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NOVEMBER

27, 1492 --San Salvador. “ ...Your Highnesses ought not to consent that any stranger should trade or put his foot in this country, except ...Christians, for this was the beginning and end of the undertaking; namely, the increase and glory of the Christian religion: and that no one should come to these parts who was not a good Christian." " ...Henceforth, with the permission of our Lord, I shall use my exertions, and have the language taught to some of our people, for I perceive that thus far the dialect is the same throughout. Thus we shall acquire a knowledge of all that is valuable here, and shall endeavor to convert to Christianity these people, which may be easily done, as they are not idolaters, but are without any religion." --Christopher Columbus, in his Journal.

27, 1790 --France. The Revolutionary Assembly issues a decree requiring all bishops to take an oath of obedience to the civil constitution of the clergy and threatening those who resist with dismissal from their posts.

28, 1628 --England. Thomas and Margaret Bunyan have a son today. They call him John. He will spend two periods of six years each in jail for the crime of preaching the Gospel despite the Act of Uniformity of 1662, which expelled all pastors from their pulpits who refused to conform to the Church of England. He will leave behind him the greatest allegory ever written: Pilgrim's Progress.

28, 1666 --Scotland. The Covenanters, who adhere to Old Presbyterian principles, are defeated in battle at Rullion Green, and the Covenanter uprising ends. Four thousand well fed, well-equipped dragoons are victorious over the gaunt, the emaciated nine hundred Presbyterians who have prayed and sang the seventy-first Psalm and the seventy-eighth Psalm. They have beaten off three attacks --one this morning, and two this afternoon. As darkness falls, the wounded lie upon the red-soaked earth singing Psalms while the sabers descend upon these half-naked wretches. Few escape to suffer banishment in wintry weather, while the wounded are taken as prisoners for torture and the scaffold.

28, 1681 --France. At Ribaut, Jean Cavalier is born. He will be the able leader in the war waged by the French king against the Camisards. The Camisards are Huguenots and are so called because of the white shirts they wear in night battles. As the king has vowed to exterminate them they will seek refuge in the mountains. Twenty thousand will be left homeless. Calling themselves the "Children of God" and their camps the "Camp of the Eternal," they live as in church amidst preaching, praying and fasting.

29, 1530 --England. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey received his bachelor's degree at the age of fifteen years. The son of a butcher, he was ambitious, proud, arrogant and extravagant. He has applied church revenues shamelessly for his own use and has showed himself a scheming and devious diplomat lying, bribing and choosing the means to his ends. His private life is said to have been impure as well.
     Nor was Mr. Wolsey a gentle and forgiving soul. Once his squire, Sir Amyas Paulet found him so quarrelsome, he bad him put in the stocks, but Wolsey took revenge by compelling the squire to spend several years in the Middle Temple in London in studying law.
     Mr. Wolsey has not approved of Henry VIII's new marriage to Anne Boleyn, neither has he been able to obtain a bill of divorcement for the king. Thus falling into the king's disfavor, he was arrested on November 4th, and charged with high treason.
     His keepers have been lenient and have traveled slowly toward London on account of his weakness. Very despondent he has constantly asserted he was being led to his execution. Midway between York and London, however, his strength completely failed him at Leicester Abbey. Today he dies here. On his deathbed he admonished Henry to "have a vigilant eye to suppress the Hellish Lutherans." "Oh, if I had served my God as I have served my king, He would never have left me thus!" thus he laments.

29, 1588 --England. Spain, with the blessing of the Pope, was at war with Protestant England. Two years before the execution of Mary Stuart in 1587, the Spanish king had begun building the largest and most formidable navy that had ever sailed the sea. His purpose was to invade "heretic" England and to bring it under the control of the Roman Pontiff. Wherever shipbuilders were to be found, whether in the West Indies or in America, Philip II searched them out, and conveyed them to the shipyards. From the coast of Portugal to Naples, to Venice and Genoa, and on to Sicily --all was converted into one vast shipyard, in 1587, Sir Francis Drake had warned his country of Spain's enormous preparations, and he declared, "There will be 40,000 men in weigh erelong, well equipped and provisioned."



 

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