The First Congregational Church in England
In the State-Paper Office has been discovered a manuscript, showing that in the Bridewell of London25 were imprisoned the members of the Congregational Church first formed after the accession of Queen Elizabeth. They were committed by the Privy Council to the custody of the gaoler, May 20, 1567. It is, no doubt, to this company that Bishop Grindal refers, in his letter to Bullinger, July 11, 1568:—“Some London citizens,” he says, “with four or five ministers, have openly separated from us; and sometimes in private houses, sometimes in fields, and occasionally even in ships, they have held meetings, and administered the sacraments. Besides this, they have ordained ministers, elders, and deacons, after their own way.” The Rev. Dr. Waddington has discovered some original papers, written by the members of this Church in the Bridewell, signed chiefly by Christian women, together with a statement of the principles of the sect. It appears from these interesting records, which have been kept, though in a loose form, for nearly three hundred years, that Richard Fitz, their first pastor, died in the prison. Dr. Waddington shows, by indisputable evidence, from original papers in the public archives, that the succession of Congregational Churches from the above period is continuous; so that the Bridewell may be regarded as the starting-point of Congregationalism after the Reformation; or, in other words, the origin of the first voluntary church in England, after the Marian persecution, was contemporaneous with the Anglican movement. And it is as remarkable as it is satisfactory, that these touching and simple memorials should have been preserved by the Metropolitan Bishop, and finally transmitted to the Royal Archives.