Printed and Published at the Dover Express Works. 1916.

TO BE FORMATTED

ANNALS OF DOVER.
SECTION FOUR.
THE HISTORY OF RELIGION.
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



THE HISTORY OF RELIGION. 191

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



192 ANNALS OF DOVER.

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



THE HISTORY Of RELIGION. 1 93

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.



194 ANNALS OF DOVER.