VIII. THE UPRISING OF NONCONFORMITY.
At the commencement of the Restoration Period many of the Kentish clergymen, who had held their benefices during the Commonwealth still continued in office. At St. Mary's Dover, the Rev. Nathaniel Barry was ousted immediately after the landing of Charles II., owing to the strong personal and party claims of the old Pastor, the Rev. John Reading, but at the Church of St. James' the Rev. John Davis continued to retain the Rectory, he having obtained a very strong hold on the affections of many of the people of Dover whose religious \iews were then not much swayed by the affairs of State. The Rev. Nathaniel Barry did not leave Dover when the pulpit of St. Mary's was closed to him. He continued to [)reach in Meeting Houses as opportunity offered. The Baptist Church in Dover, which had been founded during the Commonwealth, survived the Restoration. The first Pastor, in 1643, was the Rev. Richard Hobbs, and the Baptists had a Meeting House in some place in Dover, not identified, in 1655. He was succeeded by the Rev. John Foetness, the Elder of the Congregation being Mr. Edward Prescott, of Guston Court. The Bap»tists were not a sect favoured by the Puritans, who were in power up to the Restoration, nor with the Churchmen, who ruled afterwards. Even during the Commonwealth they were persecuted, and had to hold their meetings in fields and woods. During one of these meetings, at which Mr. Edward Prescott, of Guston, was giving an address, Capt. Samuel Tavener, the Common- wealth Governor of Deal Castle, in passing from Deal to Dover, overheard the speaker, and listened with the expectation of hearing something that would warrant his being silenced, but Capt. Tavener was so impressed that he joined the Baptists, and allowed them to meet in his house during the fiercer jjersecutions after the Restoration.
The persecutions of the Lollards and the frequent burnings in Queen Mary's reign, had already aroused the spirit of hostility to the State Church, but Dissent was still more firmly established on Bartholomew's Day, 1662, when about 2,000 Puritan clergymen were ejected from their livings by an Act of Parliament, which made it impossible for them, as honest men, to retain them, and those two thousand, with their famiUes, were so harried by other Acts of Parliament that they were driven into the rural districts where it was not possible foi them to earn a living. The law that drove the Puritans out of the Church was made more severe by subsequent enactments to prevent the ejected ministers forming new religious societies outside the estab- lished church ; and, although there were in Dover a great number of Nonconformists and several Nonconformist ministers in 1662, no trace can be found of any regularly established Chapel or Meeting House where they could lawfully assemble for worship until after the end of the Stuart Period.
In Dover, from 1662 until 1688, it was a time of trouble for everyone who could not see eye to eye with the Church of England. The Corporations Regulation Act of 166 1, passed to purge the Corporation of tho.se members who did not sign a declaration against the Solemn T.eague and Covenant, and take the Sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England, was put into force by a Commission that visited Dover in August 1662. By order of that Commission seven Jurats and twenty-three Common Council men were removed from office, and a few weeks later eighty- two Freemen were struck off the roll. That bold stroke did not reduce the number of Dissenters in Dover, but it debarred them from taking any part in public affairs.
After this purging of the Corporation there was, for a few years, some show of toleration. As long as the Nonconformists worshipped privately in their own houses, and the Pastors' voices were not heard in public, no steps were taken against them. But Dissent grew bolder, and timidity gave place to scarcely concealed religious meetings, in which some of the leading men of the town were habitually present. This was observed and reported. Towards the close of the year 1669, a Dover Jurat, named John Carlisle, holding the office of Clerk of the Dover Passage, acted as Informer, writing to the Privy Council as follows : — " We wish the King to know the distracted state of this town and port. Should any visitors be sent to Dover they would find us, as Cicero did the tomb of Archimedes, overgrown with thorns and nettles. We are overrun with schisms and factions, apparalled in several shapes and publicly owned under several names and sections. The bell-wethers of the faction are Nathaniel Barry, Nichols and Stiliard. The places of their seditious and unlawful meetings are many, but His Majesty's Victualling Yard is now used." In consequence of this information, at the beginning of January, 1670, Richard .Matson, Edward Dell, Samuel Tavener, Nathaniel Barry, Symon Yorke and Anthony Street were summoned to attend the Privy Council, and were reprimanded for attending Conventicles and unlawful meetings. This we gather from a letter which James, Duke of York, Lord Warden (after- wards James II.), wrote to his Deputy, the Lieutenant of Dover Castle, on January 21st, 1670, stating that his Majesty, Charles II., had been informed that there were divers Conventicles and unlawful meetings at Dover, and that the Magistrates were remiss in enforcing the laws against them; therefore the Privy Council had seen fit to summon before them Richard Matson, Mayor of Dover, Edward Dell, Samuel Tavener, Nathaniel Barry, Symon Yorke and Anthony Street, and, after being heard, they were reproved for their misdemeanours, and His Majesty had been pleased to order the shutting up of all such houses in the town of Dover as should be made use of for meetings of persons disaffected towards the Government under the pretence of religious worship ; therefore, he desired the Lieutenant of Dover Castle to give strict and effectual orders to the Magis- trates of Dover to cause all meeting houses to be shut, and pulpits, benches and seats pulled down, and particularly the pulpit and seats in the house of the aforesaid Samuel Tavener. These men who were called before the Privy Council were all of good standing in Dover. Richard Matson, the Mayor, was a wealthy Dover shipowner, who owned considerable estates in East Kent ; Symon Yorke was a wine merchant, the grandfather of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke; Nathaniel Barry was the Presbyterian minister ejected from St. Mary's Church at the Restoration, then an aged man. Owing to age and infirmities, Mr. Barry quietly submitted to the dictum of the Privy Council ; but Captain Tavener, who had been a Captain of Horse in Cromwell's Army, was not so submissive. He resisted, and was imprisoned in Dover Castle.
The T,ord Warden's letter to the Lieutenant of Dover Castle led to decisive action. The meeting houses were closed, and the pulpits and benches removed, but the Protestant Dissenters found other meeting places. On June 13th, 1670, an assemblage of 200 Dissenters was reported to the authorities ; and there being a like assemblage on June 21st, in the same year, the congregation was dis- persed by soldiers from the Castle. Other Nonconformist meetings were dispersed in July and in September, 1670, there being great disorders on the occasion of the election of the Mayor. In February, 167 1, by order of the Privy Council, the pulpits and benches of the Anabaptists were broken down and the doors of their meeting house fastened with padlocks ; but on the following Sunday morning the doors were broken open and meetings again held. The Presbyterians had also found out the use of locks inside, for the officers of the Mayor and Jurats reported: "At the Presbyterian meeting house we could not get in; those that hired it were so obstinate that they would not open the door." Symon Yorke, the grandfather of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, was one of that Presbyterian congregation; and the result of these proceedings was that he retired from the Common Council, and both he and his son, Philip, took no further part in Corporation affairs.
Another " Conventicle " that was shut up at that time was the Friends' Meeting House in St. James's Street, opposite Youden's Court. Although the members of the Society of Friends were, as a rule, non-resisters, their leader, Luke Howard, a shoemaker, living at the bottom of Queen Street, next to the Guildhall Tavern (who had been a Baptist), refused to submit, and he, too, was imprisoned in Dover Castle. The persecution of Nonconformists continued until the end of the Stuart Period.