At the treasury there was a complication of jealousies and quarrels.

[72] Both the First Commissioner, Mordaunt, and the Chancellor of the

Exchequer, Delamere, were zealous Whigs but, though they held the same

political creed, their tempers differed widely. Mordaunt was volatile,

dissipated, and generous. The wits of that time laughed at the way in

which he flew about from Hampton Court to the Royal Exchange, and from

the Royal Exchange back to Hampton Court. How he found time for dress,

politics, lovemaking and balladmaking was a wonder. [73] Delamere was

gloomy and acrimonious, austere in his private morals, and punctual in

his devotions, but greedy of ignoble gain. The two principal ministers

of finance, therefore, became enemies, and agreed only in hating their

colleague Godolphin. What business had he at Whitehall in these days of

Protestant ascendency, he who had sate at the same board with Papists,

he who had never scrupled to attend Mary of Modena to the idolatrous

worship of the Mass? The most provoking circumstance was that Godolphin,

though his name stood only third in the commission, was really first

Lord. For in financial knowledge and in habits of business Mordaunt and

Delamere were mere children when compared with him; and this William

soon discovered. [74]

Similar feuds raged at the other great boards and through all the

subordinate ranks of public functionaries. In every customhouse, in

every arsenal, were a Shrewsbury and a Nottingham, a Delamere and a

Godolphin. The Whigs complained that there was no department in which

creatures of the fallen tyranny were not to be found. It was idle to

allege that these men were versed in the details of business, that they

were the depositaries of official traditions, and that the friends

of liberty, having been, during many years, excluded from public

employment, must necessarily be incompetent to take on themselves at

once the whole management of affairs. Experience doubtless had its

value: but surely the first of all the qualifications of a servant was

fidelity; and no Tory could be a really faithful servant of the new

government. If King William were wise, he would rather trust novices

zealous for his interest and honour than veterans who might indeed

possess ability and knowledge, but who would use that ability and that

knowledge to effect his ruin.

The Tories, on the other hand, complained that their share of power bore

no proportion to their number and their weight in the country, and that

every where old and useful public servants were, for the crime of being

friends to monarchy and to the Church, turned out of their posts to make

way for Rye House plotters and haunters of conventicles. These upstarts,

adepts in the art of factious agitation, but ignorant of all that

belonged to their new calling, would be just beginning to learn their

business when they had undone the nation by their blunders. To be a

rebel and a schismatic was surely not all that ought to be required of

a man in high employment. What would become of the finances, what of

the marine, if Whigs who could not understand the plainest balance

sheet were to manage the revenue, and Whigs who had never walked over a

dockyard to fit out the fleet. [75]

The truth is that the charges which the two parties brought against each

other were, to a great extent, well founded, but that the blame which

both threw on William was unjust. Official experience was to be found

almost exclusively among the Tories, hearty attachment to the new

settlement almost exclusively among the Whigs. It was not the fault

of the King that the knowledge and the zeal, which, combined, make a

valuable servant of the state must at that time be had separately or

not at all. If he employed men of one party, there was great risk of

mistakes. If he employed men of the other party, there was great risk of

treachery. If he employed men of both parties, there was still some risk

of mistakes; there was still some risk of treachery; and to these risks

was added the certainty of dissension. He might join Whigs and Tories;

but it was beyond his power to mix them. In the same office, at the

same desk, they were still enemies, and agreed only in murmuring at the

Prince who tried to mediate between them. It was inevitable that, in

such circumstances, the administration, fiscal, military, naval, should

be feeble and unsteady; that nothing should be done in quite the

right way or at quite the right time; that the distractions from which

scarcely any public office was exempt should produce disasters, and

that every disaster should increase the distractions from which it had

sprung.

There was indeed one department of which the business was well

conducted; and that was the department of Foreign Affairs. There William

directed every thing, and, on important occasions, neither asked the

advice nor employed the agency of any English politician. One invaluable

assistant he had, Anthony Heinsius, who, a few weeks after the

Revolution had been accomplished, became Pensionary of Holland. Heinsius

had entered public life as a member of that party which was jealous of

the power of the House of Orange, and desirous to be on friendly terms

with France. But he had been sent in 1681 on a diplomatic mission to

Versailles; and a short residence there had produced a complete change

in his views. On a near acquaintance, he was alarmed by the power and

provoked by the insolence of that Court of which, while he contemplated

it only at a distance, he had formed a favourable opinion. He found that

his country was despised. He saw his religion persecuted. His official

character did not save him from some personal affronts which, to the

latest day of his long career, he never forgot. He went home a devoted

adherent of William and a mortal enemy of Lewis. [76]

The office of Pensionary, always important, was peculiarly important

when the Stadtholder was absent from the Hague. Had the politics of

Heinsius been still what they once were, all the great designs of

William might have been frustrated. But happily there was between these

two eminent men a perfect friendship which, till death dissolved it,

appears never to have been interrupted for one moment by suspicion or

ill humour. On all large questions of European policy they cordially

agreed. They corresponded assiduously and most unreservedly. For though

William was slow to give his confidence, yet, when he gave it, he gave

it entire. The correspondence is still extant, and is most honourable to

both. The King's letters would alone suffice to prove that he was one

of the greatest statesmen whom Europe has produced. While he lived, the

Pensionary was content to be the most obedient, the most trusty, and

the most discreet of servants. But, after the death of the master, the

servant proved himself capable of supplying with eminent ability the

master's place, and was renowned throughout Europe as one of the great

Triumvirate which humbled the pride of Lewis the Fourteenth. [77]

The foreign policy of England, directed immediately by William in

close concert with Heinsius, was, at this time, eminently skilful and

successful. But in every other part of the administration the evils

arising from the mutual animosity of factions were but too plainly

discernible. Nor was this all. To the evils arising from the mutual

animosity of factions were added other evils arising from the mutual

animosity of sects.

The year 1689 is a not less important epoch in the ecclesiastical than

in the civil history of England. In that year was granted the first

legal indulgence to Dissenters. In that year was made the last serious

attempt to bring the Presbyterians within the pale of the Church of

England. From that year dates a new schism, made, in defiance of ancient

precedents, by men who had always professed to regard schism with

peculiar abhorrence, and ancient precedents with peculiar veneration.

In that year began the long struggle between two great parties of

conformists. Those parties indeed had, under various forms, existed

within the Anglican communion ever since the Reformation; but till after

the Revolution they did not appear marshalled in regular and permanent

order of battle against each other, and were therefore not known by

established names. Some time after the accession of William they began

to be called the High Church party and the Low Church party; and, long

before the end of his reign, these appellations were in common use. [78]

In the summer of 1688 the breaches which had long divided the great body

of English Protestants had seemed to be almost closed. Disputes about

Bishops and Synods, written prayers and extemporaneous prayers, white

gowns and black gowns, sprinkling and dipping, kneeling and sitting,

had been for a short space intermitted. The serried array which was then

drawn up against Popery measured the whole of the vast interval which

separated Sancroft from Bunyan. Prelates recently conspicuous as

persecutors now declared themselves friends of religious liberty, and

exhorted their clergy to live in a constant interchange of hospitality

and of kind offices with the separatists. Separatists, on the other

hand, who had recently considered mitres and lawn sleeves as the livery

of Antichrist, were putting candles in windows and throwing faggots on

bonfires in honour of the prelates.

These feelings continued to grow till they attained their greatest

height on the memorable day on which the common oppressor finally

quitted Whitehall, and on which an innumerable multitude, tricked out in

orange ribands, welcomed the common deliverer to Saint James's. When the

clergy of London came, headed by Compton, to express their gratitude to

him by whose instrumentality God had wrought salvation for the Church

and the State, the procession was swollen by some eminent nonconformist

divines. It was delightful to many good men to learn that pious and

learned Presbyterian ministers had walked in the train of a Bishop, had

been greeted by him with fraternal kindness, and had been announced by

him in the presence chamber as his dear and respected friends, separated

from him indeed by some differences of opinion on minor points, but

united to him by Christian charity and by common zeal for the essentials

of the reformed faith. There had never before been such a day in

England; and there has never since been such a day. The tide of feeling

was already on the turn; and the ebb was even more rapid than the

flow had been. In a very few hours the High Churchman began to feel

tenderness for the enemy whose tyranny was now no longer feared, and

dislike of the allies whose services were now no longer needed. It

was easy to gratify both feelings by imputing to the dissenters the

misgovernment of the exiled King. His Majesty-such was now the language

of too many Anglican divines-would have been an excellent sovereign

had he not been too confiding, too forgiving. He had put his trust in

a class of men who hated his office, his family, his person, with

implacable hatred. He had ruined himself in the vain attempt to

conciliate them. He had relieved them, in defiance of law and of the

unanimous sense of the old royalist party, from the pressure of the

penal code; had allowed them to worship God publicly after their own

mean and tasteless fashion; had admitted them to the bench of justice

and to the Privy Council; had gratified them with fur robes, gold

chains, salaries, and pensions. In return for his liberality, these

people, once so uncouth in demeanour, once so savage in opposition even

to legitimate authority, had become the most abject of flatterers. They

had continued to applaud and encourage him when the most devoted friends

of his family had retired in shame and sorrow from his palace. Who had

more foully sold the religion and liberty of his country than Titus? Who

had been more zealous for the dispensing power than Alsop? Who had urged

on the persecution of the seven Bishops more fiercely than Lobb? What

chaplain impatient for a deanery had ever, even when preaching in the

royal presence on the thirtieth of January or the twenty-ninth of

May, uttered adulation more gross than might easily be found in

those addresses by which dissenting congregations had testified their

gratitude for the illegal Declaration of Indulgence? Was it strange that

a prince who had never studied law books should have believed that

he was only exercising his rightful prerogative, when he was thus

encouraged by a faction which had always ostentatiously professed hatred

of arbitrary power? Misled by such guidance, he had gone further and

further in the wrong path: he had at length estranged from him hearts

which would once have poured forth their best blood in his defence: he

had left himself no supporters except his old foes; and, when the day

of peril came, he had found that the feeling of his old foes towards

him was still what it had been when they had attempted to rob him of his

inheritance, and when they had plotted against his life. Every man of

sense had long known that the sectaries bore no love to monarchy. It had

now been found that they bore as little love to freedom. To trust them

with power would be an error not less fatal to the nation than to the

throne. If, in order to redeem pledges somewhat rashly given, it should

be thought necessary to grant them relief, every concession ought to be

accompanied by limitations and precautions. Above all, no man who was

an enemy to the ecclesiastical constitution of the realm ought to be

permitted to bear any part in the civil government.

Between the nonconformists and the rigid conformists stood the Low

Church party. That party contained, as it still contains, two very

different elements, a Puritan element and a Latitudinarian element. On

almost every question, however, relating either to ecclesiastical polity

or to the ceremonial of public worship, the Puritan Low Churchman and

the Latitudinarian Low Churchman were perfectly agreed. They saw in the

existing polity and in the existing ceremonial no defect, no blemish,

which could make it their duty to become dissenters. Nevertheless they

held that both the polity and the ceremonial were means and not ends,

and that the essential spirit of Christianity might exist without

episcopal orders and without a Book of Common Prayer. They had, while

James was on the throne, been mainly instrumental in forming the great

Protestant coalition against Popery and tyranny; and they continued in

1689 to hold the same conciliatory language which they had held in

1688. They gently blamed the scruples of the nonconformists. It was

undoubtedly a great weakness to imagine that there could be any sin in

wearing a white robe, in tracing a cross, in kneeling at the rails of an

altar. But the highest authority had given the plainest directions as

to the manner in which such weakness was to be treated. The weak brother

was not to be judged: he was not to be despised: believers who had

stronger minds were commanded to soothe him by large compliances, and

carefully to remove out of his path every stumbling block which could

cause him to offend. An apostle had declared that, though he had himself

no misgivings about the use of animal food or of wine, he would eat

herbs and drink water rather than give scandal to the feeblest of his

flock. What would he have thought of ecclesiastical rulers who, for the

sake of a vestment, a gesture, a posture, had not only torn the Church

asunder, but had filled all the gaols of England with men of orthodox

faith and saintly life? The reflections thrown by the High Churchmen on

the recent conduct of the dissenting body the Low Churchmen pronounced

to be grossly unjust. The wonder was, not that a few nonconformists

should have accepted with thanks an indulgence which, illegal as it

was, had opened the doors of their prisons and given security to their

hearths, but that the nonconformists generally should have been true

to the cause of a constitution from the benefits of which they had been

long excluded. It was most unfair to impute to a great party the faults

of a few individuals. Even among the Bishops of the Established Church

James had found tools and sycophants. The conduct of Cartwright and

Parker had been much more inexcusable than that of Alsop and Lobb. Yet

those who held the dissenters answerable for the errors of Alsop and

Lobb would doubtless think it most unreasonable to hold the Church

answerable for the far deeper guilt of Cartwright and Parker.

The Low Church clergymen were a minority, and not a large minority, of

their profession: but their weight was much more than proportioned to

their numbers: for they mustered strong in the capital: they had great

influence there; and the average of intellect and knowledge was higher

among them than among their order generally. We should probably overrate

their numerical strength, if we were to estimate them at a tenth part

of the priesthood. Yet it will scarcely be denied that there were among

them as many men of distinguished eloquence and learning as could be

found in the other nine tenths. Among the laity who conformed to the

established religion the parties were not unevenly balanced. Indeed

the line which separated them deviated very little from the line which

separated the Whigs and the Tories. In the House of Commons, which

had been elected when the Whigs were triumphant, the Low Church party

greatly preponderated. In the Lords there was an almost exact equipoise;

and very slight circumstances sufficed to turn the scale.

The head of the Low Church party was the King. He had been bred a

Presbyterian: he was, from rational conviction, a Latitudinarian; and

personal ambition, as well as higher motives, prompted him to act as

mediator among Protestant sects. He was bent on effecting three great

reforms in the laws touching ecclesiastical matters. His first object

was to obtain for dissenters permission to celebrate their worship in

freedom and security. His second object was to make such changes in

the Anglican ritual and polity as, without offending those to whom

that ritual and polity were dear, might conciliate the moderate

nonconformists. His third object was to throw open civil offices to

Protestants without distinction of sect. All his three objects were

good; but the first only was at that time attainable. He came too late

for the second, and too early for the third.

A few days after his accession, he took a step which indicated, in a

manner not to be mistaken, his sentiments touching ecclesiastical polity

and public worship. He found only one see unprovided with a Bishop. Seth

Ward, who had during many years had charge of the diocese of Salisbury,

and who had been honourably distinguished as one of the founders of

the Royal Society, having long survived his faculties, died while

the country was agitated by the elections for the Convention, without

knowing that great events, of which not the least important had passed

under his own roof, had saved his Church and his country from ruin. The

choice of a successor was no light matter. That choice would inevitably

be considered by the country as a prognostic of the highest import.

The King too might well be perplexed by the number of divines whose

erudition, eloquence, courage, and uprightness had been conspicuously

displayed during the contentions of the last three years. The preference

was given to Burnet. His claims were doubtless great. Yet William might

have had a more tranquil reign if he had postponed for a time the well

earned promotion of his chaplain, and had bestowed the first great

spiritual preferment, which, after the Revolution, fell to the

disposal of the Crown, on some eminent theologian, attached to the new

settlement, yet not generally hated by the clergy. Unhappily the name

of Burnet was odious to the great majority of the Anglican priesthood.

Though, as respected doctrine, he by no means belonged to the extreme

section of the Latitudinarian party, he was popularly regarded as the

personification of the Latitudinarian spirit. This distinction he owed

to the prominent place which he held in literature and politics, to the

readiness of his tongue and of his pert, and above all to the frankness

and boldness of his nature, frankness which could keep no secret, and

boldness which flinched from no danger. He had formed but a low estimate

of the character of his clerical brethren considered as a body; and,

with his usual indiscretion, he frequently suffered his opinion to

escape him. They hated him in return with a hatred which has descended

to their successors, and which, after the lapse of a century and a half,

does not appear to languish.

As soon as the King's decision was known, the question was every where

asked, What will the Archbishop do? Sancroft had absented himself from

the Convention: he had refused to sit in the Privy Council: he had

ceased to confirm, to ordain, and to institute; and he was seldom

seen out of the walls of his palace at Lambeth. He, on all occasions,

professed to think himself still bound by his old oath of allegiance.

Burnet he regarded as a scandal to the priesthood, a Presbyterian in a

surplice. The prelate who should lay hands on that unworthy head would

commit more than one great sin. He would, in a sacred place, and before

a great congregation of the faithful, at once acknowledge an usurper

as a King, and confer on a schismatic the character of a Bishop. During

some time Sancroft positively declared that he would not obey the

precept of William. Lloyd of Saint Asaph, who was the common friend of

the Archbishop and of the Bishop elect, intreated and expostulated

in vain. Nottingham, who, of all the laymen connected with the new

government, stood best with the clergy, tried his influence, but to no

better purpose. The Jacobites said every where that they were sure of

the good old Primate; that he had the spirit of a martyr; that he was

determined to brave, in the cause of the Monarchy and of the Church, the

utmost rigour of those laws with which the obsequious parliaments of the

sixteenth century had fenced the Royal Supremacy. He did in truth hold

out long. But at the last moment his heart failed him, and he looked

round him for some mode of escape. Fortunately, as childish scruples

often disturbed his conscience, childish expedients often quieted it. A

more childish expedient than that to which he now resorted is not to be

found in all the tones of the casuists. He would not himself bear a part

in the service. He would not publicly pray for the Prince and Princess

as King and Queen. He would not call for their mandate, order it to be

read, and then proceed to obey it. But he issued a commission empowering

any three of his suffragans to commit, in his name, and as his

delegates, the sins which he did not choose to commit in person. The

reproaches of all parties soon made him ashamed of himself. He then

tried to suppress the evidence of his fault by means more discreditable

than the fault itself. He abstracted from among the public records of

which he was the guardian the instrument by which he had authorised his

brethren to act for him, and was with difficulty induced to give it up.

[79]

Burnet however had, under the authority of this instrument, been

consecrated. When he next waited on Mary, she reminded him of the

conversations which they had held at the Hague about the high duties and

grave responsibility of Bishops. "I hope," she said, "that you will put

your notions in practice." Her hope was not disappointed. Whatever

may be thought of Burnet's opinions touching civil and ecclesiastical

polity, or of the temper and judgment which he showed in defending those

opinions, the utmost malevolence of faction could not venture to deny

that he tended his flock with a zeal, diligence, and disinterestedness

worthy of the purest ages of the Church. His jurisdiction extended over

Wiltshire and Berkshire. These counties he divided into districts which

he sedulously visited. About two months of every summer he passed in

preaching, catechizing, and confirming daily from church to church. When

he died there was no corner of his diocese in which the people had not

had seven or eight opportunities of receiving his instructions and of

asking his advice. The worst weather, the worst roads, did not prevent

him from discharging these duties. On one occasion, when the floods were

out, he exposed his life to imminent risk rather than disappoint a rural

congregation which was in expectation of a discourse from the Bishop.

The poverty of the inferior clergy was a constant cause of uneasiness

to his kind and generous heart. He was indefatigable and at length

successful in his attempts to obtain for them from the Crown that

grant which is known by the name of Queen Anne's Bounty. [80] He was

especially careful, when he travelled through his diocese, to lay

no burden on them. Instead of requiring them to entertain him, he

entertained them. He always fixed his headquarters at a market town,

kept a table there, and, by his decent hospitality and munificent

charities, tried to conciliate those who were prejudiced against his

doctrines. When he bestowed a poor benefice, and he had many such to

bestow, his practice was to add out of his own purse twenty pounds a

year to the income. Ten promising young men, to each of whom he allowed

thirty pounds a year, studied divinity under his own eye in the close

of Salisbury. He had several children but he did not think himself

justified in hoarding for them. Their mother had brought him a good

fortune. With that fortune, he always said, they must be content: He

would not, for their sakes, be guilty of the crime of raising an estate

out of revenues sacred to piety and charity. Such merits as these will,

in the judgment of wise and candid men, appear fully to atone for every

offence which can be justly imputed to him. [81]

When he took his seat in the House of Lords, he found that assembly

busied in ecclesiastical legislation. A statesman who was well known

to be devoted to the Church had undertaken to plead the cause of the

Dissenters. No subject in the realm occupied so important and commanding

a position with reference to religious parties as Nottingham. To the

influence derived from rank, from wealth, and from office, he added

the higher influence which belongs to knowledge, to eloquence, and to

integrity. The orthodoxy of his creed, the regularity of his devotions,

and the purity of his morals gave a peculiar weight to his opinions on

questions in which the interests of Christianity were concerned. Of all

the ministers of the new Sovereigns, he had the largest share of the

confidence of the clergy. Shrewsbury was certainly a Whig, and probably

a freethinker: he had lost one religion; and it did not very clearly

appear that he had found another. Halifax had been during many years

accused of scepticism, deism, atheism. Danby's attachment to episcopacy

and the liturgy was rather political than religious. But Nottingham

was such a son as the Church was proud to own. Propositions, therefore,

which, if made by his colleagues, would infallibly produce a violent

panic among the clergy, might, if made by him, find a favourable

reception even in universities and chapter houses. The friends

of religious liberty were with good reason desirous to obtain his

cooperation; and, up to a certain point, he was not unwilling to

cooperate with them. He was decidedly for a toleration. He was even for

what was then called a comprehension: that is to say, he was desirous

to make some alterations in the Anglican discipline and ritual for the

purpose of removing the scruples of the moderate Presbyterians. But he

was not prepared to give up the Test Act. The only fault which he found

with that Act was that it was not sufficiently stringent, and that it

left loopholes through which schismatics sometimes crept into civil

employments. In truth it was because he was not disposed to part with

the Test that he was willing to consent to some changes in the Liturgy.

He conceived that, if the entrance of the Church were but a very little

widened, great numbers who had hitherto lingered near the threshold

would press in. Those who still remained without would then not be

sufficiently numerous or powerful to extort any further concession, and

would be glad to compound for a bare toleration. [82]

The opinion of the Low Churchmen concerning the Test Act differed widely

from his. But many of them thought that it was of the highest

importance to have his support on the great questions of Toleration and

Comprehension. From the scattered fragments of information which have

come down to us, it appears that a compromise was made. It is quite

certain that Nottingham undertook to bring in a Toleration Bill and a

Comprehension Bill, and to use his best endeavours to carry both bills

through the House of Lords. It is highly probable that, in return for

this great service, some of the leading Whigs consented to let the Test

Act remain for the present unaltered.

There was no difficulty in framing either the Toleration Bill or the

Comprehension Bill. The situation of the dissenters had been much

discussed nine or ten years before, when the kingdom was distracted

by the fear of a Popish plot, and when there was among Protestants a

general disposition to unite against the common enemy. The government

had then been willing to make large concessions to the Whig party, on

condition that the crown should be suffered to descend according to the

regular course. A draught of a law authorising the public worship of the

nonconformists, and a draught of a law making some alterations in the

public worship of the Established Church, had been prepared, and would

probably have been passed by both Houses without difficulty, had not

Shaftesbury and his coadjutors refused to listen to any terms, and, by

grasping at what was beyond their reach, missed advantages which might

easily have been secured. In the framing of these draughts, Nottingham,

then an active member of the House of Commons, had borne a considerable

part. He now brought them forth from the obscurity in which they had

remained since the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, and laid them,

with some slight alterations, on the table of the Lords. [83]

The Toleration Bill passed both Houses with little debate. This

celebrated statute, long considered as the Great Charter of religious

liberty, has since been extensively modified, and is hardly known to

the present generation except by name. The name, however, is still

pronounced with respect by many who will perhaps learn with surprise

and disappointment the real nature of the law which they have been

accustomed to hold in honour.

Several statutes which had been passed between the accession of Queen

Elizabeth and the Revolution required all people under severe penalties

to attend the services of the Church of England, and to abstain from

attending conventicles. The Toleration Act did not repeal any of these

statutes, but merely provided that they should not be construed to

extend to any person who should testify his loyalty by taking the Oaths

of Allegiance and Supremacy, and his Protestantism by subscribing the

Declaration against Transubstantiation.

The relief thus granted was common between the dissenting laity and

the dissenting clergy. But the dissenting clergy had some peculiar

grievances. The Act of Uniformity had laid a mulct of a hundred pounds

on every person who, not having received episcopal ordination, should

presume to administer the Eucharist. The Five Mile Act had driven many

pious and learned ministers from their houses and their friends, to live

among rustics in obscure villages of which the name was not to be seen

on the map. The Conventicle Act had imposed heavy fines on divines who

should preach in any meeting of separatists; and, in direct opposition

to the humane spirit of our common law, the Courts were enjoined to

construe this Act largely and beneficially for the suppressing of

dissent and for the encouraging of informers. These severe statutes were

not repealed, but were, with many conditions and precautions, relaxed.

It was provided that every dissenting minister should, before he

exercised his function, profess under his hand his belief in the

articles of the Church of England, with a few exceptions. The

propositions to which he was not required to assent were these; that the

Church has power to regulate ceremonies; that the doctrines set forth in

the Book of Homilies are sound; and that there is nothing superstitious

and idolatrous in the ordination service. If he declared himself a

Baptist, he was also excused from affirming that the baptism of infants

is a laudable practice. But, unless his conscience suffered him to

subscribe thirty-four of the thirty-nine articles, and the greater part

of two other articles, he could not preach without incurring all the

punishments which the Cavaliers, in the day of their power and their

vengeance, had devised for the tormenting and ruining of schismatical

teachers.

The situation of the Quaker differed from that of other dissenters,

and differed for the worse. The Presbyterian, the Independent, and

the Baptist had no scruple about the Oath of Supremacy. But the Quaker

refused to take it, not because he objected to the proposition that

foreign sovereigns and prelates have no jurisdiction in England, but

because his conscience would not suffer him to swear to any proposition

whatever. He was therefore exposed to the severity of part of that penal

code which, long before Quakerism existed, had been enacted against

Roman Catholics by the Parliaments of Elizabeth. Soon after the

Restoration, a severe law, distinct from the general law which applied

to all conventicles, had been passed against meetings of Quakers. The

Toleration Act permitted the members of this harmless sect to hold

their assemblies in peace, on condition of signing three documents, a

declaration against Transubstantiation, a promise of fidelity to the

government, and a confession of Christian belief. The objections which

the Quaker had to the Athanasian phraseology had brought on him the

imputation of Socinianism; and the strong language in which he sometimes

asserted that he derived his knowledge of spiritual things directly from

above had raised a suspicion that he thought lightly of the authority

of Scripture. He was therefore required to profess his faith in the

divinity of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and in the inspiration of the

Old and New Testaments.

Such were the terms on which the Protestant dissenters of England were,

for the first time, permitted by law to worship God according to their

own conscience. They were very properly forbidden to assemble with

barred doors, but were protected against hostile intrusion by a

clause which made it penal to enter a meeting house for the purpose of

molesting the congregation.

As if the numerous limitations and precautions which have been mentioned

were insufficient, it was emphatically declared that the legislature

did not intend to grant the smallest indulgence to any Papist, or to any

person who denied the doctrine of the Trinity as that doctrine is set

forth in the formularies of the Church of England.

Of all the Acts that have ever been passed by Parliament, the Toleration

Act is perhaps that which most strikingly illustrates the peculiar vices

and the peculiar excellences of English legislation. The science

of Politics bears in one respect a close analogy to the science of

Mechanics. The mathematician can easily demonstrate that a certain

power, applied by means of a certain lever or of a certain system of

pulleys, will suffice to raise a certain weight. But his demonstration

proceeds on the supposition that the machinery is such as no load will

bend or break. If the engineer, who has to lift a great mass of real

granite by the instrumentality of real timber and real hemp, should

absolutely rely on the propositions which he finds in treatises on

Dynamics, and should make no allowance for the imperfection of his

materials, his whole apparatus of beams, wheels, and ropes would soon

come down in ruin, and, with all his geometrical skill, he would be

found a far inferior builder to those painted barbarians who, though

they never heard of the parallelogram of forces, managed to pile up

Stonehenge. What the engineer is to the mathematician, the active

statesman is to the contemplative statesman. It is indeed most important

that legislators and administrators should be versed in the philosophy

of government, as it is most important that the architect, who has to

fix an obelisk on its pedestal, or to hang a tubular bridge over an

estuary, should be versed in the philosophy of equilibrium and motion.

But, as he who has actually to build must bear in mind many things never

noticed by D'Alembert and Euler, so must he who has actually to govern

be perpetually guided by considerations to which no allusion can be

found in the writings of Adam Smith or Jeremy Bentham. The perfect

lawgiver is a just temper between the mere man of theory, who can see

nothing but general principles, and the mere man of business, who can

see nothing but particular circumstances. Of lawgivers in whom the

speculative element has prevailed to the exclusion of the practical,

the world has during the last eighty years been singularly fruitful.

To their wisdom Europe and America have owed scores of abortive

constitutions, scores of constitutions which have lived just long enough

to make a miserable noise, and have then gone off in convulsions. But in

the English legislature the practical element has always predominated,

and not seldom unduly predominated, over the speculative. To think

nothing of symmetry and much of convenience; never to remove an anomaly

merely because it is an anomaly; never to innovate except when some

grievance is felt; never to innovate except so far as to get rid of the

grievance; never to lay down any proposition of wider extent than the

particular case for which it is necessary to provide; these are the

rules which have, from the age of John to the age of Victoria, generally

guided the deliberations of our two hundred and fifty Parliaments. Our

national distaste for whatever is abstract in political science amounts

undoubtedly to a fault. But it is, perhaps, a fault on the right side.

That we have been far too slow to improve our laws must be admitted.

But, though in other countries there may have occasionally been more

rapid progress, it would not be easy to name any other country in which

there has been so little retrogression.

The Toleration Act approaches very near to the idea of a great

English law. To a jurist, versed in the theory of legislation, but not

intimately acquainted with the temper of the sects and parties into

which the nation was divided at the time of the Revolution, that Act

would seem to be a mere chaos of absurdities and contradictions. It will

not bear to be tried by sound general principles. Nay, it will not bear

to be tried by any principle, sound or unsound. The sound principle

undoubtedly is, that mere theological error ought not to be punished by

the civil magistrate. This principle the Toleration Act not only does

not recognise, but positively disclaims. Not a single one of the cruel

laws enacted against nonconformists by the Tudors or the Stuarts is

repealed. Persecution continues to be the general rule. Toleration is

the exception. Nor is this all. The freedom which is given to

conscience is given in the most capricious manner. A Quaker, by making

a declaration of faith in general terms, obtains the full benefit of

the Act without signing one of the thirty-nine Articles. An Independent

minister, who is perfectly willing to make the declaration required

from the Quaker, but who has doubts about six or seven of the Articles,

remains still subject to the penal laws. Howe is liable to punishment if

he preaches before he has solemnly declared his assent to the Anglican

doctrine touching the Eucharist. Penn, who altogether rejects

the Eucharist, is at perfect liberty to preach without making any

declaration whatever on the subject.

These are some of the obvious faults which must strike every person who

examines the Toleration Act by that standard of just reason which is the

same in all countries and in all ages. But these very faults may perhaps

appear to be merits, when we take into consideration the passions and

prejudices of those for whom the Toleration Act was framed. This

law, abounding with contradictions which every smatterer in political

philosophy can detect, did what a law framed by the utmost skill of the

greatest masters of political philosophy might have failed to do. That

the provisions which have been recapitulated are cumbrous, puerile,

inconsistent with each other, inconsistent with the true theory of

religious liberty, must be acknowledged. All that can be said in their

defence is this; that they removed a vast mass of evil without shocking

a vast mass of prejudice; that they put an end, at once and for ever,

without one division in either House of Parliament, without one riot in

the streets, with scarcely one audible murmur even from the classes most

deeply tainted with bigotry, to a persecution which had raged during

four generations, which had broken innumerable hearts, which had made

innumerable firesides desolate, which had filled the prisons with men

of whom the world was not worthy, which had driven thousands of those

honest, diligent and godfearing yeomen and artisans, who are the true

strength of a nation, to seek a refuge beyond the ocean among the

wigwams of red Indians and the lairs of panthers. Such a defence,

however weak it may appear to some shallow speculators, will probably be

thought complete by statesmen.

The English, in 1689, were by no means disposed to admit the doctrine

that religious error ought to be left unpunished. That doctrine was just

then more unpopular than it had ever been. For it had, only a few months

before, been hypocritically put forward as a pretext for persecuting the

Established Church, for trampling on the fundamental laws of the realm,

for confiscating freeholds, for treating as a crime the modest exercise

of the right of petition. If a bill had then been drawn up granting

entire freedom of conscience to all Protestants, it may be confidently

affirmed that Nottingham would never have introduced such a bill; that

all the bishops, Burnet included, would have voted against it; that

it would have been denounced, Sunday after Sunday, from ten thousand

pulpits, as an insult to God and to all Christian men, and as a license

to the worst heretics and blasphemers; that it would have been condemned

almost as vehemently by Bates and Baxter as by Ken and Sherlock; that it

would have been burned by the mob in half the market places of England;

that it would never have become the law of the land, and that it would

have made the very name of toleration odious during many years to the

majority of the people. And yet, if such a bill had been passed, what

would it have effected beyond what was effected by the Toleration Act?

It is true that the Toleration Act recognised persecution as the rule,

and granted liberty of conscience only as the exception. But it is

equally true that the rule remained in force only against a few hundreds

of Protestant dissenters, and that the benefit of the exceptions

extended to hundreds of thousands.

It is true that it was in theory absurd to make Howe sign thirty-four or

thirty-five of the Anglican articles before he could preach, and to let

Penn preach without signing one of those articles. But it is equally

true that, under this arrangement, both Howe and Penn got as entire

liberty to preach as they could have had under the most philosophical

code that Beccaria or Jefferson could have framed.

The progress of the bill was easy. Only one amendment of grave

importance was proposed. Some zealous churchmen in the Commons suggested

that it might be desirable to grant the toleration only for a term of

seven years, and thus to bind over the nonconformists to good behaviour.

But this suggestion was so unfavourably received that those who made it

did not venture to divide the House. [84]

The King gave his consent with hearty satisfaction: the bill became law;

and the Puritan divines thronged to the Quarter Sessions of every county

to swear and sign. Many of them probably professed their assent to the

Articles with some tacit reservations. But the tender conscience of

Baxter would not suffer him to qualify, till he had put on record an

explanation of the sense in which he understood every proposition which

seemed to him to admit of misconstruction. The instrument delivered by

him to the Court before which he took the oaths is still extant,

and contains two passages of peculiar interest. He declared that his

approbation of the Athanasian Creed was confined to that part which was

properly a Creed, and that he did not mean to express any assent to

the damnatory clauses. He also declared that he did not, by signing the

article which anathematizes all who maintain that there is any other

salvation than through Christ, mean to condemn those who entertain a

hope that sincere and virtuous unbelievers may be admitted to partake

in the benefits of Redemption. Many of the dissenting clergy of London

expressed their concurrence in these charitable sentiments. [85]

The history of the Comprehension Bill presents a remarkable contrast to

the history of the Toleration Bill. The two bills had a common origin,

and, to a great extent, a common object. They were framed at the same

time, and laid aside at the same time: they sank together into oblivion;

and they were, after the lapse of several years, again brought together

before the world. Both were laid by the same peer on the table of the

Upper House; and both were referred to the same select committee. But

it soon began to appear that they would have widely different fates.

The Comprehension Bill was indeed a neater specimen of legislative

workmanship than the Toleration Bill, but was not, like the Toleration

Bill, adapted to the wants, the feelings, and the prejudices of the

existing generation. Accordingly, while the Toleration Bill found

support in all quarters, the Comprehension Bill was attacked from all

quarters, and was at last coldly and languidly defended even by those

who had introduced it. About the same time at which the Toleration bill

became law with the general concurrence of public men, the Comprehension

Bill was, with a concurrence not less general, suffered to drop. The

Toleration Bill still ranks among those great statutes which are epochs

in our constitutional history. The Comprehension Bill is forgotten. No

collector of antiquities has thought it worth preserving. A single copy,

the same which Nottingham presented to the peers, is still among our

parliamentary records, but has been seen by only two or three persons

now living. It is a fortunate circumstance that, in this copy, almost

the whole history of the Bill can be read. In spite of cancellations

and interlineations, the original words can easily be distinguished from

those which were inserted in the committee or on the report. [86]

The first clause, as it stood when the bill was introduced, dispensed

all the ministers of the Established Church from the necessity of

subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles. For the Articles was substituted

a Declaration which ran thus; "I do approve of the doctrine and

worship and government of the Church of England by law established,

as containing all things necessary to salvation; and I promise, in the

exercise of my ministry, to preach and practice according thereunto."

Another clause granted similar indulgence to the members of the two

universities.

Then it was provided that any minister who had been ordained after

the Presbyterian fashion might, without reordination, acquire all the

privileges of a priest of the Established Church. He must, however,

be admitted to his new functions by the imposition of the hands of a

bishop, who was to pronounce the following form of words; "Take thou

authority to preach the word of God, and administer the sacraments, and

to perform all other ministerial offices in the Church of England."

The person thus admitted was to be capable of holding any rectory or

vicarage in the kingdom.

Then followed clauses providing that a clergyman might, except in a few

churches of peculiar dignity, wear the surplice or not as he thought

fit, that the sign of the cross might be omitted in baptism, that

children might be christened, if such were the wish of their parents,

without godfathers or godmothers, and that persons who had a scruple

about receiving the Eucharist kneeling might receive it sitting.

The concluding clause was drawn in the form of a petition. It was

proposed that the two Houses should request the King and Queen to issue

a commission empowering thirty divines of the Established Church

to revise the liturgy, the canons, and the constitution of the

ecclesiastical courts, and to recommend such alterations as might on

inquiry appear to be desirable.

The bill went smoothly through the first stages. Compton, who, since

Sancroft had shut himself up at Lambeth, was virtually Primate,

supported Nottingham with ardour. [87] In the committee, however, it

appeared that there was a strong body of churchmen, who were determined

not to give up a single word or form; to whom it seemed that the prayers

were no prayers without the surplice, the babe no Christian if not

marked with the cross, the bread and wine no memorials of redemption

or vehicles of grace if not received on bended knee. Why, these persons

asked, was the docile and affectionate son of the Church to be disgusted

by seeing the irreverent practices of a conventicle introduced into her

majestic choirs? Why should his feelings, his prejudices, if prejudices

they were, be less considered than the whims of schismatics? If, as

Burnet and men like Burnet were never weary of repeating, indulgence

was due to a weak brother, was it less due to the brother whose

weakness consisted in the excess of his love for an ancient, a decent, a

beautiful ritual, associated in his imagination from childhood with

all that is most sublime and endearing, than to him whose morose and

litigious mind was always devising frivolous objections to innocent and

salutary usages? But, in truth, the scrupulosity of the Puritan was not

that sort of scrupulosity which the Apostle had commanded believers to

respect. It sprang, not from morbid tenderness of conscience, but from

censoriousness and spiritual pride; and none who had studied the New

Testament could have failed to observe that, while we are charged

carefully to avoid whatever may give scandal to the feeble, we are

taught by divine precept and example to make no concession to the

supercilious and uncharitable Pharisee. Was every thing which was not of

the essence of religion to be given up as soon as it became unpleasing

to a knot of zealots whose heads had been turned by conceit and the love

of novelty? Painted glass, music, holidays, fast days, were not of the

essence of religion. Were the windows of King's College Chapel to be

broken at the demand of one set of fanatics? Was the organ of Exeter

to be silenced to please another? Were all the village bells to be mute

because Tribulation Wholesome and Deacon Ananias thought them profane?

Was Christmas no longer to be a day of rejoicing? Was Passion week no

longer to be a season of humiliation? These changes, it is true, were

not yet proposed. Put if,--so the High Churchmen reasoned,--we once

admit that what is harmless and edifying is to be given up because it

offends some narrow understandings and some gloomy tempers, where are

we to stop? And is it not probable that, by thus attempting to heal one

schism, we may cause another? All those things which the Puritans regard

as the blemishes of the Church are by a large part of the population

reckoned among her attractions. May she not, in ceasing to give scandal

to a few sour precisians, cease also to influence the hearts of many

who now delight in her ordinances? Is it not to be apprehended that, for

every proselyte whom she allures from the meeting house, ten of her old

disciples may turn away from her maimed rites and dismantled temples,

and that these new separatists may either form themselves into a

sect far more formidable than the sect which we are now seeking to

conciliate, or may, in the violence of their disgust at a cold and

ignoble worship, be tempted to join in the solemn and gorgeous idolatry

of Rome?

It is remarkable that those who held this language were by no means

disposed to contend for the doctrinal Articles of the Church. The truth

is that, from the time of James the First, that great party which has

been peculiarly zealous for the Anglican polity and the Anglican ritual

has always leaned strongly towards Arminianism, and has therefore never

been much attached to a confession of faith framed by reformers who, on

questions of metaphysical divinity, generally agreed with Calvin. One of

the characteristic marks of that party is the disposition which it has

always shown to appeal, on points of dogmatic theology, rather to the

Liturgy, which was derived from Rome, than to the Articles and Homilies,

which were derived from Geneva. The Calvinistic members of the Church,

on the other hand, have always maintained that her deliberate judgment

on such points is much more likely to be found in an Article or a Homily

than in an ejaculation of penitence or a hymn of thanksgiving. It does

not appear that, in the debates on the Comprehension Bill, a single High

Churchman raised his voice against the clause which relieved the clergy

from the necessity of subscribing the Articles, and of declaring the

doctrine contained in the Homilies to be sound. Nay, the Declaration

which, in the original draught, was substituted for the Articles, was

much softened down on the report. As the clause finally stood, the

ministers of the Church were required to declare, not that they approved

of her constitution, but merely that they submitted to it. Had the bill

become law, the only people in the kingdom who would have been under

the necessity of signing the Articles would have been the dissenting

preachers. [88]

The easy manner in which the zealous friends of the Church gave up her

confession of faith presents a striking contrast to the spirit with

which they struggled for her polity and her ritual. The clause which

admitted Presbyterian ministers to hold benefices without episcopal

ordination was rejected. The clause which permitted scrupulous persons

to communicate sitting very narrowly escaped the same fate. In the

Committee it was struck out, and, on the report, was with great

difficulty restored. The majority of peers in the House was against the

proposed indulgence, and the scale was but just turned by the proxies.

But by this time it began to appear that the bill which the High

Churchmen were so keenly assailing was menaced by dangers from a very

different quarter. The same considerations which had induced Nottingham

to support a comprehension made comprehension an object of dread and

aversion to a large body of dissenters. The truth is that the time

for such a scheme had gone by. If, a hundred years earlier, when the

division in the Protestant body was recent, Elizabeth had been so wise

as to abstain from requiring the observance of a few forms which a

large part of her subjects considered as Popish, she might perhaps have

averted those fearful calamities which, forty years after her death,

afflicted the Church. But the general tendency of schism is to widen.

Had Leo the Tenth, when the exactions and impostures of the Pardoners

first roused the indignation of Saxony, corrected those evil practices

with a vigorous hand, it is not improbable that Luther would have died

in the bosom of the Church of Rome. But the opportunity was suffered

to escape; and, when, a few years later, the Vatican would gladly

have purchased peace by yielding the original subject of quarrel, the

original subject of quarrel was almost forgotten. The inquiring spirit

which had been roused by a single abuse had discovered or imagined a

thousand: controversies engendered controversies: every attempt that

was made to accommodate one dispute ended by producing another; and

at length a General Council, which, during the earlier stages of the

distemper, had been supposed to be an infallible remedy, made the case

utterly hopeless. In this respect, as in many others, the history

of Puritanism in England bears a close analogy to the history of

Protestantism in Europe. The Parliament of 1689 could no more put an end

to nonconformity by tolerating a garb or a posture than the Doctors

of Trent could have reconciled the Teutonic nations to the Papacy by

regulating the sale of indulgences. In the sixteenth century Quakerism

was unknown; and there was not in the whole realm a single congregation

of Independents or Baptists. At the time of the Revolution, the

Independents, Baptists, and Quakers were a majority of the dissenting

body; and these sects could not be gained over on any terms which

the lowest of Low Churchmen would have been willing to offer. The

Independent held that a national Church, governed by any central

authority whatever, Pope, Patriarch, King, Bishop, or Synod, was an

unscriptural institution, and that every congregation of believers

was, under Christ, a sovereign society. The Baptist was even

more irreclaimable than the Independent, and the Quaker even more

irreclaimable than the Baptist. Concessions, therefore, which would once

have extinguished nonconformity would not now satisfy even one half

of the nonconformists; and it was the obvious interest of every

nonconformist whom no concession would satisfy that none of his brethren

should be satisfied. The more liberal the terms of comprehension, the

greater was the alarm of every separatist who knew that he could, in no

case, be comprehended. There was but slender hope that the dissenters,

unbroken and acting as one man, would be able to obtain from the

legislature full admission to civil privileges; and all hope of

obtaining such admission must be relinquished if Nottingham should,

by the help of some wellmeaning but shortsighted friends of religious

liberty, be enabled to accomplish his design. If his bill passed, there

would doubtless be a considerable defection from the dissenting

body; and every defection must be severely felt by a class already

outnumbered, depressed, and struggling against powerful enemies. Every

proselyte too must be reckoned twice over, as a loss to the party which

was even now too weak, and as a gain to the party which was even now too

strong. The Church was but too well able to hold her own against all the

sects in the kingdom; and, if those sects were to be thinned by a large

desertion, and the Church strengthened by a large reinforcement, it was

plain that all chance of obtaining any relaxation of the Test Act would

be at an end; and it was but too probable that the Toleration Act might

not long remain unrepealed.

Even those Presbyterian ministers whose scruples the Comprehension Bill

was expressly intended to remove were by no means unanimous in wishing

it to pass. The ablest and most eloquent preachers among them had, since

the Declaration of Indulgence had appeared, been very agreeably settled

in the capital and in other large towns, and were now about to enjoy,

under the sure guarantee of an Act of Parliament, that toleration which,

under the Declaration of Indulgence, had been illicit and precarious.

The situation of these men was such as the great majority of the divines

of the Established Church might well envy. Few indeed of the parochial

clergy were so abundantly supplied with comforts as the favourite

orator of a great assembly of nonconformists in the City. The voluntary

contributions of his wealthy hearers, Aldermen and Deputies, West India

merchants and Turkey merchants, Wardens of the Company of Fishmongers

and Wardens of the Company of Goldsmiths, enabled him to become a

landowner or a mortgagee. The best broadcloth from Blackwell Hall, and

the best poultry from Leadenhall Market, were frequently left at his

door. His influence over his flock was immense. Scarcely any member of

a congregation of separatists entered into a partnership, married a

daughter, put a son out as apprentice, or gave his vote at an election,

without consulting his spiritual guide. On all political and literary

questions the minister was the oracle of his own circle. It was

popularly remarked, during many years, that an eminent dissenting

minister had only to make his son an attorney or a physician; that the

attorney was sure to have clients, and the physician to have patients.

While a waiting woman was generally considered as a help meet for

a chaplain in holy orders of the Established Church, the widows and

daughters of opulent citizens were supposed to belong in a peculiar

manner to nonconformist pastors. One of the great Presbyterian Rabbies,

therefore, might well doubt whether, in a worldly view, he should

be benefited by a comprehension. He might indeed hold a rectory or

a vicarage, when he could get one. But in the meantime he would be

destitute: his meeting house would be closed: his congregation would be

dispersed among the parish churches: if a benefice were bestowed on him,

it would probably be a very slender compensation for the income which

he had lost. Nor could he hope to have, as a minister of the Anglican

Church, the authority and dignity which he had hitherto enjoyed. He

would always, by a large portion of the members of that Church, be

regarded as a deserter. He might therefore, on the whole, very naturally

wish to be left where he was. [89]

There was consequently a division in the Whig party. One section of that

party was for relieving the dissenters from the Test Act, and giving

up the Comprehension Bill. Another section was for pushing forward

the Comprehension Bill, and postponing to a more convenient time the

consideration of the Test Act. The effect of this division among the

friends of religious liberty was that the High Churchmen, though a

minority in the House of Commons, and not a majority in the House of

Lords, were able to oppose with success both the reforms which they

dreaded. The Comprehension Bill was not passed; and the Test Act was not

repealed.

Just at the moment when the question of the Test and the question of the

Comprehension became complicated together in a manner which might well

perplex an enlightened and honest politician, both questions became

complicated with a third question of grave importance.

The ancient oaths of allegiance and supremacy contained some expressions

which had always been disliked by the Whigs, and other expressions which

Tories, honestly attached to the new settlement, thought inapplicable to

princes who had not the hereditary right. The Convention had therefore,

while the throne was still vacant, framed those oaths of allegiance and

supremacy by which we still testify our loyalty to our Sovereign. By the

Act which turned the Convention into a Parliament, the members of both

Houses were required to take the new oaths. As to other persons in

public trust, it was hard to say how the law stood. One form of words

was enjoined by statutes, regularly passed, and not yet regularly

abrogated. A different form was enjoined by the Declaration of Right, an

instrument which was indeed revolutionary and irregular, but which might

well be thought equal in authority to any statute. The practice was in

as much confusion as the law. It was therefore felt to be necessary that

the legislature should, without delay, pass an Act abolishing the old

oaths, and determining when and by whom the new oaths should be taken.

The bill which settled this important question originated in the Upper

House. As to most of the provisions there was little room for dispute.

It was unanimously agreed that no person should, at any future time, be

admitted to any office, civil, military, ecclesiastical, or academical,

without taking the oaths to William and Mary. It was also unanimously

agreed that every person who already held any civil or military office

should be ejected from it, unless he took the oaths on or before the

first of August 1689. But the strongest passions of both parties

were excited by the question whether persons who already possessed

ecclesiastical or academical offices should be required to swear fealty

to the King and Queen on pain of deprivation. None could say what might

be the effect of a law enjoining all the members of a great, a powerful,

a sacred profession to make, under the most solemn sanction of

religion, a declaration which might be plausibly represented as a formal

recantation of all that they had been writing and preaching during many

years. The Primate and some of the most eminent Bishops had already

absented themselves from Parliament, and would doubtless relinquish

their palaces and revenues, rather than acknowledge the new Sovereigns.

The example of these great prelates might perhaps be followed by

a multitude of divines of humbler rank, by hundreds of canons,

prebendaries, and fellows of colleges, by thousands of parish priests.

To such an event no Tory, however clear his own conviction that he might

lawfully swear allegiance to the King who was in possession, could

look forward without the most painful emotions of compassion for the

sufferers and of anxiety for the Church.

There were some persons who went so far as to deny that the Parliament

was competent to pass a law requiring a Bishop to swear on pain of

deprivation. No earthly power, they said, could break the tie which

bound the successor of the apostles to his diocese. What God had joined

no man could sunder. Dings and senates might scrawl words on parchment

or impress figures on wax; but those words and figures could no more

change the course of the spiritual than the course of the physical

world. As the Author of the universe had appointed a certain order,

according to which it was His pleasure to send winter and summer,

seedtime and harvest, so He had appointed a certain order, according to

which He communicated His grace to His Catholic Church; and the latter

order was, like the former, independent of the powers and principalities

of the world. A legislature might alter the flames of the months, might

call June December, and December June; but, in spite of the legislature,

the snow would fall when the sun was in Capricorn, and the flowers would

bloom when he was in Cancer. And so the legislature might enact that

Ferguson or Muggleton should live in the palace at Lambeth, should sit

on the throne of Augustin, should be called Your Grace, and should

walk in processions before the Premier Duke; but, in spite of the

legislature, Sancroft would, while Sancroft lived, be the only true

Archbishop of Canterbury; and the person who should presume to usurp the

archiepiscopal functions would be a schismatic. This doctrine was proved

by reasons drawn from the budding of Aaron's rod, and from a certain

plate which Saint James the Less, according to a legend of the fourth

century, used to wear on his forehead. A Greek manuscript, relating

to the deprivation of bishops, was discovered, about this time, in the

Bodleian Library, and became the subject of a furious controversy. One

party held that God had wonderfully brought this precious volume to

light, for the guidance of His Church at a most critical moment. The

other party wondered that any importance could be attached to the

nonsense of a nameless scribbler of the thirteenth century. Much was

written about the deprivations of Chrysostom and Photius, of Nicolaus

Mysticus and Cosmas Atticus. But the case of Abiathar, whom Solomon put

out of the sacerdotal office for treason, was discussed with peculiar

eagerness. No small quantity of learning and ingenuity was expended

in the attempt to prove that Abiathar, though he wore the ephod and

answered by Urim, was not really High Priest, that he ministered

only when his superior Zadoc was incapacitated by sickness or by some

ceremonial pollution, and that therefore the act of Solomon was not a

precedent which would warrant King William in deposing a real Bishop.

[90]

But such reasoning as this, though backed by copious citations from the

Misna and Maimonides, was not generally satisfactory even to zealous

churchmen. For it admitted of one answer, short, but perfectly

intelligible to a plain man who knew nothing about Greek fathers or

Levitical genealogies. There might be some doubt whether King Solomon

had ejected a high priest; but there could be no doubt at all that Queen

Elizabeth had ejected the Bishops of more than half the sees in England.

It was notorious that fourteen prelates had, without any proceeding in

any spiritual court, been deprived by Act of Parliament for refusing to

acknowledge her supremacy. Had that deprivation been null? Had Bonner

continued to be, to the end of his life, the only true Bishop of

London? Had his successor been an usurper? Had Parker and Jewel been

schismatics? Had the Convocation of 1562, that Convocation which had

finally settled the doctrine of the Church of England, been itself out

of the pale of the Church of Christ? Nothing could be more ludicrous

than the distress of those controversialists who had to invent a plea

for Elizabeth which should not be also a plea for William. Some zealots,

indeed, gave up the vain attempt to distingush between two cases which

every man of common sense perceived to be undistinguishable, and frankly

owned that the deprivations of 1559 could not be justified. But no

person, it was said, ought to be troubled in mind on that account; for,

though the Church of England might once have been schismatical, she had

become Catholic when the Bishops deprived by Elizabeth had ceased to

live. [91] The Tories, however, were not generally disposed to admit

that the religious society to which they were fondly attached had

originated in an unlawful breach of unity. They therefore took ground

lower and more tenable. They argued the question as a question of

humanity and of expediency. They spoke much of the debt of gratitude

which the nation owed to the priesthood; of the courage and fidelity

with which the order, from the primate down to the youngest deacon,

had recently defended the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the

realm; of the memorable Sunday when, in all the hundred churches of the

capital, scarcely one slave could be found to read the Declaration of

Indulgence; of the Black Friday when, amidst the blessings and the loud

weeping of a mighty population, the barge of the seven prelates passed

through the watergate of the Tower. The firmness with which the clergy

had lately, in defiance of menace and of seduction, done what they

conscientiously believed to be right, had saved the liberty and religion

of England. Was no indulgence to be granted to them if they now refused

to do what they conscientiously apprehended to be wrong? And where, it

was said, is the danger of treating them with tenderness? Nobody is so

absurd as to propose that they shall be permitted to plot against

the Government, or to stir up the multitude to insurrection. They are

amenable to the law, like other men. If they are guilty of treason, let

them be hanged. If they are guilty of sedition, let them be fined and

imprisoned. If they omit, in their public ministrations, to pray for

King William, for Queen Mary, and for the Parliament assembled under

those most religious sovereigns, let the penal clauses of the Act of

Uniformity be put in force. If this be not enough, let his Majesty be

empowered to tender the oaths to any clergyman; and, if the oaths so

tendered are refused, let deprivation follow. In this way any nonjuring

bishop or rector who may be suspected, though he cannot be legally

convicted, of intriguing, of writing, of talking, against the present

settlement, may be at once removed from his office. But why insist on

ejecting a pious and laborious minister of religion, who never lifts a

finger or utters a word against the government, and who, as often as

he performs morning and evening service, prays from his heart for a

blessing on the rulers set over him by Providence, but who will not take

an oath which seems to him to imply a right in the people to depose a

sovereign? Surely we do all that is necessary if we leave men of this

sort to the mercy of the very prince to whom they refuse to swear

fidelity. If he is willing to bear with their scrupulosity, if he

considers them, notwithstanding their prejudices, as innocent and useful

members of society, who else can be entitled to complain?

The Whigs were vehement on the other side. They scrutinised, with

ingenuity sharpened by hatred, the claims of the clergy to the public

gratitude, and sometimes went so far as altogether to deny that the

order had in the preceding year deserved well of the nation. It was true

that bishops and priests had stood up against the tyranny of the late

King: but it was equally true that, but for the obstinacy with which

they had opposed the Exclusion Bill, he never would have been King, and

that, but for their adulation and their doctrine of passive obedience,

he would never have ventured to be guilty of such tyranny. Their chief

business, during a quarter of a century, had been to teach the people

to cringe and the prince to domineer. They were guilty of the blood of

Russell, of Sidney, of every brave and honest Englishman who had been

put to death for attempting to save the realm from Popery and despotism.

Never had they breathed a whisper against arbitrary power till arbitrary

power began to menace their own property and dignity. Then, no doubt,

forgetting all their old commonplaces about submitting to Nero, they had

made haste to save themselves. Grant,--such was the cry of these

eager disputants,--grant that, in saving themselves, they saved the

constitution. Are we therefore to forget that they had previously

endangered it? And are we to reward them by now permitting them to

destroy it? Here is a class of men closely connected with the state.

A large part of the produce of the soil has been assigned to them for

their maintenance. Their chiefs have seats in the legislature, wide

domains, stately palaces. By this privileged body the great mass of the

population is lectured every week from the chair of authority. To this

privileged body has been committed the supreme direction of liberal

education. Oxford and Cambridge, Westminster, Winchester, and Eton, are

under priestly government. By the priesthood will to a great extent be

formed the character of the nobility and gentry of the next generation.

Of the higher clergy some have in their gift numerous and valuable

benefices; others have the privilege of appointing judges who decide

grave questions affecting the liberty, the property, the reputation of

their Majesties' subjects. And is an order thus favoured by the state

to give no guarantee to the state? On what principle can it be contended

that it is unnecessary to ask from an Archbishop of Canterbury or from

a Bishop of Durham that promise of fidelity to the government which all

allow that it is necessary to demand from every layman who serves the

Crown in the humblest office. Every exciseman, every collector of the

customs, who refuses to swear, is to be deprived of his bread. For these

humble martyrs of passive obedience and hereditary right nobody has a

word to say. Yet an ecclesiastical magnate who refuses to swear is to

be suffered to retain emoluments, patronage, power, equal to those of a

great minister of state. It is said that it is superfluous to impose the

oaths on a clergyman, because he may be punished if he breaks the laws.

Why is not the same argument urged in favour of the layman? And why, if

the clergyman really means to observe the laws, does he scruple to take

the oaths? The law commands him to designate William and Mary as King

and Queen, to do this in the most sacred place, to do this in the

administration of the most solemn of all the rites of religion. The

law commands him to pray that the illustrious pair may be defended by

a special providence, that they may be victorious over every enemy,

and that their Parliament may by divine guidance be led to take such a

course as may promote their safety, honour, and welfare. Can we believe

that his conscience will suffer him to do all this, and yet will not

suffer him to promise that he will be a faithful subject to them?

To the proposition that the nonjuring clergy should be left to the mercy

of the King, the Whigs, with some justice, replied that no scheme could

be devised more unjust to his Majesty. The matter, they said, is one of

public concern, one in which every Englishman who is unwilling to be the

slave of France and of Rome has a deep interest. In such a case it

would be unworthy of the Estates of the Realm to shrink from the

responsibility of providing for the common safety, to try to obtain for

themselves the praise of tenderness and liberality, and to leave to the

Sovereign the odious task of proscription. A law requiring all public

functionaries, civil, military, ecclesiastical, without distinction of

persons, to take the oaths is at least equal. It excludes all suspicion

of partiality, of personal malignity, of secret shying and talebearing.

But, if an arbitrary discretion is left to the Government, if one

nonjuring priest is suffered to keep a lucrative benefice while another

is turned with his wife and children into the street, every ejection

will be considered as an act of cruelty, and will be imputed as a crime

to the sovereign and his ministers. [92]

Thus the Parliament had to decide, at the same moment, what quantity

of relief should be granted to the consciences of dissenters, and what

quantity of pressure should be applied to the consciences of the clergy

of the Established Church. The King conceived a hope that it might be in

his power to effect a compromise agreeable to all parties. He flattered

himself that the Tories might be induced to make some concession to

the dissenters, on condition that the Whigs would be lenient to the

Jacobites. He determined to try what his personal intervention would

effect. It chanced that, a few hours after the Lords had read the

Comprehension Bill a second time and the Bill touching the Oaths a first

time, he had occasion to go down to Parliament for the purpose of giving

his assent to a law. From the throne he addressed both Houses, and

expressed an earnest wish that they would consent to modify the existing

laws in such a manner that all Protestants might be admitted to public

employment. [93] It was well understood that he was willing, if the

legislature would comply with his request, to let clergymen who were

already beneficed continue to hold their benefices without swearing

allegiance to him. His conduct on this occasion deserves undoubtedly the

praise of disinterestedness. It is honourable to him that he attempted

to purchase liberty of conscience for his subjects by giving up a

safeguard of his own crown. But it must be acknowledged that he showed

less wisdom than virtue. The only Englishman in his Privy Council

whom he had consulted, if Burnet was correctly informed, was Richard

Hampden; [94] and Richard Hampden, though a highly respectable man, was

so far from being able to answer for the Whig party that he could not

answer even for his own son John, whose temper, naturally vindictive,

had been exasperated into ferocity by the stings of remorse and shame.

The King soon found that there was in the hatred of the two great

factions an energy which was wanting to their love. The Whigs, though

they were almost unanimous in thinking that the Sacramental Test ought

to be abolished, were by no means unanimous in thinking that moment well

chosen for the abolition; and even those Whigs who were most desirous

to see the nonconformists relieved without delay from civil disabilities

were fully determined not to forego the opportunity of humbling and

punishing the class to whose instrumentality chiefly was to be ascribed

that tremendous reflux of public feeling which had followed the

dissolution of the Oxford Parliament. To put the Janes, the Souths, the

Sherlocks into such a situation that they must either starve, or recant,

publicly, and with the Gospel at their lips, all the ostentatious

professions of many years, was a revenge too delicious to be

relinquished. The Tory, on the other hand, sincerely respected and

pitied those clergymen who felt scruples about the oaths. But the Test

was, in his view, essential to the safety of the established religion,

and must not be surrendered for the purpose of saving any man however

eminent from any hardship however serious. It would be a sad day

doubtless for the Church when the episcopal bench, the chapter houses

of cathedrals, the halls of colleges, would miss some men renowned for

piety and learning. But it would be a still sadder day for the Church

when an Independent should bear the white staff or a Baptist sit on the

woolsack. Each party tried to serve those for whom it was interested:

but neither party would consent to grant favourable terms to its

enemies. The result was that the nonconformists remained excluded from

office in the State, and the nonjurors were ejected from office in the

Church.

In the House of Commons, no member thought it expedient to propose the

repeal of the Test Act. But leave was given to bring in a bill repealing

the Corporation Act, which had been passed by the Cavalier Parliament

soon after the Restoration, and which contained a clause requiring all

municipal magistrates to receive the sacrament according to the forms of

the Church of England. When this bill was about to be committed, it was

moved by the Tories that the committee should be instructed to make

no alteration in the law touching the sacrament. Those Whigs who were

zealous for the Comprehension must have been placed by this motion in

an embarrassing position. To vote for the instruction would have been

inconsistent with their principles. To vote against it would have been

to break with Nottingham. A middle course was found. The adjournment

of the debate was moved and carried by a hundred and sixteen votes to a

hundred and fourteen; and the subject was not revived. [95] In the House

of Lords a motion was made for the abolition of the sacramental test,

but was rejected by a large majority. Many of those who thought the

motion right in principle thought it ill timed. A protest was entered;

but it was signed only by a few peers of no great authority. It is a

remarkable fact that two great chiefs of the Whig party, who were in

general very attentive to their parliamentary duty, Devonshire and

Shrewsbury, absented themselves on this occasion. [96]

The debate on the Test in the Upper House was speedily followed by a

debate on the last clause of the Comprehension Bill. By that clause it

was provided that thirty Bishops and priests should be commissioned

to revise the liturgy and canons, and to suggest amendments. On this

subject the Whig peers were almost all of one mind. They mustered

strong, and spoke warmly. Why, they asked, were none but members of the

sacerdotal order to be intrusted with this duty? Were the laity no

part of the Church of England? When the Commission should have made its

report, laymen would have to decide on the recommendations contained in

that report. Not a line of the Book of Common Prayer could be altered

but by the authority of King, Lords, and Commons. The King was a layman.

Five sixths of the Lords were laymen. All the members of the House

of Commons were laymen. Was it not absurd to say that laymen were

incompetent to examine into a matter which it was acknowledged that

laymen must in the last resort determine? And could any thing be more

opposite to the whole spirit of Protestantism than the notion that a

certain preternatural power of judging in spiritual cases was vouchsafed

to a particular caste, and to that caste alone; that such men as Selden,

as Hale, as Boyle, were less competent to give an opinion on a collect

or a creed than the youngest and silliest chaplain who, in a remote

manor house, passed his life in drinking ale and playing at shovelboard?

What God had instituted no earthly power, lay or clerical, could

alter: and of things instituted by human beings a layman was surely as

competent as a clergyman to judge. That the Anglican liturgy and

canons were of purely human institution the Parliament acknowledged by

referring them to a Commission for revision and correction. How could

it then be maintained that in such a Commission the laity, so vast a

majority of the population, the laity, whose edification was the main

end of all ecclesiastical regulations, and whose innocent tastes ought

to be carefully consulted in the framing of the public services of

religion, ought not to have a single representative? Precedent was

directly opposed to this odious distinction. Repeatedly since the light

of reformation had dawned on England Commissioners had been empowered

by law to revise the canons; and on every one of those occasions some

of the Commissioners had been laymen. In the present case the proposed

arrangement was peculiarly objectionable. For the object of issuing the

commission was the conciliating of dissenters; and it was therefore most

desirable that the Commissioners should be men in whose fairness and

moderation dissenters could confide. Would thirty such men be easily

found in the higher ranks of the clerical profession? The duty of

the legislature was to arbitrate between two contending parties, the

Nonconformist divines and the Anglican divines, and it would be the

grossest injustice to commit to one of those parties the office of

umpire.

On these grounds the Whigs proposed an amendment to the effect that

laymen should be joined with clergymen in the Commission. The contest

was sharp. Burnet, who had just taken his seat among the peers, and who

seems to have been bent on winning at almost any price the good will of

his brethren, argued with all his constitutional warmth for the clause

as it stood. The numbers on the division proved to be exactly equal. The

consequence was that, according to the rules of the House, the amendment

was lost. [97]

At length the Comprehension Bill was sent down to the Commons. There it

would easily have been carried by two to one, if it had been supported

by all the friends of religious liberty. But on this subject the High

Churchmen could count on the support of a large body of Low Churchmen.

Those members who wished well to Nottingham's plan saw that they were

outnumbered, and, despairing of a victory, began to meditate a

retreat. Just at this time a suggestion was thrown out which united all

suffrages. The ancient usage was that a Convocation should be summoned

together with a Parliament; and it might well be argued that, if ever

the advice of a Convocation could be needed, it must be when changes in

the ritual and discipline of the Church were under consideration. But,

in consequence of the irregular manner in which the Estates of the Realm

had been brought together during the vacancy of the throne, there was

no Convocation. It was proposed that the House should advise the King

to take measures for supplying this defect, and that the fate of the

Comprehension Bill should not be decided till the clergy had had

an opportunity of declaring their opinion through the ancient and

legitimate organ.

This proposition was received with general acclamation. The Tories were

well pleased to see such honour done to the priesthood. Those Whigs who

were against the Comprehension Bill were well pleased to see it laid

aside, certainly for a year, probably for ever. Those Whigs who were

for the Comprehension Bill were well pleased to escape without a

defeat. Many of them indeed were not without hopes that mild and

liberal counsels might prevail in the ecclesiastical senate. An address

requesting William to summon the Convocation was voted without a

division: the concurrence of the Lords was asked: the Lords concurred,

the address was carried up to the throne by both Houses: the King

promised that he would, at a convenient season, do what his Parliament

desired; and Nottingham's Bill was not again mentioned.

Many writers, imperfectly acquainted with the history of that age,

have inferred from these proceedings that the House of Commons was an

assembly of High Churchmen: but nothing is more certain than that two

thirds of the members were either Low Churchmen or not Churchmen at

all. A very few days before this time an occurrence had taken place,

unimportant in itself, but highly significant as an indication of the

temper of the majority. It had been suggested that the House ought, in

conformity with ancient usage, to adjourn over the Easter holidays. The

Puritans and Latitudinarians objected: there was a sharp debate: the

High Churchmen did not venture to divide; and, to the great scandal of

many grave persons, the Speaker took the chair at nine o'clock on Easter

Monday; and there was a long and busy sitting. [98]

This however was by no means the strongest proof which the Commons gave

that they were far indeed from feeling extreme reverence or tenderness

for the Anglican hierarchy. The bill for settling the oaths had just

come down from the Lords framed in a manner favourable to the clergy.

All lay functionaries were required to swear fealty to the King and

Queen on pain of expulsion from office. But it was provided that every

divine who already held a benefice might continue to hold it without

swearing, unless the Government should see reason to call on him

specially for an assurance of his loyalty. Burnett had, partly,

no doubt, from the goodnature and generosity which belonged to his

character, and partly from a desire to conciliate his brethren,

supported this arrangement in the Upper House with great energy. But

in the Lower House the feeling against the Jacobite priests was

irresistibly strong. On the very day on which that House voted, without

a division, the address requesting the King to summon the Convocation, a

clause was proposed and carried which required every person who held any

ecclesiastical or academical preferment to take the oaths by the first

of August 1689, on pain of suspension. Six months, to be reckoned from

that day, were allowed to the nonjuror for reconsideration. If, on

the first of February 1690, he still continued obstinate, he was to be

finally deprived.

The bill, thus amended, was sent back to the Lords. The Lords adhered

to their original resolution. Conference after conference was held.

Compromise after compromise was suggested. From the imperfect reports

which have come down to us it appears that every argument in favour of

lenity was forcibly urged by Burnet. But the Commons were firm: time

pressed: the unsettled state of the law caused inconvenience in every

department of the public service; and the peers very reluctantly gave

way. They at the same time added a clause empowering the King to bestow

pecuniary allowances out of the forfeited benefices on a few nonjuring

clergymen. The number of clergymen thus favoured was not to exceed

twelve. The allowance was not to exceed one third of the income

forfeited. Some zealous Whigs were unwilling to grant even this

indulgence: but the Commons were content with the victory which they had

won, and justly thought that it would be ungracious to refuse so slight

a concession. [99]

These debates were interrupted, during a short time, by the festivities

and solemnities of the Coronation. When the day fixed for that great

ceremony drew near, the House of Commons resolved itself into a

committee for the purpose of settling the form of words in which our

Sovereigns were thenceforward to enter into covenant with the nation.

All parties were agreed as to the propriety of requiring the King to

swear that, in temporal matters, he would govern according to law, and

would execute justice in mercy. But about the terms of the oath which

related to the spiritual institutions of the realm there was much

debate. Should the chief magistrate promise simply to maintain the

Protestant religion established by law, or should he promise to maintain

that religion as it should be hereafter established by law? The majority

preferred the former phrase. The latter phrase was preferred by those

Whigs who were for a Comprehension. But it was universally admitted that

the two phrases really meant the same thing, and that the oath, however

it might be worded, would bind the Sovereign in his executive capacity

only. This was indeed evident from the very nature of the transaction.

Any compact may be annulled by the free consent of the party who alone

is entitled to claim the performance. It was never doubted by the most

rigid casuist that a debtor, who has bound himself under the most

awful imprecations to pay a debt, may lawfully withhold payment if the

creditor is willing to cancel the obligation. And it is equally clear

that no assurance, exacted from a King by the Estates of his kingdom,

can bind him to refuse compliance with what may at a future time be the

wish of those Estates.

A bill was drawn up in conformity with the resolutions of the Committee,

and was rapidly passed through every stage. After the third reading, a

foolish man stood up to propose a rider, declaring that the oath was

not meant to restrain the Sovereign from consenting to any change in the

ceremonial of the Church, provided always that episcopacy and a written

form of prayer were retained. The gross absurdity of this motion was

exposed by several eminent members. Such a clause, they justly remarked,

would bind the King under pretence of setting him free. The coronation

oath, they said, was never intended to trammel him in his legislative

capacity. Leave that oath as it is now drawn, and no prince can

misunderstand it. No prince can seriously imagine that the two Houses

mean to exact from him a promise that he will put a Veto on laws which

they may hereafter think necessary to the wellbeing of the country.

Or if any prince should so strangely misapprehend the nature of the

contract between him and his subjects, any divine, any lawyer, to whose

advice he may have recourse, will set his mind at ease. But if this

rider should pass, it will be impossible to deny that the coronation

oath is meant to prevent the King from giving his assent to bills which

may be presented to him by the Lords and Commons; and the most serious

inconvenience may follow. These arguments were felt to be unanswerable,

and the proviso was rejected without a division, [100]

Every person who has read these debates must be fully convinced that the

statesmen who framed the coronation oath did not mean to bind the King

in his legislative capacity, [101] Unhappily, more than a hundred

years later, a scruple, which those statesmen thought too absurd to be

seriously entertained by any human being, found its way into a mind,

honest, indeed, and religious, but narrow and obstinate by nature, and

at once debilitated and excited by disease. Seldom, indeed, have the

ambition and perfidy of tyrants produced evils greater than those

which were brought on our country by that fatal conscientiousness. A

conjuncture singularly auspicious, a conjuncture at which wisdom and

justice might perhaps have reconciled races and sects long hostile,

and might have made the British islands one truly United Kingdom, was

suffered to pass away. The opportunity, once lost, returned no more. Two

generations of public men have since laboured with imperfect success

to repair the error which was then committed; nor is it improbable that

some of the penalties of that error may continue to afflict a remote

posterity.

The Bill by which the oath was settled passed the Upper House without

amendment. All the preparations were complete; and, on the eleventh

of April, the coronation took place. In some things it differed from

ordinary coronations. The representatives of the people attended the

ceremony in a body, and were sumptuously feasted in the Exchequer

Chamber. Mary, being not merely Queen Consort, but also Queen Regnant,

was inaugurated in all things like a King, was girt with the sword,

lifted up into the throne, and presented with the Bible, the spurs, and

the orb. Of the temporal grandees of the realm, and of their wives and

daughters, the muster was great and splendid. None could be surprised

that the Whig aristocracy should swell the triumph of Whig principles.

But the Jacobites saw, with concern, that many Lords who had voted for a

Regency bore a conspicuous part in the ceremonial. The King's crown

was carried by Grafton, the Queen's by Somerset. The pointed sword,

emblematical of temporal justice, was borne by Pembroke. Ormond was Lord

High Constable for the day, and rode up the Hall on the right hand

of the hereditary champion, who thrice flung down his glove on the

pavement, and thrice defied to mortal combat the false traitor who

should gainsay the title of William and Mary. Among the noble damsels

who supported the gorgeous train of the Queen was her beautiful and

gentle cousin, the Lady Henrietta Hyde, whose father, Rochester, had

to the last contended against the resolution which declared the throne

vacant, [102] The show of Bishops, indeed, was scanty. The Primate did

not make his appearance; and his place was supplied by Compton. On one

side of Compton, the paten was carried by Lloyd, Bishop of Saint Asaph,

eminent among the seven confessors of the preceding year. On the

other side, Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, lately a member of the High

Commission, had charge of the chalice. Burnet, the junior prelate,

preached with all his wonted ability, and more than his wonted taste

and judgment. His grave and eloquent discourse was polluted neither by

adulation nor by malignity. He is said to have been greatly applauded;

and it may well be believed that the animated peroration in which he

implored heaven to bless the royal pair with long life and mutual love,

with obedient subjects, wise counsellors, and faithful allies, with

gallant fleets and armies, with victory, with peace, and finally with

crowns more glorious and more durable than those which then glittered

on the altar of the Abbey, drew forth the loudest hums of the Commons,

[103]

On the whole the ceremony went off well, and produced something like

a revival, faint, indeed, and transient, of the enthusiasm of the

preceding December. The day was, in London and in many other places, a

day of general rejoicing. The churches were filled in the morning: the

afternoon was spent in sport and carousing; and at night bonfires were

lighted, rockets discharged, and windows lighted up. The Jacobites

however contrived to discover or to invent abundant matter for

scurrility and sarcasm. They complained bitterly, that the way from the

hall to the western door of the Abbey had been lined by Dutch soldiers.

Was it seemly that an English king should enter into the most solemn

of engagements with the English nation behind a triple hedge of foreign

swords and bayonets? Little affrays, such as, at every great pageant,

almost inevitably take place between those who are eager to see the show

and those whose business it is to keep the communications clear,

were exaggerated with all the artifices of rhetoric. One of the alien

mercenaries had backed his horse against an honest citizen who pressed

forward to catch a glimpse of the royal canopy. Another had rudely

pushed back a woman with the but end of his musket. On such grounds as

these the strangers were compared to those Lord Danes whose insolence,

in the old time, had provoked the Anglo-saxon population to insurrection

and massacre. But there was no more fertile theme for censure than

the coronation medal, which really was absurd in design and mean in

execution. A chariot appeared conspicuous on the reverse; and plain

people were at a loss to understand what this emblem had to do with

William and Mary. The disaffected wits solved the difficulty by

suggesting that the artist meant to allude to that chariot which a

Roman princess, lost to all filial affection, and blindly devoted to the

interests of an ambitious husband, drove over the still warm remains of

her father, [104]

Honours were, as usual, liberally bestowed at this festive season. Three

garters which happened to be at the disposal of the Crown were given

to Devonshire, Ormond, and Schomberg. Prince George was created Duke of

Cumberland. Several eminent men took new appellations by which they

must henceforth be designated. Danby became Marquess of Caermarthen,

Churchill Earl of Marlborough, and Bentinck Earl of Portland. Mordaunt

was made Earl of Monmouth, not without some murmuring on the part of old

Exclusionists, who still remembered with fondness their Protestant Duke,

and who had hoped that his attainder would be reversed, and that his

title would be borne by his descendants. It was remarked that the name

of Halifax did not appear in the list of promotions. None could doubt

that he might easily have obtained either a blue riband or a ducal

coronet; and, though he was honourably distinguished from most of his

contemporaries by his scorn of illicit gain, it was well known that he

desired honorary distinctions with a greediness of which he was himself

ashamed, and which was unworthy of his fine understanding. The truth is

that his ambition was at this time chilled by his fears. To those whom

he trusted he hinted his apprehensions that evil times were at hand.

The King's life was not worth a year's purchase: the government was

disjointed, the clergy and the army disaffected, the parliament torn

by factions: civil war was already raging in one part of the empire:

foreign war was impending. At such a moment a minister, whether Whig

or Tory, might well be uneasy; but neither Whig nor Tory had so much to

fear as the Trimmer, who might not improbably find himself the common

mark at which both parties would take aim. For these reasons Halifax

determined to avoid all ostentation of power and influence, to disarm

envy by a studied show of moderation, and to attach to himself by

civilities and benefits persons whose gratitude might be useful in the

event of a counterrevolution. The next three months, he said, would

be the time of trial. If the government got safe through the summer it

would probably stand, [105]

Meanwhile questions of external policy were every day becoming more

and more important. The work at which William had toiled indefatigably

during many gloomy and anxious years was at length accomplished. The

great coalition was formed. It was plain that a desperate conflict was

at hand. The oppressor of Europe would have to defend himself against

England allied with Charles the Second King of Spain, with the Emperor

Leopold, and with the Germanic and Batavian federations, and was likely

to have no ally except the Sultan, who was waging war against the House

of Austria on the Danube.

Lewis had, towards the close of the preceding year, taken his enemies at

a disadvantage, and had struck the first blow before they were prepared

to parry it. But that blow, though heavy, was not aimed at the part

where it might have been mortal. Had hostilities been commenced on

the Batavian frontier, William and his army would probably have been

detained on the continent, and James might have continued to govern

England. Happily, Lewis, under an infatuation which many pious

Protestants confidently ascribed to the righteous judgment of God,

had neglected the point on which the fate of the whole civilised world

depended, and had made a great display of power, promptitude, and

energy, in a quarter where the most splendid achievements could produce

nothing more than an illumination and a Te Deum. A French army under

the command of Marshal Duras had invaded the Palatinate and some of the

neighbouring principalities. But this expedition, though it had been

completely successful, and though the skill and vigour with which it

had been conducted had excited general admiration, could not perceptibly

affect the event of the tremendous struggle which was approaching.

France would soon be attacked on every side. It would be impossible for

Duras long to retain possession of the provinces which he had surprised

and overrun. An atrocious thought rose in the mind of Louvois, who,

in military affairs, had the chief sway at Versailles. He was a man

distinguished by zeal for what he thought the public interests, by

capacity, and by knowledge of all that related to the administration

of war, but of a savage and obdurate nature. If the cities of the

Palatinate could not be retained, they might be destroyed. If the soil

of the Palatinate was not to furnish supplies to the French, it might be

so wasted that it would at least furnish no supplies to the Germans. The

ironhearted statesman submitted his plan, probably with much management

and with some disguise, to Lewis; and Lewis, in an evil hour for his

fame, assented. Duras received orders to turn one of the fairest regions

of Europe into a wilderness. Fifteen years earlier Turenne had ravaged

part of that fine country. But the ravages committed by Turenne, though

they have left a deep stain on his glory, were mere sport in comparison

with the horrors of this second devastation. The French commander

announced to near half a million of human beings that he granted them

three days of grace, and that, within that time, they must shift for

themselves. Soon the roads and fields, which then lay deep in snow, were

blackened by innumerable multitudes of men, women, and children flying

from their homes. Many died of cold and hunger: but enough survived

to fill the streets of all the cities of Europe with lean and squalid

beggars, who had once been thriving farmers and shopkeepers.

Meanwhile the work of destruction began. The flames went up from every

marketplace, every hamlet, every parish church, every country seat,

within the devoted provinces. The fields where the corn had been sown

were ploughed up. The orchards were hewn down. No promise of a harvest

was left on the fertile plains near what had once been Frankenthal. Not

a vine, not an almond tree, was to be seen on the slopes of the sunny

hills round what had once been Heidelberg. No respect was shown to

palaces, to temples, to monasteries, to infirmaries, to beautiful works

of art, to monuments of the illustrious dead. The farfamed castle of the

Elector Palatine was turned into a heap of ruins. The adjoining hospital

was sacked. The provisions, the medicines, the pallets on which the sick

lay were destroyed. The very stones of which Mannheim had been built

were flung into the Rhine. The magnificent Cathedral of Spires perished,

and with it the marble sepulchres of eight Caesars. The coffins were

broken open. The ashes were scattered to the winds, [106] Treves,

with its fair bridge, its Roman amphitheatre, its venerable churches,

convents, and colleges, was doomed to the same fate. But, before this

last crime had been perpetrated, Lewis was recalled to a better mind

by the execrations of all the neighbouring nations, by the silence and

confusion of his flatterers, and by the expostulations of his wife. He

had been more than two years secretly married to Frances de Maintenon,

the governess of his natural children. It would be hard to name any

woman who, with so little romance in her temper, has had so much in

her life. Her early years had been passed in poverty and obscurity.

Her first husband had supported himself by writing burlesque farces

and poems. When she attracted the notice of her sovereign, she could no

longer boast of youth or beauty: but she possessed in an extraordinary

degree those more lasting charms, which men of sense, whose passions

age has tamed, and whose life is a life of business and care, prize most

highly in a female companion. Her character was such as has been well

compared to that soft green on which the eye, wearied by warm tints

and glaring lights, reposes with pleasure. A just understanding;

an inexhaustible yet never redundant flow of rational, gentle, and

sprightly conversation; a temper of which the serenity was never for a

moment ruffled, a tact which surpassed the tact of her sex as much as

the tact of her sex surpasses the tact of ours; such were the qualities

which made the widow of a buffoon first the confidential friend, and

then the spouse, of the proudest and most powerful of European kings. It

was said that Lewis had been with difficulty prevented by the arguments

and vehement entreaties of Louvois from declaring her Queen of France.

It is certain that she regarded Louvois as her enemy. Her hatred of him,

cooperating perhaps with better feelings, induced her to plead the cause

of the unhappy people of the Rhine. She appealed to those sentiments of

compassion which, though weakened by many corrupting influences, were

not altogether extinct in her husband's mind, and to those sentiments of

religion which had too often impelled him to cruelty, but which, on the

present occasion, were on the side of humanity. He relented: and Treves

was spared, [107] In truth he could hardly fail to perceive that he had

committed a great error. The devastation of the Palatinate, while it

had not in any sensible degree lessened the power of his enemies, had

inflamed their animosity, and had furnished them with inexhaustible

matter for invective. The cry of vengeance rose on every side. Whatever

scruple either branch of the House of Austria might have felt about

coalescing with Protestants was completely removed. Lewis accused

the Emperor and the Catholic King of having betrayed the cause of the

Church; of having allied themselves with an usurper who was the avowed

champion of the great schism; of having been accessary to the foul wrong

done to a lawful sovereign who was guilty of no crime but zeal for the

true religion. James sent to Vienna and Madrid piteous letters, in which

he recounted his misfortunes, and implored the assistance of his brother

kings, his brothers also in the faith, against the unnatural children

and the rebellious subjects who had driven him into exile. But there was

little difficulty in framing a plausible answer both to the reproaches

of Lewis and to the supplications of James. Leopold and Charles declared

that they had not, even for purposes of just selfdefence, leagued

themselves with heretics, till their enemy had, for purposes of unjust

aggression, leagued himself with Mahometans. Nor was this the worst.

The French King, not content with assisting the Moslem against the

Christians, was himself treating Christians with a barbarity which would

have shocked the very Moslem. His infidel allies, to do them justice,

had not perpetrated on the Danube such outrages against the edifices

and the members of the Holy Catholic Church as he who called himself

the eldest son of that Church was perpetrating on the Rhine. On these

grounds, the princes to whom James had appealed replied by appealing,

with many professions of good will and compassion, to himself. He was

surely too just to blame them for thinking that it was their first

duty to defend their own people against such outrages as had turned

the Palatinate into a desert, or for calling in the aid of Protestants

against an enemy who had not scrupled to call in the aid of the Turks,

[108]

During the winter and the earlier part of the spring, the powers hostile

to France were gathering their strength for a great effort, and were

in constant communication with one another. As the season for military

operations approached, the solemn appeals of injured nations to the God

of battles came forth in rapid succession. The manifesto of the Germanic

body appeared in February; that of the States General in March; that of

the House of Brandenburg in April; and that of Spain in May, [109]

Here, as soon as the ceremony of the coronation was over, the House of

Commons determined to take into consideration the late proceedings

of the French king, [110] In the debate, that hatred of the powerful,

unscrupulous and imperious Lewis, which had, during twenty years of

vassalage, festered in the hearts of Englishmen, broke violently forth.

He was called the most Christian Turk, the most Christian ravager

of Christendom, the most Christian barbarian who had perpetrated on

Christians outrages of which his infidel allies would have been ashamed,

[111] A committee, consisting chiefly of ardent Whigs, was appointed to

prepare an address. John Hampden, the most ardent Whig among them,

was put into the chair; and he produced a composition too long, too

rhetorical, and too vituperative to suit the lips of the Speaker or the

ears of the King. Invectives against Lewis might perhaps, in the temper

in which the House then was, have passed without censure, if they

had not been accompanied by severe reflections on the character and

administration of Charles the Second, whose memory, in spite of all his

faults, was affectionately cherished by the Tories. There were some

very intelligible allusions to Charles's dealings with the Court of

Versailles, and to the foreign woman whom that Court had sent to lie

like a snake in his bosom. The House was with good reason dissatisfied.

The address was recommitted, and, having been made more concise, and

less declamatory and acrimonious, was approved and presented, [112]

William's attention was called to the wrongs which France had done to

him and to his kingdom; and he was assured that, whenever he should

resort to arms for the redress of those wrongs, he should be heartily

supported by his people. He thanked the Commons warmly. Ambition, he

said, should never induce him to draw the sword: but he had no choice:

France had already attacked England; and it was necessary to exercise

the right of selfdefence. A few days later war was proclaimed, [113]

Of the grounds of quarrel alleged by the Commons in their address, and

by the King in his manifesto, the most serious was the interference

of Lewis in the affairs of Ireland. In that country great events had,

during several months, followed one another in rapid succession. Of

those events it is now time to relate the history, a history dark with

crime and sorrow, yet full of interest and instruction.