But neither the representations of Owen nor of others who were friendly to the Nonconformists, had any influence in changing the pohcy of those who were now in power. The golden age to which Clarendon and his associates sought to bring back the government
' " I am informed," says the author of the Anonymous Memoir, " hy one of the Doctor's relations, that King Charles II. offered him a bishopric ; but no worldly honour or advantage could prevail on the Doctor to change his principles." — P. xxii.
2 Owen's Discourse of Toleration, passim.
' Anthony Wood is amusingly cynical in his account of this matter : " Upon this our author resolved to go to New England; but since that time, the wind ^^a3 never in a right point for a voj'age." — "Wood's Atlieu. Oxon., iv. 100.
LXXXII LIFE OF DR OWEN.
and the country, was that of Laud, with all the tortures of the Star Chamber, the dark machinery of the High Commission, and the dread alternative of abject conformity, or proscription and ruin. And the licentious Charles, while affecting at times a greater liberality, joined with his ministers in their worst measures ; either from a secret sym- pathy with them, or, as is more probable, from a hope that the ranks of Nonconformity would at length be so greatly swelled as to render a measure of toleration necessary that would include in it the Ro- manist along with the Puritan. Pretexts were sought after and eagerly seized upon, in order to increase the rigours of persecution ; and new acts passed, such as the Conventicle Act, which declared it penal to hold meetings for worship, even in barns and highways, and offered high rewards to informers, — and whose deliberate intention was, either to compel the sufferers to conformity, or to goad them on to violence and crime.
In the midst of these growing rigours, which were rapidly filling the prisons with victims, and crowding the emigrant ships with exiles, the plague appeared, sweeping London as with a whirlwind of death. Then it was seen who had been the true spiritual shepherds of the people, and who had been the strangers and the hirelings. The cleri- cal oppressors of the Puritans fled from the presence of the plague, while the proscribed preachers emerged from their hiding-places, shared the dangers of that dreadful hour, addressed instruction and consolation to the perishing and bereaved, and stood between the living and the dead, until the plague was stayed. One thing, however, had been disclosed by these occurrences; and this was the undiminished influence of the Nonconformist pastors over their people, and the increased love of their people to them ; nor could the pastors ever be cut off from the means of temporal support, so long as intercourse between them and their people was maintained. This led to the passing of another act, whose ingenious cruelty historians have vied with each other adequately to describe. In the Parliament at Oxford, which had fled thither in order to escape the ravages of the plague, a law was enacted which virtually banished all Noncon- formist ministers five miles from any city, town, or l)orough, that sent members to Parliament, and five miles from any place whatso- ever where they had at any time in a number of years past preached; unless they would take an oath which it was well known no Non- conformist could take, and which the Earl of Southampton even declared, in his place in Parliament, no honest man could subscriba. This was equivalent to driving them into exile in their own land; and, in addition to the universal severance of the pastors from their people, by banishing them into remote rural districts, it exposed them not only to the caprice of those who were the instruments of government,
HIS EETIREMENT AND LAST DAYS. LXXXIII
and to all the vile acts of spies and informers, but often to tlie insults and the violence of ignorant and licentious mobs.
Dr Owen suffered in the midst of all these troubles ; and one anecdote, which most probably belongs to this period, presents us with another picture of the times. He had gone down to visit his old friends in the neighbourhood of Oxford, and adopting the usual precautions of the pe- riod, had approached his lodging after night-fall. But notwithstand- ing all his privacy, he was observed, and information given of the place vi^here he lay. Early in the morning, a company of troopers came and knocked at the door. The mistress coming down, boldly opened the door, and asked them what they would have. — " Have you any lodgers in your house?" they inquired. Instead of directly answering their question, she asked " whether they were seeking for Dr Owen?" "Yes," said they; on which she assured them he had departed that morning at an earlier hour. The soldiers believing her word, immedi- ately rode away. In the meantime the Doctor, whom the woman really supposed to have been gone, as he intended the night before, arose, and going into a neighbouring field, whither he ordered his horse to be brought to him, hastened away by an unfrequented path towards London.
A second temble visitation of Heaven was needed, in order to obtain for the persecuted Puritans a temporary breathing-time : and this second visitation came. The fire followed quickly in the footsteps of the plague, and the hand of intolerance was for the moment para- lyzed, if, indeed, its heart did not for a time relent. The greater number of the churches were consumed in the dreadful conflagration. Large wooden houses called tabernacles were quickly reared, amid the scorched and blackened ruins; and in these the Nonconfomiist ministers preached to anxious and solemnized multitudes. The long- silent voices of Owen, and Manton, and Caryl, and others, awoke the remembrance of other times ; and earnest Baxter