In the Declaration of Breda of April 1660, Charles II promised ‘liberty to tender consciences’. But his first parliament, summoned the following year, was less keen. In May 1662 it passed an Act of Uniformity demanding all clergymen accept the newly issued Book of Common Prayer by 24 August, St Bartholomew’s Day, that year. Those that didn’t would be evicted from their livings.
There were problems with that. Some were doctrinal. Charles’ religious settlement required the return of the episcopacy, something anathema to the presbyterians. Other problems were practical: the first copies of the revised prayer book didn’t come off the presses until 6 August. How was every churchman to receive a copy by the deadline, never mind square it with their conscience? Even in Middlesex, it was said, very few places received it until ‘a week, a fortnight, three weeks, or a month after’.
For non-conformists, the deadline would be remembered as ‘Black Bartholomew’s Day’ or the ‘Great Ejection’. But how great an ejection was it? Edmund Calamy, whose father and grandfather both lost their livings, tried to work it out. In total, he would name 1,897.
But, as A.G. Matthews, Calamy’s 20th-century editor, found, that number was far from reliable. Matthews noted 47 individuals listed who were dead by August 1662, 41 who were duplicated, and 113 for whom he could find no record at all. Moreover, Calamy also included those churchmen who were evicted at the Restoration in 1660 when returning loyalists wanted their livings back. Matthews calculated 695 of those.
Still, Matthews’ final total of 936 is higher than that calculated by high-church clergyman John Walker, who was so incensed by Calamy’s work that he set out to rebut it. His work, ten years in the writing, was published in 1714; Matthews calls it a ‘monumental piece of hate and patience’. Walker generously allowed that as many as 50 non-conformists might have lost their livings in 1662; although, he noted, ‘I do not at present remember to have met with an instance of more than one’.
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