CHAPTER V.

1646-1660.

Baxter resumes his Labours at Kidderminster-His account of Public Affairs till the Death of Charles I.-His conduct while in Kidderminster towards Parliament-Towards the Royal Party-His Ministry at Kidderminster-His Employments-His Success-His Advantages-Remarks on the style of his preaching-His public and private exertions-Their lasting effects.

In the fourth chapter, a full account is given of the views and conduct of Baxter while he was connected with the victorious army of the Commonwealth. His exertions to promote its spiritual interests, were indefatigable and disinterested. With the most patriotic principles and aims, he devoted himself to counteract, what he considered the factious and sectarian dispositions of the soldiers and their leaders; while he experienced nothing but sorrow and disappointment as the fruit of his labours. His bodily health, always feeble and broken, at length sunk under the pressure of his circumstances, and he was compelled reluctantly to retire from the stormy atmosphere of a camp to the calmer region of a pastoral cure.

The preceding chapter details the origin, character, and influence, of the principal and the minor religious parties which made a figure during the civil wars, or enjoyed an ephemeral notoriety during the Commonwealth. To all that concerned both the civil and religious interests of his country, Baxter was powerfully alive. He had the soul of a patriot as well as of a Christian; and often was he ready to weep tears of blood over the civil confusion and the religious distractions of his country. Yet were these halcyon days, in regard to the enjoyment of religious privileges, compared with those which preceded and followed them.

After various digressions he thus resumes his personal narative: "I have related how after my bleeding a gallon of blood by the nose, that I was left weak at Sir Thomas Rous's house, at RousLench, where I was taken up with daily medicines to prevent a dropsy; and being conscious that my time had not been improved

to the service of God as I desired it had been, I put up many an earnest prayer, that God would restore me, and use me more successfully in his work. Blessed be that mercy which heard my groans in the day of my distress; which wrought my deliverance when men and means failed, and gave me opportunity to celebrate his praise.

"Whilst I continued there, weak and unable to preach, the people of Kidderminster had again renewed their articles against their old vicar and his curate. Upon trial of the cause, the committee sequestered the place, but put no one into it; and placed the profits in the hands of divers of the inhabitants, to pay a preacher till it were disposed of. These persons sent to me and desired me to take it, in case I were again enabled to preach; which I flatly refused, and told them I would take only the lecture which, by the vicar's own consent and bond, I held before. Hereupon they sought Mr. Brumskill and others to accept the place, but could not meet with any one to their minds: they, therefore, chose Mr. Richard Serjeant to officiate, reserving the vicarage for some one that was fitter.

"When I was able, after about five months' confinement, to go abroad, I went to Kidderminster, where I found only Mr. Serjeant in possession; and the people again vehemently urged me to take the vicarage. This I declined; but got the magistrates and burgesses together into the townhall, and told them, that though I had been offered many hundred pounds per annum elsewhere, I was willing to continue with them in my old lecturer's place, which I had before the wars, expecting they would make the maintenance a hundred pounds a year, and a house; and if they would promise to submit to that doctrine of Christ, which as his minister I should deliver to them, I would not leave them. That this maintenance should neither come out of their own purses, nor any more of it out of the tithes, save the sixty pounds which the vicar had before bound himself to pay, I undertook to procure an augmentation for Milton (a chapel in the parish) of forty pounds per annum. This I afterwards did; and so the sixty pounds and that forty pounds were to be my part, and the rest I should have nothing to do with. The covenant was drawn up between us in articles, and subscribed; in which I disclaimed the vicarage and pastoral charge of the parish, and only undertook the lecture.

"Thus the sequestration continued in the hands of the townsmen, as aforesaid, who gathered the tithes and paid me (not a

hundred as they promised) but eighty pounds per annum, or ninety at most, and house-rent for a few rooms at the top of another man's house, which was all I had at Kidderminster. The rest they gave to Mr. Serjeant, and about forty pounds per annum to the old vicar; six pounds per annum to the king and lord for rents, and a few other charges.

"Beside this ignorant vicar, there was a chapel in the parish, where was an old curate as ignorant as he, that had long lived upon ten pounds a year and the fees of celebrating unlawful marriages. He was also a drunkard and a railer, and the scorn of the country. I knew not how to keep him from reading, though I judged it a sin to tolerate him in any sacred office. I got an augmentation for the place, and an honest preacher to instruct them, and let this scandalous fellow keep his former stipend of ten pounds for nothing; yet could never keep him from forcing himself upon the people to read, nor from celebrating unlawful marriages, till a little before death did call him to his account. I have examined him about the familiar points of religion, and he could not say half so much to me as I have heard a child say.

"These two in this parish were not all in one of the next parishes called The Rock,' there were two chapels, where the poor ignorant curate of one got his living by cutting faggots, and the other by making ropes. Their abilities being answerable to their studies and employments."

Such were the circumstances in which Baxter resumed his labours in Kidderminster. He was the man of the people's choice, and enjoyed his right to the vicarage of the parish, had he been disposed to avail himself of it by the sequestration of the parliamentary commissioners. It is true he had no legal episcopal title; and of this his enemies took advantage another day; but it is very certain he had no hand in ejecting the former incompetent incumbent, or in forcing himself upon the people as his successor. The appointment of the existing Government therefore, or of a body acting under its sanction, was sufficient authority to justify his taking possession of the cure, and to support his complaint of unjust treatment when subsequently refused liberty to preach in the parish by Bishop Morley. That money was not Baxter's object, is evident from the nature of his engagement; and from his afterwards offering to continue his labours gratis, if he might only be permitted to Life, part i. pp. 79, 80.

preach and live among the people, no doubt can be entertained' of his disinterested love to the work of Christ.

Before proceeding to state the nature and results of his ministry in the place where he was honoured by God to effect so much good, it will be proper, for the sake of connecting the public events of the times, to advert to some important occurrences which took place immediately after he left the army, and during the earlier period of his second residence in Kidderminster. Leaving, for a little, the narrative of his personal affairs, he thus proceeds:

"I must now look back to the course and affairs of the king; who, after the siege of Oxford, having no army left, and knowing that the Scots had more loyalty and stability in their principles than the sectaries, resolved to cast himself upon them, and so escaped to their army in the North. The Scots were very much troubled at this honour that was cast upon them, for they knew not what to do with the king. To send him back to the English parliament, seemed unfaithfulness, when he had cast himself upon them; to keep him, they knew would divide the kingdoms, and draw a war upon themselves from England, which they knew they were now unable to sustain. They kept him, therefore, awhile among them with honourable entertainment, till the parliament sent for him; and they saw that the sectaries and the army were glad of it, as an occasion to make them odious, and to invade their land. Thus the terror of the conquering army made them deliver him to the parliament's commissioners upon two conditions: 1. That they should promise to preserve his person in safety and honour, according to the duty which they owed him by their allegiance. 2. That they should presently pay the Scots army one half what was due to them for their service, which had been long unpaid.1

Hereupon the king being delivered to the parliament, they

h The treaty for the payment of the Scottish arrears, and that for the delivering up of the king, were quite distinct in themselves, though they proceeded together. Baxter is also mistaken when he says, the king was given up on the two conditions, which he specifies. He was delivered up without any conditions. The objects of the English Parliament, and of the Scottish Parliament, were the same; the covenant and the propositions. The king's life could not be supposed to be in danger, but from such a concussion of party, and such an ascendancy of persons totally different from those with whom the negotiation was going on, as would have rendered all conditions nugatory. In fact, the life of the king, at this time, was safer among the English than among the Scots; some of whom had conceived the idea of bringing him to the scaf fold for his obstinate refusal to agree to the terms of the covenant.-Brodie, iv. 74; Godwin, ii. 257.

appointed Colonel Richard Greaves, Major-General Richard Brown, with others, to be his attendants, and desired him to abide awhile at Holmby House, in Northamptonshire. While he was here, the army was hatching their conspiracy; and, on the sudden, one Cornet Joyce, with a party of soldiers, fetched away the king, notwithstanding the parliament's order for his security. This was done as if it had been against Cromwell's will, and without any order or consent of theirs; but so far was Joyce from losing his head for such a treason, that it proved the means of his preferment ; and so far was Cromwell and his soldiers from returning the king in safety, that they detained him among them and kept him with them, till they came to Hampton Court, and there they lodged him under the guard of Colonel Whalley, the army quartering all about him. While he was here, the mutable hypocrites pretended an extraordinary care of the king's honour, liberty, safety, and conscience. They blamed the austerity of the parliament, who had denied him the attendance of his own chaplains; and of his friends in whom he took most pleasure. They gave liberty to his friends and chaplains to come to him; and pretended that they would save him from the incivilities of the parliament and the Presbyterians.

"Whether this was while they tried what terms they could make with him for themselves, or while they acted any other part, it is certain that the king's old adherents began to extol the army, and to speak against the Presbyterians more distastefully than before. When the parliament offered the king propositions for concord, which Vane's faction made as high and unreasonable as they could, that they might come to nothing,' the army, forsooth, offered him proposals of their own, which the king liked better: but which of them to treat with he did not

i Charles was well pleased to accompany Joyce, and afterwards refused to return at the command of Fairfax. He was, in fact, glad to be out of the hands of the Presbyterians.-Godwin, ii. p. 320. The great object of seizing the king, was to prevent a coalition between him and the Presbyterian party. * It was the mutable hypocrisy of Charles, rather than of Cromwell, that frustrated every amicable arrangement. Had he been but steady to any one scheme of moderate policy, he would have lost neither his throne nor his life. His scheme, on all occasions, was to make the best bargain he could, till he got his enemies into his hands, when it was his determination to destroy them. Unfortunately for him they discovered this, and acted accordingly.

I The defeat of an adjustment between Charles and his Parliament, at this time, was owing to Hollis, and not to Vane and his party. See Brodie's History of the British Empire,' vol. iv. pp. 96, 100.