Above: the 50 locations of 315 public executions during King James II's 'Bloody Assizes', August - December 1685.
................
This article, in the Baptist Quarterly, January 1930 edition, is worth a look. Baptists were one of the 'non-conformist' denominations in England who were persecuted under the 'absolute monarch' regimes of Charles II and then James II, from 1661-1688. G.M. Trevelyan, in his England Under the Stuarts (1904; online here), described these as 'The Reigns of Terror'.
State power was unleashed upon the civilian populations who believed that no King was head of the church. Persecuting 'Clarendon Code' laws targeted them. 2000 non-conformist ministers ejected in England alone. John James was executed. Benjamin Keach persecuted. John Bunyan imprisoned. Isaac Watts senior* imprisoned twice. Richard Baxter put on trial... men whose writings are revered in theological circles today, but whose sufferings are almost forgotten.
Some Baptists turned their farming implements into weapons and joined the Duke of Monmouth's Rebellion of summer 1685, forging their ploughshares into swords. The rebellion failed.
The lists of the 850 'rebels' who were sold as slaves, and of the 315 more who were publicly executed, still exist. The Baptist Quarterly article picks up on those sources –
These lists deserve close attention from the secretaries of the Somerset and Dorset Baptist churches, which contributed scores, if not hundreds, to the ranks of the insurgents.
The Lyme Regis church was foremost, and it is not surprising to see the pastor, Sampson Lark, with John Holloway, the tobacconist, amongst the earliest who paid forfeit.
Other Dorset names well known in Baptist circles are Bevis, Collier, Cox, Elliot, Sprake, Waldron. Colonel Abraham Holmes and Will Hewling were Baptist, but had landed with Monmouth.
Benjamin Hewling was convicted at Taunton; the story is well known how his grandfather, (William) Kiffin of London interceded but could only obtain that he should not be quartered, but buried whole...
The grave losses sustained by our churches in Somerset and Dorset, still affected them four years later, and so when the churches of all England were represented at London in 1689, the West did not give its usual lead, which it only recovered after ten years. Some real harm was done, the effects of which persisted for nearly a century.
We commend to some Baptist antiquary in the Taunton district, that he take the official lists in the Calendar of State Papers, and try to trace his spiritual ancestors who fought against James as their fathers against his father.
Above: a photo I took of Lyme Regis Baptist Church back in 2016. Local pastor, Sampson Larke, was one of twelve who were hanged, drawn and quartered on the beach on 12 September 1685; another of them was William Hewling referred to above. When visiting Lyme Regis earlier this year I went to the churchyard of St Michael the Archangel Parish Church, where William Hewling's remains had been buried. His gravestone had been taken away some time in the early 1900s - see previous post here. The significantly-named Monmouth Street is directly opposite the church.
...........................
In November 1688 King James II was of course overthrown by a European-wide alliance headed by William, Prince of Orange, who, in 1689, with his wife Queen Mary II jointly signed into law a new Bill of Rights for the people.
From 3rd - 11th "of the seventh month" of 1689 (back then the seventh month of the year was not July, but September) an assembly of 37 Baptist pastors gathered in London, and published the 1689 Baptist Confession. This dedicated website contains the full text, and also lists all of the local pastors who were signatories.
• Those who were from the ravaged south west - Samuel Buttall of Plymouth, William Phipps of Exeter, John Ball of Tiverton (where the local congregational pastor was beheaded, and his head then displayed on the market cross), James Hitt of Dalwood, Thomas Winnel of Taunton, Toby Willes of Bridgwater, Andrew Gifford of Bristol and James Webb of Devizes - must have brought horrific tales to the liberated capital.
• Among the 37 was William Kiffin, the pastor of Devonshire Square Baptist Church in London, whose nephews William and Benjamin Hewling had been publicly executed at Lyme Regis and Taunton respectively. Decades before, Kiffin had been one of the authors of the 1644 Baptist Confession of Faith. The 1823 edition of Remarkable passages in the life of William Kiffin is online here.
...........................
* The hymnwriter Isaac Watts (1674-1748), perhaps reflecting on his Southampton childhood memory of the persecutions under Charles II and James II (men were hanged drawn and quartered at Wareham in 1685 - see previous post here), wrote these words:
“Must I be carried to the skies, On flowery beds of ease?
While others fought to win their prize, And sailed through bloody seas?”
Above: The 1689 Baptist Confession was reprinted in the USA, by Benjamin Franklin in 1743 and later reprinted by John Dunlap in 1773. They would of course collaborate in the publishing of the Declaration of Independence on 4th July 1776.
It's almost a century since that Baptist Quarterly article highlighted the need for further research, perhaps that still needs to be done.
0 comments:
Post a Comment