Introduction
In 1649, the execution of King Charles I left England in the hands of a Parliament of hardline Protestants determined to purge the Church of superstitious mumbo-jumbo. On Christmas Day 1657, Sir John Evelyn avoided the now dirty, unloved churches, clumsily improvised prayers and muddle-headed preachers, and found an old-fashioned Prayer Book service; but he did not enjoy it in peace.
I WENT to London with my wife, to celebrate Christmas-day,* Mr Gunning preaching in Exeter chapel,* on Micah vii. 2.* Sermon ended, as he was giving us the Holy Sacrament, the chapel was surrounded with soldiers, and all the communicants and assembly surprised and kept prisoners by them, some in the house, others carried away. It fell to my share to be confined to a room in the house, where yet I was permitted to dine with the master of it, the Countess of Dorset,* Lady Hatton,* and some others of quality who invited me.
In the afternoon, came Colonel Whalley, Goffe, and others,* from Whitehall, to examine us one by one; some they committed to the Marshal, some to prison. When I came before them, they took my name and abode, examined me why, contrary to the ordinance made,* that none should any longer observe the superstitious time of the Nativity (so esteemed by them), I durst offend, and particularly be at Common Prayers, which they told me was but the mass in English,* and particularly pray for Charles Stuart for which we had no Scripture.*
* This was Friday December 25th, 1657, on the Julian Calendar used in England until 1752.
* Cecil or Exeter House stood on the north side of the Strand in London until 1676, when it was demolished to make way for Exeter Exchange, itself demolished in 1829. The house belonged to the Earls of Exeter: the current holder of the title was John Cecil, 4th Earl of Exeter (1628-1678). Peter Gunning (1614-1684) was chaplain at Exeter House; following the Restoration in 1660, he was consecrated Bishop of Chichester and later Bishop of Ely.
* Micah 7:2: “The good man is perished out of the earth: and there is none upright among men: they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man his brother with a net.” Presumably some spy had alerted the authorities to what was going on, and to Mr Gunning’s provocative text. Evelyn had great respect for Gunning, but little indeed for Puritan preachers. After their “insipid, tedious, and unmethodical prayer”, there would follow “a sermon (which, for the most part, they read out of a book), consisting (like their prayers) of speculative and abstracted notions and things, which, nor the people nor themselves well understand”.
* The formidable Lady Anne Clifford (1590-1676), Countess of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery, suo jure 14th Baroness de Clifford.
* Elizabeth Hatton (?-1672), wife of Christopher Hatton, 1st Baron Hatton (1605-1670), a prominent royalist who had been Charles I’s Comptroller of the Royal Household.
* Edward Whalley (?1607-?1675) was a senior officer in the army, and one of those who signed King Charles I’s death warrant. William Goffe (?1605–?1679) was another army officer and co-signatory of the death warrant, a great favourite of Cromwell though hardly a principled republican: he was one of those who offered Cromwell the crown. After the Restoration in 1660, Goffe fled with Whalley and other regicides to New England, apparently not anxious to taste the unpalatable medicine they had prescribed for others.
* In January 1645 the English Parliament in Westminster produced a new ‘Directory of Public Worship’ which, among other things, declared that the only special days were Sundays: ‘festival days, vulgarly called Holy Days, having no warrant in the Word of God, are not to be continued’. Two years later the feasts of Christmas, Easter and Whitsun were explicitly abolished by the Commons, though the second Tuesday in each month was set aside as a day off for workers. Evelyn, who had been in France for Christmas 1652, had celebrated the Christmases of 1653-56 at home, since all the churches were shut.
* A misleading exaggeration. The Book of Common Prayer, first released in 1549 and revised in 1559 under Elizabeth I, was not merely a translation of the Roman Catholic mass: although translations from the Roman service books did indeed make up the bulk of it, much had been changed or omitted and newly crafted Protestant material had been added in. The Puritans had no love for it, even so, as it did not go anything like far enough towards their vision of Christian communities with no bishops and no formal ceremony, and its prayers assumed that the country was still a monarchy.
* Charles Stuart was the republicans’ name for King Charles II (r. 1649-1685), now exiled and residing in the French court. The argument was that Scripture gives no warrant for such prayers, which as Sir John goes on to imply betrayed a knowledge of the Bible that was at best patchy.
Précis
In 1657, diarist Sir John Evelyn recorded an eventful Christmas Day service in Oliver Cromwell’s London. As the congregation came forward for holy communion, soldiers burst in and shortly afterwards marched them off to be cross-examined by Government officials, who wanted to know why they had defied a ban on keeping Christmas Day and on using the Prayer Book. (59 / 60 words)
In 1657, diarist Sir John Evelyn recorded an eventful Christmas Day service in Oliver Cromwell’s London. As the congregation came forward for holy communion, soldiers burst in and shortly afterwards marched them off to be cross-examined by Government officials, who wanted to know why they had defied a ban on keeping Christmas Day and on using the Prayer Book.
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