CHAPTER XII.

THE REBELLION AND THE RESTORATION.

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ND now we leave the peaceful days of the last of the Tudors and the first of the Stuarts, and pass from the consideration of public amusements and learned leisure to the time when the murmurs of war and strife were beginning to be heard.

It was in the year 1642 that the Common Council passed an "Act for the better defence of the City (against the King), by fortifying the same with outworks at divers places." All the passages and ways leading to the City with the exception of four or five were to be shut up. The works were begun with the greatest alacrity, and in a short time an earthen rampart or wall was erected round the Cities of London and Westminster, and Borough of Southwark.

But jealousies were growing up between the Parliament and the Army; the Army was no longer the Servant of the Parliament, but an independent power, and the City sided with the Parliament; and in 1547, when Fairfax was approaching London, orders were sent by Parliament that the Army was not to approach any nearer to the City: they nevertheless continued their advance, on which strong guards were placed round the Cities of London, and Westminster, and the Borough of Southwark. Envoys passed backwards and forwards between the City and the Army, and when the discussion rose high and the Army halted, the Citizens thinking this proceeded from fear, valiantly

proposed to "march out and destroy them;" but when they heard the Army was in full march, their courage failed, and they cried out "treat, treat, treat." Meanwhile, the inhabitants of Southwark made a treaty on their own account, invited Fairfax, and delivered up the Borough to a party sent for that purpose.

But the Parliament at this time wanting money, and the City refusing the loan that was demanded, the Parliament and Army joined together to demolish the ramparts, bastions, and fortifications lately erected, which encircled London, Westminster and Southwark.

It is difficult to decide, apart from all questions of right and wrong, which behaved the most contemptibly of the three parties concerned, the Parliament, the Army or the City. Southwark whatever our opinion may be of the side it took, at any rate behaved with promptitude and common sense in its treaty with Fairfax.

I cannot find much to relate during the time of Cromwell and the Commonwealth; yet Southwark had its Confessors in those times. Peter Heylin, the well-known Carolinian divine and historian, was the original recorder of the ejected Episcopal Clergy in 1642. His book is earlier than the better-known "Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy." The heading to the last chapter of Heylin's "Aerius Redivivus " is as follows:-" A passed Bill of Mortality of the Clergy of London from 1641-1647 with the several casualties of the same, or a brief Martyrology and Catalogue of the Learned, Grave, Religious, and Painful Ministers of the City of London, who have been imprisoned, plundered, and barbarously used, and deprived of all Livelihood for themselves and their Families, for their Constancy to the Protestant Religion Established in this Kingdom, and their Loyalty to their Sovereign." Of those in Southwark he

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mentions "St. Olave's, Dr. Turner sequestered, plundered, fetched up prisoner with a troop of soldiers, and afterwards forced to fly: "St. Saviour's and St. Sepulchre's, Mr. Pigott, the lecturer, turned out: St. Thomas's, Mr. Spencer sequestered and imprisoned: " Walker adds the name of Joseph Draper, Curate of the Church and Hospital. of St. Thomas, Southwark, and the Rector of St. George's, Southwark, name unknown. Both the writers narrate the cruel procedures of the Puritan Triers, etc., and the mockery of the nominal allowances of fifths to these ejected Royalist Clergy, whose places were of course immediately supplied by the Presbyterian and Puritan Ministers of the day.

It was in 1660 that Monk effected the restoration of the King, but as Monk marched from the North, Southwark had no part in the preliminary measures; but when the King was to make his triumphant entry, and there was question of processions, then you may be sure Southwark came to the front, and from Kent, not now rebellious or refractory, but loyal and jubilant, came the thronging. crowds," bringing back their King."

Lady Fanshawe, in her memoirs, begins with the embarkation from Breda, and tells how a hundred fair ships set sail before the wind with "trumpets and all other music," and "by the merciful bounty of God," the King was set safely on shore at Dover, in Kent, upon the twentyfifth of May, 1660. He did not however proceed on his journey till the twenty-ninth, which was his birthday, and then she says so great were the acclamations and numbers of the people, that it reached like one street from Dover to Whitehall."

From Dover to Southwark the advance seems to have been without break. Charles on horseback riding between his two brothers, the Duke of York and the young Duke

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of Gloucester, came slowly over roads strewn with flowers, by conduits running wine, under triumphal arches and through streets hung with tapestry. "There," says Walter Scott, were the citizens in various bands, some arrayed in coats of black velvet with gold chains, some in military suits of cloth of gold, or cloth of silver, followed by all those craftsmen who, having hooted the father from Whitehall, had now come to shout the son into possession of his ancestral palace."

On his progress through Blackheath, he passed that army which so long formidable to England herself, as well as Europe, had been the means of restoring the monarchy which their own hands had destroyed. But at Southwark the procession made the first and only pause of which we read, and the personal welcome from London began in the Borough and St. George's Fields, where he was met by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen. The Mayor delivering the City sword to his Majesty had it returned with the honour of Knighthood, and his Majesty, after thus receiving the homage of the City, rested to partake of some refreshment, which he must have needed after his ride from Dover. A magnificent tent was prepared in St. George's Fields, where he was able to repose for a time. Again he started, and through our streets, richly decorated, he passed over London Bridge, which, strangely enough, is not specially mentioned in any of the accounts that I have seen, and which, I suppose, therefore as being flanked on each side by houses, was only looked upon in in the light of a street. After this he was seven hours passing through the City, from two o'clock till nine. "I stood in the Strand," says Evelyn, and beheld it, and bless'd God. And all this was done without one drop of bloodshed, and by that very army which rebell'd against him;

but it was the Lord's doing, for such a restauration was never mentioned in any history, antient or modern, since the return of the Jews from the Babylonish Captivity: nor so joyful a day and so bright ever seene in this nation, this hapning when to expect or to effect it was past all human policy."

But with Charles's return came the necessity to arrange the relations of Church and State, and I shall scarcely be forgiven if I omit here the sufferings of the Nonconformist Ministers for conscience sake; Black Bartholomew's Day, 1662, or the day on which the Puritan Ministers were displaced from the livings into which they had been intruded, is still remembered by the Nonconformists, who, not many years ago, erected a hall in Farringdon Street in memory of their constancy. The names of the ejected Ministers (who, however, had the option of remaining if they conformed) in Southwark, were Henry Jessy, Rector of St. George the Martyr; John Busoe of St. Thomas's Church; Thomas Wadsworth, born in St. Saviour's Parish, of St. Mary Magdalene's; William Whitaker of Bermondsey, Southwark; Robert Terry, from the same. From St. Olave's, Southwark, Mr. Cooper and Mr. Ralph Venning were ejected. From St. Saviour's, Southwark, John Crodacoll and Stephen Watkins. Messrs. Cobb and Beremar from St. Thomas's. It is curious that Robert Brown, the founder of the Independents, who flourished in Queen Elizabeth's reign, is said in Brayley's History of Surrey, to have been a Schoolmaster at St. Olaves in Southwark, if so, one would suppose that he must have been nearly the first. After being a most violent opponent of the Church, he conformed, and was received into its Communion about the year 1590, and preferred to the Rectory of a Church near Thrapstone, in Northamptonshire, where, however, he