bade their ecclesiastical jurisdiction, or the use of their titles." They denounced lay-preachers, and published an ordinance to prevent "the growth of errors, heresies and blasphemies;" they authorized the larger and shorter catechisms, and confession of faith, and Rouse's metrical Psalms; they declared stage-players punishable as rogues, and decreed that they should be publicly whipped, whilst all spectators should be fined five shillings for every offence; they proclaimed that any person holding certain heresies, atheism, Socinianism, universalism, free-will, quakerism, &c., should be, for some offences, committed to prison, and, unless he abjured, should suffer the pains of death; whilst for others, he should be imprisoned til he found sureties that he would maintain such doctrines no more! Such was presbyterian uniformity!

Many baptists were exposed-among them Hanserd Knollysto severe persecutions, were stoned, fined, imprisoned and outraged. The sufferings of the episcopal clergy were great. Provision was, indeed, made for them out of the sales of lands heretofore in the possession of bishops and chapters of cathedrals, and from a fifth of tithes and livings; but the allowance became difficult, and, from their suspected monarchical tendencies, dangerous to be procured. The course taken against Roman Catholics was even more severe.

Such were the fruits of a national establishment which, in the first instance, presbyterians and independents had united to form! The lamentable result shows that the evils of persecution are not justly chargeable upon any mere opinions, whether episcopalian or any other, but upon the principle of state-alliance itself. That involves so monstrous an injustice, as to metamorphose the best of men into the most unrelenting. Laud himself, when his actions are fairly put by the side of his principles, was not so bad as he seemed; and it was not wonderful that these really good men should, when judged by the same standard as that which was applied to him, appear, though none ever less deserved the charge, self-seekers and hypocrites. It is the infallible effect of power used for spiritual purposes, that it contaminates and degrades the men who use it. We can no more apologize for the conduct of the

Long Parliament, than we can for the burning of Servetus, the sufferings of Bartholomew-day, or the horrors of the inquisition. The degrees of penalty might differ; the substantial principle was the same.

The assembly of divines dwindled away, after the business of the committee of accommodation, till the death of the king. A fragment of it remained after that period, for the examination of ministers. The dissolution of the Long Parliament was at hand, and the convocation perished with it. It was high time!

The Earl of Manchester was deputed by the House of Lords, at some time hereafter, to congratulate Charles II. on his return.

Philip Nye was very prominent in political movements during the period of the commonwealth. When commissioners were appointed to treat with the king in the Isle of Wight, Nye was one of their chaplains; and when the citizens of London were actively endeavoring to procure a treaty with the king, he endeav ored by a counter-petition to prevent it. Nye was one of the Triers for appointing ministers, and is represented as having a living at Acton, and lectures in Westminster and London. He opposed the return of Charles, and it was for some time questioned whether he should be excepted from the king's indulgence. Nye drew up a complete history of the old puritan dissenters, but the manuscript was burnt in the fire of London. After the Restoration, he preached to a church who met chiefly in private houses, till the indulgence granted by Charles II. He died in September, 1672, aged seventy-six, and was buried in St. Michael's, Cornhill.

JENNY GEDDES' CUTTY STOOL.

I

OF THA

UNIV

THE "whirligig of time," which "brings about its revenges," has within the last two years restored the town of Huntingdon to its ancient place on the great north road. When stage-coaches began to mend their pace, and to cease to stop on their journey, it

was of some consequence to avoid the angle which the road made at that point, and Huntingdon was dispossessed of its pride of place, till the Great Northern Railway was recently brought through it. Yet Huntingdon boasts of some antiquity. It was one of the head-quarters of the Iceni, - possibly of the ancient British queen, Boadicea, herself; its "castle hills" were probably the site of the fortress which gave to the Duriliponte of Antoninus, afterwards called, in Saxon, Godmanchester (Good-man's-castle), its importance; and its name occurs in Saxon chronicles as Huntandene, and sometimes as Huntantum. Henry of Huntingdon lived here, and Edward the Elder rebuilt, near the town, a castle given by Stephen to David, Earl of Huntingdon and King of Scotland, of which the intrenchments remain, though the building was destroyed by Henry II., as affording too safe a retreat to his disaffected barons. In subsequent times, when the steam-engine was a mere toy in the hands of the Marquis of Worcester, when delays in travelling were as much sought as they are now avoided, that passengers might repose their bodies, bruised by the jolting and illmanaged roads, and refresh their exhausted frames; when night journeys were full of dangers, and the passage from York to London was measured but by days; Huntingdon formed a convenient resting-place, and abounded in inns, after the model then most approved, replete with all conveniences which the luxury of the times could furnish.

Huntingdon has now lost much of its ancient prestige. Its monasteries are dismantled, and their localities almost unknown: instead of the fifteen churches once standing in it, it now boasts only two; and the hospitals which formerly distinguished it have altogether disappeared. Nor will the traveller be attracted to the town by any very picturesque environs. On one side of the river Ouse, there are, indeed, gentle and agreeable undulations, though they are deserving of no higher name, and the foliage of several respectable trees is full and luxuriant. But the traveller who stands on the ancient bridge with his back to the town, and looks

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out on the expanse before him, may begin to understand what is meant by the phrase, so mysterious to the uninitiated, the fens. He will see a kind of Sahara, in which the fault, however, is not too little water, but too much, and out of which a few distant churches stand up as land-marks. Through this level the river creeping like snail," slowly saunters along; and if its waters do contrive to reach the sea near Lynn, it is by dint of more means and appliances than we can now stay to record. It was some similar region to that now within sight that a celebrated preacher called " the focus of suicides ;" and the few willows scattered in groups over the wide flat correspond sufficiently to his similitude of "nature hanging out signals of distress." Certainly, if there be any poetry on this side of the town, it is such as only Cowper, who for some time resided here, could have found; and but that "the blue sky," always beautiful, "bends over all," one may well wonder at the interest awakened in some whom we have known by the view. If great thoughts have ever come into minds in this region, they must have arisen from interior inspiration, not by any natural and obvious association with the scenes themselves. But one great name is prominent in the history of this heretofore celebrated town, a name long cast out as worthless, but now believed to be not wholly a lie; and the whole region is memorable for having produced a phenomenon, regarded once as a mere flashing meteor which had passed away into darkness, but now, in spite of Heylins and Clarendons, and Heaths and Humes, and house-of-parliament decorators, proved to have had an orbit of its own, and to have been, nay, yet to be, one of the superior planets of our system. Need we pronounce the name of Cromwell ?

But it is not at Huntingdon that the visitant will discover any enthusiastic memory of that remarkable man, or even many traces of his whereabouts. Except the bridge, a few ancient gateways, the two surviving churches, and one or two scattered and mouldering fragments besides, there is little to feed an antiquarian's curi