It is not

rangements for putting the books into circulation. unreasonable to suppose-though positive evidence is wanting-that the relation of these men, and of others whose names have not come down to us, to Browne's attempt, was more than that of accessories after the fact; in other words, that the books were written and printed in conformity with a plan agreed upon before Browne's departure from England, and were the result of consultation among thoughtful and resolute men who had already accepted the theory of separation. Be that as it may, the agitation thus inaugurated was regarded as a high crime against the government; and for their co-operation in "spreading certain books seditiously penned by Robert Browne against the Book of Common Prayer," Copping and Thacker, having been thus far in the hands of the bishop and the High Commission, were transferred to the secular power, and tried under a charge of sedition (1583, June). The alleged sedition was that, in the books distributed by them, the queen's supremacy over the church was denied. That they incited the queen's subjects to any rebellion or tumult, or to any breach of the peace; that they denied in anywise her civil supremacy over all persons and all estates within the realm-was not pretended. But only for holding the church polity of the New Testament, namely, the inalienable right and duty of Christian men to associate, voluntarily, for worship and communion, in separate and self-governed churches-only for putting into circulation certain tracts for the times, in which that theory was set forth and vindicated-those two clergymen were found guilty of sedition, under the ruling of the Lord Chief Justice of England.

One of the archbishop's chaplains, as in duty bound, labored with his two brethren thus condemned to die; but he could not bring them to the desired repentance. Nor is it likely that the success of his spiritual counsel would have been greater had the time been extended. It was only a "short shrift." Thacker on the 4th of June, and Copping on the 6th, died, not indeed as heretics, amid "the glories of

the burning stake," like the martyrs in Queen Mary's reign, but only as felons, their sole felony being that they held and published what is now called Congregationalism. In England, under Queen Elizabeth, Congregationalism was punished as sedition,1

The queen and her counselors judged rightly that the principles of the two books were dangerous to the notion of the royal supremacy in matters of religion, and to the system built upon that notion; for, instead of proposing to amend the system here and there, in the Puritan fashion, and to bring the ecclesiastical establishment of the realm into a better shape, those new principles struck at the root of the tree. If such principles were to prevail-if a church were nothing else than a society of Christian disciples, separated from the world, and voluntarily agreeing to govern themselves by the law of Christ as given in the Holy Scriptures -if churches were to be instituted at Bury St. Edmund's, at Norwich, and at London, by the same right by which churches were first instituted at Antioch, at Corinth, and at Romeif England, with its hierarchy, were not a church at all, but only a kingdom in which Elizabeth was queen-the entire fabric of the National Church was in peril. For that reason it was that John Copping and Elias Thacker were so sternly dealt with. The purpose was to make an example which should deter all men from any thought of independent churches.

Robert Browne was not a martyr. He was not of the stuff that martyrs are made of. The passion that impelled him was the love of agitation. When that passion had partly spent itself, he did what mere agitators often do as they grow older he turned conservative, and betrayed the cause for which he had contended. After about two years in Hol

1 Strype, "Annals of the Reformation," iii., pt. i., 15-17, 186, 187; Bradford, in Young's "Chronicles of the Pilgrims," p. 427; Neal, i., 149–154; Hopkins, "Puritans and Queen Elizabeth," ii., 280-320. Neal calls these two martyrs "ministers of the Brownist persuasion;" but neither Strype nor Bradford speaks of them as ministers.

land, he passed over into Scotland (1584), his flock at Middleburg having been broken up, as might have been expected in view of his imperious and impulsive temper. A pastor of such a temper may be a much better man than Browne was, and yet bring ruin upon a much stronger church than that little society of English exiles could have been. In Scotland, the agitator was as obnoxious to the Presbyterian establishment as he had been to Bishop Freke in his native country. The next year (1585) we find him in England again, presuming on the comparative immunity which he had by virtue of his high connection, and soon renewing his work of agitation. Five years after the martyrdom of Copping and Thacker he was vanquished by the civil disabilities consequent on a sentence of excommunication which had been pronounced against him in a bishop's court for the contempt of not appearing in answer to a citation. Thereupon he "submitted himself to the order and government established" in the Church of England, and was restored to good standing, not only in the church, but in its priesthood. By the influence of his friends at court he obtained "means and help for some ecclesiastical preferment," and in a short time after his submission he received a benefice (1591). This does not imply that he recanted his opinions, or made any profession of repentance for what he had done-it was enough that he submitted. He had not even the desperate self-respect which prompted Judas to hang himself; but, like Benedict Arnold, he took care not to lose the poor reward of his baseness. He was the rector of a parish, and received his tithes; but never preached. By his idle and dissolute life he disgraced his ministry; but, inasmuch as he could not be charged with nonconformity, he retained his living. The quarrelsome temper which had broken up his little church at Middleburg vented itself upon his wife in acts of cruelty, and they could not live together. In a quarrel with the constable of the parish, he took the responsibility of beating that officer. Arraigned before a justice for the unclerical offense, he used such violence of speech

that he was sent to prison for contempt, and there he died at the age of eighty, a miserable and despised old man, but a beneficed minister of the Church of England, and in regular standing. He died in the year 1630, when the Separation which he deserted, and for which Thacker and Copping suffered an ignominious death, had founded a Christian commonwealth in New England. They died in their early manhood; he lived on, and "the days of his years, by reason of strength, were fourscore years;" yet how much better and more blessed was it to die as they died, than to live as he lived!

1 Fuller, "Church History," v., 63-70.

CHAPTER VI.

SEPARATISM BEFORE THE HIGH COMMISSIONERS.

Ir was not so easy as Elizabeth and her prelates had supposed to suppress the new theory of freedom in the church. The idea of "Reformation without tarrying for any," as it survived the hanging of its first confessors, survived also the treachery of their unworthy associate. Only ten years after that hanging there was a bill in Parliament (1593) for a new law against "the Brownists," so called though Browne was no longer one of them; for some new securities were thought necessary against a party that was growing formidable. On that occasion, Sir Walter Raleigh, arguing against the bill -not that he cared for the Brownists, whom he pronounced "worthy to be rooted out of the commonwealth," but because he valued those principles of English liberty which the bill proposed to sacrifice-made a significant statement: "I am afraid," said he," there are near twenty thousand of them in England." Twenty thousand of them in England, only ten years after that hanging at Bury St. Edmund's!

Already the Separation was beginning to be spoken of among the people by another name than Browne's. Henry Barrowe, "à gentleman of a good house" in Norfolk, and a graduate of the University of Cambridge, became, after leaving the university, a member of the legal profession in London, and "was sometime a frequenter of the court" of Queen Elizabeth. Governor Bradford has given us that account of him which was current fifty years later among the Separatist founders of Plymouth, some of whom had been "well acquainted with those that knew him familiarly both before and after his conversion," and one of whom had received information from a servant of his who "tended upon