Gurnall's Ministry at Lavenham

DESCRIPTION OF LAVENHAM — HISTORY OF THE PARISH, LIVING, AND CHURCH — DIVINES WHO LIVED WITHIN REACH OF LAVENHAM — GURNALL’S CONFORMITY IN 1662 — REFLECTIONS ON HIS CONDUCT.

HAVING now brought Gurnall to the place where he lived and exercised his ministry for no less than thirty-five years, some information about Lavenham will probably be interesting to most readers.

Lavenham is a small town in the south-west corner of Suffolk, lying in a rural parish of about 2800 acres, and containing at this time about 1800 people. In Gurnall’s time it was in the diocese of Norwich. It is now in the diocese of Ely. It had once a market; and before the invention of the steam-engine, was famous for the manufacture of blue cloth and serge, for the better regulation of which, three guilds, or companies, of St. Peter’s, Holy Trinity, and Corpus Christi, were established. Its manufactures have now dwindled down into one silk-mill, and its market is no longer held. The market-place, with an ancient cross in the centre, exists still. The De Veres, Earls of Oxford, were once the principal proprietors of Lavenham, and had a large park here, comprising nearly half the parish. In the reign of Elizabeth, Edward, then Earl of Oxford, sold his property at Lavenham, together with the advowson of the living, to Paul D’Ewes, Esq., father of Sir Symond D’Ewes, the patron of William Gurnall, and to this sale therefore the good man’s connection with Lavenham must be traced.

The living to which Gurnall was appointed was, no doubt, a very valuable one. At this day the tithes are commuted at £850 a year, and there are 140 acres of glebe attached to the Rectory. Allowing for the difference in the value of money two hundred years ago, the Rector of Lavenham must have been comparatively very well off. It is however a curious fact, recorded by Fuller in his “Church History,” that in the year 1577, the living of Lavenham had a narrow escape of being reduced to half its value, and was only saved by the firmness of the Rector. The whole transaction is worth reading, as illustrating the disorders and irregularities in ecclesiastical matters, which great laymen too often attempted to perpetrate in the sixteenth century, and too often with success.

Fuller says, “In the year, 1622, Henry Coppinger, formerly Fellow of St. John’s College in Cambridge, Prebendary of York, once Chaplain to Ambrose, Earl of Warwick (whose funeral sermon he preached), made Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, by his Majesty’s mandates, though afterwards resigning his right at the Queen’s request (shall I call it 2), to prevent trouble, ended his religious life. He was the sixth son of Henry Coppinger, Esq., of Buxhall, in Suffolk, by Agnes, daughter of Sir Thomas Jermyn. His father, on his death-bed, asking him what course of life he would embrace, he answered he intended to be a divine. ‘I like it well, said the old gentleman, ‘otherwise what shall I say to Martin Luther when I shall see him in heaven, and he knows that God gave me eleven sons, and I made not one of them a minister?’ An expression proportionable enough to Luther’s judgment, who maintained, some hours before his death, that the saints in heaven shall knowingly converse one with another.

“Lavenham living fell void, which both deserved a good minister, being a rich parsonage, and needed one, it being more than suspected that Dr. Reynolds, late Incumbent, who ran away to Rome, had left some superstitious leaven behind him. The Earl of Oxford being patron, presents Mr. Coppinger to it, but adding withal, that he would pay no tithes of his park, being almost half the land of the parish. Coppinger desired to resign it again to his lordship, rather than by such sinful gratitude to betray the rights of the Church. ‘Well!’ said the Earl, ‘if you be of that mind, then take the tithes; I scorn that my estate should swell with Church goods.” However, it afterwards cost Mr. Coppinger sixteen hundred pounds in keeping his questioned, and recovering his detained right, in suit with the agent for the next minor Earl of Oxford and others; all which he left to his church’s quiet possession, being zealous in God’s cause, but remiss in his own.

“He lived forty and five years the painful parson at Lavenham, in which market-town there are about nine hundred communicants, among whom, all this time, no difference did arise which he did not compound. He had a bountiful hand and plentiful purse (his paternal inheritance by death of elder brothers and other transactions, descending upon him), bequeathing twenty pounds in money, and ten pounds per annum, to the poor of the parish; in the chancel whereof he lieth buried under a fine monument, dying on St. Thomas’ day, in the threescore and twelfth year of his age.”

The lawsuit referred to by Fuller seems at any rate not to have prevented Henry Coppinger being succeeded by his son Ambrose as Rector of Lavenham, at whose death Gurnall was appointed to the living. The Henry Coppinger referred to by Gurnall in one of his letters to Sir Symond D’Ewes, was no doubt a member of the family of Gurnall’s predecessor, and a descendant — of the Rector whose firmness preserved half the tithes of Lavenham from the Earl of Oxford’s shameful attempt to deprive the living of them.

The parish Church of Lavenham, in which Gurnall preached for thirty-five years, must naturally possess much interest in the eyes of all true admirers of his works. The pulpit in which the good man preached the substance of “The Christian in Complete Armour,” no longer exists. But the fabric of the church is in all probability exactly what it was two hundred years ago.

Lavenham Church is one of the finest and handsomest ecclesiastical buildings in the county of Suffolk. “It stands at the west end of the town, and was ‘erected on the site of the ancient fabric, in the 15th and early part of the 16th centuries, chiefly at the cost of the Earl of Oxford, and the wealthy family of Spring, whose arms are to be seen in many parts of the building. It is in the later style of decorated English architecture, and is constructed of freestone, curiously ornamented with flint, a material commonly used in Suffolk churches, from the scarcity of stone. It is 156 feet long, and 68 broad. The tower, which is of singular beauty, is 141 feet high, and 42 in diameter, and contains an excellent peal of eight bells, of which the tenor weighs 23 cwt:, and was cast in 1625. In the interior the roof is richly carved, and two pews, formerly belonging to the Earls of Oxford and the Springs, though now somewhat decayed, are highly finished specimens of Gothic work, in the elaborate style of Henry VII.’s Chapel at Westminster. In the windows are considerable remains of ancient stained lass, and the porch is of highly ornamental architecture, adorned with armorial bearings.” The above account is principally extracted from White’s “History of Suffolk,” and I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the details it contains.

At the present day there can be no doubt that Lavenham is a far less important place than it was two hundred years ago. The county in which it is situated no longer occupies the position it once occupied among the counties of England. Without mines or manufactures, or large seaport towns, the eastern counties have stood still in material prosperity, while the rest of England has moved on. The village towns, with which Suffolk is rather thickly dotted, are almost all in a decaying or stationary condition. The old glory of such places as Eye, Framlingham, Bungay, Orford, Southwold, Dunwich, Aldeburgh, Hadleigh, Bildeston, and Debenham, has clean passed away. Lavenham has shared the fate of these places. It is now nothing more than a quiet village in an agricultural district, remarkable only for its beautiful church and its numerous old charitable institutions.

The thirty-five years during which Gurnall lived at Lavenham, and filled the pulpit of the old parish church, were years full of stirring incidents in English history. The final overthrow of the King’s party in the Commonwealth wars, the beheading of Charles LI, the establishment of the Protectorate, the death of Oliver Cromwell, the restoration of the Stuarts to the throne, the passing of the Act of Uniformity, the ejection of two thousand Ministers of the Church of England which followed that act, and the intolerant persecution of all nonconformists which disgraced this country for many years after the Act was passed, are events with which every student of English history is familiar. What Gurnall thought of most of these we have no means of knowing. What part he took, if any, and how he acted amidst the political and ecclesiastical convulsions which distracted the country, we cannot say. His health in all probability prevented him from frequently leaving his own home, or doing much outside his own parish. Be the cause what it may, I am obliged to confess that the facts on record about the last thirty-five years of his life are exceed- ingly few.

It is certainly somewhat remarkable that during the period of Gurnall’s ministry at Lavenham, that is between 1644 and 1679, some of the best and holiest Puritan divines were at one time or another living within twenty miles of Gurnall’s home at Lavenham. I will give their names.

The famous John Owen, whose name is familiar to every reader of pure English theology, began his ministry at Fordham and Coggeshall in Essex, and only left the latter place when Cromwell made him Dean of Christ Church, and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, in 1650, six years after Gurnall became Rector of Lavenham.

254 Bishops and Olergy of other days.

Stephen Marshall, one of the most celebrated divines in the Westminster Assembly, and a prominent character in the Commonwealth times, was Minister of Wethersfield and Finchingfield, in Essex, shortly before Gurnall came to Lavenham, and spent the last two years of his life at Ipswich, where he died in 1655.

Matthew Newcomen, another eminent member of the Westminster Assembly, and an assistant of Arrowsmith and Tuckney in drawing up the well-known Assembly’s Catechism, was Vicar of Dedham in Essex, after the famous John Rogers was ejected in 1629, until the time of his own ejection by the Act of Uniformity, in 1662.

Thomas Young, another distinguished member of the Westminster Assembly, and Milton’s tutor, was Vicar of Stowmarket, in Suffolk, for the thirty years before 1643, when he became Pastor of a Church in — Duke’s Place, London. Afterwards, being ejected in 1650, he retired to Stowmarket, and died there in 1655. He was one of the five authors of the famous controversial work, called “Smectymnuus,” which made a great stir in the first half of the seventeenth century. It was so called from the initial letters of the names of its five writers: viz., Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, and William Spurstow. Of these five men, let us remember, no less than three died within a few hours’ reach of Gurnall.

It would be easy to add other great names to this list, such as those of Daniel Rogers, who died at Wethersfield in 1652; Blackerby, who died at Great Thurlow in 1648; Fairclough, who was ejected from Kedington in 1662, and was succeeded by Tillotson; and Owen Stockton, who was ejected from St. Andrew’s, Colchester, in 1662. Beside these good men, there were some who are less well known, such as William Sparrow of Halstead in Essex, John Fairfax of Barking in Suffolk, Matthias Candler of Coddenham in Suffolk, Samuel Spring of Creeting St. Mary in Suffolk, Stephen Scanderet of Haverhill in Suffolk, Tobias Leg of Hemingstone in Suffolk, Brunning and Stonham of Ipswich, Storer of Stowmarket — all of whom were eminent Puritan Ministers, and were ejected in 1662. Their historiés will be found in Calamy’s “Nonconformists’ Memorial.” All these men, I repeat, lived within twenty miles of Gurnall, and must have come in contact with him occasionally.

It would be deeply interesting if we knew whether Gurnall had much communication with these good men. My own private impression is that he had not. Il-health in all probability kept him much at home. But I suspect this was not all. I am inclined to think that Gurnall was a man of retiring and cautious temperament, and naturally disinclined to go much into society. Above all, I am strongly inclined to think that he liked the Episcopal Church and the Prayer-book better than many of his neighbours did, and naturally withdrew from close intimacy with them. All these, however, are only conjectures, and I shall therefore pass on to the only remaining facts that remain to be told about Gurnall’s history.

In the year 1645, the year following his appointment to Lavenham, Gurnall was married to Sarah Mott, daughter of the Rev. Thomas Mott, Vicar of Stoke by Nayland. By this lady, who survived him some years, he had ten children, eight of whom. were living at his death.

In the year 1662, when no less than two thousand Ministers were ejected from the Church of England by the Act of Uniformity, Gurnall signed the declaration required by the Act, on August 20th, was ordained Priest by the Bishop of Norwich, the well-known Bishop Reynolds, on August 21st, and went through the forms of Episcopal institution to Lavenham on the presentation of Thomas Bowes, of Bromley Hall, in Essex, a connection of the D’Ewes family, on August 22nd. The close proximity of these three dates is very remarkable! The result was, that while many of his Puritan brethren resigned their preferments, he retained his position as Rector of Lavenham until his death.

This part of Gurnall’s history undoubtedly demands some consideration. At first sight undeniably there is something curious about it. That a Minister of at least eighteen years’ standing should submit to receive Priest’s orders at a Bishop’s hands — that a preacher of notoriously Puritan sentiments should sit still and retain his connection with the Church of England, while nearly all his Puritan brethren around him seceded — ain all this there:is something strange. That it really was so is as certain as possible. A facsimile of his subscription, which I have obtained from the Registry of Norwich, places the matter beyond doubt. ‘It is a doubly interesting document, as containing the only specimen I know of Gurnall’s hand-writing.* That Gurnall’s conformity brought on him great obloquy and reproach we may well suppose. A libellous attack” on him was published in the year 1665, quoted by Bishop Kennett, which contains the following passage. “Neither is Mr. Gurnall alone in these

* By the kindness of the Bishop of Norwich, I have been enabled to verify all the three remarkable dates above given from the Registry at Norwich.

The title of this libellous attack is so curious that I give it entire. ‘‘Covenant Renouncers Desperate Apostates, opened in two letters, written by a Christian friend to Mr. W. Gurnall, of Lavenham Suffolk, which may indefinitely serve as an admonition to all such Presbyterian Ministers or others, who have forced their conscience, not only to leap over, but to renounce their solemn covenant obligation to endeavour a reformation according to God’s Word, and the extirpation of all prelatical superstitions, and contrary thereunto conform to those superstitious vanities against which they had so solemnly sworn. Printed in Anti-turn-coat Street, and sold at the sign of Truth’s Delight, right opposite to Backsliding Alley. 4to, 1665.”

s horrible defilements, hateful to the Word of God and His saints, but is compassed about with a cloud of witnesses, even in the same county where himself liveth, men of the same order of anti-Christian priesthood and brethren in the same iniquity with himself.”

That he brought on himself much private sorrow and discomfort by his conformity we may easily believe. His own wife’s father, Mr. Mott, of Stoke by Nayland, was one of the two thousand who went out of the Church of England for conscience’ sake. Above all, the value of his living at Lavenham, and the large size of the family dependent on him, would be sure to cause men to cast suspicion on what he did, and to question the sincerity of his motives.

But after all, the point remains to be considered, did Gurnall do anything inconsistent with his character as a Minister of Christ? Was there anything abstractedly wrong in his conformity? Was there anything in the antecedents of his history to make it base or dishonourable to retain his post at Lavenham, to subscribe the declaration of the Act of Uniformity, to assent to the liturgy, and to submit to receive Priest’s orders.at Bishop Reynolds’ hands? On these points I have something to say.

I shall clear the way by saying that I thoroughly disapprove the Act of Uniformity, although personally I feel no difficulty about its requirements. To show my own feeling about it, I need only refer my readers - to a long passage in my biography of Baxter, in this volume, in which the Act of Uniformity is plainly condemned.

But while I protest against the Act of Uniformity as an unjust, unwise, impolitic, unstatesmanlike, and hard measure, I do not for a moment admit that no good man could possibly submit to its requirements. On the contrary, I can quite understand that many holy and faithful Ministers would do as Gurnall did, and act as he acted. They would argue that we cannot have everything to our mind in this world below — that the way of patience is better than the way of secession — that there is nothing abstractedly wrong in forms of prayer — that it is better to put up with some things we do not like in a Church, than to throw away opportunities of usefulness — that it was better to accept the Prayer-book with all its blemishes, and have liberty to preach the gospel, than to refuse the Prayer-book and be silenced altogether — that so long as the thirty-nine Articles were sound and uninjured, they could not be compelled to preach unsound doctrine — and that so long as they were allowed to preach sound doctrine, they ought not to refuse the opportunity, but to preach, and stand by their flocks. All this I can conceive a good man saying to himself. Whether Gurnall reasoned in this manner I cannot pretend to say. But I think he might have done so.

The plain truth is, that before any one condemns

Gurnall for submitting to the Act of Uniformity, he ought in common justice to remember the times and circumstances in which Gurnall first entered the ministry. He became a Minister of the Gospel at a period in English history when it was impossible to obtain Episcopal ordination, and the use of the Prayer-book was almost forbidden. I have no doubt he was quite right in accepting the position of things which he found around him. The imposition of Episcopal hands is not absolutely necessary to make a valid ordination. The use of the Church of England liturgy is not essential to the being of a Church. At the time when Gurnall entered the ministry he could neither have Episcopacy nor the Prayer-book, and he entered the ministry without them. Let others say what they will, I do not think he was wrong. It is better to have the Gospel preached without Bishops and Prayer-books, than not to have any preaching at all.

But after all, there is not the slightest proof that Gurnall had any conscientious objection either to Episcopacy or the liturgy of the Church of England. For anything we can discover, he had never committed himself to any such condemnation of them as to make it inconsistent to approve and adopt them, What right then have we to find fault with him because he submitted to the requirements of the act of 16622 He was ordained Priest by Bishop Reynolds, because he could not be an Incumbent in the diocese without priest’s orders. But who shall say that he would not gladly have received “Episcopal orders twenty years before if it had been possible to obtain them? He declared his assent and consent to all things contained in the Prayer-book. But who shall say that he would not have done the same at any period in his life? He had never been a member of the Westminster Assembly, like many of the two thousand ejected divines. He had never been mixed up in their public proceedings, discussions, and controversies, like Owen, Newcomen, Baxter, and many more. He had been a quiet retired preacher in a country parish, and there is really no proof whatever that his retention of his position at Lavenham was inconsistent with anything in his previous life.

One more circumstance ought not to be forgotten in forming our estimate of Gurnall’s conduct at this crisis of his life. The Bishop in whose diocese he was living, and at whose hands he accepted re-ordination, was Bishop Reynolds, himself a Puritan in doctrine, and notoriously the most mild and lenient man on the Episcopal bench in dealing with scrupulous clergymen. We cannot doubt that such a man as Reynolds would use every effort to meet Gurnall’s scruples, if he had any. We cannot doubt that he would strain every nerve to retain as many of the clergy as possible within the pale of the Church, and to prevent secessions. I confess to a strong suspicion that this circumstance weighed much in Gurnall’s mind. Few men can do more by kindness, and less by harshness, in dealing with men, than Bishops. If Gurnall ever had any doubts about remaining in the Church of England, in 1662, I think it very likely that his good Bishop’s character turned the scale. In short, I venture the euess, that he might have gone out of Lavenham Rectory, and followed his father-in-law, Mr. Mott, in secession, if the occupier of Norwich Palace had been any other Bishop than Reynolds.

I leave the subject of Gurnall’s conduct in 1662 with the reader. It is one on which different men will have different opinions, according to the standpoint which they occupy. Some in the present day would have thought more highly of Gurnall if he had refused to submit to the Act of Uniformity, and had gone out with the famous two thousand. I, and many

* Reynolds was made Bishop of Norwich by Charles II., in 1661. He was a thorough Puritan and a prominent member of the famous Westminster Assembly of Divines. When the Bishopric of Norwich was offered to him, the Bishopric of Hereford at the same time was offered to Baxter, the Bishopric of Lichfield to Calamy, the Deanery of Rochester to Manton, and the Deanery of Coventry to Bates. All these eminent Puritan divines refused preferment when Reynolds accepted it. Their refusal, 1 venture to think, was the greatest misfortune that ever befell the Church of England, and the most singular instance of mistaken judgment on record in Church history. If Reynolds, Baxter, and Calamy had all been Bishops, and sat in the House of Lords, and Manton and Bates had been Deans, I doubt if the Act of Uniformity, in its present shape, could ever have been passed.

others perhaps, think more highly of him because he held his ground and did not secede. Which of us is right will never, probably, be settled in this world. I only desire to record my own opinion, that Gurnall was probably just as courageous, conscientious and high-principled in deciding to stay in, as hundreds of his two thousand ejected brethren were in deciding to go out. In movements like that of 1662, the seceding party has not always a monopoly of grace and courage. There were many cases, I have no doubt, in which it showed more courage to submit to the Act of Uniformity than to refuse submission, and in which it cost a man far more to hold his living than to throw it up. I should not wonder if Gurnall’s was one.

About Gurnall’s life after the year 1662 we know literally nothing at all. We may well suppose that his latter years were saddened by the events of the year 1662. Human nature would not be what it is, if his retention of his position, and subscription to the Act of Uniformity, did not create some estrangement of feeling between himself and his seceding brethren. But we really have no right to speak decidedly on the matter. There are floating traditions in the neighbourhood of Lavenham that he never was the same man as a Minister after 1662, that he had been before: that there was no power or blessing attending his ministry from that time forward. But I must plainly say, that I cannot discover any foundation for these traditions.

I regard them as nothing better than lying stories. Such stories are often current about eminent servants of Christ. His refusal to give up his post at Lavenham, when many other Ministers seceded, would no doubt give great annoyance to the bitterest and most extreme nonconformists in that part of Suffolk, since it would weaken their hands and strengthen the Church of England. I should therefore expect, as a matter of course, that all manner of false reports would be current about him. Lies are Satan’s chief weapons against God’s saints. 7