The Works of Thomas Carlyle/Volume 6/Letter 3

by Thomas Carlyle

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LETTER III

TO MY LOVING FRIEND MR. WILLINGHAM, AT HIS HOUSE IN SWITHIN’S LANE: THESE

“London, February 1640.”^[1]

Sir,—I desire you to send me the Reasons of the Scots to enforce their desire of Uniformity in Religion, expressed in their 8th Article; I mean that which I had before of you. I would peruse it against we fall upon that Debate, which will be speedily. Yours,

OLIVER CROMWELL.^[2]

There is a great quantity of intricate investigation requisite to date this small undated Note, and make it entirely transparent! The Scotch Treaty, begun at Ripon, is going on,—never ended: the agitation about abolishing Bishops has just begun, in the House and out of it.

On Friday 11th December 1640, the Londoners present their celebrated ‘Petition,’ signed by 15,000 hands, craving to have Bishops and their Ceremonies radically reformed. Then on Saturday 23d January 1640-1, comes the still more celebrated ‘Petition and Remonstrance from 700 Ministers of the Church of England,’^[3] to the like effect. Upon which Documents, especially upon the latter, ensue strenuous debatings,^[4] ensues a ‘Committee of Twenty-four’; a Bill to abolish Superstition and Idolatry; and, in a week or two, a Bill to take away the Bishops’ Votes in Parliament: Bills recommended by the said Committee. A diligent Committee; which heard much evidence, and theological debating, from Dr. Burgess and others. Their Bishops Bill, not without hot arguing, passed through the Commons; was rejected by the Lords;—took effect, however, in a much heavier shape, within year and day. Young Sir Ralph Varney, son of Edmund the Standard-bearer, has preserved very careful Notes of the theological revelations and profound arguments, heard in this Committee from Dr. Burgess and others; intensely interesting at that time to all ingenuous young gentlemen; a mere torpor now to all persons.

In fact, the whole world, as we perceive, in this Spring of 1641, is getting on fire with episcopal, anti-episcopal emotion; and the Scotch Commissioners, with their Desire of Uniformity, are naturally the centre of the latter. Bishop Hall, Smectymnuus, and one Mr. Milton ‘near St. Bride’s Church,’ are all getting their Pamphlets ready.—The assiduous contemporary individual who collected the huge stock of loose Printing now known as King’s Pamphlets in the British Museum, usually writes the date on the title-page of each; but has, with a curious infelicity, omitted it in the case of Milton’s Pamphlets, which accordingly remain undateable except approximately.

The exact copy of the Scotch Demands towards a Treaty I have not yet met with, though doubtless it is in print amid the unsorted Rubbish-Mountains of the British Museum. Notices of it are to be seen in Baillie, also in Rushworth.^[5] The first Seven Articles relate to secularities; payment of damages; punishment of incendiaries, and so forth: the Seventh is the ‘recalling’ of the King’s Proclamations against the Scots. The Eighth, ‘anent a solid peace betwixt the Nations,’ involves this matter of Uniformity in Religion, and therefore is of weightier moment. Baillie says: ‘For the Eighth great Demand some days were spent in preparation.’ The Lords would have made no difficulty about dismantling Berwick and Carlisle, or such-like; but finding that the other points of this Eighth Article were to involve the permanent relations of England, they delayed. ‘We expect it this very day,’ says Baillie (28th February 1640-1). Oliver Cromwell also expects it this very day, or ‘speedily,‘—and therefore writes to Mr Willingham for a sight of the Documents again.

Whoever wishes to trace the emergence, re-emergence, slow ambiguous progress and dim issue of this ‘Eighth Article, may consult the opaque but authentic Commons Journals, and strive to elucidate the same by poor old brown Pamphlets, in the places cited below.^[6] It was not finally voted in the affirmative till the middle of May; and then still it was far from being ended. It ended, properly, in the Summoning of a ‘Westminster Assembly of Divines,’ To ascertain for us how ‘the two Nations’ may best attain to ‘Uniformity of Religion.’

This ‘Mr. Willingham my loving friend,’ of whom I have found no other vestige anywhere in Nature, is presumably a London Puritan concerned in the London Petition and other such matters, to whom the Member for Cambridge, a man of known zeal, good connexion, and growing weight, is worth convincing.

Oliver St. John the Shipmoney Lawyer, now Member for Totness, has lately been made Solicitor-General; on the 2d of February 1640-1, D’Ewes says of him, ‘newly created’;^[7] a date worth attending to. Strafford’s Trial is coming on; to begin on the 22d of March: Strafford and Laud are safe in the Tower long since; Finch and Windebank, and other Delinquents in high places, have fled rapidly beyond seas.

1. The words within double commas, here as always in the Text of Cromwell’s Letters, are mine, not his; the date in this instance is conjectural or inferential.
2. Harris, p. 517; Sloane Mss. no. 2035, f. 126.
3. Commons Journals, ii. 72.
4. Ibid. ii. 81; 8th and 9th of February. See Baillie’s Letters, i. 302; and Rushworth, iv. 93 and 174.
5. Baillie, i. 297, and antea et postea; Rushworth, iv. 166.
6. Commons Journals, ii, 84, 85; Diurnal Occurrences in Parliament (Printed for William Cooke, London, 1641,—often erroneous as to the day), 10th February, 7th March, 15th May.
7. Sir Simond D’Ewes’s Notes of the Long Parliament (Harleian Mss., nos. 162-6), fol. 189 a; p. 156 of Transcript penes me.