Bell Harry by Nicholas Best

Author:Nicholas Best [Best, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Media
Published: 2019-12-04T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

A Pilgrim Father Charters the Mayflower

For weeks, someone had been going around Canterbury pinning libellous notices to church doors. The libels were religious tracts attacking the Church of England. It was clear from the tone that they had been written by a dissenter, one of the new breed of Puritans opposed to all the ritual and dogma accompanying Christian worship in England.

It was November 1603 before the authorities managed to identify the author. Robert Cushman was an apprentice grocer, active in the Puritan movement. He was hauled before the court on charges of writing the tracts and failing to attend church, as the law required.

Cushman refused to confess to the libels, even though the evidence was overwhelming, but he couldn’t deny his failure to attend service on the Sabbath. The Church of England, with all its pomp and ceremony, wasn’t for him anymore.

‘The singing of hymns is an abomination,’ he told the court. ‘It’s a corruption of God’s word. So is the Book of Common Prayer. Where is it written in the Bible that there should be bishops, living fat and sleek off their flock?’

‘That’s no reason to nail Lord have mercy upon us to the church door.’

‘God’s chosen are few. Scarcely one in a hundred will be saved if they don’t repent.’

Unimpressed, the court sentenced Cushman to a brief spell in the prison at the West Gate to bring him to his senses. He emerged more determined than ever to live like a Puritan. He wanted to be free for the rest of his life from all the bowing and scraping of the Church of the England. Cushman wanted to worship the Lord in his own particular way.

He was due to marry Sarah Reader when he had completed his apprenticeship. Sarah lived in the cathedral precincts. She and her brother Helkiah were active Puritans. Helkiah Reader had done time in the West Gate for distributing Cushman’s libellous tracts.

Cushman went to see Sarah in her lodgings beside the cathedral. Like him, Sarah knew the building well, but could never bring herself to worship there. Beginning with the statue of Jesus over the Christ Church gate, Canterbury cathedral represented everything they hated most about the way religion was conducted in England. Statues of Jesus were idolatrous.

Cushman found Sarah at home and sat in the parlour with her, discussing their future in an unsympathetic country. It looked more and more as if they would have to submit to the Church of England for the rest of their days if they couldn’t find an acceptable alternative. Neither of them was happy about that.

‘King James is the problem,’ Cushman told his fiancée. ‘There are a thousand Puritan clergy in the realm. Some of them went to see the King the other day. They asked him to make a few small changes to the Church of England, but he refused to listen. He wouldn’t help us at all.’

‘Not even changes to the creed?’

‘Nothing. The King wouldn’t hear of it. He says he will make Puritans conform to the established Church or else harry us out of the land.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.