NONCONFORMITY is the term employed to designate Protestant dissent from the Church of England. It was in the reign of Edward VI. that the English reformed church first received a definite constitution. During the time of Henry VIII. it remained in a great measure unsettled, and was subject to continual variation, according to the caprice of the king. As organised by Edward, while Calvinistic in its creed, it was Episcopalian in its government, and retained in its worship many of those forms and observances which had been introduced in the days of Roman Catholic ascendancy. In the first of these par iticulars it resembled and in the last two it differed from the Genevan church. During the temporary restoration of the Roman Catholic faith under the administration of Philip and Mary, great numbers of the persecuted disciples of the reformed faith sought refuge in France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and other parts of the Continent. Of those who fled to Germany, some observed the ecclesiastical order ordained by Edward ; others, not without warm disputes with their brethren, which had their commencement at Frankfort, adopted the Swiss mode of worship, preferring it as more simple, and more agreeable to Scripture and primitive usage. Those who composed this latter class were called Nonconformists. The distinction has been permanent, and the name has been perpetuated. Queen Elizabeth's accession to the throne, in 1558, opened the way for the return of the exiles to the land of their fathers. It was natural for each of the parties of which they consisted, to advocate at home the systems of worship to which they had been respectively attached while abroad; and the controversy, which had been agitated by them in a foreign country, immediately became a matter of contention with the great body of Protestants in their own. It suited neither the views nor inclinations of the illustrious princess who then held the sceptre to realise the wishes of the Noncon formists, or Puritans, as they began to be called, by giving her sanction to the opinions which they maintained, and assenting to the demands which they made. The plain and unostentatious method of religious service which they recommended did not accord with that love of show and pomp for which she was remarkable ; and the policy of the early part of her reign, in which she was supported by the high dignitaries both in the church and state, was to conciliate her Roman Catholic subjects, who, in rank, wealth, and numbers, far exceeded the Noncon formists. The liturgy of Edward VI., having been submitted to a committee of divines, and certain alterations, betraying a leaning to popery rather than to puritanism, having been made, the Act of Uniformity was passed, which, while it empowered the queen and her commissioners to " ordain and publish such further ceremonies and rites" as might be deemed advisable, forbade, under severe penalties, the performance of divine worship except as prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer. This Act was only partially carried into effect from the time of its being passed, in 1558, to 1565. But in 1565 it began to be rigidly enforced, and many of the Nonconformists were deprived of their preferments (for notwithstanding their sentiments, most of them had still remained in connection with the Established Church, being from principle averse to an entire separation); many also were committed to prison. The High Commission Court, tyrannical in its very constitution, became still more severe in the exercise of its functions; and at length, in 1593, the parliament declared that all persons above sixteen years of age who should absent themselves for one month from the parish church should be banished the kingdom ; and if they returned without licence, should be sentenced to death as felons. These provisions, though directed principally against the
Catholics, affected the Protestant Nonconformists with equal severity; and with reference both to Catholics and Protestants who dissented from the Church of England, were unjust and impolitic. The Non conformists, during the age of Elizabeth, are not to be regarded as an unimportant faction. Both among clergy and the laity they were a numerous body ; and they would have been powerful in proportion to their numbers, had they only been more closely united among themselves. A motion, made in 1561, at the first convocation of the clergy which was held in England, to do away with the ceremonies and forms to which the Puritans objected, was lost by a majority of only one, even though the queen and the primate Parker were well known to be opposed to such a change. In the Commons the Puritan influence was strong ; and if that house be supposed, iu any adequate degree, to have represented the people for whom it legislated, their numerical force throughout the country generally must necessarily have been great. Without presumption therefore they might have expected that their remonstrances would be listened to, and their grievances redressed. And certainly it would have been wiser in the government to have endeavoured to secure their support, than to have awakened their dis content and provoked their opposition ; more especially when the hostile aspect of foreign nations is considered, and when we remember that the English Roman Catholics, whose numbers and power rendered them particularly formidable, were eagerly watching every symptom favourable to the re-establishment of the ancient faith. Nor would it have been a difficult matter to yield to the claims of the Nonconformists. The moderate among them sought not the overthrow of the ecclesi astical constitution, but contended merely that certain rites and observances, which they regarded as departures from the purity and simplicity of Christian worship, should be dispensed with ; and. generally, that ma .ters commonly recognised as things indifferent should not be insisted on as indispensable. Doubtless many were less reasonable in their demands, and injustice and persecution tended much to increase their number. A party, at the head of which was Professor Cart wright, of Cambridge, desired a change, not only in the forms of worship, but in church polity also, and would have substituted Presbytery in the room of Episcopacy. Another party, namely, the Independents, or Browniata, as they were then termed, goiug still further, wished the disseverment of the connection between church and state altogether. Still there is every reason to believe that slight concession to the demands of the less violent, and the display of a spirit of forbearance, would have satisfied many, would have allayed the dissatisfaction of all, and would have been the reveres of disagreeable to the country generally. Unfortunately an opposite course of policy in this and subsequent reigns was chosen; which ultimately conducted to the horrors of a civil war, the subversion of the regal authority, and those disastrous events which make the history of the 17th century one of the most melancholy pages of our national annals.