44 LIFE OF RICHARD BAXTER. commission, star chamber, and other arbitrary courts were soon afterwards abolished. Not many months elapsed before the bish- ops were deprived of their seats in the house of lords. Thus one encroachment after another was made on the royal power, the king, meanwhile, as formerly, pursuing no uniform course of con- duct, but acting now from fear, and now from pride or anger, as one passion or another was excited by present circumstances. Mutual distrust and irritation proceeded ; every preparation was gradually made, by both parties, for an appeal to arms; and at last, on the 22d of August, 1642, the king set up his standard, and civil war was begun. But we have run before our Narrative of Baxter's personal his- tory. One of the measures of reform undertaken by the parlia- ment, was the appointment of a committee to receive petitions and complaints against scandalous clergymen. As soon as this was known, petitions were brought forward from all quarters. At a later period, ministers were removed by parliament for political of- fenses ; but at the time now referred to, noencouragement was giv- en for complaints against any minister except for insufficiency, false doctrine, illegal innovations, or scandal. The chairmanofthis com- mittee published the names of a hundred of these ministers, with their places and the articles proved against them, "where," says Baxter, " so much ignorance, insufficiency, drunkenness, filthiness, etc., was charged upon them, that many moderate men could have wished that their nakedness had been rather hid, and not exposed to the world's derision."* The inhabitants of Kidderminster in Worcestershire, following the example of other towns, prepared a petition against their min- isters, the vicar and his two curates, all of whom were decidedly unqualified for the sacred office. The vicar, whose name was Dance, foreseeing how such a petition in relation to him would ter- minate, proposed a compromise with the people. By the media- tion of Sir Henry Herbert, Baxter's old patron at Whitehall, then member of parliament, an agreement was finally made that the vicar should dismiss the curate who assisted him in the town, and should allow sixty pounds yearly to such preacher as a committee of fourteen, named by the complainants, should choose. The min- ister thus elected was not to be hindered from preaching at any time ; and the vicar was to read the common prayer, as usual, and to do whatever else was to be ,done. So the petition was with- drawn, and the vicar kept his place, which, after the allowance stipulated for a preacher, was still worth two hundred pounds per annum. *Narrative, Part I. p. 19.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=