE TITHES. OR TO ANY OTHER 
 
 THING CALLED CHURCH PROPERTY, GREATER THAN 
 
 THE DISSENTERS HAVE TO THE SAME ? AND 
 
 OUGHT THERE, OR OUGHT THERE NOT 
 
 TO BE A SEPARATION OF THE 
 
 CHURCH FROM THE STATE? i 
 
 IN SIX LETTERS, 
 
 Addressed to the Churcli Parsons in general, including the 
 Cathedral and College Clergy, and the Bishops. 
 
 WITH A 
 
 DEDICATION TO BLOMFIELD, BISHOP OF LONDON. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM COBBETT, M.P. 
 
 FOR OLDHAM. 
 
 NEW EDITION. 
 
 LONDON: 
 CHAELES GKIFFIN AND COMPANY, 
 
 STATIONERS' HALL COURT.
 
 SlS7 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 THE LETTERS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. — ^How came there to be an Established Church ? 9 
 
 II. — How came there to be people called Dissenters ? 38 
 
 lU. — What is the foundation of the domination of the 
 
 Church over Dissenters ? ... ... ... 50 
 
 IV. — Does tlie Establishment conduce to religious in- 
 struction? 69 
 
 V. — What is the state of the Establishment ? and, 
 
 is it possible to reform it ? 80 
 
 VI. — What is that compound thing, called Church and 
 State ? and what would be the Effect of a 
 separation of them ? 107 
 
 1817860
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 TO JAMES BLOMFIELD, BISHOP OF LONDON. 
 
 Normandy Farm, 9 March, 1835. 
 Bishop, 
 
 About six-and-twenty years ago, you drank tea 
 at my bouse at Botley, wben you were a curate of 
 some place in Norfolk; or a teacher to the ofispring- 
 of some hereditary legislator. How rugged has my 
 course been since that time : how thickly has my path 
 been strewed with thorns ! How smooth, how flowery, 
 how pleasant, your career ! Yet, here we are ; you 
 with a mitre on your head, indeed, and a crosier in 
 your holy hands; I, at the end of my rugged and 
 thorny path in a situation to have a right, in the name 
 of the aciilions of this cation, to inquire, not only into 
 your conduct, but into the titility of the very office that 
 yon fill. 
 
 It is now become a question, seriously, publicly, and 
 practically entertained, whether you andyour brethren of 
 the Established Church should be legally deprived of all 
 your enormouR temporal possessions ; and also, whether 
 your whole order should not, as a thing supported by 
 the law, be put an end to for ever. These questions 
 
 B
 
 6 DEDICATION. 
 
 must now be discussed. Tliey are not to be shuffled 
 off" by Commissions of Inquiry, or any other Com- 
 missions; the people demand a discussion of these 
 questions, and a decision upon them ; the Parliament 
 must discuss them ; and, this little book, which I now 
 dedicate to you, is written for the Purpose of aiding- 
 us all in the discussion ; so that we may come at last 
 to a just decision. 
 
 I select you to dedicate my book to ; first because 
 3'ou were a zealous defender of the Dead-Body Bill, 
 which consigns the corpses of the most unfortunate of 
 the poor to be cut up by surgeons, instead of being- 
 consigned, with double and treble solicitude, to the care 
 of a really Christian clergy, and provided with all 
 the means and circumstances of the most respectful 
 Christian burial. 
 
 Another reason is, that you were a 'poor lam com- 
 mhsioner ; one of the authors of that book, which was 
 slyly laid upon the table of the House of Commons, 
 by the Whigs, in 1833 ; and one of the authors of that 
 voluminous report and appendix, laid upon the table of 
 the same House last j^ear ; on which report and 
 appendix the coarser-food bill was passed ; and in 
 which report and appendix, you have communicated to 
 the House of Commons the most infamous libels 
 against me by name. 
 
 Another reason is, that you are a Church-reform 
 commissioner, imder the present set of Ministers ; and 
 that I find, that, while you were Bishop of Chester, 
 youmade a G. B. Blomfield, a prebendary of Chester, 
 and that he now has, in addition to that prebend, two 
 ••eat church livings; namely, the rectory of Cad-
 
 DEDICATIOX. 7 
 
 DiNGTON, and the rector}^ of Tattenhall, eacli worth, 
 probably, from a thousand to fifteen hundred pounds a 
 year. Now, Bishop, this is a very solid reason for 
 •addressing my little book to you ; for, if you can talk of 
 •' Church-reform^^ and about seeking" for the means of 
 providing for the cure of souls, while this Blomfield 
 lias a prebend and two g'reat rectories, it is pretty clear 
 that you want a great deal of enlightening on the 
 subject. If you do not, however, many other people 
 do'; and therefore it is, that I write and publish this 
 little book, which is my Legacy to Parsons, and which 
 I most earnestly hope will very soon be amongst the 
 most valuable of their remaining- temporal possessions. 
 You will find the little book go to the venj bottom 
 of the matter ; that it will unveil all the mystery that 
 has hung about this Church for so many 3'^ears ; that 
 it will leave the people nothing more to ask about the 
 matter; and put them in a situation to determine 
 reasonably, at once, either to submit to the most crying 
 abuses that ever existed upon the face of the earth; or 
 to put themselves in motion for the purpose of legally 
 but resolutely, effectually, and for ever, putting an end 
 (0 tins abuse. 
 
 W'u. COBBETT
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 HOW CAME THERE TO BE AN ESTABLISHED CHURCH . 
 
 Parsons, 
 
 This question oug-ht to be clearly answered; 
 because on it must tin-n the g-ieat practical question 
 now at issue ; nanieh', has the Parliament the rightful 
 ■power to assume, to tahe possession of\ and to dispose 
 of, the tithes and all other j^i'operty, commonly 
 called Chtirch-property, in whatever manner it ,^iay 
 think proper ? You and 3'our partisans contend that 
 it has not this rightful power j I contend that it has. 
 
 As to the justice and the expediency, we shall ha-^e 
 to consider these further on : we have first to settle 
 the question of right ; and this question will be settled, 
 at once, when we have seen hoiu this Church came 
 to he. 
 
 The following- facts are undeniable; i.amcly, that 
 the Roman Catholic relig-ion was the religion of all 
 Christian countries and governments until about the 
 year 1520, when Henry the Eighth was King* of 
 England ; that the Roman Catholics contended that 
 their Church was established by Christ and the Apostlesj 
 that they ordained that there should be one flock, one 
 fold, and one shepherd ; that the church w\as built on 
 « rock, the name of St. Peter being synonymous with 
 that of stone, or rock ; that St. Peter was appointed 
 by this Divine authority, to be the first head of the 
 Church, after Christ himself j that the Popes have
 
 10 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 been, and are the true successors of St, Peter, I)_y 
 Divine appointment; that the Pope is the one 
 shejiherd, to whom all Christians owe spiritual 
 obedience. The relig'ion was called the Roman 
 Catholic voW^wn; because the see (that is to say, seat) 
 of St. Peter was at Rome, and because his authority 
 was tiniversal, that being the meaning- of the word 
 Catholic. 
 
 No matter as to the truth or error of these opinions 
 and assertions : they prevailed ; with here and there an 
 exception, all Christians held these opinions ; and, when 
 the Christian religion was introduced into England, 
 which was eifectually dune about six hundred years 
 after the death of Christ, these opinions prevailed in 
 England as well as in other Christian countries. The 
 Pope was the head of the Church here as well as else- 
 where ; his spiritual authority he exercised without any 
 copartnership with, or dependence upon, the state ; 
 the tithes and oblations were claimed by him and the 
 clerg-y as thing-s belonging to God, and held by them 
 solely by Divine authority. Whatever was given to 
 the Church by anybody j whatever endowment, of any 
 description; was held to belong to the Church, 
 independent of all temporal or secular power. The 
 church claimf'd to hold its possessions independent 
 of all written laws ; they claimed a ^Jre5(??'i^?^u'<? 
 rig-ht to all their possessions; they allowed no time 
 to work injury to their rights; in short, they claimed 
 to hold their possessions immediately from God him- 
 selfj as a man claims the right to the possession 
 of his life and his limbs ; and, of course, they denied 
 that any legislator, or any body of legislators, possessed, 
 or could possibly possess, the rightfld power to take 
 from thjm, or to interfere with the management of, any 
 part of those possessions. As I said before, no matter 
 as to the soundness or unsoundness of the doctrines on 
 which these pretensions were fornded : such were the 
 doctrines, and such the pretensions ; and, during their
 
 T.J LEGACY TO PAllS iNS. 11 
 
 prevalenco in Eng-land, arose our churches, our parishes 
 (or priest-ships), our cathedrals, and bishops' sees ; all 
 those monasteries which have since been suppressed 
 and destroyed ; and, along- with the rest, our universities 
 and their colleges. 
 
 For a Parliament to meddle with a Church like 
 this; to question th^3 rightful power of a Parliament, 
 consisting- of la3'men, to meddle with the possessions 
 of a Church like this, having- its head totally separate 
 from the temporal sovereignty of the country ; to 
 question the rightl'ul power of a body of laymen to 
 meddle with the jiroperty of a Church like this, whose 
 Divine origin, and Divine mission and authority, had 
 been universally acknowledged for about twelve 
 hundred years ; to question the rightful power of a 
 Parliament, in such a case, was not a thing- so very 
 unreasonable ; but, on the contrary, the questioners 
 had reason on their side, especially as these doctrines 
 had prevailed during' so long- a period ; and as the 
 country had been so free, and so happy, during- the 
 g-reater part of that period. 
 
 But, Parsons, has ^our Church any such preten- 
 sions ? I have a high opinion of that quality in you, 
 which is usually denominated '^ hra^sS ■''' but, do you 
 pretend that this Establishment was founded by Jesus 
 Christ and his Apostles ? Do you pretend to hold 
 your possessions immediately by a grant from God j 
 and that they are as much yours as my life and my 
 limbs are laine ? Why, yes, you are, at this time 
 (very carious to relate), endeavouring- to set up a 
 something- savouring- of these pretensions j and are 
 positively assorting- that you hold your possessions, 
 and to the exclusion too of all other Christian sects, 
 Dy a right of prescription ; that is to say, a right 
 which existed before all written laws. This was dis- 
 tinctly stated by Sir Robert Peel, during- the dis- 
 cussion of the question relative to the admission of 
 Dissenters to take deg-rees in the Universities. Quite
 
 12 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 enough had been written and published by me, long' 
 before, to show that it was rapine, on the part of those 
 who took the Church-property from Catholics and gave 
 it to Protestants ; that that was an act of rapine, and 
 not an act of rightful power, on Cie part of the 
 Parliament of that day, unless the present Parliament 
 had the rightful power to take the property from the 
 present possessors and dispose of it at its pleasure. 
 Perceiving the irresistible iorce of this argument, Sir 
 KoBEKT Peel, forgetting all about the lay-impro- 
 priations, discovered that the Catholic Church had a 
 prescriptive right to its possessions ; and that the 
 Parliament had never meddled with, that prescriptive 
 right ; that the Established Church was still, in fact, 
 tlie Catholic Church, and was meve\j reformed ; and 
 that it was in the possession of aJ the prescriptive 
 rights which had ever belonged to " Holy Church !" 
 
 If this were so; if you were merely a reformed 
 Catholic Church, and the regular successors of the 
 bishops and priests of the Roman Catholic relig^'on; 
 then all the lay-estates, in tithes or in lands, which 
 were formerly possessed by your predecessors, are 
 wholly destitute of a title ; and the owners may, any 
 day, be legally ejected by the King's Attorney- 
 General ; and the King may order the estates to be 
 returned to you. However, we are now going to look 
 at the reality ; we are now going to see, that, to 
 tithes, to oblations, to bishops' lands, to college 
 lands, to any thing- that you possess, as clergy of the 
 Church, you have no prescrijitive right, any more than 
 the Duke of Wellington has to his estate of 
 Strathfieldsaye, which he ])ossesses in virtue of an 
 Act of Parliament, and solely in virtue of that Act of 
 Parliament. Indeed, what are the names, style, and 
 title of your Church ? Wh_, " The Protestaiit 
 Church of England, as hy kav established ;" not as 
 b}"- Christ established; not as established by the 
 Apostles. The King's coronation oath binds him to 
 
 1
 
 r.] li:gacy to rviisoxs. 13 
 
 support the Protc?t;int Church " as b}' Inw estab- 
 lished :" and this description was invented too for the 
 express purpose of distinguishing- the tenure of your 
 Church from tliat of the Koman Catholic Church ; the 
 tenure of which was by prescription, independent of 
 all written law. In short, yours is a Church foundea 
 solely on Acts of tlte Parliavicnt sitting at West- 
 minster ; and we are now going- to see what those Acts 
 of Parliament were ; under what circumstances they 
 were passed, and the sort of men by whom they were 
 passed ; together with the manifold motives and 
 objects of those men. 
 
 The Roman Catholic Church had begun to have its 
 authority disputed in some parts of Christendom, 
 about the year 1520, At this time Henry the 
 Eighth, for the purpose of gratifying his own wicked 
 passions, joined those who had begun to deny the 
 authority of the Pope as head of the Church, though 
 he had before written a book in defence of that 
 authority for which he had received the title ot 
 *^ Defender of the Faith" which our kings retain to 
 this da}', though by their coronation oath they 
 solemnly protest against that very faith of which 
 Henry the Eighth was the Defender ! This monster 
 of cruelty proclaimed himself to be the supreme head 
 of Christ's Chvrch in England ; and he put to 
 death hundreds of most virtuous and excellent persons, 
 because they would not take an oath recognising' his 
 spiritual supremacy. Finding' his most strenuous 
 opponents to be in the monasteries, and at the same 
 time, eager to g-et hold of tiie possessions of those 
 monasteries as the means of bribing over to his side 
 the most powerful men in the countiy, he suppressed ; 
 that is to say, he confiscated and took possession of 
 all the monasteries and all their immense estates. This 
 was not done without Acts of Parliament, Two Acts 
 were passed : one in the 2?th year of his reign, and 
 in the year 1535 ; the other in the 31st year of his
 
 14 cobbett's {Letter 
 
 reig-n, and in the year 1539. These Acts of Parlia- 
 ment granted to him all this g-reat mass of possessions; 
 and granted to him also a very considerable part of 
 the great tithes of the parishes ; because the monaa^ 
 teries had in many cases become both the patrons and 
 the incumbents of the benefices of the parishes. Thus, 
 more than a third part of the whole of the real pro- 
 ]ierty of the kingdom was granted to him by the 
 Parliament, with power to him to give it away to 
 whom he pleased ; to sell it, or to exchange it. Those 
 who passed these Acts knew very well that they 
 should have the chief share of the spoil. He was 
 compelled to divide this spoil amongst the noblemen, 
 gentlemen, and all persons of great power and 
 influence in the country ; in order to bind them up in 
 the same girdle with himself. This he did without 
 loss of time, and we are now going to see the pro- 
 digious effect of this division of the spoil j and 
 especially we are going to see its great effect in the 
 producing of this present Church of England, " as by 
 law established." 
 
 Amidst such assaults as these, it was impossible 
 that the Roman Catholic Church should remain 
 unshaken. When men saw these monstrous acts of 
 what had hitherto been deemed sacrilege, committed, 
 not only with impunity, but under the sanction of 
 law ; when they saw a mere layman assume the 
 spiritual supremacy of the Church of Christ; when 
 they saw innumerable persons put to death for 
 refusing to swear, that they believed that which they 
 had always been taught to disbelieve ; when they 
 heard this new head of the Church proclaiming one 
 sort of creed one day, and another sort of creed 
 another day ; Avhen they saw him burning Protestants 
 and Catholics at the same stake ; and still heard 
 him call himself a Ca'holic king, and a spiritual head 
 of the Church at the same time : amidst all these 
 things, it was impossible that men could retain any-
 
 I.[ LEGACY TO PARSONS. 15 
 
 thing- like an unity of faith : it was impossible that 
 the nation should not he s])lit up into a diversity of 
 sects, that each man should not claim a right to think 
 and decide for himself in religious matters ; and this 
 actually was the state in England, in this respect, at 
 the time of the death of this merciless tyrant, which 
 took place in the year 1547, when he expired, in the 
 fifty-sixth year of his ag'e, and in the thirty-eighth of 
 his reig-n ; the most unjust, hard-hearted, meanest, 
 and most sanguinary tyrant that the world had ever 
 beheld, whether Christian or Heathen. As long as 
 this tyrant existed, the holders of confiscated Church 
 property, which was also the pcdrimony of the poor at 
 the same time, were safe in their possessions under 
 his sort of mongrel Catholic Church ; but when his 
 son Edward tlie Sixth (a mere boy), succeeded him, 
 and the government was to be carried on by guardians 
 and trustees, there was great danger that the people 
 would resume their rights ; at any rate, that the 
 Pope would, in a short time, resume his power in 
 England where the parish-priests were still Catholic; 
 and if he resumed his power, the shares in the 
 plunder were in a perilous state, as far as related to 
 that plunder. Therefore, in order to obviate this 
 danger, it was necessary to abrogate, to put down by 
 Act of Pai-liament, to efface for ever, if possible, the 
 Catholic rehgion in England. And Parsons, look at 
 the thing well ; for here you will find the first, the 
 great, the all-powerful motive for making the Pro- 
 testant Church, " as by law established." If men had 
 been left without any law to compel them to submit 
 to any particular Church, they who had never had an 
 idea of tithes, oblations, or Church-land rents, payable 
 to mere laymen, never could have long submitted to 
 such payment. Nothing but the axes and the halters, 
 and the fires of Henry the Eighth, could have in- 
 duced them to submit to this. It was, therefore, 
 necessary to make another Church; and to give to
 
 1 codbett's [Letter 
 
 tliat Church all the powers, all the exclusive benefits, 
 all the protection, all the advantaj^-es necessary to 
 make it a valuable thing* to those who would neces- 
 sarily have its patronage exclusively in their 
 hands. 
 
 With these motives in their minds, and these 
 objects before them, the nobility, the powerful g"entry, 
 to name them b}' one word, the aristocracy, having* 
 g'ot rid of the old tyrant, and his mongrel Catholic 
 religion, resolved to make a new Church by law, 
 and a Protestant Church, in order that the Pope 
 might never come and instigate the people to make 
 them restore the landed estates and the tithes which 
 they had got into their possession by g-rants from the 
 barbarous old tyrant. In their execution of this 
 design, this nation witnessed scenes never before 
 witnessed in this world ; such insincerity, such bare- 
 faced apostacy, such greediness, such injustice, such 
 defiance of every sentiment of morality, and every 
 sentiment of religion, such prostration of character 
 as cannot be described by tongue or pen, except in 
 faithfully relating the facts ; and it would be wise in 
 in you Parsons, never to direct our eyes back to tho 
 origin of this Church, as by law established. The 
 Catholics assert that their Church originated with 
 Christ and his Apostles ; yours originated ^■^•ith the 
 aristocracy of England, whose conduct, in the making 
 of this Church, we have now to survey ; we have now 
 to look at it in its true colours, be the effects on our 
 minds what they may. 
 
 I'he motives for making the Church I have des- 
 cribed ; and now we have to see something of the 
 manner of making it. The first step was by Act ot 
 Parliament, first year of Edward the Sixth, chapter i. 
 and in the year 1547. This is an Act to punish 
 people for speaking irreverently against the sacra- 
 ment, taken in hoth hinds, which was contrary to the 
 practice of the Catholic Church. The preamble of
 
 1.1 li:gacy to paksons. 17 
 
 the Act tells ns, that this new practice had been 
 ridiculed by the people, " in dialogues, rlijmes, songs^ 
 plays, and jests." Tlae sharers of the spoil of the 
 Church and the poor people were by no means 
 disposed to suffer song's and jests upon the subject. 
 They therefore enacted that these rliymsters and 
 singei's should sutfer " imprisonment of their bodies, 
 and fines, at the king's will and pleasure." Though 
 this was wholly a new thing; quite contrary to the 
 faith and practice of the people and of their fore- 
 fathers for nine hundred years ; a new invention 
 oversetting the main pillar of their faith. This 
 monstrous severity was followed by an enactment, 
 giving a new interpretation to the Holy Scriptures, 
 and containing an assertion, laid down by mere 
 laymen, that both the bread and the wine were 
 necessary to be taken. But this was only a little 
 beo-innino' : this was only a foretaste of that which 
 was to come : it was a preparmg of tlie way for tlie 
 making of this Church, the fate of which is now to be 
 decided. 
 
 In the second year of the reign of this boy-king 
 (who was now only eleven years old), who was, at 
 once, supreme spiritual head of the Church, and 
 secular sovereign of the State, this Protestant Church 
 and religion were established. The Roman Catholic 
 religion having been abrogated, having been protested 
 against and declared to be idolatrous and damnable, 
 all men were let loose to choose for themselves, each 
 having the Bible in his hands. One sect had as much 
 right to the churches and the tithes as another sect j 
 but this would never have done for the aristocracy. 
 The remaining tithes, the oblations, the bishops' lands, 
 the college lands : these were too valuable to be 
 suffered to be scrambled For, and though the aristoc- 
 racy bad protested against that Church, to which 
 they had belonged, and for the support of which 
 they had been given, still they had no quarrel with
 
 18 cobbett's Letter 
 
 the thing's themselves; they had not protested against 
 the tithes, and the lands, and the ohlations ; they had 
 only protested against their being in hands other than 
 their own. The Catholic religion was idolatrous and 
 damnable ; but they saw nothing* either idolatrous or 
 damnable, in the lands, the tithes, and the oblations. 
 These, therefore, they resolved to keep ; but to keep 
 them, they must have another Church ; and to that 
 Church all must yield tithes and oblations, however 
 contrary its creeds might be to the faith which the 
 Scriptures taught them to adopt, or which they bad 
 been taught by their fathers from g-eneration to 
 generation. The preamble of the Act of Parliament 
 (1st and 2nd Edward the Sixth) tells us, that ''the 
 " king, in his great goodness, has appointed the Arch- 
 '• bishop of Canterbury (Cranmer), and others, to 
 " draw, and make, one meet order, rite, and fashion, 
 ^' of common and open prayer, and administration of 
 " Sacraments, to be had, and used in his Majesty's realm 
 " of EiNGLAND and Wales ; the which, at this time, 
 '^ by aid of the Holy Ghost, with one uniform agree- 
 '' ment is of them concluded, set forth, and delivered 
 *■' to his Highness" {eleven years of age) " to his gTeat 
 ^' comfort and quietness of mind, intituled, The Booh 
 *' of common Prayer and Admini. -it ration of tJie Sacra- 
 " mcnts and other Elte^ and Ceremoiiies of the Church 
 ^' after the use oj'thc Church oj' England. Wherefore, 
 *' the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in this present Par- 
 *' liamtnt assembled, considering as well the most godly 
 ^' travel of the king's highness" {eleven years of age), 
 '^ of the Lord Protector, and of other his Highness's 
 ^' council, in gatheringand collecting* the said Arch- 
 *' bishop, and learned men together, as the godly 
 ^' Prayers, Rites and Ceremonies, in the said book 
 " mentioned ; and the considerations of altering those 
 '^ things which he altered, and retaining those thing's 
 " which he retained in the said book, but also the 
 " honour of God and great quietness, which, by the
 
 [.] LEGACY TO PARSONS. 19 
 
 " g-race of God, shall ensue, do give his Tligness most 
 " hearty and lowly thanks for the same." 
 
 Bearing in mind this assertion about the aid of the 
 Holy Glwst, in this work, let us now come to the 
 enactments. You, Parsons, found the Church's 
 prescriptive rights upon the assertion, that there 
 never was any Act ef Parliament for taking the 
 iencfjces atoay from the Catholics and giving them 
 to Protestants ; that the Catholic parish-pviests were 
 never ousted from their benefices by Act of Parlia- 
 ment ; that they became converted in their several 
 parishes ; or continued to exercise their functions as 
 before, till the day of their death ; or that they went 
 away from their benefices without force : so that, as 
 they had unquestionably, a prescriptive right to their 
 benefices ; the present parsons stand fairly in their 
 shoes, and have a jjrescrijjtive right too. Now, then, 
 let us see how this matter stands. The king had put 
 forth a Book of Homilies and a Catechism. Priests 
 had been permitted to marry ; and an Act was soon 
 after passed (2nd and 3rd Edward the Sixth, chap. 
 21) to allow priests to marry. Every inducement had 
 been offered to withdraw the parish-priests from their 
 religion ; but still, with very few scandalous exceptions, 
 they remained firm in their faith and their practice, 
 at the time of the passing of this Act. The Act, 
 therefore, provided, that, if any rector, vicar, perpetual 
 curate, or other priest, with benefice, should in future 
 say mass in the usual manner, and not use the 
 Common Prayer Book, he should foi-feit to the king- 
 one year's revenue of his benefice, and be imprisoned 
 for six months ; that for a second offence, he should 
 be deprived of his benefice, and of all his spiritual 
 promotions, and be imprisoned for one whole year ; 
 for a third offence, imprisonment during his natural 
 life 5 that, if the priest had no benefice, he should be 
 imprisoned for six months for the first offence ; and 
 for the second offence, should be imprisoned for his
 
 20 cobdett's [Letter 
 
 natural life ! Thus did this g-entle Christian Church 
 begin ; thus did the Ang-el of Charity, Ilumihtj, 
 and Humanity, preside at her birth. But the Act 
 did not stop liere, it went on to the laity ; and it 
 enacted, that if any one should, by interludes, plaj'^s, 
 song's, rhymes, or by other open words, declare or 
 speak anything' in derogation, depraving, or despis- 
 ing', the said Book of Common Prayer, penalty after 
 penalty were to follow, till at last came the forfeiture 
 of chattels to the king-, and imprisonment during- the 
 natural life of the party ! 
 
 Here we have a faithhd account of the BIRTH of 
 this famous Church, which simply put it to the 
 priests and the people : '' Here is f/iis Church ; talie 
 it ; or, take i)ecuniary ruin and imprisonment for 
 life ;" and in the face of these undeniable facts, is 
 there any one base enoug'h to say, that the Catholic 
 priests were not ousted hj force, and by Act of Parlia- 
 ment ? Tiie Act provides for the depriving' of the 
 party of his benefice, and of all spiritual promotion 
 whatever, unless he apostatize from the Catholic 
 religion; and it authorizes patrons to appoint Pro- 
 testant ministers to succeed him, in just the same 
 manner as if he were dead. Will Sir Robert 
 Peel call this " a reformed Catholic church," then? 
 Will he ag'ain say, that the Protestant parsons stand 
 in the pi'escriptice shoes of the Catholic priests ? 
 
 But, the reader will say, did this Common Prayer 
 Book always continue in use, after this Act was 
 passed ? Oh no ! And now we have to see what 
 sort of men those were who made this new Church, 
 and to see well what their motives were. For very 
 much depends upon this, when we are estimating' the 
 character of this Church. 
 
 This chvu'ch-making' king* died at the end of about 
 seven years, and was succeeded on the throne by his 
 sister Mary, who was a Catholic ; and who, proceed- 
 ing upon the settled constitution and laws of the
 
 I.] LEGACY TO PAHSONS. Ql 
 
 countn', resolved upon restoring- the Catholic relig'iuu. 
 The Common Prayer-Book aristocracy, exceedingly 
 alarmed at this prospect ; not so much alarmed, how- 
 ever, for the almost certain loss of the Commoa 
 Prayer Book and tlie new Church, as for the possible, 
 and even probable loss of that immense mass of \)vo- 
 perty of the Church and the poor, which they had 
 g'ot into their possession, by the means before men- 
 tioned, entered into a negotiation with the queen, 
 agreeing to give iip their CoDimon Prayer Book and 
 their Protestant religion ; agreeing to bring back the 
 Catholic religion into the country, and to punish par- 
 sons for not being" Catholics, as they had punished 
 them before for not being* Protestants ; agreeing- to 
 confess themselves to have been schismatics ; ag-reeing- 
 to receive absolution from the Pope, for having- re- 
 belled ag-ainst his authority; agreeing to reinstate 
 him in all his power in England, which they before 
 desig-nated as abominable usurpations ; agreeing-, 
 above all things, to abrogate as schismatical that 
 very Common Prayer Book which they had before 
 declared, in the preamble to an Act of Parliament, 
 to have heen composed hy the "aid of the Holy 
 Ghost," and which was, they said, made " to the 
 honour of ^^^i^Z; " agreeing- to all this, if the queen 
 would obtain the consent of the Pope, and give her 
 own consent, to suffer them to hccp the immense 
 masses of p)>'opcrty in land and m tithes, which, 
 during- the two preceding- reigns, they had grasped 
 from the Church and the poor ! This is something- 
 so monstrous, that I would venture to state it upon no 
 authority short of that of an Act of Parliament ; and yet 
 it is by no means the worst that we have to behold on 
 the part of these men who called themselves nohlemeyi 
 and gentlemen, and whose descendants coolly assume 
 the same appellations ! 
 
 As p. sort of prelude to the monstrous acts, which 
 they Were about to perform, they passed almost as 
 
 c
 
 09 
 
 cobbhtt's [Letter 
 
 soon ns Mary was upon the throne, an Act to repeal 
 the whole of the famous Act, mahing the Common 
 Prayer Book ; and that too npon the CTouncl, that it 
 was contrary to the true religion ; thoug-h tliey al- 
 leged that they had been assisted hy the Holy Ghost, 
 in the making; of that Book of Common Prayer ! 
 They abolished all the penalties for persons acting 
 plays, sing'ing- song^s, ridiculing* the new religion ; 
 they repealed the law for preventing images being 
 put up in churches ; they repealed the law permitting 
 priests to marry ; they swept away, by this Act of 
 Parliament, every vestige of the Protestant Church 
 service, and reiu'^tnted the service of the Catholic 
 religion ; brough^ m dg-ain the singing of the mass in 
 all the churches and chapels : and this too upon the 
 express ground that they had been for yeuTs manderinf]r 
 in error and in schism ; though, never forget, that 
 they asserted that the Holy Ghost had assisted them 
 in making their Common Prayer Book ! 
 
 This, however, was only a beginning. Having 
 jnade their bargain to keep the lands and the tithes, 
 which they had taken from the Church and the Poor, 
 they petitioned the Queen to intercede with the Pope 
 to forgive them for all the sins which they had com- 
 mitted against him, and against the Catholic faith ; 
 to " assoil, discharge, and deliver them from all eccle- 
 siastical excommunications, interdictions, and cen- 
 sures, hanging' over their heads, for their faults during 
 the schism : and to take them again into the bosom 
 of Holy Church." The Queen, detesting* the mon- 
 sters in her heart, no doubt, consented, and obtained 
 the Pope's consent, to let them keep the lands and 
 the tithes; not because it was right, but because it 
 was thought to be an evil less than that of a civil 
 war, which might have been produced b}'- a rejection 
 of the terms of this agreement. Having obtained the 
 3ecurity, Cardinal Pole was sent over by tlie Pope, 
 KS his legate, authorized to give them pardon and
 
 I.] LKGACY TO PAUSOXS. 23 
 
 absolution. To work they went, instantly, to repeal 
 every act made, after Henry the Eighth beg-an liis 
 relM^lIion np'ainst the Pope j every act at all trenching* 
 on the papal authority ; but taking- special care in the 
 same Act to secure to themselves the safe possession 
 of all the property of the Church and the Poor, which 
 they had g-rasped, during" the reig'ns of Henry and 
 of Edwaud. Though, I say, I am referring- to Acts 
 of Parliament, and though the reader will, upon 
 reflection, know that I should not dare to state the 
 substance of those Acts untruly, still I cannot g;ive an 
 adequate idea of the character of these Protestant 
 church-makers, without taking- their own words, as I 
 find them in the preamble to this Act, 1st and 2nd of 
 Mary, chapter S; and when I read it, I always 
 wonder that some scheme or other has not been in- 
 vented for the obliterating-, for the erasing-, fi'om the 
 statute-book, words so dishonourable, so indelibly 
 infamous. 
 
 " Whereas since the twentieth year of King- Henry 
 ^' the Eighth of famous memory, Father unto your 
 " Majesty our most natural Sovereign, and g-racious 
 " Lady and Queen, much false and erroneous doctrine 
 ^' hath been taug-ht, preached and written, partly by 
 *' divers the natural-born subjects of this realm, and 
 " partly being- brought in hither from sundry other 
 ^' foreign countries, hath been sown and spread abroad 
 " witiiin the same : by reason whereofj as well the 
 " spirituality as the temporality of your Highness* 
 '' realms and dominions have swerved from the obe- 
 ^' dience of the See Apostolick, and declined from the 
 *' unity of Christ's Church, and so have continued, 
 " until such time as your Majesty being" first raised 
 " up by God, and set in the seat ro3'al over us, and. 
 " then by his divine and g-racious Providence knit in 
 " marriage with the most noble and virtiious Prince 
 " the King" our Sovereign Lord your Husband, the 
 ^' Pope's Holiness and the See Apostolick sent hither
 
 24 codbett's [Letter 
 
 *' unto yonr Majesties (as unto persons undefiled, and 
 " by God's goodness preserved from the common 
 *' infection aioresaid) and to the whole realm, the 
 '' most Reveren"' father in God the Lord Cardina^ 
 ^^ Pole, Legate de latere, to call us home again into 
 " the right way from whence we have all this long 
 " while wandered and stra3'ed abroad ; and we, after 
 '* sundry long and grievous plagues and calamities, 
 '' seeing by the goodness of God our own errors, have 
 '' acknowledged the same nto the said most Reverend 
 " Father, and by him have been and are the rather 
 *' at the contemplation of your Majesties, received and 
 " embraced unto the Unity and Bosom of Christ's 
 " Church, and upon our humble submission and pro- 
 *' mise made for a declaration oi our repentance, to 
 '' repeal and abrogate such Acts and Statutes as had 
 " been made in Parliament since the said tvventietli 
 " year of the said King Henry the Eighth, against 
 '' the supremacy of the See Apostolick, as in our sub- 
 " mission exhibited to the said most Rev rend Father 
 " in God by your Majesties appeareth : the tenour 
 ^' whereof ensueth. 
 
 " We the Lords spiritual and temporal and the 
 " Commons, assembled in this present Parliament, 
 '' representing the whole body of the realm of Eug- 
 " land, and the dominions of the same, in the nan. e 
 " of ourselves particularly, and also of the said body 
 " universally, in this our supplication directed to your 
 " Majesties, with most humble suit, that it may b}' 
 " your graces intercession and mean be exhibited to 
 " the most Reverend Father in God, the Lord Car- 
 " dinal Pole, Legate, sent specially hither from our 
 " most Holy Father Pope Julian the Third and the 
 " See Apostolick of Rome, do declare ourselves very 
 '* sorry and repentant of the schism and disobedience 
 ** committed in this realm and dominions aforesaid 
 " against the See Apostolick. either by making, agree- 
 ** ing, or executing any Laws, Ordinances or Com-
 
 I,j LEGACY TO PARSONS. 2/> 
 
 ^' ir.andinents, ag'oinst the supremacy of the paid See, 
 *' or otherwise doing* or speaking, that miiiht impugn 
 " the same : offering ouri^elves and promising ])y this 
 *' our supplication, that for a token aud knowledge oi 
 " our said repentance, we be and shall be always 
 ^' ready, under and with the authorities of your Ma- 
 '' jesties, to the uttermost of our powers, to do that 
 *' shall lie in us for the abrogation and repealing of 
 '' the said Laws and Ordinances, in this present 
 '^ Parliament, as well for ourselves as for the whole body 
 " w!u)ui we represent. Whereupon we most humbly 
 '' desire your Majesties, as personages undefiled in the 
 "offence of this body towards the said See, which 
 "nevertheless God by His Providencehath made subject 
 " to you, so to set forth this our humble suit that we 
 *'ma3' obtain from the See Apostolick, by the said most 
 " Reverend Father, as well particularl}- and generally, 
 " absolution, release, and discharge from all danger of 
 " such censures and sentences, as by the Laws of the 
 "' Church we be fallen into ; and that we may as 
 " children repentant be received into the bosom and 
 " unity of Christ's Church, so as this noble realm, 
 " with all the members thereof, may in this unity and. 
 " perfect obedience to the See Apostolick, and Popes 
 "for the time being, serve God and your Majesties, to 
 "the furtherance and advancement of His honour 
 " and glory. We are, at the intercession of your 
 *' Majesties, by the authority of our holy Father Pope 
 "Julian the Third and of the See Apostolick, assoiled, 
 *' discharged and delivered from the excommunications, 
 "interdictions, and other censures ecclesiastical, which 
 ^'hatli hanged over our heads, for our said defaults, 
 *' since the time of the said schism mentioned in our 
 "supplication. It may now like your Majesties, that 
 " for the accomplishment of our promise made in the 
 " said supplication, that is, to repeal all the Laws and 
 " Statutes made contrary to the said Supremacy and 
 ^' See Apostolick, during the said schism, the which is
 
 £6 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 ''to be understood since the twentieth yea-r of the 
 "reign of the said late King- Henry the Eighth, ami 
 '' so the said Lord Legate doth accept and recognise 
 " the same." 
 
 After this most solemn recantation ; after this apj3eal 
 to God for the sincerity of their repentance, they 
 proceeded to enact the repeal of every Act that had 
 ever been passed to infringe upon the supremacy or 
 authority of the Pope ; they, in the most express and 
 solemn manner, enacted that no king or queen of 
 England luas ever, or ever could he the head of the 
 Church, or had, or ever could have, any pi'etension to 
 a right of supremacy in regard to the Church. But, 
 in the same Act of Parliament, every sentence of which 
 makes one shudder as one reads it, they took special 
 care, while they acknowledged the act of plundei', to 
 secure to themselves, by clause upon clause, the tm- 
 interrupted possession of that third part of the pro- 
 perty of the hingdom, which they had grasped Jrom 
 the Church and the poor. 
 
 But, at any rate, they were now Catholics again ; 
 they were once more Iloman Catholics. They had been 
 born and bred Roman Catholics j they had apostatized 
 and protested against the faith of their fathers, for the 
 purpose of getting possession of a large part of the 
 ])roperty of the kingdom ; but having now made safe 
 the possession of this enormous mass of plunder ; and 
 having, nevertheless, been absolved of their sins, and 
 £aken back into the bosom of the Church, the}'', surely, 
 now remained Roman Catholics to the end of their 
 days ? Not they, indeed ; for the moment the death 
 of Maby took place, which was in 1558, that is to say 
 at the end of five years, they undid all that they had 
 done in the time of Mary ; apostatized again, and de- 
 clared their abhorrence of that Church, into the bosom 
 of which they had so recently thanked the Queen for 
 having interceded with the Pope to receive them ! 
 
 This would not, and could not, be believed, if it
 
 I.] LEGxiCY TO PAnSO^S. 27 
 
 were not upon record in the Statute Book, wliich cannot 
 lie, in this case ; and which contains in this case, too, 
 the lam as we liace now to obey it. Elizabeth the 
 immediate successor of Mary, was a CathoUc herself, 
 by profession and pubHc worsliip ; she was crowned by 
 a CathoUc bishop ; iier manifest intention, at first, 
 was to maintain the CathoHc rehgion : but she was a 
 hastard, according- to the law, she having- been born of 
 another woman, while ner father's first wife was still 
 alive ; besides which, an Act had been passed in her 
 father's life-time declaring- her to be a bastard. All 
 this would not have signified much,* but the Pope 
 would not recognise her legitimacy ; and of course 
 would not acknowledge her right to reign as Queen of 
 Exglanb. Finding- this, she resolved to be Protestant j 
 and resolved that her people should be Protestant, too. 
 The very first Act of Parliament of her reign, therefore, 
 swept away the whole that had been done during- the 
 reig-n of Mary ; and the Act (1st of Elizabeth, chap- 
 ter 1) repealed the whole of the Act of which I have 
 just quoted the memorable preamble, except only those 
 parts of it which secured the plunder of the Church 
 and the poor to those who had got possession of it ; 
 and those same men, who had so recently received 
 absolution from the Pope, for having- acknowledged the 
 ecclesiastical supremacy to be in the king, now enacted, 
 that that supremacy had alwa^'s belonged to the king; 
 that it never had belonged to the Pope ; that the Pope 
 had usurped it ; and they even went so far now as to 
 exact an oath from every Englishman, if the Queen 
 chose to require it, declaring- a fii-m belief in this 
 supremacy of the Queen ! The oath (in use to this 
 day) begins thus, " I, A. B., do utterly declare and 
 " testify in my conscience, that the Queen's Highness 
 " is the only supreme governor of this realm, as well 
 " in all spiritual and ecclesiastical things, or causes, 
 " as temporal 1" An oath was now to come to re-assert 
 that, which these very men had supplicated pardon and
 
 ?8 cobbett's [Lette?- 
 
 {i"b?,olixtion from the Pope, and prayed for forg-iveness to 
 God, for having* asserted before. 
 
 But the second Act (1st Elizabeth, chapter 2) 
 hrovghi hack the Prayer JBooJi again. The horrible 
 men, whose conduct we have been reviewing", had con- 
 demned their Prayer Book as schismatical ; had 
 abolished it by their Acts ; and had reinstated Catholic 
 priests in the churches. They now, in the Act of which 
 I am speaking", ousted them again ; re-enacted the 
 Common Prayer Book ; and inflicted penalties upon the 
 j)riests who should refuse to apostatize by becoming* 
 Protestants and using" this book in their churches. For 
 the first oifence, such priest was to forfeit a year's 
 revenue of his benefice, and be imprisoned for six 
 months. For a second offence he was to lose all his 
 ecclesiastical preferments and possessions, and was, 
 besides, to be imprisoned during the remainder of his 
 life. If he were a priest without a benefice, he was to 
 be imprisoned, for the first offence, during a whole 
 year; for the second offence imprisoned during his 
 whole life. For speaking" in derogation of the Prayer 
 Book ; or to ridicule the new religion, by songs, plays, 
 jests, of any sort, the offender was to forfeit a hundred 
 marks for ths first offence ; four hundred marks for the 
 second offence (equal to two thousand poimds of the 
 money of this day); and for the third ofl'ence, to forfeit 
 to the Queen all his goods and chattels, and lie imprisoned 
 for life. Every person was compelled on Sunday's, and 
 holydays, to attend at the Church, to hear this common 
 prayer, under various pecuniary penalties, and in failure 
 of paying" the penalties, to be imprisoned. Bisho]is, 
 Archdeacons, and other ordinaries, were to have power 
 for inflicting" these punishments. This Act of confis- 
 cation, of ruin, of stripes, of death, was enforced with 
 •all the rigour that imagination can conceive. The 
 Queen reigned for forty-five years, and these fort3^-fivo 
 years were spent in deeds of such cruelty, as the world 
 Lad never heard of or read of before ; and all for the
 
 I.] LEGACY TO I'ARGONS. 20 
 
 purpose of compelling- her people to submit to this 
 established Church. With reg'ard to the cruelties ot 
 this monster in woman's shape ; her butchering-s ; hev 
 ripping-s-up ; her tearing-out of the bowels of her 
 subjects ; her racks ; her torments, of every description, 
 in which shfe was alwaj^s cordially supported by the 
 law-g'iving" makers of the Prayer-iJook, I must refer 
 the reader to my " History of the Protestant Re- 
 formation ;" suiiice it to say, that, in these forty-five 
 years which were employed in the establishing' of this 
 Church, there were more cruelty, more bloodshed, more 
 suffering*, than ever were witnessed in the world, in any 
 other country, in a like j)eriod of time. 
 
 The main thing-, however, to be kept in view here, 
 is the fact, which all these Acts of Parliament so fully 
 confirm, that this Church was created by Acts of Par- 
 liament ; that it has no existence as a church ; that it 
 has no rite, no ceremony, no creed, no article of faith, 
 which has not sprung- out of an Act of the Parliament; 
 and that there is nothing' of prescription belong-ing- to 
 it, from its first being- named among-st men, until the 
 present hour. 
 
 It is not, by any means, when we are examining into 
 tlie orig-in, and the pretended iinalienahle rights of this 
 Church ; it is not, by any means, unnecessary to look 
 well at the conduct and character of those ParHaments, 
 who passed the several Acts by which the Church was 
 made. It was manifestly not made by Christ and his 
 Apostles. It is certain it was made by Acts of Par- 
 liament ; but if those who composed those Parliaments 
 had been men resembling- the fathers of the Church ; 
 if they had been men of acknowledg-ed piety and dis- 
 interestedness, their character would have thrown a 
 sort of lustre over the thing- that they had made ; but 
 when we find them beg-in by an act of plunder, so g-reat 
 as to be almost incredible ; when we see them remain 
 Catholics till this plunder became in dang-er by the 
 existence of that relig-ion : when we see tliem turn
 
 JiO cobdett's [Letter 
 
 Protestants, and make tlie Church and:-ts Prajer-boolc, 
 and ascribe the success of the undertaking- to the aid 
 given them by the Holy Ghost ; when we afterwards 
 see them abolishing* this Prayer-book, declaring it to 
 have been schismatical, supplicating a Catholic Queen 
 to interfere with the Pope for pardon for having- made 
 it ; when we see them actually receiving- absolution 
 from the Pope's leg-ate for having- made this book, the 
 making of which they had ascribed to the aid of the 
 Holy Ghost ; when we see them afterwards re-cant 
 and re-apostatize ; when we see them re-enact the 
 Common Prayer-book, re-enforce it upon the people j 
 and, especially, when we see this remarkable circum- 
 stance ; that, when they had to suffer the Catholic 
 relig-ion to take its course ; when the object of their 
 enactments was to restore that relig-ion, they had no 
 penalties to injiict; no compulsion to exercise; no fines 
 to impose, in order to drag- the people to the Church ; 
 but that, when they had their Prayer-book Church to 
 establish; then they had fines, forfeitures, imprisonment 
 for life, to inflict ; and everything- short of immediate 
 death, in order to secure anything- like compliance on 
 the part of the people. 
 
 Thus was this Church established, not, as her de- 
 fenders pretend, by the reasonableness of the institution 
 itself; not by its own '■Hnlierent heaufy and simplicity " 
 as the fat and impudent pluralist tells us ; not by the 
 pretended '^reform of abuses''^ which its institution 
 effected ; but solely by Acts of Paidiament, of the most 
 severe and cruel character; and executed with the most 
 savag-e barbarity. The authors of these acts were triple 
 ajiosrates; by far the most shameless apostates, the 
 most barefaced, the most unblushing*, that the world 
 has ever seen. The orig-in of this Church, then, is not 
 to be found in mere Acts of Parliament, but in Acts 
 of Parliament causing- sheer force, bodily coercion, 
 pains and penalties, at every step, to be used ; this is 
 the main thing- to be kept in view, when the end of
 
 LEGACY TO PARSONS. 31 
 
 our enquiry is to be, whether it be not now proper to 
 take from this Church the protection of the State. 
 
 These are the Acts of Parhament to be attended to 
 in a particnhar manner ; first, 2nd and Srd Edward the 
 Sixth, chapter 1 ; second, 1st of Elizabeth, chapter 
 2 ; third, l3th of Elizabeth, chapter 12, The first 
 relates to tlis making- of the Common Prayer Book, by 
 Cranmer and his associates; and here we must stop n. 
 moment to enquire a little what this Cranmer was. 
 We know that he was Archbishup of Canterbury at the 
 time when he made this Prayer-Book, The whole of 
 the history of this man ; of all his horrid deeds, and 
 those of his associates, is to be found in my "History 
 of the Profe-'^lant Heformation ;" but as we are now- 
 speaking- of that flimous Cliurch of which he was the 
 founder, and of that Prayer-Book, of which he was the 
 principal author, I must give, respecting him, an extract 
 from that book; for without knowing- who ^u^what^Q 
 was, we shall not have all the merits of this Church fairly 
 before us. "Black as many others are, they bleach the 
 "moment that Cranmer appears in his true colours. 
 "But, alas ! where is the pen or tongue to give us 
 "those colours? Of the sixty-five years that he lived, 
 " and of the thirty-five years of his manhood, twenty- 
 ^' nine years w'ere spent in the commission of a series 
 " of acts, which, for wickedness in their nature, and 
 ^^for mischief in their consequences, are absolutely 
 " without anything- approaching- to a parallel in the an- 
 " nals of Imman infamy. Being- o, fellow of a college at 
 "Cambridge, and having-, of course, made an engage- 
 "ment (as the J cllo/vs do to this day) not to marry 
 " while he was a fellow, he married secretly, and still 
 "enjoyed his fellowship. While a married man he 
 "became a priest, and took the oath of celibacy; and, 
 "going- to Germany, he married another wife, the 
 " daughter of a Protestant ; so that now he had two 
 "wives at the one time, though his oath bound him to 
 "have no wife at all. He, as Archbishop, enforced
 
 52 coBBiiTT's [Lettet 
 
 " the law of celibncy, while he himself secretly kept 
 "his German //'o/y in the palace at Canterbury, having-, 
 ''as we have seen in paragraph 104, imported her 
 ^'in a chest. He, as ecclesiastical judg-e, divorced 
 " Henry VIII. from three wives, the g-rounds of his 
 "■ decision in two of the cases being* directly the con- 
 " trary of those which he himself had laid down when 
 " he declared the viarriage to be valid; and, in the case 
 '' of Anne Bolevn, he, as ecclesiastical judge, pro- 
 "nounced that Anne had never been the king\s loife ; 
 '•while, as a member of the House of Peers, he voted 
 '■'•for her death ^ as having' been an adidtrcss, and 
 "thereby g-uilty of ties:<o)i to her husband. As 
 "Archbishop under Hen RV, (which office he entered 
 '^ upon with a premeditated false oath on his lips), he 
 "sent men and women to the stake because they were 
 " not Cafholics, and he sent Catholics to the stake, 
 "because they would not acknowledge the king's su- 
 "premacy, and thereby perjure themselves as he had 
 "so often done. Become openly a Protestant, in 
 "Edward's reign, and openly professing those very 
 "principles for the professing of which he had burnt 
 "others, he now burnt his fellojv- Protestants hecanse 
 "their grounds for protesting were different J'rotn his. 
 "As executor of the will of his old master, Henry, 
 "which gave the crown (after Edward) to his 
 " daughters, Marv and Elizabeth, he conspired with 
 ^' others, to rob those two daughters of their right, and 
 ^'to give the crown to Lady Jane Grey, that queen 
 ^'of nine da3''s, whom he with others, ordered to be 
 "proclaimed. Confined, notwithstanding his many 
 " monstrous crimes, merely to the palace at Lambeth, 
 "he, in requital of the queen's lenit^^, plotted with 
 " traitors in the pay of France to overset her govern- 
 " ment. Brought, at last, to trial and to condemnation 
 " as a hei»etic, he professed himself ready to recant. 
 " He was respited for six weeks, during which time he 
 " signed siic different forms of recantation, each more
 
 I.J LEGACY TO PARSONS 83 
 
 " ample than the former. He declared that the Pro- 
 " testant religion was false ; that the Catholic religion 
 "was the only true one ; that he now believed in all 
 "the doctrines of the Catholic Church; that he had 
 "been a horrid blasphemer against the sacrament; that 
 " he was unworthy of forgiveness ; that he prayed the 
 " People, the Queen, and the Pope, to have pity on, 
 " and to pray for his wretched soul ; and that he had 
 " made and signed this declaration without fear, and 
 "without hope of favour; and for the discharge of his 
 " conscience, and as a warning to others. It was a 
 " question in the queen's council, whether he should be 
 " pardoned, as other recanters had been ; but it was 
 "resolved that his crimes Avere so enormous that it 
 " would be unjust to let him escape ; to which might 
 " have been added, that it could have done the Catholic 
 '• Church no honour to see reconciled to it a wretch 
 "covered with robberies, perjuries, treasons and blood- 
 " shed. Brought, therefore, to the jJuMic readhig of 
 "his recantation, on his way to the stake ; seeing the 
 " pile read^-^ ; now -finding that he m^ist die, and 
 '^ carrying in his breast all his malignity undiminished, 
 "he recanted his recantation, thrust into the Jire the 
 "■hand that had signed it, and thus expired, protesting' 
 "against that very religion in which, only nine hnnrs 
 "before, he had called God to witness that he firmly 
 "believed!" 
 
 Now, not one of these facts can be denied; but, at- 
 the very least, we know that he was an apostate, a 
 perjurer, and a murderer : and we know that the Act, 
 w*hich enacted the Prayer Book, tells us that he was at 
 the head of those persons who, " with the aid of the 
 Holy Ghost," composed that Prayer Book. 
 
 The second of these Acts of Parliament is 1st 
 Elizabeth, chapter 2, which re-enacts the former Act, 
 and adds to the severity of its provisions. The third is 
 13th Elizabeth, chapter 12, relating to the Articles 
 of religion ; and excluding from all share in the tithes.
 
 4?-l cobbett's [Letter 
 
 or any other Cliurch-propert}", all persons v.-Iio will not 
 swear to, and subscribe those articles. 
 
 These Acts of Parliament, having been read with due 
 care, you see clearly " Jiow there came to he an 
 JEstahlished Church;''^ and you are able to answer at 
 once the question, whether this Church have any rip-hts, 
 or can have any rig-hts, other than those which it, 
 derives from Acts of the Parliament. This is now a 
 matter of the greatest possible import.,ince; for now, 
 at the distance of 287 years from the time of passing the 
 Act of Edward the Sixth, -which first made the Church 
 and the Prayer Book, the Parliament (still sittino; at 
 "Westminster) has to discuss tlie question ; and is now 
 actually, indeed, engaged in the discussion of the 
 question ; whether this Church stands on prescription, 
 vr on Acts of ParVtament. I have laid before 3'ou the 
 Acts by which it was made ; b}' which it was created; 
 i'rom which it entirely sprang, and had its being ; and 
 I defy any man to discover any circumstance which can 
 give it a pretence for claiming any right not founded 
 on these Acts of Parliament. 
 
 Whac a Parliament can do, a Parliament can undo. 
 If there be property of any sort, that a Parliament can 
 take from one description of persons, and give it to 
 another description of persons, a Parliament can take 
 that same property again, and dispose of it in a similar, 
 or in any other manner. ^J'his, Parsons, is what you 
 are so much afraid of nov/ ! I, for instance, would take 
 away the whole of the propert}^ from you, and dispose 
 of it in another manner ; others would not go so far ; 
 but you have cunning enough to perceive that, if once 
 a beginning is made, no one can tell where we are to 
 end. Therefore it is that you and your partizans contend 
 that you have a right of prescription, such as a man 
 has to an estate, purely private ; that your right of 
 possession is heyondv all the inquiries of laiv, and that 
 a Parliament must be a tyrant, and guilty of rapine, ifj 
 bj its acts, it alienate any part of your property.
 
 I.] LEGACY TO PARSONS. 35 
 
 Those who hold this doctrine forg-et its inevitable 
 eifect on the titles of all the holders of abbey-lands, 
 and all the lay-holders of tithes. There are, very li-e- 
 quently, lay-holders of oblations too ; but, for clearness 
 and simplicity's sake, I will confine myself, for the 
 present, to the lay-titJws. These tithes, which are now 
 ceemed private property, were taken from the Church, 
 were taken from the parochial clergy, and g-ranted to 
 the king-; and by him g'ranted to private persons ; and 
 thus were totally alienated from the Church. Do you 
 say that this was an act of rapine ? Do you say that 
 the Parliament had no rig-htful power to do this ? Do 
 you say that this law was contrary to the rights of pre- 
 ?cription, and the laws of God 5 and that, therefore, 
 according; to the maxims of our law, it was no law at 
 all, but an act of rapine ; So said the people of Eng*- 
 land at the time ; and the people actually refused to 
 yield their tithes to laymen, pleading- the law of God ; 
 denying- that any Parliament had a right to pass a law 
 authorising- laymen to receive tithes. 
 
 But those Avho had passed the laws which took the 
 tithes from the Church and the poor, and put them into 
 their own hands, soon found the means of compelling- 
 the people to submit to it, whether it were rapine or 
 not. The Act 27th, IIexry the Eighth, chapter 20 ; 
 alter stating- that ''divers numbers of evil disposed 
 '' persons inhabited in sundry counties, having- no respect 
 " to their duties to AlmiyldyGod" &c., had ''subtracted, 
 *' or withheld parts or tlie whole of their tithes, under 
 "pretence of their tithes being- demanded by lay- 
 ^^ persons," proceeds to enact various punishments for 
 such subtracting", or withholding. Five years after- 
 wards, when the second great Act of plundering the 
 monasteries had taken place, another Act was passed, 
 stia more strictly enforcing the yielding of tithes to 
 ];iy-persons. The accusation against the people was 
 Slated thus, in the preamble to this Act : "That the 
 •' people, not regarding their duties to Almighty God,
 
 S6 cobbett's [Lettep 
 
 "subtracted and withdrew the lawful and accustomed 
 "tithes of corn, hay, pasturage, and other sorts of 
 " tithes and oblations due to the owners, proprietors, 
 "and possessors of parsonages, vicarages, and other 
 ''ecclesiastical places; being the more encouraged 
 *' thereto, for that divers of the owners of the saidpar- 
 "sonages, vicarages, tithes, and oblations are lay- 
 " persons." Then the Act goes on to give to these 
 lay-persons all the rights of the clergy as to suing in 
 the ecclesiastical courts, which they could not do with- 
 out an Act for the purpose. 
 
 After the minor plunder of the chantries, of the 
 guilds and fraternities and hospitals, it was necessary 
 to pass another Act (2nd and 3rd Edward the Sixth, 
 chapter 13), to enforce these Acts of Henry the Eighth, 
 and to compel payment of tithes to laymen upon the 
 footing of the clergy, as to the manner of suing for the 
 same. 
 
 Here, then, are all these Acts of Parliament proving, 
 that in spite of the opposition of the people, that in 
 spite of their deep sense of the injustice, that in the 
 face of all the former laws of the country, the Parliament 
 had the rightful power to take away both the predial 
 and personal tithes ; and to give them to laymen, and 
 to vest them, as an estate, in laymen. 
 
 Now, then, if this were not an act of rapine, if it 
 were a thing that a Parliament could rightfully do, 
 what pretence have you for saying, that this present 
 Parliament cannot rightfully deal with the remainder 
 of the tithes, in any manner that the}' may think proper? 
 And if it were an act of rapine, then all the laws re- 
 lative to abbey-lnnds, all the laws relative to the tithes, 
 all the laws relative to the Church Establishment, are to 
 be considered as no laws at all. If you plead that the 
 Parliament has no right to take away, or alienate, that 
 which is called Church-property, you must insist that no 
 layman has a good title to tithes ; but you cannot 
 do this without, at the same time, denying the validity
 
 L] LEGACY TO TAnSONS. 37 
 
 of tliose Acts of Parliament, to which, and to which 
 alone, you owe your own right of possession to tithes, 
 to ohlations, to any part, or particle of that which you 
 possess. So that it comes to this at last, that either all 
 was ra])ine, all was directly contrary to the laws of 
 God ; and therefore null ; or all your possessions and 
 privileg-es have their foundation in Acts of Parliament, 
 in Acts of Parliament alone, and may therefore he all 
 taken away by the rightful power of the Parliament. 
 
 There are some persons who contend that the Parlia- 
 ment has the rightful power to make regulations with 
 reg-ard to the property of the Church ; to make a oiew 
 distribution of it amongst the bishops, deans, parsons, 
 and so forth ; but that, though there may be too 
 much property found lodged in certain hands, and 
 though the rig-htful power of the Parliament to make 
 a more desirable distribution is undoubted, still that 
 power does not extend so far as to the taking of it away 
 f-om. the Churcli altogether; and that, if it be taken 
 fi'om parsons, bishops, and so forth, it must be applied 
 to some purposes or other tending- to the upholding* 
 and to the efficiency of the Established Church; and 
 the purposes of education are generally named, which 
 is about as curious a whim as ever entered into the 
 head of mortal man. Why, what is the Established 
 Church for ? For what does its clergy swallow up from 
 five to eight millions a year ? If for any thing of pub- 
 lic benefit, it must be for the purpose of instructing 
 the people in religion; that is to sa}^, for educating the 
 people in the principles of true religion. Why, then, 
 take the money away from the parsons and give it to 
 somebody else, that they may teach the people ? 
 Besides, if the tithes be taken from the parsons, and 
 their amount given to schoolmasters, there is, in fact, 
 an alienation from the Church. It is, then, a mere mat- 
 ter of expediency ; and the only question is, mould it 
 he good for the people ; good for the people in general, 
 of this kingdom, to take the whole oj the property
 
 38 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 f>'om the clergy, or mould it not ? Tins is the only 
 question to be entertained on the subject by rational 
 men. I am of opinion that it would be good to do it; 
 and before I have done, I shall clearly and frankly state 
 all my reasons for beinj^- of that opinion. 
 
 The first question, "How came there to be an 
 Established Church?" I have now answered ; I 
 have stated, and clearl}"- shown, the motives for the 
 making of this Church ,• I have shewn the manner in 
 which it was made ; I have given a true picture of the 
 character and conduct of the makers of it ; I have 
 exhibited to the view of the reader the severities, the 
 cruelties, the ferocious, the more than savag'e punish- 
 ments by which its introduction was enforced j I have, 
 above all thing-s, shown that it originated in Acts of 
 Parliament ; that it rests solely on Acts of Parliament 
 for every fragment of possession that it has ; and tliat 
 it, and all that belongs to it, may now be disposed of 
 by the rightful power of the Parliament, in any man- 
 ner, and for any purpose, that the Parliament may deem 
 to be proper ; and now I shall, in the next letter, pro- 
 ceed to show " How there came to be people 
 CALLED Dissenters." 
 
 LETTER 11. 
 
 HOW CAME there TO BE PEOPLE CALLED 
 DISSENTERS ? 
 
 Parsons, 
 
 Amongst all the qualities for which the Church, as 
 by law established, is distinguished from every other 
 body of men in the world, the quality of cool impudence 
 stands very conspicuous. A Church parson always 
 jirgues with you, or talks with you, as if you admitted in 
 limine, that his Church is the only true Church of Christ 
 now in the world, or that there ever was in the worldj
 
 II.] LEGACY TO I'ARSOXS. 39 
 
 and th-at all which those who differ from it can pretend 
 to, is a somewhat mitigated deg-ree of error. One would 
 have thought that men who, fromheing Roman Catho- 
 lics, had hecome of Tom Craxmer's religion, and 
 enacted his Pra}' er Book ; who had afterwards enacted 
 that his Prayer Book was schism atical, and had gone 
 upon their knees to receive ahsohition from the Pope 
 for having made it ; and had recorded, in an Act of 
 Parliament, this ahsolution that they had recently re- 
 ceived from the Pope; and had enacted all the circum- 
 stances and acts connected with the making of this 
 Prayer Book to have heen unlawfid and impious ; and 
 who had, after that, re-enacted this same Prayer Book : 
 one would have thought that, at any rate, after all this, 
 they would not have had the audacity to set up a title to 
 infallihilitij ; and to claim aright to compel all other men 
 to adopt a helief in any thing, he it what it might, 
 which they chose to adopt as their creed ; to call those 
 who would not conform to this their will by the disre- 
 spectful name of Dlsf^enters; that is to say, fallers 
 away from the true J'aith, and not entitled to the or- 
 dinary benefit of the law ; and when it suited the 
 purpose of the Church-makers, as liable to some sort 
 of punishment. Yet this is what these Church-makers 
 did; and on these principles they have acted even unto 
 the present day ; though now (from causes which we 
 ^hall by and by have to state) they begm to discover 
 ciome misgivings ; and to profess to be willing- to yield 
 up a portion of tlieir enormous pretensions. 
 
 When the Roman Catholic Church had been broken 
 up, when its clergy had been ousted, when its property 
 had been confiscated and scattered, when the faith, 
 which the people in general had lived in for nine hun- 
 dred years, had been declared to be erroneous, when 
 the worship,- which they had practised for that length 
 of time) had been stigmatized as idolatrous and dam- 
 nable, what rightful power was tliere, or could there 
 be on earth, to command the people to adopt any par-
 
 40 codbett's [Letter 
 
 ticular vewfaitli, or any new worship ? What rightful 
 power could there be to make a whole nation conform 
 to any rule of faith or ol worship prescribed by any 
 person or set of persons ? and especially, what rightful 
 power could tliere be in those who had abrogated the 
 Prayer Book after they had made it, and had called it 
 schismatical ; what rightful power could they ever 
 have had to bend the necks of the whole nation, and to 
 compel them to adopt a religion, to adopt creeds, and a 
 form of worship which they themselves had begged 
 pardon of Almighty God for having invented? 
 
 This question is monstrous j and so monstrous is the 
 proposition that it embraces, that it is to be answered 
 only by indignant i'eelings ; no words can furnish a 
 suitable answer. The ancient religion of the country 
 having been overturned and put down by law, by law 
 indeed, aided by the bayonet, every man was left, of 
 course, to choose a religion for himself. Every man 
 had the Bible in his hand ; he had a conscience in his 
 breast ; and it was for him to consider and determine 
 what that Bible taught him to believe, and the sort of 
 worship it taught him to practise. Jesus Christ was 
 no longer upon earth j the apostles wei'e gone ; that 
 which the nation had so long believed had been founded 
 by them and their successors in authority, that was 
 now gone too; the distribution of the Church-property; 
 its application to charitable purposes, this was gone. 
 And in such a state of things justice demanded that 
 the people should be left to themselves to choose their 
 mode of worshipping God; and that the national pro- 
 perty called Church-property should be applied to the 
 uses of the nation in general, and not grasped for the 
 sole use of any particular set of rtien. 
 
 That this was the general way of thinking- of the 
 peo])le, at the time, there can be no doubt ; for Cran- 
 mer's Church was hardly born before there were plenty 
 of people to protest against it. To call them Pro- 
 testants would not do; because that was the name
 
 II.] LEGACY TO PAUSOXS. 41 
 
 o-iven to those who had protested aj^-ainst the Catholic 
 Church ; and besides, that was a name designed to be 
 heki in honour. There were Baptists ; there were 
 Calvinists; there were great numbers of persons of 
 difterent opinions, as there naturally would be in such 
 a state of things. The Prayer Book Church-makers 
 having- the property in their hands, and resolved to 
 keep it, proscribed all these conscientious sets of per- 
 sons under the general names of Non-conformists, Sec- 
 tarians, or r/^^senters ; and they soon found the means 
 of keeping theui in a state of the most abject subjec- 
 tion ; though they had not a shadow of rightful power 
 for so doing. 
 
 The Dissenters, as we must now call thn?e Pro- 
 testants who refused to subscribe the creeds and articles 
 of the Church, objected to those creeds and to the 
 Church worship, some for one reason and some for 
 another ; but it is a curious fact that they all agreed 
 most cordially in one objection ; namely, to tlw iiniilng 
 of the spintual supremacy of the Ckurcli with the 
 temporal supremacy of the .state ; they all insisted, and 
 most perseveringl}', on this, which they called an 
 *' unscriptural union :" such they call it unto this day; 
 and hence their united demand for a separation of the 
 Church from the state ; and it is truly curious, that 
 though they were Roman Catholics, the two most 
 learned and most virtuous men of that age, or of almost 
 any age. Sir Thomas Moore, and Bishop Fisher, 
 died upon the scatfbld, rather than acknowledge the 
 lawfulness of the union of Church and State. 
 
 Indeed, if one looks at the thing in a religious point 
 of view, it is pei'fectly monstrous. In the first place, 
 that a mere lay-person, not having* studied divinity; 
 not having any character of religious teacher about 
 him ; being essentially a soldier ; being essentially a 
 magistrate bearing' the sword ; that such a person 
 should be the head of the Church of Christ ; have 
 the supremacy over that Church in s])iritual matrers;
 
 43 col'Eett's [Lctter 
 
 and we having the example of the Apostles heibre u?, 
 as to the gcvevnment of the Church, and as to the 
 selecting- and appointing of bishops and other sjiiritual 
 guides : this alone, upon the mere face of it, might 
 have been an excuse for conscientious men objecting' to 
 this establishment. Then, as to the mode of selec- 
 ting and appointing bishops, and the practice called 
 the Conge cVelire. Mr. Baron Maseres, who was so 
 many years Cursitor Baron of the Exchequer; who 
 was descended fi'om a Huguenot ; who was a very 
 staunch Protestant; who was also a staunch Church- 
 man for a great many 3'ears of his very long life, and 
 who certainly was as good a man as ever breathed ; 
 wrote and published a little book, which he called the 
 *' Moderate Jiefovmerr In this book he strongly re- 
 comanended the discontinuance of the practice of the 
 Conge (VlTire, that being a thing which he deemed 
 most injurious to the character of the Church. 
 
 The Conge cVcTire is a leave to elect ; tliat is to say, a 
 leave given by the King as Head of the Church, to the 
 dean and chapter of a diocese, to elect a bishop. When 
 they receive this leave from the King they meet; and 
 after the religious ceremony and invocations suitable 
 to the occasion, the dean, I suppose it is, pulls out of 
 his pocket the name of the man whom the King has 
 given them leave to elect 1 Noav, is there any man of 
 sense and reason in the world Avho will sa}^ that it was 
 just to compel all the people of England to conform 
 to the belief, that this was agreeable to the will of the 
 Author of the Christian religion ? 
 
 But the lieathh'ip of the Clmrcli does not in this 
 exhibit any thing like all its objectionable parts : 
 a ovcman may be the head of the Church, as women 
 twice have been in England; a boy, or a little girl; 
 nay, a baby in arms ; nay, further, one not yet born, 
 supposing the king to die while the queen is pregnant 
 wdtli an heir to the throne, may be the head of the 
 Church of Christ in Iln.(jland ; to say nothing of the
 
 II.] LEGACY TO PARSONS. '13 
 
 Eossibility of this headsliip being" possessed by persons 
 eref't of their senses ! 
 Here, then, in this one thing-, will nny man say, 
 that there was not enough to make conscientious men 
 hesitate before they consented to belong- to this Church ? 
 Will any one say, that it was right to stig-matize, and 
 to exclude from the ordinary benefits of the law, men 
 who coidd not bring- themselves to bend to this ? will 
 any one say that it was just to inflict penalties on men 
 because they, with the Gospels and the Epistles in their 
 hands, refused to conform to an establishment like 
 this ? However, stigmatized and punished they were. 
 Cranmer biirnt several of them for protesting- ag-ainst 
 his Church ; and as to Elizabeth, her forty -five years 
 reign were forty-five years of the most ferocious punish- 
 ments inflicted on this conscientious part of her subjects. 
 I beg- the reader, if he wish to possess a thorough 
 knowledg-e of the treatment of the persons called 
 Dissenters ; of the treatment which the forefathers of 
 the present Dissenters received at the hands of the 
 Established Church and its head, to read, if his boiling- 
 blood will permit him to read, the Act 35th Elizabeth, 
 chapter I, entitled ^' An Act to retain the Queen's 
 " Ilajcstys Subjects in their due Ohedlence,'' which 
 Act begins thus : '' For the preventing- and avoiding- of 
 " such great inconveniences and perils as might happen 
 ^' and grow oy the wicked and dangerous practices of 
 " seditious Sectaries and disloj^al persons, be it enacted, 
 " &c." The reader will observe that this had nothing at 
 all to do with the Roman Catholics, for the scourging, 
 and racking, and ripping up of whom the Church- 
 makers had other Acts of Parliament. This Act was 
 purely against Protestant Dissenters ; or as the Act 
 calls them, Non-conformists ; that is to say, that con- 
 scientious part of the people who would not conform to 
 that Prayer Book Church, which, by the authors of it 
 themselves, had been called " Schismatical nud wicked," 
 and for having- made which they had supplicated the 
 Pope to give them absolution.
 
 44 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 At this time the Dissenters were very numerous, as 
 tliey naturally would be. There were already laws to 
 exclude them from all emoluments of office ; from the 
 himefits of the Universities ; and to compel them to pay 
 tithes, Church-rates, and oblations, and dues, to the 
 clergy of the Church : there were already laws to 
 'imprison tliem for life, and to cause thousands upon 
 thousands to die in prison under their persecution ; 
 however, thej still increased ; and this Act was intended 
 totally to put them down, or to expel them from the 
 country of their birth, or to kill them. But there was 
 a difficulty in discovering' who were and who were not 
 Dissenters. Divers schemes were resorted to for this 
 purpose ; but at last the Church-makers fell upon the 
 scheme contained in this Act, which was simply this : 
 to covipel all the i^eople to go to the chnrcl/esregvilavlj, 
 and there to join in the pei'fbrmance of Divine service, 
 and in the use of the Common Prayer. All persons, 
 of whatever rank or degTee, above the age of sixteen 
 years, who refused to go to some chui'ch or chapel, or 
 place of common prayer; or who persuaded any other 
 person not to go, or who should be at any conventicle, 
 or meeting, under colour or pretence of any exercise of 
 any religion other than that ordered by the state ; then 
 every such person was to be committed to prison, there 
 to remain until he should be ordered to come to some 
 church or usual place of common prayer, and there 
 make an open stihmission and declaration of his con- 
 formity, in these following words : " I, A B, do 
 "humbly confessand acknowledge that Ihave grievously 
 " offended God in contemning her Majesty's lawful 
 "■ government and authority, by absenting myself from 
 " Church, and in using unlawful conventicles and 
 " assemblies, under pretence and colour of exercise of 
 " religion ; and I am heartily sorry for the same ; 
 '' and I do acknowledge and testify in my conscience 
 " that no person hath, or ought to have, any power or 
 '^ authority over her Majesty ; and I do promise that I
 
 II.] LEGACY TO PARSONS. 45 
 
 '^ will from time to time repair to the Churcli and hear 
 •' divine service, and do ni}^ utmost endeavour to defend 
 "and maintain the same." 
 
 Now, what was the jnmishment, in case of dis- 
 obedience here? The otfender was to "abjure the 
 realm J " that is to say, was to bair'ssk Itinisclf Jor 
 life; and, if he i'ailed to do this ; ii he did not g-et 
 out of the Idng'dom in the course of such time as 
 should be appointed by the authority of the queen ; 
 or, if he returned into the kingdom, without her leave, 
 such person so offending- "was to be adjudged a 
 ''felon, and was to suffer, as in cases of felony, with- 
 "out benefit of clergy j" that is to say, suffer the 
 sentence due to arson or murder ; to be hanged by 
 the neck till he was dead 1 
 
 Gentle Church ! Mild Church ! Sweet Christian 
 Church ; most " amiable establishment !" This was 
 the way that you went to work to convert the people 
 to your doctrines, and to induce them to attend your 
 ■worship. " This was a ffrcut while ckjoT Yes, it 
 ■was a g'reat while ago ; but it is very necessary for 
 lis of this day to know what it was ; and that this 
 Act continued in force, until the first year of Wil- 
 liam AND Mary, when it was only a little mitigated; 
 the Church always sticking* firmly to this law. This 
 was a law which said to all the people ; " Come and 
 '' hear our Prayer Book read, the amiable history of 
 ''which 3'Ou know so well; come in person, and declare 
 "your belief in our creeds, and join in the repeating of 
 " our Prayer Book ; which was made by Act of Par- 
 " liament, abrogated as schismatical by another Act of 
 '' Parliament, and then made by Act of Parliament 
 " again : come and openly profess your sincere belief 
 "in all this; or, be banished for life; or, be hanged by 
 "the neck till you be dead !" 
 
 What a strang-e thing that the Dissenters should be 
 so perverse, as to bear something like animosity towards 
 this " amiable establishment," -which you parsons tell
 
 46 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 us, has always Ijeen ''the most tolerant Church that 
 "ever was heard of in the world." One cannot help 
 laughing- ; one's horror is so great that it ends at last 
 in ridicule at the monstrousness of this thing, con- 
 tinuing in full force, too^ through the rest of the reign 
 of this horrible woman; through that of James the 
 First; Charles the First ; Charles the Second; and 
 never attempted to be mitigated until James the Second 
 made the attempt, and which attempt was the real 
 cause of the loss of the throne to him and his family 
 for ever. 
 
 Parsons, you always talk of this Church, as if it had 
 been established by the common consent of the people; 
 as if it had arisen out of their will ; and had been their 
 work, and not the work of the aristocracy ; and you 
 always represent the Dissenters as unreasonaJde and 
 perverse in withirawing from it, or not joining it : 
 ■you always speak of the makers of this Church as 
 zealous and pious men, acting in conformity to the will 
 of the people. You forget to tell us, that, even in its 
 very dawn; that at the very introduction of the Common 
 Prayer Book into the Churches ^even at the very first 
 stripping- of the altars, and the priests of their vest- 
 ments ; you forget to tell us, that the peojDle complained 
 and remonstrated all over the kingdom ; that they de- 
 manded the return of their ancient religion ; that they 
 complained that they had been reduced to the state of 
 pack-horses, while the nobilit}^ and gentry were wal- 
 lowing in newly acquired wealth. Those who have 
 read my History of the Protestant Reformation, know 
 all this to be true ; they know that the people rose in 
 insurrection in several parts of England ; and that 
 they were brought into the bosom of the Prayer- Book 
 Church, in the reign of Edward, by pious exhortations, 
 no doubt, but with the aid of good well-tempered Ger- 
 man bayonets ; as you will see in Protestant Reforma- 
 tion, paragraph 212. 
 
 You never tell us of the famous ecclesiatical Com-
 
 II.] LEGACY TO PARSONS. 47 
 
 mision, established in the reign of Elizabeth, il 
 virtue of the very first Act of her reign, dauses, 17, 
 18,'and 19, In virtue of the authority given her by this 
 Act, 1 Elizabeth, chapter 1, she appointed a Com- 
 mission, consisting of certain bhsJtops and others, whose 
 power extended over the whole kingdom, and over all 
 ranks and degrees of people. They were empov/ered 
 to have an absolute control over the opinions of all 
 men, and, merely at their oivn dlficretion, to inflict any 
 punishment, short of death, on any person whatsoever. 
 If they chose, they might proceed Icgall}^ in the ob- 
 taining of evidence against parties; but, if they chose, 
 they might employ hnprisonmenf, the racl;, or torture' 
 of any sort for this purpose. If their suspicions alighted 
 upon any man, no matter respecting what, and they 
 had no evidence, nor even an hearsay against him, 
 they might administer an oath called cxojficw, to him,, 
 by which he was bound, if called upon, to reveal his 
 thoughts, and to accuse himself, his friend, his brother, 
 his father, upon pain of death ! These monsters in- 
 flicted what fines they pleased ; they imprisoned men 
 for any length of time that they pleased; they put forth 
 wh^itevev new articles ^/\/rr?7A they pleased"; and, in 
 short, they had an absolute control over the bodies and 
 the minds of the whole of the people ; and, observe, 
 this act remained in force until the 16th yearof Charles 
 the First, when iS was repealed by chapter 11 of that 
 year. 
 
 Parsons, perhaps you will tell us, that i/oto' Church 
 had nothing to do with this ; that this was the work 
 of the queen. She was the. head of j^our Church, at 
 any rate ; but, observe, the Commission was composed 
 oi' Bishops, chiefly; bishops of the Prayer-Book Church 
 were at the head of this Commission. 
 
 The Commission was for the purpose, and for the 
 sole purpose of punishing people for not conforming to 
 the Church ; and, are we to be made to believe, that 
 the Church did oiot approve of this Commission ; es-
 
 43 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 pecially, when we never heard of such a thing- as any 
 Bishop^ or any one belong-ing- to the Church, protesting 
 against the use of these liorrible means of sustaining it. 
 
 In like manner you wash your hands of all the savage 
 Ijutcheries of this reign, during which more English- 
 men were slaughtered in one year for offences, made 
 such by Act of Parliament, for the sole purpose of up- 
 liolding this Church, than were put to death for all 
 offences whatsoever, during the whole of the reign of 
 the '' Bloody Queen Mary;" more slaughtered in one 
 year, for oifences made by Acts of Parliament to sup- 
 ])ort this Clmrch, than were slaughtered, even in the 
 massacre of St. Bartholomew, if we include the deaths 
 in prison, and the deaths occasioned by banishment. 
 The historian, Strype (he was a Protestant), tells us. 
 that the queen executed more than five hundred crimi- 
 nals in one year, and was so little satisfied with that 
 number that she threatened to send private persons to 
 see her laws executed,/^;;- '■'■ projit and (]ahi\^ salte.^^ 
 
 It is impossible to look at the origin and the progress 
 of this Church without believing that it caused greater 
 cruelties to be inflcted ; a greater mass of human suf- 
 fering to be endured than ever was occasioned by any 
 religious establishment in the world, lliere have been 
 religious wars, there have been crusades, but these 
 have been wars. These have heen^fghts of one naticn, 
 or part of a nation, against another ; that is quite 
 another matter : it is army against army, it is not the 
 cold blooded operations of law; and I am satisfied that 
 the history of the world furnishes no instance of so 
 much human suffering inflicted in cold blood, as was 
 inflicted for the establishment and the upholding of this 
 Church, which nevertheless has the cool impudence to 
 call itself " the most tolerant Church in the world." 
 
 Perverse creatures, then, these Dissenters must be, 
 to feel anything like a prejudice against this ^' amiable 
 •establishment"! Monstrous impudence; impudence so 
 great, that one cannot find words to express suitable
 
 IL] LEGACY TO PARSONS. 49* 
 
 indig-nation ag'ainst it ; monstrous impudpnce, to pre- 
 tend, that it is g-ranting- a J'aww to Dissenter?, to 
 siitrer them to he placed upon a level with those Avho 
 belong- to, or pretend to belong- to, this Church ! Mon- 
 strous impudence, to pretend that they have not as 
 great a right to all the ecclesiastical possessions, of 
 every sort, as you, the parsons, have ! For my part I 
 hear them with contempt when they come crawling- for 
 what they call a ^'redress of their grievances" VVhy, 
 the domination of the Church is a grievance alto- 
 gether. We are all grieved alike by its existence. It 
 ought never to have been such as it has been. But of 
 these matters I shall speak more fully in my next letter ; 
 having- here answered the question, " I£o)v there came 
 to he jjeople called Dissenters ;" having- given an ac- 
 count of their rise, their progress, and of the horrible 
 attempts made to extirpate them, by this Church, as 
 by law established ; for again and again I protest 
 against the idea, that these horrible laws and ferocious 
 cruelties were committed against the will, or without 
 the concurrence of the Chinch. The atrocious act of 
 Elizabeth (35th of her reign, chapter 1) coxild not 
 have been passed without the concurrence of the bishops 
 and the clergy 5 they were to be the executors of the 
 law, or to see the law executed ; they were to receive 
 the submission and declaration of conformity ; the 
 minister of the j)f(^'i^h was to make a record of the 
 submission, and he was to make a report of it to thcr 
 bishop ; so that here it was a church affair altogether. 
 Therefore we are not to be shuffled oif with the pretence 
 that it was a mere act of the secular power of the State. 
 Indeed (and this is what we never ought to loso 
 sight of), Ave always find the clergy of the Church 
 working- busily in all these things ; we so find them 
 from the days of Cranmer down to the late French 
 war ; aye, and down to the days of Sidmouth and 
 Castlereagh. At this moment, indeed, they seem to 
 have become more " tolerant 5" they seem to begin to
 
 50 rncBETT's [Letter 
 
 perceivft that at last the}' must <2,ive way. Still their 
 partizans cling* to their pretended rig-hts ; and therefore 
 it is necessary that we now look well into those rig-hts ; 
 and it will be prudent in the Dissenters not to express 
 their content with any change short of a complete 
 putting an end to the abuse, from the top to the bottom. 
 We shall see enough of tJw jJ^'csent state of this Church 
 in a subsequent letter ; we shall see in what degree it 
 can possibly be a religious instructor ; above all things 
 we shall see who it is that now pocket its revenues ; 
 we shall see how those revenues are emploj^ed for the 
 " cu?'e of souls ; " and when v/e have seen these clearly, 
 I trust there will be found spirit and sense enough left 
 in this nation to insist upon complete redress of this 
 mighty grievance; for if this redress be not had, to 
 have reformed the Parliament will have been a gross 
 deception ; a mere contrivance to amuse the people 
 with vain hopes never to be realized; and in fact to 
 prevent a redress of this, as well as of every other 
 wrong, of which the industrious millions of this op- 
 pressed and impoverished people so loudly and so justly 
 <;omplain. 
 
 LETTER III. 
 
 TYHAT IS THE FOUNDATION OF THE DOMINATION 
 OF THE CHURCH OVER THE DISSENTERS ? 
 
 Parsons, 
 
 I know you will say, ''the Law gives us this 
 '•' domination." I know it does ; and, for that very 
 reason, I want the law altered ; I want the law re- 
 pealed that gives this domination to you ; and, with 
 that object in view, I ask, '' what is the foundation " 
 of the present law ? 
 
 Rightful domination, or mastership, has these foun- 
 dations, or one of them ; the immediate gift oj God ;
 
 III.] LEGACY TO PARSONS. 51 
 
 ■conmiest ; hereditary 2^^'opcriy ; imrcliaae ; paternal 
 authority. IS^either of these foundations has your 
 audacious domination to rest on. Your jiretence of 
 being- the prescrqjflve siceceisors of the Roman Catholic 
 Clergy would subject you to their duties and huvs, as 
 well as give you their possessions. These would com- 
 pel you to keep the poorj to feed the strang-er; to 
 harbour the houseless; to abstain from marriage and 
 all carnal intercourse ; and would shut out all bastards 
 liom being- ministers of Christ ! Blachstone (Book 1, 
 c. 16) "A Bastard was incapahle of Holy Orders: 
 imd. though that were dispensed with, yet he was 
 idtcrly disqualified for holding any dignity in the 
 Church : but, this doctrine seems now ohsoletey That 
 is to say, it is out qffocshlon ! Oh ! it ^' seems" does 
 it. Faith, it a little more than seems; and this, I 
 trust, we shall ascertain, by having the names of the 
 parties before us, before we have done with the bastardy 
 <.'Iauses of the Poor-law Bill. It a little more than 
 ^^ seems -^^ though there is no law for this departure 
 from the ancient law, which, you will observe, was, 
 imd still is, the law of the land, independent of all 
 Acts of Parliament. 
 
 But, as to this right of domination. Suppose it had 
 been just to suppress the Roman Catholic Church j 
 suppose, also, that it had been just to take away a large 
 part of its property, and give it to the aristocracy; 
 suppose that it had been just to oust and extirpate the 
 Catholic priests ; suppose that it had been just to do 
 iill tliese things, upon the g-round of the Catholic re- 
 ligion being idolatrous and damnable. Admit all this 
 for argument sake ; still what g-round was there for 
 erecting- another Church by law, and compelling- all 
 Protestants to submit to that new Church ? The pre- 
 tence for suppressing- the ancient Church, be it what it 
 mig-ht, ftirnishedno ground for cova\\e\h\i<^ Protestants 
 to submit to another Church. The ancient religion 
 having been declared to be bad, and having- been
 
 S2 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 stripped of all its possessions, every man was free to 
 choose a mode of worship for himself; and to pay his 
 own priest, if he chose to have a priest. There was 
 no rig-htful power anywhere to have control over the 
 consciences of men : and it was tyranny ; the most 
 hateful t^^ranny, to attempt to exercise such control. 
 
 Still, however, if a decided majority of the jjeo'ple 
 had been for the establishment of this new Church ; 
 then, as questions in such cases must be decided by the 
 majority of voices, the present Church might plead 
 something" like a legitimate origin; and.indeed, her par- 
 tizans contend that she had this decided majority of 
 the people with her. Whittaker, in his book expos- 
 ing- the murderous character of Elizabeth, observes, 
 Aat she had had g'iven to her, very unjustly, the cha- 
 racter of vuiher of the Protestant Established Ckurch; 
 " that Church," says he, " arose out of the 'piety, the 
 " good sense, and the common consent of the people of 
 " England." Whittaker, who took up the cause 
 of Mary Queen of Scots, was a most zealous church- 
 man, nevertheless ; and Avas as unjust towards the 
 Catholics and the Dissenters, as he was just in the case 
 of these two queens. There is no way of effectually 
 closing- up the mouth of these self-called historians, but 
 by going' to the Statute Booh; and now let us hear 
 what the Statute Book says upon this subject. We 
 have seen in the preceding- letters, that the Prayer 
 Book was enacted in the year 1548. In the year 1552 
 (5 and G Edward the Sixth, chap. 1), there required 
 an Act of Parliament to comjwl 'people to go to the 
 churches to hear this Prayer Book. The preamble to 
 this Act sets forth, "that g-reat numbers of people in 
 " divers parts of the realm do wilfully and damnably 
 '' abstain and refuse to come to their parish churches." 
 Then the Act proceeds to order all and every person 
 inhabiting- within the realm to come to the churches, 
 to assist at the prayer, and to hear the preaching- j it 
 n;xt charges the bishops and others to endeavour to
 
 III.] LEGACY TO PARSONS. 53 
 
 their utmost to get the people to their churches, and to 
 pnnish the reiractory by all the censures and po/vers 
 oj' punishment which they possessed ; it concludes by 
 inflicting- penalties on all those who should attend or 
 assist at the performance of any other sort of worsh'qjy 
 whether Catholic or Protestant ; for the first offence, 
 six months' imprisonment ; for the second offence, im- 
 prisonment for a yearj for the third ofl'ence, impri- 
 sonment for life ! 
 
 This severity brought Dissenters to the churches, 
 and into the church-yards. In those churches and 
 church-yards they disputed about religion. Some 
 disliked the new Church for one cause ; some for 
 another ; and, therefore, an Act was passed in the same 
 year (5 and G Edward the Sixth, chap. 4), intituled 
 "Against qiiarreUing and f(jhti?i(ji in churches and 
 church-yards'' The preamble sets forth, " Forasmuch 
 " as of late, divers and many outrageous and barbarous 
 " behaviours and acts have been used and committed 
 " by divers ungodly and irrelig-ious persons, by 
 ^' quarreUing, brawling, fraying, and fghting, in 
 '' churches and church-yards." Then on g-oes the Act, 
 delivering' over to the spiritual authority all the 
 offenders. If one laid violent hands on another, or 
 smote another, sentence of excommunication, with all 
 its consequences, was to be passed upon the offender. 
 If any one smote another with a weapon, or drew a 
 weapon to smite him with, he was to have one of his 
 ears cut off; and now mark, parsons : if the offender 
 had no ears, then he was to be burnt in the cheek with 
 the letter F, si^^m^fm^ fray-maher ovfgliter; and was 
 to be excommunicated besides. 1'his Act remains, in 
 g'reat part, in force to this very day; and under it hun- 
 dreds of persons have been, within my recollection, 
 imprisoned and ruined ; and let the people of this 
 insulted country now remember, and well remember, 
 that they owe this barbarous law solely to the establish- 
 : ment of this Church.
 
 5i cobbett's [Letter 
 
 When Mary came to the throne after this boy-king-, 
 these Acts were swept away. The Prayer Book Chui'ch 
 was gone, and there needed no more cutting'-ofF of ears, 
 or burnings in the cheek. But can we proceed any 
 further without expressing our horror, that England 
 should have been reduced to such a state, that it was 
 necessary to provide, in an Act of Parliament, for the 
 contin^encj of offenders havin (J no ears to be mt off! 
 What eifect the new Church had had upon their con- 
 sciences and morals we may guess, when it had had 
 such an astonishing effect upon their ears ! In short, 
 it was a continual fight ; not with the Catholics, but 
 amongst Protestants of different descriptions, from 
 the hour that the Prayer Book Act was passed, until 
 Mary came to the throne and swept away all these Acts, 
 and restored the Catholic religion. Then, if all was 
 not harmony ; and all could not be harmony after what 
 had passed ; still, however, there required no Acts of 
 Parliament to compel the people to go to church ; 
 there required neither death, nor imprisonment, nor 
 banishment, nor anything else, to effect this purpose. 
 She wished to make all her subjects Roman Catholics ; 
 she wished all her subjects to attend mass ; but she left 
 it to themselves, as far as related to their personal 
 attendance at worship ; she did not compel them to be 
 guilty of what they deemed blasphemy. 
 
 Will it be said that this contest amongst the Protes- 
 tants was but of short duration: that it was in the heat 
 of disputation, natural enough upon such a change ; 
 but that the people all became very soon of one mind : 
 and that, therefore, the brawlings and fightings are not 
 to be looked upon as anything serious as to the character 
 of this new Church. Now observe ; the bloody Act ot 
 Elizabeth, giving the people a choice of three things, 
 conformity ; that is, coming to church, making public 
 confession of belief and adhesion to the new religion, 
 promising not to profess any other religion, or attend 
 at any other place of worship, and of having this sub-
 
 III.J LEGACY TO PARSONS. 65 
 
 mission recorded in a book by the parson of the paris^Ii . 
 this was one of the things that they had to choose 
 amongst. Not being- able to bring their consciences to 
 bend to this, they were to abjure the reahn, and banisli 
 themselves for life. Not being able to bring themselves 
 to leave behind them for ever, wives, children, parents, 
 brethren, and all that they held dear in the world, there 
 remained to them, to he hanged by the vech till they 
 were dead ; and, observe, this Act applied purely and 
 expressly to Protestant Dissenters ; and that, by the 
 r2th clause of the Act (35 Elizabeth, chapter 1), 
 Roman Catholics were excepted from the provisions of 
 the Act, there being other Acts for them of a still more 
 horrible description. 
 
 And now the most material observation of all, with 
 regard to this point, remains to be made ; and that is 
 this, that this Act was passed at the end of forty-one 
 years of attempts to enforce this Protestant Established 
 Church. Edward had had six years' attempt at it, 
 with all his horrible punishments ; and now this she 
 t}Tant, the most cruel that ever existed in the world, 
 had to pass this Act, at the end of thirty-five years of 
 her merciless doings ; so that, after forty-one years of 
 punishments of all sorts ; after thousands had died in 
 prison; after privations, exclusions, fines, amercements, 
 and disqualifications as to })roperty, trades, and profes- 
 sions; at the end of forty-one years of this horrid work, it 
 required banishment for life, or hanging on the gallows, 
 to compel the Protestants of England to bring their 
 bodies within the walls of the places where this v/orsliip 
 of the Established Church was performed ! What plea 
 have you then, parsons ; what ground have you for 
 asserting ; what had Whittaker to bear him out in the 
 allegation, that this Church arwse out of the common 
 consent ; out of tlie movements of the consciences ; out 
 of the zeal and the piety of the people ; and that the 
 Church was established by the love of the ])eople for it; 
 and not by the acts of any king or queen, or those of
 
 f)0 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 their Parliaments ? Let it be observed that this Act ; 
 that this banishing'-and-hang'ing' Act continued in full 
 force, as to all the main parts of its provisions, until it 
 was altered by the Act 1st of William and Mary, 
 session 1, chapter 18 j and that it is very far from 
 being" swept clean away even unto this hour. 
 
 The repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts took 
 place in I828j these Acts Avere passed in the reig-n 
 of Charles the Second; the Act 25 Charles the 
 Second, chap 2, and the Act 13 Charles Second, 
 statute 2, chapter 1, excluded from all offices in corpo- 
 rations, and from all offices of trust and emolument 
 under the Crown, all persons who should not receive 
 the Sacrament according to the r'ujhts and ceremonies 
 of the EstahVishcd Church, within one year next 
 before their election in such corporations, or their ap- 
 pointment to such offices. Now, will you have the 
 audacity to pretend that the Cliurch was not the instl- 
 gator to the passing' of these Acts of Parliament ? 
 Every one must see that it tended to keep all poAvers 
 and all emoluments of the whole country in the hands 
 of the aristocracy, of whom, indeed, the Church is, in 
 fact, the property. Was it from piety ; from motives 
 oi pure religion; from a desire to save tJiesotds of men, 
 that this compulsion to take the sacrament in this par- 
 ticular manner Avas imposed ; and is it not manifest 
 that it Avas imposed for the purposes of exclusion ? 
 The Corporation Act, as it is usually called, is intituled, 
 " An Act for the iceJl- governing and reg'ulating- of 
 ''Corporations;" and the preamble states, that many 
 evil spirits Avere Avorking-, and that it was necessary to 
 perpetuate corporations in the hands of persons Avell 
 afiected to his Majesty and the established g'overn- 
 ment ; then the Act pi'oceeds to enact, amongst other 
 things, that no man shall have a post in a corporation 
 unless he receive the sacrament according to the rites 
 and ceremonies of the Church of England. The Test 
 Act (25th Charles the Second, chapter 2), is intituled,
 
 111.] LEGACY TO PARSONS. 57 
 
 *' An Act to prevent dang-ers that may liappen from 
 Popish recusants;" but, before it lias done, it includes 
 Dissenters; for it makesit necessary for «;?7/ person hold- 
 ing- a«^ office, civil or militari/, ovvcceiving any pay, 
 salary, fee, or Avag'es, or who shall be in any place of 
 command or of trust from, or under the king-, or by 
 authority derived from him, or shall be in the navy, or 
 in the islands of Jersey and Guernsey, and who shall 
 not receive the sacrament of the Lord's sap])er, accord- 
 ing- to the usage of the Charch of England, shall lose 
 his said post or employment ; and that, in future, no 
 man shall have any such post, unless he bring- from 
 some bishop, j'j?-?e.sf, or other ecclesiastic, a certificate 
 that he has received the said sacrament in manner 
 aforesaid. These Acts remained in force, as I observed 
 before, until they were repealed upon the motion of 
 Lord John Russell, in the year 1828 ; which Act was 
 cried up as a redressing of all the wrongs of the Dis- 
 senters ; of which I will say more presently. 
 
 But, upon what ground were these Acts repealed? 
 Why, upon the g-round that they were unjust; upon 
 the g-round that tliey inflicted great wrongs ; upon the 
 g-round that they were passed ag-ainst common right. 
 Upon no other g-round could the repeal have taken 
 place. There was no expediency now that had not 
 always existed. But what did tliis repeal do for the 
 Dissenters in g-eneral ? The persons who were candi- 
 dates for offices in corporations, and in employments 
 under the king-; the Dissenters of this description were 
 very few in number, compared with the millions of 
 Dissenters. Yet this repeal was represented to be all 
 that the Dissenters ever could ask for ! The very re- 
 peal of the Acts acknowledged them to have been 
 wrong-ful ; yet, what were these Acts, which merely 
 shut men out from public employments, compared with 
 the bloody Acts Avhich we have before seen, by which 
 the Church was introduced and upheld by the ruin or 
 the killing of the people who dissented from it ?
 
 58 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 However, this repeal left all the great and siihstan- 
 tial gTievances remaining*. It left the Dissenters just 
 •where they were hefore with reg-ard to these g-rievances ; 
 it left them to have their marrmgoH solemnized hy the 
 Established Church, or to be without the quaHty of 
 legality ; it compelled them to have recourse to the 
 Church, in order to secure legal proof of their births 
 and their dc-aths; it shut them out of the Universities; but 
 above all things, it left them that grievance of all griev- 
 ances; that liagrant and intolerant injustice, of ren- 
 dering tithes and ohlafions, of paying rates and dues, 
 to support a clergy and an establishment, which, from 
 the beginning, their forefathers had conscientiously dis- 
 sented from ; and from which they still dissented, more 
 strongly than ever, if possible, with regard, as well to 
 its doctrines, as to its ritual and its discipline ; and the 
 whole of which they will now learn from the Statute- 
 Book were declared, by the very authors of them 
 (1 Mary, 2nd session, chapter 2) to he schism atical ; 
 and were, by them, swept away accordingly ! 
 
 If the Test and Corporation Acts were wrongful; 
 and they were so ; and it was right and just to repeal 
 them ; why not repeal all the other grievances ? By 
 what law of God ; by what possible interpretation of 
 any part of the Holy Scriptures ; by what plea of pre- 
 scription ; by what reason, or operation of common 
 sense, does this Church claim a right to bring Dissen- 
 ters before it to solemnize their marriages, according* 
 to a written service which never had their sanction ? 
 An expedient has now been fallen upon to redress, as 
 it is called, this grievance. Marriages are to be con- 
 tracted, it seems, now, hefore the civil magistrate ; but 
 still the Church keeps its hand upon them, according 
 to the intention which has been stated in the Parlia- 
 ment. The parson is to record them in his Church- 
 hooh, with the sum of five shillings to accompany each 
 record. To be sure, this is taking out a great screw : 
 this is rubbing out the dogma of the Church, that
 
 Ill] LEGACY TO PARSOXS. 59 
 
 marriag'e is essentially a 7'elig'wus act ; and few people, 
 I suppose, if this Act pass, will think it necessary to 
 go to the Church to be married ; for as to the declara- 
 tion, that the parties do not belong to the Church., what 
 is the meaning' of those words ? What is belonging 
 to the Church ; or being' a member of the Church ? 
 Who does belong to the Church ? All those who are 
 baptized in the Church ? It is notorious that nine- 
 tenths of the present Dissenters were so baptized. If 
 belonging to the Church means having- commvnicated 
 in the Church ; having- been confirmed by the bishops, 
 and admitted to partake the communion, then I venture 
 to say, that not one man in England out of one tlwusand 
 belongs to the Church. However, though this is a giving* 
 way, it is a little movement after the manner of the 
 hunted beaver, and it seems to illustrate the nature of 
 all the rest of the grievances. If the law that com- 
 pelled Dissenters to marry in the Church were just ; if 
 it were a law for the good of the people ; why not per- 
 severe in it? And, if it were an unjust law, in what 
 does it differ, I pray, from the laws inflicting the rest 
 of the g-rievances ? 
 
 What right, I should be glad to know, have the 
 people of a particular faith or worship to compel all the 
 rest (probably four times their number) to be buried 
 with a ceremony which they disliked while alive ; or 
 else to be excluded from the church-yards, which are 
 the common property of all the people; Avliat right 
 have they to prevent the bodies of Dissenters being- 
 brought into the church-yard with the performance of 
 their own ceremony ? What right has this corpora- 
 tion called the Church to arrogate to itself the right 
 of excluding children from registry of birth, unless 
 their parents subject them to a mode of baptism, 
 against which they in their consciences protest ? And 
 Avith reg'ard to the Universities, here is an immense 
 mass of power and of property, civil and political pri- 
 vileg-es endless, emoluments arising- from sources innu-
 
 60 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 meraUe, honours and distinctions without end, besides 
 immense landed estates. And why are Dissenters to 
 be exchided from any of these ? Is the pi-ound of ex- 
 clusion that they do not embrace that Prayer Book, 
 Avhich those who enacted it called by Act of ParUament 
 scliismatical, and which they afterwards re-enacted 
 and forced upon the people, on pain of banishment for 
 life, or hanging on the gallows ? Is this the ground that 
 they set up for excluding other Protestants from sharing 
 in these estates, which were taken from the Catholics ? 
 The miserable dispute about the Dissenters not being 
 suffered to take degrees in the Universities without first 
 embracing the Common Prayer and the Act-of- 
 Parliament Articles of Eeligion : the miserable dispute 
 about this matter, the only alleged evil of which was, 
 to retard, by three years, the progress of a Dissenter 
 to the bar, or to the corporation of physicians and sur- 
 geons ; wliich could not affect one Dissenter out of one 
 hundred thousand, and which affected ninety-nine out 
 of every hundred of Church Protestants who were 
 going to the bar, or to medicine or surgery : this dis- 
 pute always appeared to me to be most contemptible ; 
 and to be greatly mischievous too ; because it seemed 
 to imply that, as far as related to the Universities, this 
 was all that the Dissenters had to complain of. This 
 has, it seems, been smoothed over by the hencliers and 
 the College of Physicians ag'reeing to admit the aspi- 
 rant Dissenters in the same manner as if they had 
 taken degrees -, and this too, observe, to the manifest 
 injury of all the candidates for these professions 
 who have not been able to pay money to the parsons 
 of the Universities. 
 
 What the Dissenters have a right to, in this case, 
 is, promotion in the Universities according to their 
 learning, rank, and station there, according to their 
 virtues and their talents ; both of which they possess 
 in a degree tenfold greater than the present possessors; 
 but above all thiags they have a rightful claim to a
 
 III.] LEGACY TO PARSONS. 61 
 
 full shnve of the estates possessed by tliose bodies. The 
 foundations, the endowments, were taken from the 
 Catholics. If it be ridit that Protestants alone should 
 possess them, they belong- to nil the Protestants ; and 
 what right can there be other than the rig-ht of the 
 strongest, to give the whole to one description of Pro- 
 testants and to exclude all the rest from any share ? 
 They are excluded because they are Dissenters. Dis- 
 sentevs from what? All Protestants are Dissenters 
 from the Roman Catholic Church ; and why are Dis- 
 senters of one sort to be preferred before those of 
 another ? Except, indeed, that those who are now- 
 called Dissenters have never attempted to fill their 
 churches by laws to inflict banishment, or death, on 
 those who refuse to attend. 
 
 The Universities, including the great schools, such 
 as that at Winchester, Westminster, Eton, and 
 some others, were founded, after the introduction of 
 the Christian religion, for the purpose of teaching those, 
 and the children of those, who had not the means of 
 obtaining teaching at their own expense, which is 
 clearly proved by the statutes of these Universities. 
 The fellows, or body of proprietors of the estates, were 
 obliged to sn'ear that they had no income of their o?r)i 
 above a certain small amount : and indeed the great 
 intention of all these estabUshments was, not to give 
 learning to the sons of the rick, but to the sons of the 
 poor, who are now, except by the merest accident in 
 the world, as completely excluded from them as are the 
 hares and pheasants, which, whenever they come there, 
 come only to be eaten. These are now become great 
 masses of property, possessed and enjoyed exclusively 
 by the aristocracy and their dependants ; and indeed 
 such is the whole of the property of the Church. To 
 come snivelling, therefore, and petition for liberty/ to 
 take decrees in the Universities, without subscribing 
 articles of religion in which the parties do not believe j 
 to come praying to be permitted to take those degrees
 
 C2 cobbett's jLetrer 
 
 without a fiilse oath, is a thin^ so despicable that no 
 man of sincerity will give it his countenance : besides 
 which it clearly implies an a]'proval of, or at least an 
 acquiescence in, tlie/«(.s^ clomliuition of the Church with 
 reg-ard to all the immense masses of property belonging* 
 to these Universities. 
 
 All these exclusions, however, great as the injurious- 
 ness of them is, unjust as they are towards the great 
 body of the people, and degrading as they are in their 
 tendency, are, all put together, a mere trifle, compared 
 with the compulsion upon the Dissenters to give the 
 fouits of their estates and \he fruits of their earnings, 
 for the purpose of supporting the established clergy and 
 Church. Is there any thing that can be conceived 
 more hostile to natural justice, than for men to be com- 
 pelled to take away from the means of supporting their 
 families a considerable part of the fruit of their labour, 
 and to give it to men for preaching a doctrine in which 
 they do not believe, and for performing a service in 
 which their consciences forbid them to join ? If there 
 be any thing more hostile to natural justice than this, 
 I should like to have it pointed out to me. To be sure 
 they are no longer compelled, on pain of banishment, 
 or death, to go into the churches and ctill God to 
 witness that they reverence that which they abhor; 
 but they are comjielled to give their money or their 
 goods in support of it ; and this indeed was all that the 
 banishment and the hanging were intended to insure. 
 If the church-makers of Edward and Elizabeth 
 could have obtained security for getting money of the 
 Dissenters, as quietly as it is now got, they would never 
 have had any Acts of Parliament to compel them to go 
 to church ; the}'- would have been as *' liberal " as our 
 present parsons now are; the flocks might have roamed 
 where they had liked, as they do now^ the shepherds 
 having taken care to secure the fleece. 
 
 The two great grievances of Dissenters are, the 
 Church-rates and the Tithes. There are schemes for
 
 III.] LEGACY TO PARSONS. 6?? 
 
 quieting- tliem as to the former; but what schemes are 
 these ? None of us ought to ])ay any clmrcli-rates. 
 
 The churches were kept in repair out of the clerical 
 revenues of the parish. A third part of the tithes was 
 allotted to the support of the edifice of the church and 
 to the furnishing- of the altar ; and if the present clergy 
 have the tithes by right of lyrescription, does not this 
 duty come down to them too, in the same way ? 
 However, this pretended prescription is all nonsense. 
 We know that the parsons and the aristocracy have the 
 tithes; we know that out of those tithfs they ought to 
 keep up the churches ; hut we also know that they 
 raise the means of doing- this by an annual tax on the 
 land and the houses of all jJO'sons, Dissenters as well 
 as others. 
 
 This is so manifestly unjust towards the Dissenters, 
 who build and maintain places of worship for them- 
 selves, at their o?im cost, that it is a grievance of 
 which they loudly complain ; and at last, schemes of 
 redress have been pro])osed. To excuse a man from 
 this annual tax, upon the grounds of his heing a Dis- 
 senter, would be to put an end to the tax at once ; for 
 there is no test, or law, by which a Dissenter is known ; 
 and every man would declare himself a Dissenter, the 
 moment he was asked for the tax> The scheme of 
 Lord Althorp was, to abolish the tax entirely ; and 
 to pay the church-rates out of the consolidated fund ; 
 and some scheme of this sort still appears to be 
 entertained. A beautiful scheme this would be ; a 
 most delightful redress of a grievance ! The tax would 
 then fall upon the Dissenters far more heavily than it 
 does now ; for nine-tenths of the taxes, which make up- 
 the consolidated fund, are paid by the industrious 
 classes. The Dissenters compose a great part of those- 
 industrious classes ; the tax now falls principally upon 
 the owners and occupiers of land, who would thus, 
 according- to the course which they have been pursuini^ 
 for three huncbed years, and which is so very conspi-
 
 ■G4: cobbett's [Lettar 
 
 cuous in the monstrous partiality in the stamp duties, 
 shift the burden from their own shoulders and throw it 
 upon the shoulders of industry ; and the common day- 
 labouring- man or the artizan, if frequenting- the Church, 
 who is now shut cut to sit in the aisles of that Church, 
 while the rich are seated in the pews, would have to 
 pay Church-rates in the enormous taxes which he pays 
 on all the necessaries of life. This monstrous scheme 
 was, therefore, rejected by the Dissenters, as well it 
 might ; and there is no other mode of redress of this 
 grievance, except that of compelling- the owners qftlie 
 tithes to keep the Churches in repair ; and this, by the 
 Canon Law, that is to say, the laws of the Church, 
 which laws they avail themselves of upon all occasions, 
 the tithes-owners are compelled to do unto this day. 
 But this law is become '^obsolete, " I suppose, as all 
 the rest of the laws are, Avhich impose duties on the 
 tithe-owners of this Church ; and " ohsolete'^ they will 
 remain, until the people shall chose a Parliament, such 
 as, I am afraid, we have very little hope of seeing* at 
 present. 
 
 But the fitlics themselves are the great, grievance 
 after all. We have seen how this Church and the 
 aristocracy came into possession of them; Ave have seen 
 that neither has any right of prescription to plead; we 
 have seen the Acts of Parliament by which they 
 appropriated them ; and have seen that the Dissenters 
 never acknowledged the justice or the right of appro- 
 priation ; but were compelled to render them by Acts 
 of Parliament, which exposed them to banishment, or 
 death, in case of refusal to yield them. 
 
 Upon what ground is it, then, that Dissenters, at 
 any rate, are still called upon to render tithes ? Upon 
 the ground of Acts of Parliament, I know very well ; 
 but this present Parliament has the power to pass Acts 
 also ; and, therefore, it is a mere question of justice 
 und of expediency which we have to discuss. If it be 
 iinjust to make Dissenters pay Church-rates, the
 
 III.] LEGACY TO PARSONS. 65- 
 
 injustice is much greater, because the burden is much 
 greater, to make them pay tithes. It wouhl be per- 
 fectly just in the ParHament to abolish tithes altogether; 
 and this will be done in some way or other, before it 
 be long ; but with regard to Dissenters, it is so 
 manifestly unjust to compel them to render tithes, that 
 the thought is not to be entertained without some 
 degree of horror. Yet they are so compelled ; and to 
 pay personal tithes, too, such as Easier- offerings. 
 Many persons, having refused to pay oblations, ohcen- 
 tions, and offerings, have been imprisoned for great 
 lengths of time, and are so imprisoned unto this day. 
 It is only about two years since one parson, sitting as 
 a magistrate, imprisoned a man in Yorkshire for not 
 paying tithes on the amount of his lahoiir • that is to 
 say, paying tithes on his n-eeldy and yearly wages, as a 
 labourer ! So that this is no emptj sound ; it is a 
 reality ; it arises out of Acts of Parliament (Statute 2 
 and 3 Edward the Sixth) by which this new Church, 
 was made. 
 
 Monstrous as this is with regard to the people in 
 general, how much more monstrous is it with regard 
 to Dissenters ! At last, however, this great and bare- 
 faced abuse of tithes is become a subject of complaint 
 so general, so loud, so menacing, that the owners of 
 them see that it is impossible for them to hold them 
 under their ^;;-^.s<?;?i name and J'ortn. We shall by and 
 by see, in a future letter, into Avhose pockets they go ; 
 we shall see quite enough instances of half-a-dozen 
 benefices in the hands of one man ; we shall by and by 
 see whether they are applied for the purpose of " giving 
 religious instruction;^^ but, in the meanwhile, the 
 aristocracy and their parsons perceive that they cannot 
 much longer retain the exclusive possession of this 
 immense mass of wealth, unless they can, somehow or 
 other, retain it under a name and form other than 
 those which it now bears, and under which name and 
 form the thing has become so odious to the people^ and
 
 fi6 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 so detested by them. Therefore, a scheme is on foot to 
 make, by Act of Parliament, what is termed a " com- 
 mutation of tithes." A commutation means a changing' 
 of one thing for another ; and this scheme is to 
 abolish the tithes, and to impose a money-pnyment m 
 their stead. 
 
 How this is to be done, in any manner whatever, it 
 is very ditficnlt to imagine ; but one thing is certain, 
 that if the Parliament have the rightful power to do 
 this, it has the rightful power to abolish the tithes, 
 without substituting any money-payment in their stead : 
 that much is certain ; and that is what will be done at 
 last, in spite of all the efforts of the aristocracy and the 
 clergy to prevent it. 
 
 Who is to ascertain what the tithes of a farm will be 
 M^orth, for any number of years to come ? What 
 rightful power can any Parliament have to make a 
 man so use his farm as to make the tithes of it always 
 of the present value ? What rightful power can a 
 Parliament have to compel a man not to lay his 
 gTound down into pasture ? What rightful power to 
 compel him to pay the same sum in tithes, whether he 
 have crop or no crop ? What rightful power to change 
 a claim on the increase recoverable by one class of laws 
 into a claim on the soil itself recoverable by another 
 class of laws ? Talk of the sacredness of property, 
 indeed ! What property has any man, even in an 
 estate descended from his ancestors for hundreds of 
 years, if the Parliament have the power to load it witb 
 a rent-clmrge, instead of the yielding of a portion of 
 the increase arising' out of the landj and that, too, 
 tlependent for its amount on his own mode of cultiva- 
 tion, and on the seasons ? Talk of the sacredness of 
 property, indeed ; and at the same time allow that the 
 Parliament has the power to impose a rent-charge on 
 every inch of land in the kingdom ; to give the aristo- 
 cratical tithe-owners and the parsons a lien in fee on 
 every man's estate, however large or small, and subject
 
 III.] LEGACY TO PARSONS. 07 
 
 liim to the chances of having his land seized and sold 
 away from heirs as well as present possessors, by the 
 parson or tithe-owner ! Bad enough to compel men 
 to yield a tenth of the increase ; but a great deal worse 
 to make them acknowledge a perpetual rent-charge to 
 the amount of a fourth or fifth part of the estate ; yet 
 this is what is meant by a " comtnutation of tithes." 
 
 It will be curious, however, to see what is to become 
 of the personal tithes : what is to become of the obla- 
 tions, and ohventions, and offerings ; what is to become 
 of tlie tithes payable on a man's labour, or on the 
 existence of his body ! Are these to be commuted too ; 
 and is a man to contract for giving a parson so much 
 a year for being alive, and so much a year for the fruit 
 of his labour ? In the case of tithes on mills, is the 
 mill still to pay the rent-charge, though burnt to the 
 ground, or swept away by the floods ? How are you 
 to commute the tithes on market-tolls P How com- 
 mute the tithes of the cottage-gardens, and of the 
 apples in their little orchards, and of their geese, and 
 the eggs of their hens ? How commute the tithes of 
 a dair^'-farm, when the farm may cease to be a dairy- 
 farm any day ? Here are all these absurdities to en- 
 counter ; new and hitherto unperceived discontents to 
 contend against; innumerable acts of injustice un- 
 avoidable ; whole estates actually made over to the 
 tithe-owners in cases of hop-gardens and orchards, 
 especially the former. In short, the confusion, the 
 inevitable outrageous injustice, produced by this, is not 
 to be described by the pen or tongue of man. 
 
 And if it were possible, which it is not, to make 
 Church people submit quietly to it, would the Dissen- 
 ters be such fools as to give their consent to a measure 
 which would render this monstrous tax, and, to them, 
 badge of degrading servitude, permanent as the land 
 itself? Their industry, their great proficiency in the 
 sciences, their exemplary sobriety, their persevernnce 
 in business, their great probity as to all pecuniary
 
 ^3- cobbett's [Letter 
 
 matters, and matters of trade ; these have g-iven them 
 the possession, the rightful and well-merited posses- 
 sion of a very considerable part of the property of this 
 whole kingdom; and at these possessions they have 
 come, in spite of two hundred years of persecution ; 
 two hundred years of the contrivances of this Esta- 
 blished Church; tAvo hundred years of exclusions, 
 privations, degradations, and bodily punishments, as 
 well as ruinous pecuniary punishments. Struggling- 
 along for two hundred years, against all the powers of 
 the state to depress them ; amidst the terrors of eccle- 
 siastical censures ; of bonds, of strife, of banishment, 
 of death ; amidst all these, they have struggled along- 
 to their present possessions. If they do not merit 
 their possessions, in this whole world there is nobody 
 that does. 
 
 And if this " Commutation of Tithes " were to take 
 place, this perpetual rent-charge, instead of a yielding- 
 of a portion of the increase, what would be the situation 
 of a Dissenter, whose industry had g'iven him a landed 
 estate ? He now, from his dislike of the Church doc- 
 trine, ritual, and discipline, contributes towards the 
 maintenance of his own Church and his own minister. 
 He naturall}^, and most reasonably and justly, grudges 
 the yielding of a tenth of the increase of his land ; 
 but he has the means of mitigating the burden, by 
 using the land in such a way as to make it as small as 
 possible. Let this commutation come, and it fixes him 
 with a rent-charge foi' ever ; takes from him, and the 
 owners after him, a Jl/'th part of the property in his 
 estate ; places him in the situation of a mortgager ; 
 gives him a co-partner in the possession of his estate ; 
 and in some cases (and there aremany of them), when 
 a lord, or other great man, is the owner of appropria- 
 tions, he will be as a mortgagee to all the landowners 
 of a whole district of country. 
 
 It is impossible that Dissenters can submit to this, 
 except in the way of yielding to downright Jbrce ; and
 
 IV.1 LEGACY TO PARSONS. G)) 
 
 3'et something" must be done to remove tins intolcraljle 
 g-rievance of tithes. IViat something will be at last, 
 and it would be wise to let it be at first, a com])lete and 
 total abolition of tithes; a complete and total taking of 
 them away from the Established Church ; and letting- 
 that Church rest, as other Christian Churches do, upon 
 its own intrinsic merits, and upon the voluntary support 
 of the people who like it ; the good elFects of which I 
 shall have hereafter to describe ; concluding this present 
 letter with expressing a hope that I have clearly proved 
 that the domination of the Established Church over 
 the Dissenters has no other foundation than that which 
 was created by Acts of Parliament ; and that those Acts 
 of Parliament were founded in injustice and enforced 
 by the most barbarous means. 
 
 LETTER lY. 
 
 DOES THE ESTABLISHMENT CONDUCE TO RELIGIOUS 
 INSTRUCTION ? 
 
 Parsons, 
 
 No: flatly no: if " religious instruction" mean a 
 teaching- of the people the principles and practice of a 
 pious worshipping of God, as their Maker, their 
 Preserver, and as a Being to whom they are to be 
 answerable for all their actions in this world : flatly no ! 
 
 When the Dissenters object to the union of Church 
 and State, and insist that the teachers of religion ought 
 to be supported by the voluntary ofterings or con- 
 tributions of those who choose to have them, the 
 answer which they receive from both the political 
 factions is, that " it is the hounden duty of every state 
 or government to provide, hy law, rel'tgious hutruction 
 
 F
 
 70 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 for tlie people wlio live under it." Notliing- can be 
 more false than this ; nothin_4" more at variance with 
 the precepts and practice of Christ and his Apostles. 
 They never called upon the State for its support, or for 
 its aid in any way : they taug-ht that the priest was to 
 live hy the altar; that is to say, by the voluntary 
 oifering's of those who came to the altar ; they set up no 
 claim to any tax upon the land, or upon houses, or 
 \x\ion. people' s labour ; on all which a claim to a heavy 
 tax is set up, and enforced, by our Established 
 Church. 
 
 For many, many ages. Christians, in no part of the 
 world, knew anything of comjmlsory payments to any 
 priesthood; and until 1215 the Church of Rome never 
 pretended that any tithes were demandable by covimon 
 right ; and it was a long- time before there was any law, 
 in any part of this counti-y, to force people to yield 
 tithes of any kind to anybody. And yet Christianity 
 spread itself all over Europe, and churches and cathe- 
 drals rose up without any compulsory payments ; just 
 as Dissenting" meeting-houses and Catholic chapels now 
 rise up, to hold the millions who flee from, or turn their 
 backs on, the Established Church. When the Roman 
 Catholic Church had recourse to the aid of the State to 
 produce compulsory jjayments to it, it began to decline 
 in the estimation of the people. It grew rich, it 
 became luxurious, it became grand and splendid, and 
 the attachment of the people to it became feeble in the 
 same proportion ; till at last an attempt to raise money 
 by a sale of indulgences, in order to apply that money 
 to the building of St. Peter's church at Rome; in 
 order to erect this piece of ostentation and pride ; till 
 at last this attempt, this audaciously profligate use of 
 the power of the Pope, produced that open opposition 
 which led to the protest against his authority : and 
 hence came Protestants and the Protestant religion. 
 
 It is false, then, to say, that it is the duty of a State 
 or Government to provide, by law, for the religious
 
 IV.] LEGACY TO PARSONS. 71 
 
 in-^tnict'ion of the people. The principles and practice of 
 Ohrist and His Apostles contradict this assertion, which, 
 is also contradicted hy the practice of all Christendom 
 ibr twelve hundred years. But it is said that, thoug-li 
 fivery man have the Bihle in his hands, there would be an 
 endless variety of faiths if every man were to be his own 
 interpreter, and if there were no arbiter. An illustration 
 of the absurdity of this has ])cen sought in the case of 
 the common and statute law; and it has been said, 
 what would be the situation of property and of life, if 
 there were no judge to determine the meaning* of the 
 law, and to compel the parties to sulmit to his in- 
 terpretation ? Tliis is very naked sophistry ; because, if 
 there were no interpreter of the laws, no arbiter, by 
 whose decision men were to be bound, men would do 
 injustice and g-reat injury to one another ; every man 
 would interpret in his own favour and to the injury of 
 his neighbour ; but in the other case, it is a matter 
 hciween man and Ids Maker; no injury can arise to any 
 other person from my wron;:^ interpretation of the 
 Scriptures, considered as the foundation of my belief, 
 and as the ground of my worship ; and there is no more 
 necessity, for the good of society, that I should believe 
 the meaning of the first chapter of St. John to establish 
 the doctrine of the Trinity, than that I should believe the 
 contrary. It may be very desirable that the people of 
 a country should be all of one faith, and all frequent the 
 same places of worship; but it never can be desirable 
 that the whole of a people should be heavily burdened 
 to support the priests of one particular sect, from 
 whose teaching nine-tenths of that people dissent; there 
 can exist a rightful power nowhere to uphold by force, 
 by jails, by stripes, by prisons, by halters, a state of 
 things like this. 
 
 But, as to "religious in.ffruetion." Let us see a 
 little what this Established Church does in this way. 
 It is very well known to everybody that ever heard of 
 the matter at all, that the greatest of all the objections
 
 72 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 to the Roman Catholic religion, was it?, oral confessions 
 and its absolutions, cjiven hy the 2^'>''^esfs. This is very 
 well known. Now then, what does this Church teach .'' 
 Why, both these, in principle and in practice. In the 
 *' Visitation of the Sick" it is ordered b^"- the Rubrick, 
 that the priest shall go to the sick person, who is to be 
 moved by the priest to make a special confession of his 
 sins, after which the priest is to absolve hi?)), after this 
 sort : " Our Lord Josus Christ, who hath left power to 
 ^' his Church to absolve all sinners who truly repent 
 '• and believe in him, of his great mercy forgive thee ; 
 *' and by his authority, cov)V)ittcd to 7))e, I absolve thee 
 ^'■from all thy sins. " Here is ^' oral co)]fession,'^ here 
 is " absolution, " as complete as ever was heard of in 
 the Church of Rome. It is well known that the 
 Protestant Dissenters, from the very first, held this in 
 abhorrence ; and it is equally notorious that, during a 
 hundred j^ears, they were, by this Established Church, 
 or at its instigation, exposed to banishment for life, or 
 to death upon the gallows, for not going to the church 
 and professing their belief, that this confession and 
 absolution were agreeable tothewillof God. Supposing, 
 therefore, the Church to be efficient for its intended 
 purposes, is this to be called '^ religious i7ist)-uctio}^" and 
 is there even one single churchman in the whole king- 
 dom who will declare, that he believes that any bishop or 
 parson has authority from Christ to absolve him of his 
 sins ? Not one single man, with the exception of the 
 parsons and their kindred, and perhaps their patrons^ 
 will say that he believes this. Here, then, is a part of 
 the religious instruction, which it is the alleged duty 
 of the State to provide for us, and for which that State 
 makes us pay sums so enormous, and for not paying 
 towards the support of which, as tithes upon the fruit 
 of labouring men's labour, even day-labouring men arn 
 liable by the law to be sent to jail, and sometimes aro 
 sent to jail. Let it be observed, that this confession 
 and absolution are provided for by act of parliament ;
 
 IV.] LEGACY TO PARSONS. 73 
 
 that they proceed from the Jaw, and do not arise from 
 the taste or caprice of" any man. 
 
 One part of" religious instruction, " and a g-reat part 
 of it, is the teaching of children; and this is provided 
 for by the h\w ; and \iviij observe, that it is provided 
 for by the law, which orders, that in every parish the 
 officiating' minister shall, upon Sundays and holidays, 
 after the reading of the second lesson, openly in the 
 church, instruct and examine the children of his parish 
 on some part at least of the Catechism ; and that the 
 fathers, mothers, masters, and dames, shall come with 
 their children, servants, and apprentices, to hear the 
 examination, and to receive the orders of the minister 
 with regard to the instruction of the children. Now I 
 will pledge my life, that there is not one man out of 
 every fifty thousand in England and Wales now 
 alive, who ever lieard that there was any such law as 
 this. This would be something like " religious 
 *' instruction-^^ but it does not exist : if it do, I should 
 like to see the man that ever saw an instance of it. If 
 anywhere practised once or twice in the year, it is such, 
 a rarity, so small an exception, as not to be worth 
 naming ; though a thing so positively enjoined by law ; 
 and by that law, too, wliich made this Church, and on 
 which this Church professes to stand. 
 
 But the great test of all is the ceremony of the 
 Comvmnion. It is this ceremony, it is taking of tlie 
 sacrament according to the rites and ceremonies of the 
 Church, which is the real te-st of belonging to, or being 
 a member of, the Church. Now the law is very positive 
 in this respect. It orders, " that every pari-'<hioner 
 *' shall communicate, at the least, three times in the year. 
 ^' of which Easter is to be one ;" and I remember that 
 the churchwarden of the parish of Botley showed me 
 a printed paper, which he had to fill up to carry to 
 the visitation, in which was this question for him to 
 answer : " Do your parishioners regularly communicate, 
 '' according" to the law ?" When I asked him what
 
 74 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 answer he gave to that question, he said, " JVune at 
 all;" and, indeed, I saw that he answered none of the 
 questions, but wrote at the bottom of the paper, " All's 
 Tvell." I lived in that parish fifteen years. The 
 benefice was worth about five or six hundred a year ; I 
 never even heard of but two persons that went to the 
 Communion ; I have attended the church on Sundays, 
 many times, when there has been nobody in it but 
 myself and two or three children, the parson, the clerk, 
 and the parson's Avife, and two or three of his children ; 
 while the Methodistmeeting'-house was crammed three 
 times a day so full, as for many of the people to be 
 standing- outside of the doors ; and, though this might 
 be an extreme instance, it is notoriously pretty nearly 
 the case all ever England and Wales. 
 
 But, what do they do with the LAW ? The law 
 positively commands that every person shall com- 
 municate at the least three times a year, of which 
 Easter is to be one. Now, do I go too far when I say, that 
 not one man out of one thousand ever communicated 
 in his life, unless he be more than threescore years of 
 age? With regard to the young people; I mean 
 those under thirty, or thereabouts, not only do they 
 never communicate ; but my firm belief is that not one 
 out of one thousand, under thirty years of age, in 
 England and Wales, has any knowledge even of the 
 ineaninij of the word. Yet, if it be the duty of the 
 State to provide religious instruction for the people; 
 and if it have the rightful power to tax the people so 
 enormously for the support of its religious instructors ; 
 if it have the rightful power to impose upon all the 
 people a species of religious instruction according to its 
 will, and according to a law of its own enacting, it is 
 surely its duty to see that the instruction takes place ; 
 to see that the monstrous masses of money paid by the 
 people are not paid for nothing ; to see that the law is 
 not thus set openly at defiance by people as well as by 
 priests ; or, the religious instruction having ceased, is
 
 IV.J LEGACY TO PARSONS. 75 
 
 it not the duty of the State to cause the payments for 
 that instruction to cease also ? 
 
 But, after all, the i^reat fact is, that the Church is 
 not a religious instructor of the people. Not a 
 twentieth part of them go to the church. As long as 
 banishment or death com})elled them to go; as long 
 as they were stigmatized as something bad and wicked, 
 if they did not go ; so long their dislike of the Church 
 was a sort of secret, kept to themselves. Banishment 
 or death Imng over their heads until the reign of 
 William the Third. The Act of that reign (before 
 mentioned) emboldened them to open their mouths a 
 little, and to withdraw themselves from the Church ; 
 subsequent Acts, and public opinion, made their tether 
 still longer and longer; till, at last, they make a merit 
 of dissenting, and laugh at that which drew from their 
 forefathers such copious streams of tears and of blood. 
 
 The treatment of the poorer part of the people has 
 gxeatly tended to their alienation from the Church, 
 from the edifice of which they have been almost literally 
 shut out. The poorer part of the people see the ricli 
 seated in pews, while they are compelled to stand about 
 in the aisles, exposed to the draxights of air, and to 
 every possible inconvenience. The monstrous abuses 
 in London, and in other great towns, in this respect, 
 are beyond description. Those who have not money, 
 wherewith to purchase a seat, are treated like dogs. 
 In the villages, indeed, it is not pushed to this extent; 
 but even there the precepts of the Apostles are pretty 
 completely set at defiance. Great merit is taken by 
 those who are teaching the poorer people to read, and 
 who are subscribing for Bibles to put into their 
 hands. Probably very few of them, comparatively, 
 ever read the books thus subscribed for ; but those who 
 do read are likely to tell others what they do read; 
 and those who do read, read as follows, in the 2nd 
 chapter of the Epistle of St. James, who really seems 
 to have been inspired with a foreknowledge of these
 
 76 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 very clays in which we live, and with the practice ol 
 this Church as established by law. 
 
 ^' My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus 
 " Christ, with respect of persons. For if there come 
 *' unto your assembly a man with a gold ring', in goodly 
 " apparel, and there come in also a poor man in vile 
 "raiment; and _ye have respect to him that weareth 
 " the gay clothing, and say unto him, Sit thou here in 
 '' a good place ; and say to the poor, Stand thou there, 
 "or sit here under my footstool ; are ye not then 
 " partial in yourselves, and are become Judges of evil 
 " thoughts ?■" 
 
 One would almost imagine, thiit the Church-parsons 
 had read this with all possible care; and had then 
 determined to act precisely in opposition to it; and 
 had then fixed i:pon a plan and adopted a series of 
 regulations, the best in the world to give effect to such 
 determination. Men, however humble in life, have 
 some consciousness of their worth as human beings : 
 reason ; natural reason, as well as the word of God, 
 teach them, that all men are equal in the e3'es of God, 
 at any rate. The law tells them, that the church and 
 the parson are appointed fov the '' cia^e of souls;" 
 that is to say, the salvation of souls. All men know, 
 and must know, that one soul is as precious as another; 
 and that the soul is not more precious for being in a 
 body covered with fine clothes. All men know this ; it 
 is obvious to the understandings of all men. The 
 business at Church is, the salvation of souls ; there- 
 fore this partiality, this honour paid to the rich, and 
 degradation inflicted on the poor, is revolting to the 
 very natiu-e of man. No man is of so base a spirit as 
 to like degradation : the poorer part of the people : 
 therefore, turn their backs on the Church; and go to 
 those places of worship where all are upon a level. 
 The old Roman Catholic Church was too wise to make 
 these distinctions ; all were upon the floor, rich and 
 poor; for that short time, at any rate, poverty ceased
 
 IV.J LEGACY TO PARSONS. ?7 
 
 to be held in degTadation. This Established Chiircliis 
 the only church in the woidd, or that ever was in the 
 world, where the poor are, or were, treated in a 
 manner different from the rich. 
 
 If it he the duty of the State to provide "religious 
 instruction" for the people; and if it have a rig-htful 
 power to enact a certain form of worship, and to com- 
 pel the people to pay for the support of it ; if it have 
 the rig'htful power to compel the people to pay for a 
 Church service in any particular form of words, it is its 
 duty to cause the church to adhere to that form, in 
 all and every part, according- to the law. The law 
 establishing- this Church declares matrimomj to be a 
 '^holy relig-ious ceremony." It declares, that this lioly 
 estate of matrimony " was instituted of God, sig-nifying- 
 ''to us the m3'stical union, that is hctmxt Christ and 
 " his Cimrch'j whicli holy estate Christ adorned with his 
 "presence, and first miracle that he wrought, in Cana of 
 " Galilee." Now, if this be all true, and if the Parlia- 
 ment have the rig-htful power to permit the people to be 
 married % tJie civil magistrate, what is there that the 
 Parliament has not the rightful power to do with re- 
 gard to this Church ? And, is it not evident, that this 
 matrimony -part of the Church Establishment is vir- 
 tually repealed, the moment you pass a law to authorize 
 marriag-e by the civil mag-istrate ? 
 
 There is another part of the law, which made this 
 Church, and which appoints an order for the Burial 
 of the dead. It orders this service to be performed at 
 the burial of every person, except such as die nnbap- 
 iized, or excommunicate, or have laid violent hands 
 tipon themsclces. But, we have now a law, which 
 virtually repeals this part of the law of the Church. 
 This new law, passed without any opposition from the 
 bishops; and defended by Blomfield, bishop of 
 London; authorizes those who have the custody of 
 those unfortunate poor, who have no relations or others 
 to pay for their Christian burial, to disjjose of the bodies
 
 7S cobbett's [Letter 
 
 of the said unfortunate poor, to be taken away, and 
 to he cut to pieces by surgeoyis ; and, of course, to be 
 placed beyond the possibility of Christian burial 
 accordinf^' to the law on which this Church stands. 
 Now, either this service of the " hu rial o^ t\i.e dead" is 
 of some use in the Avay of " 7'eligwus instruction" or 
 it is not. If it be not of any use, why are we to sup- 
 pose that any other of the services, appointed by the 
 same law, are of any use ? If it be of no use, what 
 are we to think of the charg-es for consecrating buryin"'- 
 grounds ; what are we to think of the dues exacted by 
 the clergy for performing- the burial-service ; which, 
 dues, observe, are of immense amount in the course of 
 a year. If it be of some use ; if it do form a part of 
 *' religious instruction;^^ if it do conduce to religious 
 feeling's, by the great attention it bestows upon the 
 bodies of the dead; what are we to think of that Church 
 whose bishops assented, in person, and whose clergy 
 all tacitly assented, to the depriving- of the most un- 
 fortunate of the poor of this last trifling- mark of 
 attention towards their remams ? 
 
 And after all this, are we to wonder that the people 
 turn their backs on tlie established Church ? Are we 
 to wonder that it is become useless Avith reg-ard to 
 them ? Are we to wonder at anything- relating- to the 
 matter, except at the impudence of those who pretend 
 to reg-ard this establishment as something conducing 
 to religious instruction ? 
 
 I noticed in the beginning of this letter, that the 
 Roman Catholic Church ceased to be beloved by the 
 people in the exact proportion that it obtained protec- 
 tion from the State; but there wanted a modern instance 
 for the illustration of this principle ; and that instance 
 we have most complete in the United States of 
 Abierica; a country, the bai-e pronouncing- of the 
 name of which fi'ightens every unjust devourer of tithes 
 and of taxes half to death. The excellent government 
 of that country ; the wise, the cheap, the just govern- 
 ment of that country, knows nothing of one religion
 
 IV.] LEGACY TO PARSONS. 79^ 
 
 more tlion of anotlicr. In that country religious sects^ 
 religion itself, are wholly unknown to the laws. As 
 connected with religion, the laws of the country know 
 nothing- of any man, and of course there is no compul- 
 sion on any man to pay one farthing- to any body for 
 reli"-ious instruction. Yet it is agreed on all hands, it 
 will be denied by nobody, that the people of the United 
 States are hettir instructed in religion than any other 
 people in the world ; and it is curious too, that Tom 
 Cranmer's Prayer-Book religion is in that country in 
 a very flourishing- state (with some parts of the Prayer 
 Book expunged), and that the bishops and parsons of 
 that church are as much respected and beloved as other 
 religious teachers generally are ; and this too, precisely 
 because the religion is not established hy law 
 
 One reason for supporting- this establishment is^ 
 that if it were destroyed the people would be split up 
 into sects. What ! more than they are now ? Why 
 should they be split up more than they are now ? 
 Having got out of danger of banishment and the 
 halter, they now follow their own fancy in this respect ; 
 each man acts according- to the dictates of his 
 conscience ; and what could he do more if the Church 
 were broken up. 
 
 Oh no ! This thing is not wanted for " religious 
 instruction ;^^ it is not wanted for the tenching of the 
 people, or the saving of their souls, but for quite other 
 purposes, of which other purposes we shall see enough 
 in the next letter, when we come to look at the 
 present actual state of this establishment, the bare 
 sight of which ought to make its defenders drop down 
 dead with shame. We shall then see a little more as 
 to the natural effect on the people of the existence of 
 this Church, and of the conduct of its clergy ; but we 
 have here seen quite enough to convince any reasonable 
 man, any man of common understanding and common 
 justice, that it is a gross falsehood to pretend that this- 
 establishment ought to be regarded as a thing necessary 
 to the " religious instriiction " of the people.
 
 so cobbett's [Latter 
 
 LETTER V. 
 
 "vVilAT IS THE PRESENT STATE OF THE CHUnCIl 
 
 ESTABLISHMENT ? AND IS IT POSSIBLE 
 
 TO REFORM IT ? 
 
 Parsons, 
 
 The answer to the first of these quastions will g-o 
 pretty nearly to answer the second ; because, though 
 .no human being can describe the present state of this 
 Church in its true colours ; though the Church in its 
 present state is so contrary to natural justice, so out- 
 rageously insulting to the reason and common sense 
 of the nation, that neither pen nor tongue can furnish 
 an adequate description of it ; still that which I shall 
 be able to state will be enough to show to every man 
 of sense and reflection, that this establishment admits 
 of no reform ; and that, as it arose out of Acts of 
 Parliament, so it ought to be put an end to by Acts of 
 Parliament. 
 
 I shall consider the state of the Church under two 
 heads : its revenues ; and the ^;^r/J^r;»ff?^cg of its 
 dudes : and I must beseech the reader's attention not 
 only to the J'acts that I have to state ; but to the i^roofs 
 which I produce of the truth of those facts, m.oving, as 
 I shall, not one single step without undoubted proof of 
 every single fact. 
 
 With regard to the revenues of the Church, they 
 consist, in the first place, of tithes ; and these are 
 personal, ■predial, and mixed. Personal tithes consist 
 of what are called (9Z'/r/;^?ons, ohccntions, and offerings ; 
 and these are commanded to bo paid by the Act t2nd 
 and 3rd Edward the Sixth, chapter 13. These tithes 
 arise from the profit of the j)ersonal labour of a man, 
 in the exercise of any art, trade, or employment.
 
 v.] LEGACY TO PARSONS. 81 
 
 They are exacted to this day. I have paid JEaster 
 offerings all my life-time ; and the sum collected in 
 this way, in the g'reat towns, is perfectly enormous. 
 Within my recollection, many men have heen put into 
 jail, and kept there for a long- time, for refusing* to 
 make these payments, they being- Dmenters, and the 
 payments being contrary to their consciences. But 
 upon this head Ave have a parliamentary document, 
 printed by order of the House of Commons, in 1833, 
 showing' the extent to which the parsons push this 
 species of demand. This document was laid before the 
 House in the'month of August 1833. It showed that 
 Francis Lundy, rector of Lockington, in the East 
 Riding- of the count}^ of York, charged with tithes 
 the following- working- men of his parish : 
 
 Sums 
 
 Wages, demandecl. 
 
 £ s. d. £ s. d. 
 
 Jeremiah Dodswortb for last year 13 4 4 
 
 Ditto, this year, hired weekly 15 5 
 
 William Hall 10 10 3 6 
 
 Harrison Moment U .3 
 
 Henry Blakeston 15 5 
 
 William Foster 8 2 8 
 
 George Fenby G G 2 
 
 John Hall, half a year 10 10 3 G 
 
 John Milner 15 5 
 
 Matthew Blakeston 8 8 2 8 
 
 Carling Eisim IG 5 4 
 
 John Dodsworth 15 5 
 
 Wm. Fallowfield, miller, servant 18 G 
 
 Eobt. Braithwaite, do., jiromised to 
 
 compound, but now refuseth 15 5 
 
 Jeremiah Dodsworth refused to pay. He was 
 summoned before two magistrates, John Blanchard, 
 a parson, and Robert Wylie, who sentenced him 
 to pay the four shillings and fourpence, and the costs 
 and charges of the prosecution. He still refusing- to 
 pay, the same two magistrates issued a warrant of 
 distress against his goods and chattels. He having- 
 no goods and chattels, John Blanchard, the parson.
 
 ■'82 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 ns magistrate, committed him to the Hnnse of Correction 
 at Beverley, there to be hcpt for tlie space of three 
 calendar months, as jnoiishmoit for not imyvng his 
 tithes Now, observe, the Act befbre-mentioned of 
 the 2nd and 3rd of Edward the Sixth, chapter 13, 
 exempts from payment of personal tithes, clay-lahourrvg 
 7ne?i, and Jeremiah Dodswotrii was aday-labom'ing' 
 man. The law has long laid it down that no personal 
 tithes are due from servants in husbandry; because, 
 by their labour, things are produced which pay tithes. 
 But now, you will say, how came justices of the peace 
 to have anything to do with this matter ? Tithes 
 were an affair known only to the ecclesiastical courts; 
 but the parsons wanted a swifter way to come at poor 
 men. They, therefore, procured to be passed, in the 
 7th and 8th William the Third, "An Act for the 
 " more easy recovery of small tithes." This Act, 
 Avhich was first passed for three years, and afterwards 
 made perpetual, by the 3rd of Anne, chapter 18, made 
 provision that two justices of the peace might issue 
 their warrant of distress against a person refusing to 
 pay tithes. This Act extended to all tithes under the 
 value of forty shillings; and this Act took care to 
 make no exceptions with regard to day-labourers and 
 servants in husbandry. It enacted, that "aZ/ and every 
 ^'person or p)ersons''^ should pay offerings, oblations, 
 and obventions. Thus was the Act of Edward, 
 ■with regard to day-labourers, and servants in hus- 
 l)andry, set aside ; and the tithe-claimers were let 
 loose upon the whole of the community with their two 
 justices of the peace to issue distraints on goods and 
 ■chattels. 
 
 But (and I beg my readers to mark it well) this 
 Act did not go to the length of sending to jail persons 
 who had no goods and chattels ! That was reserved 
 for the " enlightened nineteenth century :" and for 
 the " beneficent reign,'^ as Sir Robert Peel called 
 it, of the great big " Sovereign," so famed for his
 
 V.J LEGACY TO PAKSONS. 83 
 
 exploits on Virginia Water. In the fifth year of 
 his "g'lorious reig'n," an Act was passed (5 Geo. IV, 
 chapter IS) to authorize magistrates to send men to 
 jail, in cases where they had nothing to distrain upon. 
 Under this Act it was that this John Blanciiakd, 
 the parson, by his single authority and warrant, com- 
 mitted Jeremiah Dodswortii to jail for three 
 months, for not paying to his brother parson, Francis 
 LuNDY, four shilhngs and fourpence for offerings, 
 oblations, and obventions ! This, then, is the law ! 
 Is this law to continue ? Will Sir Robert Peel's 
 Church reform suffer this law to continue '? If he does 
 not suffer it to continue, he must abolish these tithes; 
 and if he can abolish these tithes, why not abolish other 
 tithes? I leave this for Sir Robert Peel to reflect 
 upon ; just observing- of Lundy and Blanchard, 
 that they were both j^luraUsts! 
 
 So much for personal tithes. Next comes the tithe 
 on mills, which is a sort of personal tithe also. The 
 next class is, the ^jrec/iaZ tithes, as of corn, hay, wood, 
 hemp, hops, and all kinds of fruit, seeds, and herbs. 
 The tithes on pasturage, commonly called agistment 
 tithes ; tithes on milk, on all young- animals, on eggs, 
 on young- fowls, on young- birds (except game). Tithes 
 are payable on acorns ; everything; that grows in a 
 g-arden. The mast of beech pays titlies ; rabbits in a 
 warren are titheable ; pigeons are titheable ; but deer 
 are not ! Deer, hares, pheasants, and partridges, are 
 not titheable, because they are " wild animals," though 
 the high-blooded nobility of England now breed 
 them for sale, and sell them. My God ! how impudent, 
 as well as unjust, are these things ! 
 
 Thus we see how larg-e a portion of all the produce, 
 even of our very labour, is taken from us by this 
 Church. Besides the tithes, this Church has all the 
 immense property attached to the Universities and 
 their colleg'es ; all the immense mass of property 
 attached to the great schools ; estates without number
 
 84 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 and without bounds ; all belonging" to the whole of 
 the people at large, and all swallowed up by a handful 
 of the aristocracy, their relations and dependants. 
 For all this property a (/rent deal ought to be done J'or 
 the people ; and is it not curious that, while the amount 
 of this revenue, not so little in England and Wales 
 as six millions a year 5 is it not curious ; is it not 
 offensive to one's feelings ; is it not an insult to call us 
 an enlightened people, and to brag about the light of the 
 nineteenth century ; to have the audacity to accuse 
 our forefathers of tameness and of ignorance ; and to 
 issue a Royal Commission at the same time, consisting 
 of bishops, archbishops, and the prime minister, '' to 
 " devise the means of providing for the cure of souls ;" 
 that is to say, to devise the means of causing this 
 revenue to be given to men who will reside in the 
 2)arishes, and teach the jjcojyle the Chtirch religion. 
 
 I now come to speak of the performance of the duties 
 of this Church, having first to observe, however, that 
 with regard to the whole amount of its revenue of 
 all sorts, special care has been taken to give us no 
 official accoimt of what that amount is. Return upon 
 return have been made by the bishops j but always 
 keeping this important fact out of sight. They have 
 always been forward to tell us how many small livings 
 there are, and what is the amount of the revenue of each 
 of these ; but never have they told us how many great 
 livings there are, and what is the amount of each of 
 them ; nor have they ever told us how the small livings 
 came to be small, when we well know, that at the Re- 
 formation, they were all so settled as for none to be 
 too small : we must, therefore, by-and-by, hunt out the 
 cause of their being small as well as we can. 
 
 With regard to the performance of the duties of the 
 Church, ever}'- man, when he enters into holy orders, 
 makes a positive declaration before God at the altar, 
 in the presence of the bishop, that ''he verily believes 
 *' that he is inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take
 
 v.] LEGACY TO PARSOXS. 85 
 
 "upon him this office find administration, to serve God 
 "for the jn'omoting of His glory, and the edifying of 
 " His 2^<^ople, that he is determined, with the 
 " Scriptm-es, to instruct the 2^copJe committed to his 
 " charge; that he will give his faithful diligence always 
 " so to minister the doctrine and sacraments, and the 
 " discipline of Christ, as the Lord hath commanded, 
 '' and as this realm hath received the same according" 
 "to the commandment of God ; that he will teach the 
 '■'people committed to his cure and charge, with all 
 " diligence to keep and observe the same ; that he will 
 "he ready 7vifhcdlfoiith fill dilige7ice to banish and 
 '• drive awaji all erroneous and strange doctrines con- 
 " trary to Gods word; and to use public and private 
 '"' admonitions and exhortations, as well to the sick as 
 '' to the whole, within his cure, as need shall require 
 " and occasion be given ; that he will be diligent in the 
 ''prayers and in the reading of the Holy ScrijJtures, 
 "and in such studies as help to the same, layi^ig aside 
 " the study of the world and the flesh ; that he will be 
 " dilig-ent to frame and fashion himself and his family 
 " according; to the doctrine of Christ, ,that he may be 
 " a wholesome example and spectacle to the Jlock of 
 " Christ ; and that he will maintain and set forward 
 *' quietness, jjeace, and love among- all Christians, but 
 " especially among- them that are or shall be com- 
 *' mitted to his charg-e :" having- made these declara- 
 tions and promises, he solemnly ratifies and confirms 
 them by receiving the holy communion! 
 
 Besides this the vicars (and about one-third of the 
 benefices are vicarag-es) were, before the passing- of the 
 Act of the 4;3rd of Geo. III. chnpter 8-4 (of which 
 Act I shall have to say a great deal by-aud-by), com- 
 pelled to talic an oath on the Evangelists, that they 
 would be constantly resident with their Jlochs. This 
 oath was not deemed necessary in the case of a rector ; 
 but the vicar being- an inferior person, it was thouii-lit 
 necessary to bind him to an oath, over and above the 
 
 o
 
 86 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 loinding's of his solemn declaration on taking- orders. 
 Yet, in the face of these solemn vows, in the face of the 
 declaration that each man of them believed himself moved 
 hy the Holy Ghost to tahevponhwi the cure of souls ; 
 in defiance of the solemn ratification of their declara- 
 tions and promises hy receiving* the holy communion ; 
 despite of all these, a return made by the bishops to the 
 king- in council, in 1811, and communicated by the king- 
 in council to the parliament, there were, when that 
 return was made, ten thousand four hundred and 
 t)venfy-one henejices; and of those benefices five 
 thousand three hundred and, ninety-seven of the in- 
 cumbents were resident on their benefices, and five 
 thousand and twenty-four were not resident on their 
 benefices ; and of course were not fulfilling- their vows 
 made at their ordination I 
 
 But we now come to a memorable epoch and trans- 
 action in the history of this Church ; namely, the Act 
 of Parliament of 1803, 43rd of George the Third, 
 chapter 84. The reader should be informed, that dur- 
 ing- the late "glorious'^ war ag'ainst the republicans of 
 France, a total change took place with reg-ard to the 
 conduct of the clerg-y of this Church. The French, 
 broken loose from the fang-s of their tyrants, had com- 
 mitted deeds which filled all the world, and particularly 
 the Eng-lish people, with horror. They had put down 
 their Church, and all its trapping-s and its tithes. They 
 had -almost proclaimed themselves Atheists. The 
 Eng-lish parsons, not only for their own security but for 
 their aggrandizement, as they thought, took advantage 
 ofthese things; they represented alll>zm'«fe/-5 generally, 
 and every man who dared to utter a word by way of 
 complaint against tithes, or against the Church, as a 
 friend of the French atheists ; as o. jacobin, a leveller, 
 a revolutionist, and a rebel in his heart. They suc- 
 ceeded : and during that war innumerable persons 
 were punished by heavy fines and imprisonment, for 
 mere inuendos ; lor merely hinting, with regard to the
 
 v.] LEGACY TO PARSONS 87 
 
 clerqy and the Churcli, onh' a hundredth part of what 
 is now explicily dechired against them in every news- 
 paper in the kingdom. 
 
 In this state of things, ninteen-twentieths of the 
 nation bUnded and dehided, and the other twentieth 
 silenced by the fear of pecuniary ruin, or a jail, the 
 clergy set the laws of residence openly at defiance, 
 bid defiance to their parishioners in this respect. And 
 now be pleased, reader, to pay great attention to 
 what these laws of residence were. The Act of 21 
 IIenky VIII. chapter 13, provided for the residence 
 of incumbents. This Act has the following preamble: 
 " For the more cpiiet and virtuous increase and 
 *' maintenance of divine worship, the preaching and 
 *' teaching the Word of God, with godly and good 
 " example given, the better discharge of curates, the 
 *' maintenance of hospitality, the relief of poor people, 
 " the increase of devotion, and good opinion of lay- 
 *' men toward the spiritual persons." The Act was 
 entitled, " Spiritual persons abridged from having 
 " pluralities of livings, and from the taking of farms." 
 There was a heavy penalty imposed by this Act 
 against parsons who shall procure more than one 
 henefice ; any one who should be absent from his 
 living and his parsonage-house; any one who should 
 farm, except merely for provision for himself and his 
 household; any parson who shall buy an}- thing to 
 sell again, whether merchandise, corn, or cattle, or any 
 other thing ; any parson who should offend in any of 
 these respects was made liable to an information qui 
 tarn; the one-half of the forfeiture to go to the king, 
 and the other half to the informer, '^ sxiing for the 
 *' same in the king's courts." There were divers excep- 
 tions with regard to chaplains of the king, of the 
 bishops, and of the great nobility ; and in these ex- 
 cepted cases the clergyman might have tivo benefices ; 
 but as to the general mass of the parochial clergy the 
 Act was express, and even towards the clergy of the
 
 88 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 cathedrals. This claiise of the Act expressly says that 
 "Every archdeacon, dean, prebendary, parson, or 
 "vicar, shall be personally resident and abiding in^ 
 " at, and ■upon, Ms said dignify pvchcnd, or benefice " 
 (or at one of them in the exceptions, where he was 
 allowed to have two); and " in case of such spiritual 
 " person not keeping- residence, but absenting" himself 
 " wilfully by the space of one month tog-ether, or by 
 " the space of two months, to be accounted at several 
 'Himes in any one year, and make his residence 
 " and abiding- in any other place by such time, that 
 " then he shall forfeit for every such default ten pounds 
 " sterling ; the one-half thereof to the king- our sove- 
 " reig-n lord, and the other half thereof to the party 
 " that will sue for the same in any of the king-'s courts 
 "by orirj'inal w-rit, debt, bill^ plaint, or information; 
 " in which action and suit the defendant shall not 
 " wag-ehis law, nor have essoin or protection allowed." 
 Now, this was the law, descending- down from the 
 Roman Catholic Church, and never repealed nor 
 infring-ed on. And what could be more reasonable 
 than this ? There was another Act, passed after the 
 country became Protestant; namely, 13 Elizabeth, 
 chapter 20, providing- that no lease of any benefice 
 should endure longer than the incumbent slioidd be 
 resident in his parish; and that if any one offend 
 against this Act he was to forfeit a year's profit of 
 his benefice. And noAv we come to the grand blom 
 of the Church. I have described before, the state of 
 arrogance and insolence at which the clergy had 
 arrived during the French war; T have described 
 the pitch of total disregard of the people, at which they 
 had arrived, in spite of the existence of these laws, 
 which enabled anybod}'', and particularly their parish- 
 ioners, to inform against them for absenting themselves 
 from their duty. If their voios and their oaths passed 
 for nothing with them, here was the positive, unequi- 
 vocal letter of the law ; and recollect, that ten pounds
 
 V.'l LEGACY TO PARSONS. S^ 
 
 sterling", at the time when tlie hiw passed, was equal 
 tu two hundred pounds sterling in the middle of the 
 French war. In this state of thing's, however, with 
 ilie people nineteen-twentieths blinded and frig-htened, 
 and the other twentieth not daring- to open their lips, 
 ■H'lio was to enforce the law ? "Where was to be found a 
 man who dai'ed to lay an information against a parson 
 for trafficking-, or for being- absent from his living ? At 
 hist there was such a man found j and in 1790, and 
 ISOO, a iMr. Wili.iams, who had been secretary to 
 one of the bishops, laid informations against hundreds 
 of the clergy ; and had the informations in the Court 
 of King's Bench ; some of them carried on to the stage 
 o'i conaction. 
 
 Well, this reminded the defaulters of the law, to be 
 sure, and of their duty ? There v.'os no remed}' but to 
 ]i:iy the penalties, and the penalties were enormous, 
 notwithstanding the change in the value of money; for 
 scores of the parsons, in spite oi their vows and their 
 oaths, had been absent from their livings, or had 
 been farming and trafficking, for years. However, 
 t!iere was no remedy: law was positive, express, and. 
 plain ; and no ex-iwtit facto law could be passed without 
 u viohition of the constitution. Now hear it; not oh 
 Heavens ! or oh earth ! but oh injured and insulted 
 people of England ! hear what I am about to say. 
 In the year 1801, soon after the bringing of the 
 actions aforementioned, the Parliament which Wel- 
 lington said was the best possible Parliament, passed 
 an Act (4:1st Geo. III. chapter 102) to compel the 
 Court of King's Bench to stay the proceedings in the 
 .aforementioned actions, till the Ooth of March, 1802. 
 15efore the 25th of March came, the same Parliament 
 ])assed another Act (42nd Geo. III. chapter 30) to 
 i^tay the proceedings in those actions still further, 
 until the 25th day of July, in that same year, 1802. 
 Before July came it passed anotlier Act (42nd Geo, 
 III. chapter 80) to stay the proceedings under the
 
 DO cobbett's [Lettei- 
 
 Act of Kexry the Eig-lith, and also under the Act of 
 Elizabeth, until the 8th day of April, 1803. Thus, 
 by these Acts of Parliament, clearly ex post facto ; 
 clearly in violation of the express written lawj clearly 
 taking' from the informer his property, and holding- it 
 in abeyance ; thus by this ex post facto law, the 
 parsons were protected in their delinquencies for two 
 whole years, and the informer subject to the amount 
 of his costs, and exposed to ruin, having- the cry of 
 Atheist and Jacobin set up against him, because he 
 obeyed the law in endeavouring to punish these parsons 
 for having- neglected their duty and broken their 
 vows and their oaths ! But we have only seen the 
 beginning- of this memorable transaction. There is 
 the end to come yet. The actions having been sus- 
 pended until April 1803, this suspending work was 
 iDrought to a close by the Act of 43 Geo. III. chapter 
 84, which Act laid the foiindation of the total 
 overthrow of the Church, though it was passed^at the 
 clamorous instigation of the parsons themselves. It 
 enacted that every spiritual person, who before that 
 Act had incurred pecuniary penalties for non-residence, 
 or farming, should be freed and discharged from the 
 same; that all the actions already commenced should 
 be rendered null ; that, where convictions had taken 
 place, the informers should receive no more than ten 
 pounds, be the amount of the penalty what it might; 
 and that, as for the other actions where convictions 
 had not taken place, they should cease and have no 
 effect ; and that such actions should be dismissed or 
 cliscontiniied by order of the Court, ovithout payment 
 of costs ! This glorious Act then went on to repeal 
 and annul all the informations qid tarn ; to authorize 
 parsons to be farmers, and to buy and sell corn and 
 cattle ; to authorize bishops to give license to what 
 parsons they liked, to farm, to be absent from their 
 livings ; and in short to do what they chose to permit 
 them to do contrary to the character of clergymen. 
 
 I
 
 v.] LEGACY TO PARSONS. 91 
 
 This Act wns broug-ht in by Sir William Scott, who 
 ivas then Memher for the University of OxJ'ord ; and 
 it passed, without the smallest opposition, on the 7th 
 of July, 1803. It did not expressly exonerate the 
 clergy from the vows and promises made at their 
 ordination : hut it expressly repealed the obligation 
 on the vicars to talie the oath of residence at their induc- 
 tion, as will be seen by reference to clause 37 of the Act. 
 It is curious that this Act was entitled. An ■'■ Act 
 "to amend the Laws relating- to Spiritual Persons 
 " Holding- of Farms, and for the Enforcing the Besi- 
 " dence of Spiritual Persons on -their Benefices in 
 •' England.''' How completely it succeeded we have 
 seen ; for, in eight years after the Act was passed, out 
 of ten thousand four hundred and twenty-one benefices, 
 five thousand and twenty-four were without resident 
 incumbents, even according- to the showing- of the 
 bishops themselves, who would, of course, do every- 
 thing- in their power to make the thing- appear as 
 little bad as possible ! Hence it is that crowds of 
 these incximbents live upon the continent of Europe ; 
 hence it is that the wealth of the parishes is withdrawn 
 from them ; hence it is that these swarms of drones 
 come and take the honey fi'om the hive, and carry it 
 out of the country ; and hence it is that there are, in 
 fact, no Church-people left, except the aged, who 
 follow their habits of fifty years ago, and those who 
 have an interest in upholding this prodigious mass of 
 abuse. In the meanwhile, the clergy have assumed the 
 sword of the viagistrate ; having lost the powers of 
 persicasioJi, they have resorted to force; laid down the 
 Bible and taken up the Statute Book. They are every- 
 where found foremost in a rigid execution of the 
 penal laws. They read the Communion Service, and 
 enjoin on their congregations, by a whole string ol 
 precepts from Holy Writ, to be, above all things, 
 merciful and good to thepoor; and, at this very moment, 
 "we see Parson Capper recommending- the separation
 
 82 cobbett's [l^etter 
 
 of the unfortunate poor man from his wife ; and both 
 from their children : and we see Parson Lowe in the 
 high tide of practising- upon the recommendation. Do 
 they hear Zechariah say, "Woe to the idle shepherd 
 " that leaveth the flock ? " Do they read the words 
 of Ezekiel ? " Woe he to the shepherds of Israel that 
 " do feed themselves ! Should not the shepherds feed 
 " the flocks ? Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with 
 "the wool, ye kill them that are fed ; but ye feed not 
 " the flock. The diseased have ye not streng-thened, 
 " neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither 
 *' have ye bound up that which was broken, neither 
 " have ye broug-ht again that which was driven away, 
 "neither have ye sought that which was lost; but 
 ^' with force and with cnielty liaxe ye ruled them. 
 "And they were scattered, because there is no shep- 
 " herd." 
 
 Whether they read them or not, the people read 
 them ; and it is not overwise to put into their hands the 
 means of reading' them. However, they do read tbem j 
 and they read in the two Testaments, from one end of 
 them to the other, that which has made them make up 
 their minds unanimously, with the exceptions before- 
 mentioned, that this establishment ought to be fcpealed; 
 that this immense mass of property ought no longer to 
 be held by the aristocracy, their relations and depen- 
 dants; but that, as it is the property of the whole nation, 
 for the benefit of the whole nation it ought to be used. 
 
 We have now to see what sort of a distribution there 
 is of the benefices. There are twenty-six bishoprics ; 
 twenty-six deaneries, fifty-three archdeaconries ; three 
 hundred and ninety-four prebends ; there are four hun- 
 dred and forty-four fellowships at Oxford, and four 
 hundred and seven fellowships at Cambridge : there 
 are the fellowships at Winchester College; the bene- 
 fices in the schools at Eton and Westminster; the 
 masterships of innumerable hospitals and schools and 
 other charitable endowments; there are the master-
 
 V.J LEGACY TO PARSONS. 03 
 
 ships of alms-hoiisos even, in g-reat numbers ; and all 
 these, with the exception of" the least valuable part of 
 them, are in the hands of those who are called " the 
 nobilifi/" and in those ot their relations and dependants. 
 But now, with regard to the jmrochial benefices; 
 there are three hundred and tkirty-tn'o persons, who 
 Lave amongst them the revenues oi fourteen hundred 
 and ninety-dx parishes. There are five hundred 
 more who have among-st them fifteen hundred 
 and twenty-Joiir parishes. There are several persons, 
 who are either peers or the relations of peers, 
 who have each six benefices, at the least, including* 
 their cathedral preferment. There is a G. W. 
 Onslow, who is the vicar of Send, perpetual curate 
 of RiPTxEY, vicar of Shalford, perpetual curate of 
 Bramley, rector of Wisley, and vicar of Purford. 
 There is a Gilbert Heathcote, who is archdeacon 
 of Winchester, a fellow of Winchester College, 
 treasurer of AVells Cathedral, vicar of Andover, 
 vicar of Hursley, perpetual curate of Foscot, and 
 perpetual curate of Otterbourne. There is Lord 
 Walsingham, who is on the pension-list, as last 
 printed, for £700 a year, who is Archdeacon of 
 Surrey, a prebendary of Winchester, rector of 
 Calbodrne, rector of Fawley', perpetual curate 
 of ExBURY, and rector of Merton. The Earl 
 of Guildford is rector of Old Alresford, 
 rector of New Alresford, perpetual curate of 
 Medsted, rector of St. Mary, Southampton, 
 including- the g-reat parish of South Stoneham, 
 master of St. Cross Hospital, with the revenue 
 of the parish of St. Faith along- with it. 
 There is a Mr. John Fellowes, rector of Bkam- 
 MERTON, rector of Bratton Cloveley, vicar of 
 Easton Newton, rector of Mautby, rector of 
 Shottisham St. Martin. There is the Honourable 
 E. S. Keppel a rector in j^ue, parishes, and a vicar 
 in two parishes. There is the Rev. William Hett,
 
 94 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 who is a prebendary, and a vicar clioral in Lincoln, 
 a rector in three parishes, and a vicar in two 
 parishes, and a perpetual rurate in two parishes. 
 There are three Prettym^^as, having- amongst them 
 fifteen benefices. There is the Rev. F. D. Perkins, 
 chaplain to the king", rector of Haji, rector of Sway- 
 field, vicar of Foleshill, vicar of Hatiierley- 
 DowN, vicar of Sow, vicar of Stoke. I will not tire 
 the reader, but I must mention the Eev. J. T. 
 Casberd, who has a prebend in each of the two 
 cathedrals of Wells and Llandaff, who is a rector 
 in one parish, a vicar in y<)wr parishes, and a perpetual 
 curate in two parishes ! Wellington's brother has 
 one of the great prebends of Durham, he his rector 
 of BiSHOPWEARMouTH, rcctor of Chelsea, and 
 rector of Therfielb. These are merely* instances ; 
 so that, as the reader will see, the Parliament is going 
 to be prettily amused with a scheme for maldng 
 provision for the cure of souls. As to the authority 
 upon which I state these thing-s, I take them from a 
 book printed by Rivington of St. Paul's church- 
 yard, entitled the " Clerical Guide" and published 
 m 1S29, that being- the last edition; audit is well- 
 known that Messrs. Rivington are the boohsellers of 
 the EstaUshed Church, and that they have been such 
 for fifty years. 
 
 IVow, " will any man pretend to say that this 
 estalilishment ought to exist as it is? And will he 
 pretend to say tliat it is possible to reform it by mere 
 miserable expedients, such as are now talked of ? 
 Why, the very sug-gestion of a desire to discover the 
 means of providing- for the cure of souls : the bare 
 fact that the king- has appointed a commission of 
 bishops and others, to discover the means of making- 
 this provision : when we see fourteen hundred and 
 ninety-sis parishes in the hands of three hundred and 
 thirty-two men ; when we see the incumbents thus, 
 by necessity, incapable even to go to look at their
 
 V'.J LEGACY TO TARSONS. 95 
 
 parishes ; when we see tlie bishop of Loxdon, wlio is 
 one of the commissioners to discover these means, 
 with a relation, promoted by himself to be a pre- 
 bendary of Chester and the rector at the same 
 time of two great ^xtrixlies ; when we see the Arch- 
 bishop of York (who is another of the commis- 
 sioners), with one relation being- a chancellor of the 
 church of York, Archdeacon of Cleveland, rector 
 of KiRBY, vicar of Stainton St. Winifred, and 
 rector of Stokesley' ; when we see this, what are we 
 to believe with reg'ard to the real hifc7ition of this 
 commission ? 
 
 But there is another branch of this subject, the 
 SMALL LIVINGS, which if our indignation were 
 still asleep, Avould rouse it into most turbulent action. 
 It is hardly credible, but the facts are these, that in 
 England and Wales there are sixteen thousand 
 and some odd separate pittr^shes and torvnslups, each 
 having' its church (where the church has not been 
 suffered to tumble down), each having- its church- 
 wardens and overseers ; and each ought to have its 
 resident minister; but when the aristocracy had 
 g-rasped the property of the church and the poor, as 
 we have beixjre seen, in the reign of Henry the 
 Eighth, the}^ passed an act to unite parishes ; so that 
 two parishes became one as to the proprietorship of 
 the tithes and offering-s. This act was 37 Henry' the 
 VIII., chapter 1. By another act which was passed 
 17 Charles the Second (chapter 3), the power of 
 uniting parishes was extended still fiirther than by the 
 act of Henry the Eighth. The united parishes 
 became one living- or benefice; but they still retained 
 by law their separate capacity as to the civil parochial 
 government. Thus the sixteen thousand parishes 
 and townships became moulded into ten thousand four 
 hundred and twenty-one benefices ; and we have just 
 seen how these benefices are heaped together for the 
 aristocracy, their relations, and dependants. The
 
 90 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 uniting oi parishes was for the purpose of getting- 
 the revenues into greater heaps, to he handy for the 
 purposes of the aristocracy, who have now the im- 
 pudence to pretend to helievo that the country is now 
 more populous than it formerly was, while they have 
 united parishes in this manner under the pretence of 
 the people having hecome less numerous ! 
 
 INow to the tacts with regard to the SMALL 
 LIVINGS. The parishes were united to maku 
 them all large enough. Yet when the last return 
 was made hy the hishops to the King in council, 
 and that return was laid before the House of 
 Commons, which was in 1818, the thing stood thus : 
 There were ten thousand four hundred and twenty- 
 one livings or benefices. Of these there were 4,3()1 
 that were called '' small livings" the revenue of each 
 being under 350^. a year. Some of these were under 
 ten pounds a year, and so on up to a hundred and 
 fifty. In short, there were 4,301 benefices so small, 
 in spite of the unions, that the average revenue of 
 them was 84Z. ! Monstrous fact, while there are 
 1 is hops with from twenty to forty thousand pounds a 
 year revenue; while there are deans, prebendaries, 
 ri "deacons, rectors, vicars, fellows of colleges with 
 thousands a year each ; and observe, these small 
 livings are exonerated from the land-tax on account 
 of their smallness ! How then (for this is the great 
 <|uestion) how then (for this is the question for Sir 
 KoBERT Peel to answer to a Parliament of sense and 
 of spirit) ; limv, then, came there to he small 
 livings, when everything was so settled at the 
 Reformation that the law (as I have above cited it) 
 insisted imj)eratively on the residence, on the constant 
 residence of every incumbent on the spot whence he 
 derived his revenues ? Could the law contemplate a 
 man's constant residence upon a spot, and the per- 
 formance of clerical duties on a spot, the revenues of 
 which yielded him less than ten pounds a 3'ear of our
 
 \'.j LEGACY TO PARSONS. 97 
 
 money? That is impossible. The livings were all 
 sufficiently great at that time, and now let us see how 
 they came to be too small. Every living yields a 
 sufficiency now, and more than a sufficiency. The 
 people pay more than a sufficiency. Who then is it 
 that takes it away from the rector, the vicar, or 
 perpetual curate ? 
 
 To be sure, the aristocracy took away a large part 
 of the property of the Church and the poor ; they 
 took away the abbey-lands ; they took away a large 
 portion of the great tithes ; but the law took care 
 to leave enough for the due maintenance of the 
 incumbent. The parsons are now crying out against 
 the lay -impropriators, and if the people were to cry 
 out against them, the cry would be just enough. But 
 we must look at the conduct of the clergy themselves, 
 and see what hand they have had in the producing of 
 the small livings. 
 
 At the Keformation, when the Parliament did with 
 all the Church-property just what it pleased, it bnsely 
 took away the revenues of parishes innumerable; 
 gave them to laymen in some cases ; gave them to 
 colleges in other cases ; gave them to Church- 
 dignitaries in other cases ; gave them to deans and 
 chapters in other cases. But in all these cases the law 
 compelled the parties, to whom the revenues were 
 thus given, to give a certain sum, annually, to the 
 parson of the parish, for ever, which was called an 
 endowment. Now I beg you to pay attention to what 
 I am going to say. At that time money was of 
 twenty times the value that it is now, as nearly as 
 possible. The endowment was a certain fixed sum ; 
 and now mark the monstrousness of this aristocracy 
 and aristocratical part of the clergy. The revenues 
 are much about twenty times as great as they were at 
 the time when the endowment was fixed. These great 
 clergymen have received the augmented revenues to 
 their full extent ; and, they have paid the parsons in the
 
 "98 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 several parishes the bare sum of the endowment; that is 
 to sa}', a twentieth part of what they oug-ht to have 
 paid them ; and^ of the 4,321 small living-s, the 
 poverty of the far greater part of them ai'ises from 
 this cause. Two or three instances will be better 
 than a long essay, and a great deal better than any 
 declamation on the subject. The parish of Aldershot, 
 in Hampshire, was given to the Master of St. Cross 
 Hospital at Winchester, reserving- an endowment 
 of fifteen pounds a year for the parson of the parish. 
 The tithes then amounted, probably, to about thirty 
 pounds a year in that money. They now amount to 
 upwards of seven hundred a year. The Master of 
 St. Cross Hospital receives the seven hundred pounds 
 a year, and he honestly g'ives the parson of the parish 
 the fifteen pounds a year. And who is this Master of 
 St. Cross Hospital ? It is the Earl of Guildford I 
 No wonder we see such alarm at the prospect of 
 meddling with Church property; but is this good 
 treatment of the people of Aldershot, in whose 
 parish in defiance of the law, there is no iiarsonage- 
 liouse ; and how should there be, when Lord Guild- 
 ford leaves but fifteen pounds a year in the parish ? 
 This is an agricultural and nice productive little 
 parish, with four hundred and ninety-four in- 
 habitants. Take another instance in the north of 
 Hampshire. Huestbourne Priors, united with 
 the parish of St. Marybourne, contains, probably, 
 four or five thousand acres of land. The tithes 
 of all sorts cannot be worth so little as six or seven 
 hundred a year. Lord Portsmouth's fine house and 
 park are in one of these parishes. There are two 
 Churches, and 1,205 inhabitants, all agricultural ; 
 some of the finest meadows, sheep-farms, and coppices, 
 in the kingdom. These two united parishes give to 
 the incumbent a hundred and thirty pounds a year, 
 including an addition out of Queen Anne's Bounty; 
 that is to say, out of the taxes; of which I shall say
 
 v.] LEOACY TO I'ARSONS. 09 
 
 more by-and-by. The Bishop of Winchester is 
 the patron ; and I do not ascertain from any document 
 that I have, who it is that takes away the revenues ; 
 but I know this, that the bishops say the parsonag-e- 
 house is in " a damp and unhealthy situation," and 
 that no parson resides in it ; so that here are two 
 parishes, with four or five thousand acres of fine land, 
 with 1,205 inhabitants, paying-, perhaps, a thousand a 
 year in tithes and ofierings, with two Churches, with a 
 non-resident parson, paid partly out of the taxes, while 
 the revenues of the parishes are taken away by the 
 Bishop of Winchester, or by some one who pays 
 the pitiful endowment to the parson. Take another 
 instance. The parish of Bentley, in the east of 
 Hampshire, and a few miles from Farnham, in 
 Surrey, has a population of 400 persons. A con- 
 siderable part of the parish is finehop-g-arden; the tithes 
 amount to from 800/. to 1,OOOZ. a year, and the parson 
 receives his endowment of twenty-eig-ht pounds a year. 
 He would receive five hundred and sixty pounds a year, 
 if he were to be paid according' to the spirit and in- 
 tention of the endowment. If his endowment had 
 been raised as the tithes went on rising-, he would now 
 Lave 5G0/. a year at the least. In despite of the law, 
 there is no parsonage-lwuse in the parish; and here 
 is this productive and populous parish left without 
 parsonage-house or parson, while the Archdeacon of 
 Surrey takes away the 800/. or 1,000/. a year ! And 
 mho is the Archdeacon of Surrey ? It is Lord Wal- 
 siNGHAM, who is a pensioner on the pension-list ; who 
 has the tithes of several other parishes in this same sort 
 of way; who is a prebendary of Winchester ; and, as 
 we have seen before, a chaplain to the King-, rector of 
 Calbourne, rector of Fawley, perpetual curate of 
 ExBURY, and rector of Merton, or who was all these, 
 observe, in the year 1829, that being- the latest period 
 to which my authorities come down. 
 
 Here is enough : here is a sample of the whole ;
 
 100 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 and hence it is, that there fire 4,361 small livings out 
 of the 10,420 ! And is SirlloBERT Peel sitting- in a 
 Commission : do not his vast acquirements and talents 
 cry aloud ag'ainst him, while he sees these things in 
 existence, and while he is sitting- in a commission, to 
 discover the means of providing- for the cure of souls 
 in the parishes ofALDEusnoT, Hurstbourne, and 
 Bentley; and in all the other thousands of parishes 
 similarly situated ? And does he believe that he can 
 '■^ reform^'' this Church with the assent and co-operation 
 of the dignitaries of this same Church 1 He heard 
 Sir James Graham tell us, that '* the tithes belong-ed 
 " not to man ; that they were given to God." Are 
 they given to God at Aldershot and at Bentley ? 
 Or would it be the most daring- blasphemy to affect to 
 believe that they are so given ? 
 
 Bad as all this is, shameful as it is, the blackest 
 story still remains to come, namely, the invention and 
 application of what is called QUEEN ANNE'S 
 BOUNTY, of which the people of England have 
 heard ialU long enough ; and it is now time that they 
 understand something- about it. They will find that 
 it was no Bounty of Queen Anne, or of anybody else ; 
 but a parcel of inihlxc revenue and of taxes, taken 
 from the people by the aristocracy and given to them- 
 selves. To prove this we must g-o a little back, and 
 begin at the bottom of the curious thing- which we 
 have now ])efore us. 
 
 Until Henry the Eighth quarrelled with the Pope 
 and cast him off, the Church paid its tenths and first- 
 fruits to the Pope ; or at least, he had the disposal of 
 them for what was termed the good of the Churcli. 
 And now let us see what these tenths and first-fruits 
 are. They consist of a tenth part of the annual 
 revenues of every benefice, from the bishoprics down 
 to the smallest parochial livings. These are called 
 the tenths The first-fruits consist of the first year's 
 clear revenue of every benefice, from the bishop down-
 
 v.] LEGACY TO PARSONS. 101 
 
 wards. When Henry the Eio-lith and his ParHament 
 took these from the Pope, the King- having- made him- 
 self head of the Church, took them to himself j had 
 tlie several benefices valued ; had books made, called 
 THE KING'S BOOKS, in which the value was re- 
 corded ', and he made the clerg-y pay their tenths and 
 first-fruits accordingly, all which the Parliament 
 provided for by an Act, 26th Henry the Eig-hth, 
 chapter 3. When Mary came to the throne, she g-ave 
 back the tenths and fii-st-fruits to the Pope. Elizabeth 
 (1st year, chapter 4) took them back to herself; but 
 discharged or acquitted such benefices as had not a 
 revenue of more than ten pounds a year. Money had 
 become somewhat diminished in value at this time, 
 and therefore it appeared just to make this change. 
 In the reign of Queen Anne, money had greatly 
 lowered in value; and she (5 Anne, chapter 24) 
 discharg-ed from the payment of the tenths and first- 
 fruits all benefices the then revenues of which were 
 under fifty pounds a year. We shall, by-and-by, see 
 the monstrous profligacy of this work of discharg-ing-. 
 But we must now return to Queen Anne's Bounty. 
 She, like her Protestant predecessors, received the 
 tenths and first-fruits, which were not her private 
 property ; but made a part of her revenue, wherewith 
 to maintain her state, her household, her oHicers of 
 state, her ambassadors, and the like; but the aris- 
 tocracy fell upon a scheme of taking' these tenths and 
 first-fruits to themselves. By the Act 2 and 3 of 
 Anne, chapter 11, they took them away from her, 
 under pretence of wanting- money to augment the 
 smaller livings ; and they estabhshed a Board of first- 
 fruits, consisting of trustees appointed by the Crown, 
 who whereto receive the tenths and first-fruits, and apply 
 them to the purposes described by the Act ; which 
 was, the augmentation of small living's; and this they 
 called the Bounty of Queen Anne, though taxes were 
 imposed on the people to be given to her in lieu of her 
 
 ii
 
 102 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 tenths and first-fruits ! I have spoken before of the 
 act of her reign which discharged the small livings 
 from paying the tenths and first-fruits, and shall have 
 to speak of it again prescntl}'. 
 
 Thus you see that it was a portion of the revenues 
 of the State which was thus taken from the State and 
 given to the clergy, and as we shall presently see to 
 the aristocracy. But we see onhr a part of this thing 
 yet. Exemptions from land-tax and stamp taxes exist 
 with regard to these small livings ; but besides these, 
 numerous grants have been made out of the taxes ; 
 out of the consolidated fund ; out of the fruit of the 
 industry of every man in the Kingdom, Churchman, 
 Dissenter, or Catholic. At the particulars and at the 
 gross amount of all these grants, during the hundred 
 and twenty years that the Queen Anne's Bounty 
 Corporation, or Board of Commissioners, has existed, I 
 have no means of coming : but I know that during 
 the regency and reign of our late most big and 
 '' beneficent " sovereign, one miUionJive hundred thou- 
 sand poiauh were voted out of the consolidated fund 
 to go to augment the Queen Anne's Bounty, the 
 
 Earticulars of which, year by year, will be seen in my 
 istoryofthat "beneficent" reign and regency. So 
 that you will please to observe, it is all a mass of taxes 
 altogether, taken from the Dissenters and Catholics, 
 Scotch Church and all, as well as Churchmen, to be 
 given for the relief of the poor clergy of the Church of 
 England, as it is described in the distribution of Par- 
 liamentary grants ! Oh ! how this nation has been 
 duped ! Oh ! what a score this Church has now to 
 settle with it ! 
 
 Well, but it was to " augment the small livings," 
 was it not ? It was to make the lot of the poor 
 parsons a liitle. better, was it not? Stop a bit, I will 
 tell you all about that, and will, in the next paragraph 
 but two, make you grind your teeth at the bare eight 
 of anything so black; but before I do that we must have 
 a word^bout these " KING'S BOOKS," "according to
 
 V^] LEGACY TO PARSONS. 103 
 
 Kliich the Actof Hexry the Eiahth ahove-mcntioned 
 (2Gth of his reig-n, chapter 8) the tenths and first- 
 fruits were to he paid. That Act provided that the 
 vahxe of the henefices shoukl he inserted in these 
 books ; and that the tenths and first-fruits shoukl be 
 paid according'ly. Now money was twenty times the 
 value then that it is at this time ; but it has been 
 exceedingly convenient to the aristocracy and their 
 Church that the nominal sum should still remain the 
 same. So that a living- that now yields five hundred 
 a year was then rated, probably, at five-and-twenty 
 pounds a year ; and according- to that rate the parson 
 now pays, if he pays at all ; so that he g'ives 
 to the state two pounds ten shillings a year, instead of 
 giving fifty pounds a year ! I have before me an 
 instance of this within my own knowledge. Botley, 
 the parish in which I lived, in Hampshire, is rated 
 in the King's books as yielding a revenue to the parson 
 of £5 10s. 2h^. a year, I know that the living was 
 worth to the parson between five and six hundred 
 pounds a j-ear ; so that the parson instead of payino* 
 fifty pounds a year or upwards, as his tenths ; instead 
 of paying upwards of five hundred pounds as his first- 
 fruits, paid as first-fruits £5 10s. 2|d., and pays as 
 tenths lis. O^d. ! Now the present man has had 
 the living thirtj'-two years, and he has kept from the 
 State, according to the law of Henry the Eighth 
 (without which these tenths and first-fruits have no 
 existence in law), the sum of two thousand and sixty- 
 one pounds, not reckoning interest. Yet it is not the 
 parson who gain here : it is the ARISTOCRACY 
 again ! The adcojvson belongs to the Duke of Port- 
 land ; and it is worth so much more now than it 
 ■would be if it rendered first-fruits and tenths according 
 to the Act of Henry VIII. ! Good again : thus, it is 
 all for this aristocracy. 
 
 But great numbers of the livings are discharged, 
 on account of their smallness. Discharged, first by
 
 701 cobbett'9 [Letter 
 
 the 1st of Elizabeth, chapter 4; and second, by the 
 5th of Anne, chapter 24. Now do look at the mon- 
 strousness of this. Elizabeth discharg-ed them if 
 the revenue were not above ten pounds a year ; and 
 Anne discharg-ed them if they were under fifty 
 pounds a year. That is to say, of their real value 
 at those two times. But in laying- this real value 
 before the people, the value of the endowments only 
 was given ; only the real value of that which was 
 given to the poor parson ; and thus stands the thing 
 now to this day ; and the parish of Bentley, before- 
 mentioned, the real revenue of which is from eight 
 hundred to a thousand pounds a year, and the parish 
 of Aldershot, before mentioned, the revenue of which 
 is between seven and eight hundred pounds a year, 
 stand discharged from the payment of first-fruits and 
 tithes, on the ground that each is worth less than 
 fifty pounds a year, while their great revenues are 
 received by Lords Walsingham and Guildford, 
 who here rank amongst the " poor clergy of the 
 Established Church !" 
 
 This would be a most scandalous piece of injustice 
 to the nation ; a most shameful evasion of the intention 
 of the law, even if the Act of Henry the Eighth had 
 made no provision for the change in the value of 
 money. But the Act does make such provision. It 
 provides, that the Chancellor of England, for the 
 time being, shall issue commissions, in order to have 
 livings taxed, and the rates levied to the use of the 
 King, his heirs and successors for ever ; so that all the 
 benefices might pay, at all times, '^according to their 
 true and just, whole and entire, yearly values !" If 
 the present Lord Chancellor were to issue, as he 
 is fully authorized to do, without any new law, 
 a commission of this sort, instead of carrying on dis- 
 cussions with Bishop Blomfield, about " Church 
 *' Heform," we might expect something like real reform 
 in this Church. This is the law as completely now as
 
 Y.]' Lii:aACY TO parsons. 105 
 
 It was in the 26th j'-ear of Henry the Eighth ; and 
 Bishop Blomfield (clever fellow) is only thinking- 
 how he can make " provision for the cure of souU" 
 while his relation is a prebendary of Chester, and 
 is the rector of two thundering- great parishes in 
 Cheshire ; and while there are 332 men who have 
 1,496 parishes amongst them ! 
 
 But, the reader will say, you told us just now, that 
 3'ou would tell us all about the story of the Queen 
 Anne's Bounty being applied to the mending of the 
 lot of the poorer parsons ; and so I will tell you, and 
 now directly. I have told you, that the living of 
 Aldershot yields a revenue of about seven hundred 
 pounds a year. Well, now, that living has been aug- 
 mented by Queen Anne's bounty, by the amount of fifty 
 poimds ayear; thatisto say, that the])eoplepay,in taxes, 
 fifty pounds ayear to the poor parson, while Lord Guild- 
 ford takes away the whole of the revenue from the tithes, 
 all but fifteen pounds ! I have told you that the living 
 of Bentley yields from eight hundred to a thousand 
 pounds a year; and that the parson receives twenty- 
 eight pounds a ye^v out of that revenue, while Lord 
 "Walsingiiam takes the rest. That living also has 
 been augmented by Queen Anne's Bounty; thatisto 
 say, out of the taxes, paid by Dissenters and Catholics, 
 ns well as by Churchmen. Every labouring man in the 
 kingdom is taxed to help to pay this poor parson, while 
 Lord Walsingham takes away the revenues of the 
 parish, and to Lord Walsingham we give the taxes, 
 to be sure, and not to the poor parson, whose living 
 ought to be worth five hundred and sixty pounds a 
 year. To crown the whole, great numbers of the rich 
 pluralists are the holders of small livings that have been 
 augmented by Queen Anne's Bounty, that is to say, 
 they, under the garb of '■'■ poor chrgyT put into their 
 pockets taxes, paid by a people whom they now propose 
 to make live upon a '^ coarser sort of food !" 
 
 Now then, is it possible to reform this Church? The
 
 10.6 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 very first step -u-onld be to make it pay tenths and 
 first-fruits, according- to tlie true meaning- of the law; 
 and to make every hving- incumbent pay up the arrears, 
 according- to tliat law : the next step to compel the 
 Church to pay back to the people the amount of all the 
 sums that have been given to " the poor clerg-y out of the 
 taxes :" the next step, to compel those who pay the 
 miserable endowments out of the revenues of the parishes, 
 to pay those endowments according to the altered 
 value of money: the next step, to repeal the monstrous 
 Act of 4:3rd of George III., and to compel residence 
 unremitted, or forfeiture to the amount prescribed by 
 the Act of Henry VIIT., and an addition in point of 
 sum, according- to the altered value of money. This 
 would be real reform.; with anything- short of this 
 no man of sense and of spirit would be satisfied ; this 
 would abolish the monstrous pluralities ; would place 
 a resident minister constantly in every parish ; would 
 make the clergy Christian-like teachers; would put an 
 end to their scandalous luxury, and to their unbearable 
 insolence. 
 
 The question is, can Sir Robert Peel effect a 
 reform like this ? If he cannot, he will only labour in 
 vain. At every step, he will be met with the statements 
 which I have made in this book. He will perceive 
 that there can be no contradiction g-iven to me with 
 truth. He will look at the monstrous mass of abuses, 
 and of injustice towards the nation, that he will find 
 stated in this little volume. He will perceive the utter 
 impossibility of removing- this mass of abuse and 
 injustice, by any means, other than those that will put 
 an end to this hierarchy for ever ; he will see that that 
 must be a great revolution in England ; but after he 
 has turned it round and round, and looked at it on 
 every side, he will see that that revolution is absolutely 
 necessary to prevent a g-reater revolution. It will be, 
 and I scorn to disguise my belief in the fact, a pulling- 
 *1own of the whole of the aristocracy; a lowerin;^ of
 
 VI.] LEGACY TO PARSONS. 107 
 
 them by mniiy a dep-ree ; Imt he will have too much 
 virtue, I should ho])e, not to jirefer that to a destruction, 
 a total destruction of THAT, which it is his bounden 
 duty to uphold and defend at all hazardsj whether of 
 reputation oi* of life. 
 
 LETTER yj. 
 
 WHAT IS THAT COAIPOUND THING CALLED CHURCH 
 AND STATE .'* AND WHAT WOULD BE THE EFFECTS 
 OF A SEPARATION OF THEM^ ONE FROM THE 
 OTHER? 
 
 Parsons, 
 
 I shall, in the latter part of this letter, state what 
 would be the effects of a separation of Church from 
 State. As to the former question, we now know pretty- 
 well what a Cliurcli is, and what this Church in par- 
 ticular is ; and now let us see what a State is. A 
 State is not a king- and a ministry; a State is a Common- 
 wealth ; a people formed into a community, and freely 
 forming' a government, by which they agree to be 
 ruled. That is a State, in the large sense of the word. 
 In a somewhat narrower sense, it means the goveni- 
 ment of such a comviunity, or commonwealth ; and 
 everything- which belongs to, or is upheld by, the whole 
 g-overnment, legislative as well as executive, may be 
 said to be connected with the State. In this manner 
 the Church is connected with the State, and it calls 
 itself, and the king, at his coronation, swears that it 
 is a church established hy lam ; that is to say, by the 
 law of man. The head of the g-overnment is also the 
 iiead of the Church. The Church, as established by 
 Christ and his Apostles, had no such headj it knew
 
 108 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 Tiothing of any g-overnment protection ; it appealed 
 not to the laws of man. It asked for no laws, and it 
 Lad 110 laws, to compel people to give their money or 
 their goods for its support. It inculcated the duty of 
 Chiistians giving their money or their goods, if they 
 coxdd afford it, to defray the expenses of the altar, and 
 to feed and clothe those who served at the altar ; but 
 it resorted to no force ; to no penalties, much less to 
 imprisonment and death, to compel men to conform, 
 and to give their money or their goods. The Church, 
 as established by Christ and his Apostles, was, in this 
 respect, what the Churches of the Dissenters are now. 
 It depended, for its support, on the voluntary offerings, 
 oblations, and contributions of the people. Therefore 
 it is, that the Dissenters represent the Established 
 Church as unchristian in its nature ; and, feeling that 
 it loads them with heavy burdens, they justly and 
 reasonably call for a separation of the Church from the 
 State. 
 
 Now, let us hear the objections to the granting of 
 this prayer of the Dissenters ; for it would be hard, 
 indeed, if those who possess from six to eight millions 
 a year of j^roperty belonging to the commonwealth ; 
 hard, indeed, if they could find out no objection to 
 the taking of that immense sum away from them. 
 
 Their first objection is, that such a change would be 
 contrary to all the settled notions of mankind, according 
 to which, it is the bounden duty of every government 
 to provide for the religious instruction of the people. 
 I have before answered this objection completely; 
 but if it be the duty of a government to provide for 
 the religious instruction of the people, does it provide 
 for it by the means of this Church, when we find, 
 that, out of 16,000 parishes and townships there were 
 resident only 5,397 incumbents ; and when Ave find 
 1,496 parishes in the hands of 330 incumbents ; when 
 we further find, that there are in England and Wales 
 25J: parishes without any churches ; 1,729 parishes,
 
 VJ.l LEGACY TO PARSONS. 109 
 
 which have no parsonage-houses ; and 1,422 parishes, 
 which, in spite of the law, the parsons themselves 
 represent as unfit to live in; and, be it observed, too, 
 that this refers to the hcnefices, and not to the parishes ; 
 for then there are about five thousand more parishes 
 and townships that have no parsonage-house, notwith- 
 standing the provisions of the law, to compel the 
 upholding of the parsonages ? Does the Church, 
 then, exhibit to us the means of religious instruction 
 for the people ? In a very large part of England and 
 Wales the teaching of religion would be utterly 
 imknown to the people, were it not for the Dissenters 
 of various descriptions. Many reports from the mis- 
 sionaries of the Dissenters have stated that they have 
 found whole parishes totally destitute of all knowledge 
 of religion. And why are we not to believe the fact, 
 when we see 1,496 parishes with their revenues in the 
 hands of 332 incumbents ? 
 
 But it is said, that these swallowers, these noble, 
 honourable, and gentle incumbents, employ CURATES 
 in their parishes ; that is to say, that they hi?'e men to 
 do their duty. In the first place, they do not hire one 
 man for every parish ; and nothing is more common, 
 in some parts of England, than one curate serving 
 three parishes ; and in some cases four ; nothing so 
 common as two. But, how stands this matter ? The 
 curate is paid so poorly,that it is utterly impossible 
 that he should perform the duties of a teacher of 
 religion in the manner that he ought to do. He is a 
 poor man, with hardly the means of living better than 
 a mechanic, or a labourer. His poverty is known, and 
 seen j and, as he sets up for a gentleman, he excites no 
 compassion in his beholders ; but is sure to excite their 
 contempt ; and, this being the case, is it likely, that 
 he should do much in the way of giving* religious 
 instruction ? Was it ever yet known in the world, 
 that men sucked in instruction from those whom they 
 despised ? However, it is certain that the incumbent
 
 110 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 gives the curate but a small part of the revenue of the 
 parish, and that he puts the rest into his own pocket; 
 and here is the un])Ieasant dilemma for the parsons. 
 Doubtless, the Earl of Guilford has curates at Oli> 
 Alresford, New Alresford, Meusted, St. Mary 
 Southampton, and tSouTH Stoneham, and also in 
 ■^he parish of St. Faith : doubtless he has curates; 
 lOr he hardly does the duty himself, while he is living' 
 at Waldershare in Kent, or sitting- in the House of 
 Lords. Doubtless he may have three curates, one at 
 the Alresfords and Medsted, one at St. Faith 
 and St, Cross, and one at Southampton ; and 
 doubtless, he gives them stipends not under eighty 
 pounds a year (in cases like these), according to the 
 Act 53rd George III. chapter 149, which Act was 
 made to comjiel the rich incinnlents to pay their hire* 
 lings at a certain rate ! But, here is the dilemma : 
 here is the nasty dilemma for Sir Robert Peel 
 to touch in his Church-reform ; either these miserable 
 stipends are sufficient ; are adequate to the payment of 
 men to have the care of souls ; or, they are not sufficient 
 for that purpose. If they be not sufficient, then here 
 is the State neglecting to provide for the religious 
 instruction of the people ; and if they be sufficient, 
 9vh/ give Lord Guildford anything more for these 
 
 })arishes, than the amount of the stipend paid to the 
 lireling ? Upon one or other of the horns of this 
 dilemma Sir Robert Peel must be hooked ; and let 
 him get off as he can ; that is to say, he must bo 
 hooked, unless he be prepared, as I hope he may, to 
 enact a separation of the Church from the State. 
 
 Another objection is, that, if the volimfary prin-> 
 ciple were adopted, religion would suffer by the 
 dependent state of the Ministers, who would then be the 
 mere hirelings of their flocks. What are these miserable 
 curates then 1 They do not receive, ) n an average, 
 one-half of what the average of Dissenting Ministers 
 receive. And, as to dependence ; the Dissenting
 
 VJ.j LEGACY TO PARSONS. ID 
 
 Ministers nre dependent on the caprice of nobod\' ; 
 not even of" their congregation ; while the miserable 
 curate is in the most abject state of dependence ; and 
 that, too, on the will, on the caprice, it may be, of one 
 single man; for the incumbent has the power of dis- 
 charging' the curate whenever he pleases ; in spite of 
 all the pretences of the Act 58rd Geo. III., chap. 
 149, to give protection to these poor creatures. Besides 
 which, the curate, if he do or say anything to displease 
 the bishop of the diocese, he can prevent him from 
 being employed in any other diocese; for no other 
 bishop will suffer him to be employed, unless he brings 
 testimonials from his last bishop ; and these testimo- 
 nials may be refused, without catise assigned; so that 
 the poor creature's mouth is actually locked up ; he 
 is doomed to certain ruin or to absolute submission to 
 tlie will of his master-parson. There is no footman so 
 completely dependent as one of these miserable men ; 
 and these are the men which this Established Church 
 gives us for our religious instructors: these are the 
 men, with whom the State furnishes us to keep us all 
 in the fold, and to protect us against adopting strango 
 and erroneous doctrines ! 
 
 Another objection is, that if there were not men set 
 apa^t by the State to teach religion, and supplied with 
 incomes by the State for that purpose, the teaching of 
 religion would fall into loiv hands; that the ministers 
 of Christ would become a mere mundane race of 
 men, hankering after " the n-orld and thefiesh ;" and. 
 Sir William Scott, in his impudent speech, when he, 
 as member for the University of Oxford, moved the 
 passing of the before-mentioned Act of George the 
 Third, 43rd year of his reign, chapter 84, which, as 
 we observed before. Jet the parsons loose, insisted that 
 it Tvas proper that the clergy should go to places of 
 fashionahle resort, and of pleasure, with their families, 
 seeing that, " hj the Reformation, they had been 
 invited to marry." I must stop here to observe, that
 
 112 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 Sir James Gkaham, in his speecli on Lord John 
 Russell's motion regarding the Irish Tithes, took 
 occasion to utter an invective against the celibacy of 
 the Roman Catholic clergy, and observed, that " our 
 Churcli denominated unmarried priests unlwly priests." 
 Now, then, let us see how the " Reformation^^ invited 
 them to marry : now let us see whether our Church 
 holds unmarried priests to be unlwly priests. After 
 the Reformation had been made ; after the new Church 
 and the Prayer-Book had been enacted, an Act (2nd 
 and 3rd Ebward the Sixth, chapter 21) was passed to 
 '■'■ talie away all positive laws made against the marriage 
 *' ^' l^ngsfe ;" and upon what grounds was this Act 
 passed, and what did it say in its preamble ? Why, 
 this is what it said. ^'Although it were not only 
 ''better for the estimation of priests, and other ministers 
 *'in the Church of God, to live chaste, sole, and separate 
 *'from the company of women, and the bond of marriage, 
 "but also thereby they might the better intend to the 
 *' administration of the Gospel, and be less intricated and 
 ''troubled with the charge of household, being free and 
 "unburdened with care and cost of finding wife and 
 " children, and that it were most to be wished, that they 
 "would willingly and of themselves, endeavour them- 
 "selves to a perpetual chastity and abstinence from the 
 ''use of women : yet, forasmuch as the contrary had 
 ''rather been seen, &c.,&c.;" and then the Act proceeds 
 to exempt them from, pains and penalties, if they do 
 marry ! And this is what Sir William Scott called 
 ^'inviting them to marry;" and this is what the learned 
 doctor in divinity-. Sir James Graham, calls the prin- 
 ciple of our Church, that ^' im unmarried priest is an 
 ^Hcnholy priest." 
 
 I have before noticed the arrogance and insolence of 
 the c'-'ergy, at the time of the passing of the Act of 
 43rd George III. c. 84, which put an end to the 
 informations against them, and which let them loose to 
 ramble aoout as they liked, and to farm and to traffic.
 
 VI.J LEGACY TO PARS0X9. 113 
 
 I have before observed on the advantage ■which they 
 took of the violences committed in France. And Scott, 
 (now Stowell), when he moved for this Bill, uttered 
 these memorable words : " Whilst we have seen, in 
 "other countries, CHRISTIANITY SUFFERING 
 ** in the persons of the oppressed clergy, it imposes a 
 *^ peculiar ohligation vpon us, to treat our own tvitk 
 "kindness and respect, and to beware of degrading 
 " religion by an apparent degradation of its ministers !" 
 What an impudent speech ! They had deserted their 
 flocks : they had abandoned their parishes : they had 
 broken their solemn vows and their solemn oaths; they 
 had abandoned the people committed to their charge, 
 after having solemnly declared that they believed 
 themselves to have been inwardly moved by tlie Holy 
 Ghost to take upon xhem the oifice, " to serve God for 
 " the promoting of his glory, and the edifying of his 
 '^ people;" they had set the law of the land at defiance 
 in the most daring manner ; audit was called "degrad- 
 " ing 7-eligio7i" to attempt to bring them back to their 
 duty ! But, such was the hoodwinked, frightened, and 
 cowed-down state of the nation at that time, that this 
 impudent speech passed without censure from anybody ! 
 Excellent, too, that Christianity had suffered in France 
 in the persons of the clergy of that country ; excellent 
 and most impudent to tell us that the Roman Catholic 
 religion being put down caused Christianity to suffer y 
 though the University, of which this Scott was the 
 representative, and for whom he was talking, had, for 
 three hundred j^ears taught us that that religion was 
 idolatrous and da7nnable ! 
 
 To return to the objection, that the teaching of 
 religion would fall into low hands ; which objection 
 we will take in the words of Scott ; that, if there 
 was an equalization of the Church-incomes, " we should 
 " run the risk of having a body of clergy resemhling 
 " only the lower orders of society in their conversation, 
 " in their manners, and their habits ; and it were well
 
 1 14 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 *'- if they were not affected by a popular' fondness for 
 ■" some of the species oi a gross ana J'aetious relig'ion." 
 But how could they well be lower than these miserable 
 curates, if small incomes would make them low ? And 
 these miserable curates we have in the 16,000 parishes, 
 where there are any ministers at all, excepting 5,379 
 parishes. How then could the voluntary 2J^'i^t'Ciple 
 make them lower ? And, appealing- to the fact, are the 
 Dissenting- ministers lower now 'i Every one who 
 knows anything- of the matter will say that they 
 are not, and that, as to respect and reverence, every 
 one knows that all the settled Dissenting- ministers 
 have fifty times as much of these as falls to the lot 
 of the parsons. 
 
 The Dissenting ministers are sometimes traders at 
 the same time ; they are farmers and dealers. And 
 what are the parsons 1 Why, they were indeed most 
 positively forbidden, by law, to be farmers and dealers ; 
 they were informed against for being such ; there was 
 the just law to punish them for it : they set that law at 
 defiance : the boroughmonger parliament repealed the 
 law ; quashed the informations against them ; passed 
 another law to allow them to farm and to deal. As 
 cattle-jobbers ; as dealers in cattle, sheep, hogs, and 
 horses ; as buyers and sellers of these, they are amongst 
 the most eminent and the most busy in the country. 
 Scarcely was that Act passed (43 George III., chap. 
 84), to protect them against informations, and to allow 
 them to farm and to job, when the Botley Parson 
 took, on lease, a considerable farm in his parish, called 
 Bracksalls; though the glebe that surrounded his 
 parsonage-house consisted of five fields and a meadow 
 of very good land ; and though his living was worth 
 from five to six hundred pounds a year. 
 
 But, why need we waste our time in any statement 
 to show, that this would necessarily be the case, when 
 the public papers informed us of a bishop standing as 
 a partner, behind a banker's counter at CAr.iBRiDQE.
 
 VI.J LEGACY TO PARSONS. 115 
 
 ;it the time of the panic, to pny the pressing customers 
 tmd to give his countenance in favour of the solvency 
 of the house? In the London Gazette of Friday, 
 SOth January, 1835, was the following-, under the head 
 oi hanlirupfs : ^^ 1h.e Reverend Thomas Fisher, King- 
 " ston-upon-Hull, the Meverend John Fisher, Higham 
 *' upon-the-hill, Leicestershire ; and Mai'y Simmonds, 
 ^' of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, BANKERS." 
 These men have each ol' them a rectory in the Church ; 
 and they both most solemnly vowed at the altar, that 
 they would constantly attend to the people committed 
 to their charge ; that they would Jay aside the study 
 of the world and thejicsli ; and that they veril}' believed 
 themselves to be inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost ; 
 whereupon they solemnly ratified the same, by j;«r- 
 taking of the Holy Comnninion! If a banker is not a 
 trafficker, I should like to know what is. His business 
 is that of money-changing, indeed. Very proper 
 business for other men to carry on, provided they carr^'- 
 it on within the limits prescribed by the law ; but how 
 are the people to have respect for a man who has 
 made the vows that these men made, relative to the 
 n'orld and the ^fiesh ; and who are seen afterwards 
 carrying on a business, the sole object of which is that 
 of making- mone}' ? These two men have large livings 
 in the Church ; so that they have not been tempted 
 liy their poverty to br^ak their vows. 
 
 One more instance of this sort will be quite enough. 
 I find in the London Gazette of the 24th of March, 
 1835, a list of hanh-upts, with regard to whose 
 estates dividends are to be made on the 16th of April; 
 find amongst these bankrupts is the following : ''The 
 *' Reverend S. W. Perkins, Stockton, Warv/ickshire, 
 *' clerk, BROKER; at twelve, at the Georg-e Inn, 
 *'= Warwick.'* Now, this holy broker is the rec- 
 tof'©*' Stockton, in the diocese of Lichfield and 
 <.\)^*f'r^M,_ahd his rectory is a large living ; and need 
 thet-fe^b^fiiofe-saidonthis part of the subject j can any
 
 116 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 Dissenting- minister be lower than being- a hrolier m 
 the very town where his congreg-ation resides ; and 
 within a stone's throw of the church, to enter which, 
 as a minister, he has professed that he behoved he was 
 inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost j in that very 
 parish where he had promised to lay aside the study 
 of the world and of the flesh, and to live as a whole- 
 some example and spectacle to the flock of Christ ? 
 And this man a hroher; a buyer and seller purely for 
 gain's sake ; for no other purpose whatsoever but to 
 get money ! And yet Scott had the audacity to say 
 that the Act (43rd George III., chap. 84) was neces- 
 sary to prevent men in the Church from resembling 
 the lower orders of society ! 
 
 However, there is something a great deal worse 
 than this; namely, the receiving of wiZiter?/ andwat-ai 
 pay ; or rather half-pay, and being in the church at the 
 same time. At the end of the war, great numbers of the 
 the aristocracy, their relations and dependants, went 
 into the Church. Every man of them professed at the 
 altar, and took the communion as a ratification of his 
 profession, that he verily believed that he was in- 
 wardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon him 
 this new calling, though so different from his last ! 
 Every one thus solemnly pledged himself to lay aside 
 the study of the world and the flesh. In spite of 
 this, every one of them tooh the half-pay, as being 
 still naval and military officers ! And now mark the 
 conduct of them, and of the government ; the half-pay is 
 a RETAINING FEE FOR FUTURE SERVICES. 
 I beg you to mark this ; and this half-pay is very fre- 
 quently taken away merely by the king saying to the 
 officer that he has no longer any need of his services. If 
 called upon to serve, and they refuse to come out to 
 serve, their half-pay is taken away. It is the same 
 with non-commissioned officers and private soldiers; 
 and I have just sent two memorials to the paymaster- 
 general in behalf of two private soldiers, who had their
 
 VI. j LEGACY TO PARSONS. 117 
 
 pensions taken away a g'ood while ago. It is therefore, 
 you will observe, 7iot a reward for past services, but 
 a retaining fee for future services. What a flagitious 
 act, then, to give these soldier-parsons half-pay, after 
 they had got livings in the Church ! Mr, Hume 
 complained of this, and I made a weekly exposition of 
 tlie shameful transaction for a whole year, or there- 
 abouts. At last the half-pay to these men was stopped ; 
 but now, do mark ; do mark, if you have a mind to 
 to know this government and this Church. A certain 
 time n-as to he given before the half-pay was to he 
 *^(;joj9^^/; and (hear it, if you have ears!) before the 
 day of stopping arrived, notice was given that any 
 o%.cer might SELL his half -pay out and out ! and yet 
 Sir Jamks Graham tells us that the tithes do not 
 belong to the people, but that they helong to God; and 
 he would tell us, I dare say, that these half-pay people 
 were appointed hy God to receive them for him ! One- 
 of these military heroes, who felt himself inwardly 
 moved as aforesaid, was the Honourable Mr. Neville, 
 now Lord Viscount Neville, who was receiving, for- 
 about twelve years, tithes as a parson, and half-pay 
 as a captain of horse; and he is now vicar of Byrling,. 
 rector of Holveston, rector of Burgh Apton, and 
 rector of Otley. And is he to have all these livings 
 still? and is the Lord Viscount to keep the military 
 half-pay that he got during the twelve years ? If he 
 be, I care not if England be sunk to the bottom of 
 the sea. 
 
 What is any one to apprehend as the consequence of" 
 putting an end to a Church like this ? Can anything 
 arise more barefaced ? Can anything arise more offen- 
 sive to the people ? The LAW; these fellows always 
 talk to us about the law ; the law requires that the par- 
 sonage-houses, and the buildings belonging to them, 
 shall be kept in good and suihcient repair ; and that, 
 if any incumbent suifer the parsonage-house to fall out 
 of repair, he, if he quit that living for another, shall
 
 118 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 pay for dilapidations ; that is to say, put the house in 
 repair J and that if he die, his property shall be liable 
 for the same ; and the law expressly provides that the 
 money which he or his heirs pay for dilapidations, shall 
 be expended upon the house. To what a scandalous 
 extent this law has been set at defiance, appears from 
 a return which the bishops had the face to make to the 
 king' in council; in 1818, from which return it appears, 
 that even out of the 10,421 benefices (almost every 
 benefice containing- more than one parish), there were 
 1729 benefices witliout any parsonage-house at all, 
 and 1,422 parishes in which the parsonage- houses were 
 unfit to live in ! And the bishops, knowing- the law 
 as they must, had the face to make this report to the 
 king- in council ! The reasons which the several par- 
 sons give for the unfitness of the parsonage-houses, are 
 of themselves quite sufiicient to authorize the Parlia- 
 ment to abate this Church by law. So much inso- 
 lence, so much brazen effrontery, never was before 
 shown by mortal men. One says, that " the parson- 
 '^ age-house is too S7»all ;" another, '* not large enough 
 *Mbr the accommodation of a gentleman^s family ;" 
 another says, '* imcoinmocUmis f another saj's, " incon- 
 venient ;" and they had the impudence to say this 
 when the}' had obtained a letting- loose from the law 
 which bound them to reside in their parsonage-houses. 
 The greater part of them, however, are represented as 
 being in a ruinous state and irreparable ; and the 
 bishops tell us, that nearly two thousand of them have 
 been suffered to fall down and disappear. The parsons 
 have pocketed the tithes and other revenues of the 
 parishes, and have suffered this great mass of national 
 property to be annihilated; and if the Waterloo- 
 delusion could have continued, if the great Captain's 
 picture could have continued on the sign-posts, it 
 would not have been at all wonderful if a second 
 Scott had come to propose to the Parliament a grant 
 of money to rebuild these houses. However, let us
 
 VI.] LEGACY TO PARSONS. il9 
 
 congratulate ourselves on the fact that these audacious 
 men will never make another return like this : the 
 effects of their Waterloo-war have overtaken them at 
 last. Like a stag- at bay, the}^ are got up into a corner, 
 looking" from side to side but seeing- no means of 
 escape. 
 
 Among-st tbe evils of this Churcli is that evil des- 
 cribed by Lord Baco.v, who says, "A numerous 
 " married clergy, giving- life to great numbers of 
 ^* idlers, or persons never to work, is very dangerous 
 *' to a State, by creating- mouths without creating a 
 *' suitable portion of labour at the same time." Now 
 g'o to the Navj'-list, go to the Army-list, g-o to the 
 Taxing-offices, go to the Government-offices, go to 
 the military and naval Academies, go to the Pension- 
 list, go to the g-reat schools and colleges, g-o to any of 
 these swarms of idle devourers, and you will find that 
 not much less than a full third part of the whole have 
 either sprung- from parsons, or have married parsons* 
 daughters ; and whence the parsons themselves have 
 come, let it be reserved for me to tell when I am in a 
 place differing a good deal from a farm-house. 
 
 Well, then, what short of a total repeal of all the 
 laws which create the revenue and powers of this mass 
 of monstrous abuse can possibly be of any avail ? 
 What, short of adopting- the voluntary principle; 
 what, short of a separating of the Church from the 
 State, can give satisfaction to the people, and peace 
 to the country ? RELIGION ! How is religion to 
 suffer; how is the religion of the Bible, how is the 
 religion of Jesus Christ and his Apostles to suffer, 
 by putting down these monstrous abuses, which exist 
 by a misappHcation - of its sacred name ? Can noto- 
 riously broken vows and broken oaths ; can an open 
 abandonment of the flock, after a vow made to wat-ch 
 constantly over it, and that, too, ratified by receiving 
 the sacrament ; can 1,49G parishes in the hands of 
 o32 men; can these tend to thepromotion of morality
 
 120 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 find religion ; and can it be the duty of any g"overn- 
 nient to give even the sHghtest countenance to a thing 
 like this ? If* there were danger of strange doctrines 
 risking up, could a thing like this prevent it i* If there 
 were danger of heats and animosities, arising from 
 differences of opinion about religion, could a thing like 
 this produce reconciliation and harmony amongst the 
 parties ? If the people were prone to infidelity ; if 
 conceited Deism, or gloomy and half-mad Atheism, 
 were likely to get a hold upon this at all times reli- 
 gious people, would a thing like this have a tendency 
 to make it loosen its hold '.'' Would the Deist, or the 
 Atheist, be reduced to silence, by having pointed out 
 to him the bankrupt bankers, the bankrupt broker, 
 the retaining-fee-receiving soldier; all of them having 
 at their ordination made a vow to lay aside the world 
 and the flesh ? Would the Deist or Atheist be 
 silenced by seeing S'-]2 men with 1,49G parishes in 
 their hands ; by seeing the tithes paid where there 
 wns no Church, by seeing the ]iarsonage-houses tumble 
 down into ruins; and lastly, by seeing bishops sitting 
 in a commission to discover the means of providing- 
 for the cure of souls, while each of those bishops has 
 given a plurality of livings to relations of his own ! 
 
 On the other hand, look at the Dissenters ; see with 
 what strictness and what decorum they perform their 
 duties to their flocks. Look at the effect upon those 
 flocks ; look at the personal attention of the ministers 
 to individuals standing in need of their peculiar care. 
 Look at their exertions ; look at their labours ; look 
 at their unexceptionable moral habits and manners ; 
 look at the respect that is paid to them ; look at the 
 real affection for them ; turn then, and look at the 
 clergy of the Established Church, and at the feeling' 
 of the people towards them ; and then say if you can, 
 that RELIGIOjN would not be benefitted; that it 
 ■would not be, in its effect, m.ueh greater than now, if 
 the voluntary principle prevailed, and if this Church
 
 \I.] LEGACY TO PARSONS. 121 
 
 were sepnrated from tlje State. But tliere is the great 
 American nation, where it is separated from the State, 
 and where we are presented with successful experience 
 to guide us. 
 
 Oh ! say they, you must not go to America; and 
 they told us in the House of Commons that we must 
 go to France, Prussia, Austria, and Belgium ! 
 Belgium, where the king is our pensioner, who takes 
 care to keep a house well aired at Esher, in Surrey. 
 But why not to America ? The people there sprang- 
 from Englishmen. The people that settled New 
 Hampshire went from Old Hampshire ; and they 
 called the j)lace of their landing Portsmouth, anii 
 there they built a town, which goes by that name to 
 this day J and there is a Norfolk, a Suffolk, a 
 Kent, a Sussex, and all the counties and all the 
 towns of England and Wales. There are the laws 
 of England ; the manners of England ; the lan- 
 guage of England; the Winchester bushel ; the 
 statute acre : there is the learning and literature of 
 England. There are all our books ; and this book 
 that I am writing now, will onl}'- appear six weeks 
 later in New York than it will appear in London. 
 This, then, is the country to go to for a test of the 
 effect of the voluntary principle. There the law knows 
 nothing at all about religions, one sort or another ; 
 and it never did know anything about religion, except 
 in that part of the States called New England. 
 There was a law there, somewhat resembling the 
 law of England in the early period of the insti- 
 tution of tithes. This law compelled every man to 
 3'ield tithes, but to yield them to ivhatcver priest he 
 chose. So, in New England, every man might pay 
 towards the supportof what sect and what place of wor- 
 ship he liked; but he was compelled by law to pay to some 
 €ne. In 1816, however, all these laws were repealtd 
 in New England; and since that, in that country, 
 the law has known nothing of religion, any more
 
 122 cobbett's [Letter 
 
 than it has known of the conduct of the birds and 
 bats. Yet in this whole world was there ever a 
 country, in which such complete peace and harmony 
 prevailed ! Never is such a thing heard ofj as a 
 quarrel of one religious sect against another. In 
 social intercourse; in the courts of law; in the 
 choosing of officers, political or municipal ; in legis- 
 lative assemblies ; in the senate ; on the bench ; in 
 the army ; in the navy ; Churchmen, Roman Catholic, 
 Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Unitarian, Indepen- 
 dent, all mixed together, without a suspicion in any 
 man's mind, that his cause, in the case of any dispute, 
 is safer in the hands of persons of his own sect, than 
 in those of the persons of any other sect. Here, then, 
 is the 2)recedcnt upon which for us to stand : here is 
 solid ground for us to move upon; and let no 
 statesman in England imagine that this example can 
 be exhibited to our eyes J'o)' many years lonyer, with- 
 out goading us on to imitation. 
 
 The surprising progress in wealth, power, arts, 
 arms, science, and prosperity of the United States, 
 is silently producing an ellfect on all the nations of 
 Europe; but particularly on England. It is another 
 England, at only twenty days distance ; and it is 
 impossible, not onl}' morally, but almost physically, 
 impossible, that this England should view the state 
 of that other England, for any length of time, 
 without resolving to be its rival in freedom and in 
 happiness, and particularly on the score of freedom as 
 to religion. Our aristocracy (never deficient in low 
 cunning and in spite), saw, at the close of the French 
 war, the final effect of the example of the United 
 States upon England. This was the real ground 
 of that war which Jackson ended at New Orleans, 
 and which heroic and bullet-proof Waterloo took 
 care not to have a hand in ; that war which added 
 seventy millions to our debt, and which first told us 
 the unwelcome secret tliat we had found out somel-ol^^
 
 VI.J LEGACY TO PARSONS. 153 
 
 to leat lis at last, and beat us tliey will in everything-, 
 unless we resolve to imitate them in cheapness oi 
 government, and in a religion unknown to the laws ; 
 and if there were no other motive for resorting- to 
 these, we shall be compelled to resort to them in self- 
 defence. 
 
 Having- now shown what this thing- called " Church 
 and State " is ; and having- proved, I trust, most 
 satisfactoril}', that a separation of the one from the 
 other is not the less necessary to the inculcation of 
 true religion, than it is to the freedom, the peace, and 
 the well-being- of the Commonwealth, I should here 
 lay down my pen ; but I must, in conclusion, just 
 notice the curious principle which I hear m-any men, 
 to my g-reat surprise, accede to without difficulty ; 
 namely, that though it is just and expedient to put an 
 end to the monstrous abuses of which I have been 
 speaking-, '•' existing- interests " are not to be touched ; 
 that is to say, that all those who are wallowing- in the 
 fruits of the abuses, are therein to wallow to the end 
 of their lives. So that, while " pluralities are to be 
 put an end to " and a residence is to be insisted on, 
 tlie young- fellows (and there are scores upon scores 
 of them) each of whom has four or five parishes 
 now ; these scores and other scores, and hundreds, 
 who are now non-residing-, are to continue to 
 possess their parishes, and to non-reside, to the end 
 of their lives, leaving- to the nation a pretty fair chance 
 of seeing' something- like a reform effected in about 
 three score years from this day ! Oh, no ; let us, in 
 this respect, take a leaf out of the book of the Church 
 itself; let the law do by these parsons as it did by the 
 Cathohc priests ; that is to say, as to method, but not 
 in degree. They were left to wander over the face of 
 the earth, miserable mendicants, with the mere 
 mockery of a pension ; let us be merciful ; and make 
 suitable provision for such as shall think proper to 
 refuse to perform the duties in the church ss on the
 
 124 cobbett's [Letter VI. 
 
 voluntary principle : and I have long- thought that tliis 
 would be the end ; and the conviction in my mind is 
 now more firmly fixed than ever. 
 
 Parsons, thus I conclude : / call upon you to 
 ansrver tliis hooJi. That you will not attempt to do ; 
 but the minds of my readers will be made up, and 
 the just conclusion will be^ that you are unable to 
 answer.
 
 2 »t 3 Ed. VI.] LEGACY TO PARSONS. l25 
 
 THE ACT OF PARLIAMENT BY WHICH 
 THE CHURCH WAS MADE. 
 
 2 AND 3 Edward the Sixth, chapter 1. 
 
 An Act for the Uniformity of Service and Administra- 
 tion of the Sacraments throughout the Reahn. 
 
 Whereas, of long^ time, there hath been had in this 
 realm of England, and in Wales, divers forms of 
 Common Prayer, commonly called the Service of the 
 Church, that is to say, the use of Sarum., of York, 
 of Bangor and of Lincoln; and besides the same 
 now of late much more divers and sundry forms and 
 fashions have been used in the cathedral and parish 
 c\\\xvc\iQs oi England and Wales, as well concerning 
 the Mattens or Morning- Prayer and the Evensong-, as 
 also, concerning the Holy Communion, commonly 
 called the Mass, with divers and sundry rites 
 and ceremonies concerning the same, and in the 
 administration of other Sacraments of the Church: 
 And as the doers and executors of the said rites and 
 ceremonies, in other form than of late j^ears they have 
 been used, were pleased therewith : So other not 
 using the same rites and ceremonies, were thereby 
 greatly offended : And albeit the King's Majesty, 
 with the advice of his most entirely beloved uncle, 
 the Lord Protector, and other of his Highness's 
 Council, hath heretofore divers times assayed to stay 
 innovations or new rites concerning the premisses; 
 yet the same hath not had such good success as his 
 Highness required in that behalf; whereupon his 
 Highness, by the most prudent advice aforesaid, being 
 pleased to bear with the frailty and weakness of his 
 subjects in that behalf^ of his great clemency hath
 
 126 cobbett's [2 and 3 
 
 BOt been only content to abstain from punishment of 
 those that have offended in that behalf, foi* that his 
 Highness taketh that they did it of a g'ood zeal ; but 
 also to the intent a uniform quiet and godly 
 order should be had concerning the premisses, hath 
 appointed the Archbishop of Canterbury, and certain 
 of the most learned and discreet bishops, and other 
 learned men of this realm, to consider and ponder 
 the premisses ; and thereupon having as well eye and 
 respect to the most sincere and pure Christian religion 
 taught by the Scripture, as to the usages in the 
 primitive Church, should draw and make one con- 
 venient and meet Order, Rite and Fashion of Common 
 and open Prayer and Administration of the Sacra- 
 ments, to be had and used in his Majesty's realm of 
 JUngland and in Wales; the which at this time, by 
 the aid of the Holy Ghost, with one uniform agree- 
 ment is of them concluded, set forth and delivered to 
 his Highness, to his great comfort and quietness of 
 mind, in a book entituled, " The Book of the 
 Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacra- 
 ments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the 
 Church, after the Use of the Church of England." 
 Wherefore the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and 
 the Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, 
 considering as well the most godly travel of the 
 King's Highness, of the Lord Protector, and of other 
 His Highness's, Council, in gathering- and collecting- 
 the said Archbishop, Bishops, and learned men 
 together, as the godly Prayers, Orders, Rites, and 
 Ceremonies in the said book mentioned, and the con- 
 siderations of altering those things which he altered, 
 and retaining those things which he retained in 
 the said book, but also the honour of God and great 
 quietness, which, by the grace of God, shall ensue 
 upon the one and uniform Rite and Order in such 
 Common Prayer and Rites and external Ceremonies to 
 be used throughout England and in Wales, at Cahce
 
 Ed. VI.] LEGACY TO PARSONS. 127 
 
 and the Marches of the same, do g-ive to his Highness 
 most hearty and lowly thanks for the same. And 
 himibl}' prayen that it may be ordained and enacted 
 by his Majesty, with the assent of the Lords and 
 Commons in this present Parliament assembled, and 
 by the authority of the same, that all and singular 
 person and persons that have offended concerning the 
 premisses, other than such person and persons as 
 now be and remain in the Tower of London, or in the 
 Fleet, may be pardoned thereof : and that all and 
 singular ministers in any Cathedral or Parish Church, 
 or other place within this realm of England, Wales, 
 Calice, and the Marshes of the same, or other the 
 King's dominions, shall, from and after the Feast of 
 Pentecost next coming, be bounden to say and use the 
 Mattens, Evensong*, Celebration of the Lord's Supper, 
 commonly called the Mass, and Administration of 
 each of the Sacraments, and all their common and 
 open Pra^^er, in such order and form as is mentioned in 
 the same book, and none other or otherwise. And 
 albeit that the same be so godly and good, that they 
 give Occasion to every honest and comformable man 
 most willingly to embrace them, yet, lest any 
 obstinate person, who willingly would distiu'b so 
 godly order and quiet in this realm should not go 
 unpunished, that it may also be ordained and 
 enacted, by the authority aforesaid, "That if any 
 manner of Parson, Vicar, or other whatsoever Minister, 
 that ought or should sing or say Common Prayer 
 mentioned in the said book, or minister the Sacra- 
 ments, shall, after the said Feast of Pentecost next 
 coming, refuse to use the said Common Prayers, or to 
 minister the Sacraments in such Cathedral or Parish 
 Church, or other places as he should use or minister 
 the same, in such order and form as they be men- 
 tioned and set forth in the said book ; or shall use, 
 wilfully and obstinately standing in the same, any 
 other Rite, Ceremony, Order, Form, or manner of
 
 128 cobbett's [2 and 3 
 
 Mass, openly or privily, or Mattens, Evensong*, 
 Administration of the Sacraments, or other Open 
 Prayer than is mentioned and set forth in the said book 
 (Open Prayer in and throughout this Act, is meant 
 that Prayer which is for other to come unto or hear, 
 either in common Churches or private Chapels or 
 oratories, commonly called the Service of the Church) ; 
 or shall preach, declare, or speak any thing- in the 
 <:lerog;ation or depraving- of the said book, or any thing* 
 therein contained, or of any part thereof; and shall 
 1)6 thereof lawfully convicted according; to the laws of 
 this realm, by verdict of twelve men, or by his own 
 confession, or by the notorious evidence of the fact, 
 shall lose and forfeit to the King's Highness, his Heirs 
 and Successors, for the first offence, the profit of such 
 one of his spiritual benefices or promotions as it shall 
 please the King's Highness to assign or appoint, 
 coming' and arising in one whole year next after his con- 
 viction; And alsothatthe same person so convicted shall, 
 for the same offence, suffer imprisonment by the space 
 of six months, without bail or mainprise : And if any 
 such person once convict of any such offence concerning" 
 the premisses shall after his first conviction, eftsoons 
 offend and be thereof in form aforesaid lawfully 
 convict, that then the same person shall for his second 
 offence suffer imprisonment by the space of one whole 
 year : and also shall therefore be deprived, ipso facto, 
 of all his spiritual promotions; and that it shall be 
 lawful to all patrons, donors, and grantees, of all and 
 singular the same spiritual promotions, to present to 
 the same any other able clerk, in like manner and 
 form as though the party so offending- were dead : And 
 that if any such person or persons, after he shall be 
 twice convicted in form aforesaid, shall offend against 
 any of the premisses the third time, and shall be 
 t!iereof in form aforesaid lawfully convicted, that 
 then the person so offending- and convicted the third 
 t.imej,^hall suffer imprisonment during his life. And
 
 Ed. VI.] LEGACY TO PARSONS. 12i> 
 
 if the person that shall offend and be convict in form 
 aforesaid concerning- any of the premisses, shall not 
 be beneficed nor have anv-- spiritual promotion, that 
 then the same person so offending* and convict shall, 
 for the first offence, suffer imprisonment during* six 
 months, without bail or mainprise : And if any such 
 person not having' any spiritual promotion, alter his 
 first conviction, shall eftsoons offend in anything con- 
 cerning the premisses, and shall in form aforesaid be 
 thereof lawflilly convicted, that then the same person 
 shall, for his second offence, suffer imprisonment during- 
 his life. 
 
 And it is ordained and enacted by the authority 
 aforesaid, that if any person or persons -whatsoever, 
 after the said Feast of Pentecost next coming, shall, 
 in any interludes, plays, songs, rhymes, or by other 
 open words, declare or speak any thing- in the dero- 
 gation, depraving or despising- of the same book or of 
 any thing- therein contained, or any part thereof j or shall 
 by open fact, deed, or by open threatenings, compel, 
 or cause, or otherwise procure or maintain, any Parson,. 
 Vicar, or other Minister in any Cathedral or Parish 
 Church, or in any Chapel or other place, to sing- or 
 say any common and open prayer, or to minister any 
 Sacrament otherwise or in any other manner or form, 
 than is mentioned in the said book ; or that, by any 
 of the said means, shall unlawfully interrupt, or let 
 any Parson, Vicar, or other Ministers, in any Cathedral 
 or Parish Church, Chapel, or any other place, to sing' 
 or say common and open prayer, or to minister the- 
 Sacraments, or any of them, in any such manner and 
 form as is mentioned in the snid book : That then 
 every person being- thereof lawfully convicted in form- 
 abovesiiid, shall forfeit to the King, our Sovereign Lord, 
 his Heirs and Successors, for the first offence ten 
 pounds. And if any person or persons, being once- 
 convicted of any such offence, eftsoons offend against 
 any of t!;e premisses, and shall in form aforesaid^
 
 J 30 cobbett's P&3Ed. VI. 
 
 "be thereof lawfully convict, that then the same persons 
 :S0 offending- and convict, shall for the second offence, 
 forfeit to the King-, our Sovereign Lord, his Heirs and 
 Successors, twenty pounds : And if any person, after 
 he in form aforesaid shall have been twice convict of 
 any offence concerning* any of the premisses, shall 
 offend the third time, and be thereof in form abovesaid 
 lawfully convict, that then every person so offending 
 and convict shall for his third offence forfeit to our 
 Sovereign Lord the King- all his goods and chattels, 
 and shall suffer imprisonment during his life. And 
 if any person or persons, that for his first offence 
 concerning- the premisses shall be convict in form 
 aforesaid, do not pay the sum to be paid by virtue of 
 his conviction, in such manner and form as the same 
 ought to be paid, within six weeks next after his 
 conviction ; that then every person so convict, and 
 so not paying the same, shall, for the first offence, 
 instead of the said ten pound, suffer imprisonment by 
 the space of three months without bail or mainprise. 
 And if any person or persons, that for his second 
 offence concerning the premisses shall be convict in 
 form aforesaid, do not pay the sum to be paid by 
 virtue of his conviction, in such manner and form as 
 the same ought to be paid within six weeks next after 
 his said second convictioja; that then every person so 
 convicted, and not so paying the same, shall, for the 
 same second offence, in the stead of the said twenty 
 pounds, suffer imprisonment during six months, without 
 ibail or mainprise. 
 
 N.B. — Tlie rest of the Act consists of the technical 
 
 r,G tiers 'IS io the execution thereof.
 
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 (incidentally) to Young Women, in the ]\Iiddle and Higher 
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 Bachelor, a Lover, a Husband, a Father, a Citizen, and a 
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