The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut | Page 4

had received before their advent. It is to be recalled that Henry VIII
substituted for submission to the Pope submission to himself as head of
a church essentially Romish in ritual, teaching, and authority over his
subjects. The religious reformation, as such, came later and by slow
evolution through the gradual awakening of the moral and spiritual
perceptions of the masses. It came very slowly notwithstanding the fact
that the first definite and systematic opposition to the abuses and
assumptions of the clergy had arisen long before Henry's reign. As
early as 1382, the itinerant preachers, sent out by Wyckliff, were
complained of by the clergy and magistrates as teachers of
insubordinate and dangerous doctrines. Thenceforward, outcroppings
of dissatisfaction with the clergy appear from time to time both in
English life and literature. This dissatisfaction was silenced by various
acts of Parliament which were passed to enforce conformity and to
punish heresy. Their character and intent were the same whether the
head of the church wore the papal tiara or the English crown. Two
hundred years after Wyckliff, in 1582, laws were still fulminated
against "divers false and perverse people of certain new sects," for
Protestant England would support but one form of religion as the moral
prop of the state. She regarded all innovations as questionable, or
wholly evil, and their authors as dangerous men. Chief among the latter
was Robert Browne. But before Browne's advent and in the days of
Henry the Eighth, there had been a large, respectable, and steadily

increasing party whose desire was to remain within the English church,
but to purify it from superstitious rites and practices, such as penances,
pilgrimages, forced oblations, and votive offerings. They wished also to
free the ritual from many customs inherited from the days of Rome's
supremacy. It was in this party that the leaven of Protestantism had
been working. Luther and Henry, be it remembered, had died within a
year of each other. Under the feeble rule of Edward the Sixth, the
English reform movement gained rapidly, and, in 1550, upon the
refusal of Bishop Hooper to be consecrated in the usual Romish
vestments, it began to crystallize in two forms, Separatism and
Puritanism. [c] In spite of much opposition, the teachings of Luther,
Calvin, and other Continental reformers took root in England, and
interested men of widely different classes. They stirred to new activity
the scattered and persecuted groups, that, from time to time, had met in
secret in London and elsewhere to read the Scriptures and to worship
with their elected leaders in some simpler form of service than that
prescribed by law. Under Mary's persecution, these Separatists
increased, and with other Protestants swelled the roll of martyrs. In her
severity, the Queen also drove into exile many able and learned men,
who sought shelter in Geneva, Zurich, Basle, and Frankfort, where they
were hospitably entertained. Upon their return, there was a marked
increase in the Calvinistic tone both of preaching and teaching in the
English church and in the university lecture rooms, especially those of
Cambridge. Among the most influential teachers was Thomas
Cartwright, [d] in 1560-1562, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at
Cambridge. While having no sympathy with the nonconformist or
Separatist of his day, Cartwright accepted the polity and creed of
Calvin in its severer form. He became junior-dean of St. John's,
major-fellow of Trinity, and a member of the governing-board. In 1565
he went to Ireland to escape the heated controversy of the period which
centred in the "Vestiarian" movement. He was recalled in 1569 to his
former professorship, and in September, 1571, was forced out of it
because, when controversy changed from vestments to polity, he took
extreme views of church discipline and repudiated episcopal
government. [e] While Cartwright was very pronounced in his views,
his desire at first was that the changes in church polity should be
brought about by the united action of the Crown and Parliament. Such

had been the method of introducing changes under the three sovereigns,
Henry, Mary, and Elizabeth. With this brief summary of the reform
movements among the masses and in the universities covering the years
until Cartwright, through the influence of the ritualistic church party,
was expelled from Cambridge, and Robert Browne, as a student there,
came under the strong Puritan influence of the university, we pass to a
consideration of Brownism.
Robert Browne was graduated from Cambridge in 1572, the year after
Cartwright's expulsion. The next three years he taught in London and
"wholly bent himself to search and find out the matters of the church:
as to how it was guided and ordered, and what abuses there were in the
ecclesiastical government then used." [2] When the plague broke out in
London, Browne went to Cambridge. There, he refused to accept the