Cornish Characters and Strange Events. Baring-Gould Sabine

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СКАЧАТЬ in his Diary, under date 17th January, 1648-9, says: "I heard the rebel Peters invite the rebel powers met in the Painted Chamber to destroy his Majesty." Bishop Burnet says: "That he (Peters) had been outrageous in pressing the King's death with the cruelty and rudeness of an inquisitor."

      Prynne, one of the secluded members, published "A brief memento to the present unparliamentary junto, touching their present intentions and proceedings to depose and execute Charles Stuart, their lawful King of England."

      The officers now decided to gain the approval of the ministers – Presbyterian – in London, or at least persuade them to remain neutral.

      Hugh Peters was selected for the purpose, and he went among them, but all his efforts were fruitless. They declared unanimously for the release of the King. He then invited several of them, Calamy, Whitaker, Sedgwick, etc., to a conference with some of the officers; but instead of attending, the ministers assembled in Sion College and drew up "A serious and faithful representation of the judgment of the ministers of the Gospel within the province of London," dated 18th January, 1648-9. In this they protested against the coercive measures adopted toward the Parliament, and bade them beware of proceeding to extremities. "Examine your consciences, if any number of persons of different principles from yourselves had invaded the rights of Parliament, imprisoned the King, and carried him about from place to place, and attempted the dissolution of the whole government, whether you would not have charged them with the highest crimes."

      This was subscribed by forty-seven ministers.

      A second paper, "A vindication of the London ministers from the unjust aspersions … as if they had promoted the bringing of the King to capital punishment," appeared shortly after, signed by fifty-seven ministers.

      Even the Independent preachers shrank from approving the proceedings of the council of officers in the trial of the King, with the exception of Hugh Peters and John Goodwin. Some of the Independent ministers in the country joined the Presbyterians in protesting against them.

      But it was all in vain. The King was tried and sentenced to death, and executed on 30th January, 1649. Rumour had it that the masked executioner was none other than Peters himself. This he denied, asserting that on the day of the King's death he was ill in bed. He had certainly been about and preaching not many days before.

      Who the executioner was, was never discovered, and Peters was not charged as such when tried for his life in 1660.

      In Epulæ Thyestæ, printed in 1649, Peters is accused of having been the executioner of King Charles: —

      There's Peters, the Denyer, (nay 'tis sad)

      He that, disguised, cut off his Master's head;

      That godly pigeon of Apostacy

      Does buz about his Ante-Monarchy,

      His scaffold Doctrines.

      But there was an element of kindness in Hugh Peters that induced him to do gracious acts even to those whom he hated. Whitelocke assures us that "at a conference between him (Peters) and the King, the King desired one of his own chaplains might be permitted to come to him" on the occasion of his execution; he had refused the ministrations of the Presbyterian divines, "and thereupon the Bishop of London was ordered to go to his Majesty."

      On a former occasion a message from the Queen was allowed to be transmitted to the King through the instrumentality of Peters.

      In his letter to his daughter Peters says: "I had access to the King – he used me civilly, I, in requital, offered my poor thoughts three times for his safety." It was an impertinence in the man to approach the King, when he had stirred up the army to demand his death, and had raced about London endeavouring to get the approval of the sentence from the ministers. Although we cannot believe that Hugh Peters was the executioner of Charles, yet he cannot be acquitted of being a regicide, on the same principle as the trumpeter in the fable was condemned to be hanged. His plea that he had not drawn a sword in the battle was not held to justify him – he had sounded the charge and summoned to the battle.

      Peters was one of the Triers appointed by Cromwell to test the parochial clergy, and to eject from their livings such as did not approve themselves to their judgment as fitting pastors to the flock either by their morals or theological opinions.

      Every parishioner who bore a grudge against his pastor was invited to lay his grievances before the Grand Committee. Lord Clarendon says: "Petitions presented by many parishioners against their pastors, with articles of their misdemeanours and behaviours … were read with great delight and promptly referred to the Committee about Religion." The matter of these accusations was for the most part, as Clarendon informs us, "bowing at the name of Jesus, and obliging the communicants to the altar, i.e. to the rails which enclosed the Communion table, to receive the sacrament." What the Puritans desired was that the minister should walk about the church distributing to the people in the pews. The observance of all holy days except Sundays had already been forbidden. A priest who said service on Christmas Day or Good Friday was certain of deprivation. But the great question put to each rector or vicar was, "whether he had any experience of a work of grace" in his heart, and the answer to this determined whether he should be allowed to hold his cure or be thrust out, apart from all question of moral fitness. That there were a host of lukewarm, indifferent men in the ministry, caring little for religion and knowing little, without fixed convictions, cannot be wondered at, after the swaying of the pendulum of belief during the last reigns, and these would be precisely the men who would be able volubly to assert their experience of divine grace, and abandon doctrines they never sincerely held and ceremonies about which they cared nothing. There were vicars of Bray everywhere.

      Butler hits off the work of the Triers in Hudibras: —

      Whose business is, by cunning sight,

      To cast a figure for men's light;

      To find in lines of Beard and Face

      The Physiognomy of Grace;

      And by the Sound and Twang of Nose,

      If all the sound within disclose;

      Free from a crack or flaw of sinning,

      As men try pipkins by the ringing.

      Peters was next appointed a commissioner for the amending of the laws, though he had no knowledge of law. He said himself, in his Legacy: "When I was a trier of others, I went to hear and gain experience, rather than to judge; when I was called to mend laws, I rather was there to pray than to mend laws." Whitelocke says: "I was often advised with by some of this committee, and none of them was more active in this business than Mr. Hugh Peters, the minister, who understood little of the law, but was very opinionative, and would frequently mention some proceedings of law in Holland, wherein he was altogether mistaken."

      Peters was chaplain to the Protector, and certainly in one way or another made a good deal of money. Dr. Barwick in his Life says:5 "The wild prophecies uttered by his (Hugh Peters') impure mouth were still received by the people with the same veneration as if they had been oracles; though he was known to be infamous for more than one kind of wickedness. A fact which Milton himself did not dare to deny when he purposely wrote his Apology, for this very end, to defend even by name, as far as possible, the very blackest of the conspirators, and Hugh Peters among the chief of them, who were by name accused of manifest impieties by their adversaries." Bishop Burnet says as well: "He was a very vicious man."

      Peters by his wife – his second wife, Deliverance, the widow of a Mr. Sheffield – became the father of the Elizabeth Peters to whom he addressed his Dying Father's Last Legacy.

      The Dutch having been disconcerted by the defeats of their fleets by Admiral Blake, and the messengers they had sent to England having СКАЧАТЬ