Robert Morrison and the Protestant Plan for China

Chapter 1. The Birth of British Evangelicalism and the Disappointment of the Earliest LMS Missions

This story begins in 1660 with the restoration of the House of Stuart, commenced by Parliament’s offering of the throne to an exiled Charles II and the consequent conclusion of the period of parliamentary and military rule known as the English Interregnum. At this stage in its history, England was recovering from involvement in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), as well as from three consecutive ‘civil wars’ (1642–46, 1648–49, 1649–51), which were collectively referred to as the English Civil War (despite the wars’ inclusions of clashes with and civil wars within other countries, notably Scotland and Ireland). Moreover, it found its political agenda affected by a rivalry that persisted between the High Church and Puritanism, which itself was prejudiced by an enduring power competition between the crown and Parliament. Giving a clear advantage to the orthodox Anglicans, in the next year’s May 1661 Parliamentary election the High Church party gained an overwhelming majority of seats.1 Equipped with the ability to manipulate policymaking, this High Church-dominated Parliament, known as the Cavalier Parliament, began developing a schema that would give the Church of England much desired religious and social dominance.2 Although the Cavalier Parliament began heavily royalist, it became increasingly critical of Charles II particularly in regards to his treatments of religious matters.3 Charles II, in an attempt to strengthen the reinstatement of the monarchy by addressing the theological divisions thought responsible for the hostile ousting of his father,4 concerned himself with uniting church and state by fusing England’s disparate denominations of Protestantism, such as Puritanism and Anglicanism, into one government-controlled, national church. The High Church Members of Parliament, however, seeking revenge for the Puritan Chapter 1 The Birth of British Evangelicalism and the Disappointment of the Earliest LMS Missions 16 Robert Morrison and the Protestant Plan for China advantages gained during the English Interregnum (which came at the expense of High Church disadvantages),5 resisted any such form of friendly or united churchmanship with their Christian rivals. Subsequently, they silenced the diplomatic efforts of Charles II by taking advantage of their parliamentary powers to issue a series of discriminatory penal laws aimed towards eliminating religious practices not falling under the jurisdiction of the High Church. Together these laws formed a dramatic punitive package (named the ‘Clarendon Code’ by earlier historians) that included the Corporation Act (1661), the Act of Uniformity (1662), the Conventicle Act (1664) and the Five-Mile Act (1665)—along with a later, updated (read stricter) 1670 version of the Conventicle Act.6 To summarise, these particular penal laws, known to the Dissenters of the age as ‘the five-thonged whip’,7 required public office holders to take the Anglican sacrament and to renounce the Solemn League and Covenant;8 called for all ministers, lecturers, and schoolmasters to declare their ‘unfeigned assent and consent to everything in the Book of Common Prayer’;9 and forbade conventicles (gatherings for unauthorised public worship) of more than five people over the age of sixteen who were not members of the same household. Moreover, the acts cut the ties between Nonconformist leaders and their previous pastorates by imposing penalties upon any Dissenters who travelled or resided within five miles of their former locale of ministry, or any corporate town for that matter.10 For their part, England’s two universities, Oxford and Cambridge, showed their support for the Cavalier Parliament’s discriminatory laws and voluntarily developed their own statutes to exclude dissenting students from the environment of higher education.11 As if these restrictions did not suffice, there were additional penalties directed towards Nonconformity passed during the late seventeenth century12 that further limited and alienated the religious dissidents in England. Altogether, the result of the punitive package was to exclude Dissenters from holding public office, to prevent dissenting congregations from gathering, and to expel over 2,000 clergy (including one-third of London’s ministers), schoolmasters , and university lecturers. Yet while Parliament’s ultimate aim was to dissolve Dissent in England altogether, for the most part Nonconformists refused to submit to the proscriptions and several of the ministers forced to desert their pulpits fled to secluded countryside spots where they could sermonise and educate in secrecy. Predominantly, their congregations followed them, forming a The Birth of British Evangelicalism and the Disappointment of the Earliest LMS Missions 17 chain of underground field assemblies, or unofficial, highly illegal conventicles.13...