Each of the two parties into which the court was divided had zealous

foreign allies. The ministers of Spain, of the Empire, and of the States

General were now as anxious to support Rochester as they had formerly

been to support Halifax. All the influence of Barillon was employed

on the other side; and Barillon was assisted by another French agent,

inferior to him in station, but far superior in abilities, Bonrepaux.

Barillon was not without parts, and possessed in large measure the

graces and accomplishments which then distinguished the French gentry.

But his capacity was scarcely equal to what his great place required. He

had become sluggish and self indulgent, liked the pleasures of society

and of the table better than business, and on great emergencies

generally waited for admonitions and even for reprimands from Versailles

before he showed much activity. [53] Bonrepaux had raised himself from

obscurity by the intelligence and industry which he had exhibited as a

clerk in the department of the marine, and was esteemed an adept in the

mystery of mercantile politics. At the close of the year 1685, he

was sent to London, charged with several special commissions of high

importance. He was to lay the ground for a treaty of commerce; he was to

ascertain and report the state of the English fleets and dockyards;

and he was to make some overtures to the Huguenot refugees, who, it was

supposed, had been so effectually tamed by penury and exile, that they

would thankfully accept almost any terms of reconciliation. The new

Envoy's origin was plebeian, his stature was dwarfish, his countenance

was ludicrously ugly, and his accent was that of his native Gascony:

but his strong sense, his keen penetration, and his lively wit eminently

qualified him for his post. In spite of every disadvantage of birth

and figure he was soon known as a most pleasing companion and as a most

skilful diplomatist. He contrived, while flirting with the Duchess of

Mazarin, discussing literary questions with Waller and Saint Evremond,

and corresponding with La Fontaine, to acquire a considerable knowledge

of English politics. His skill in maritime affairs recommended him to

James, who had, during many years, paid close attention to the business

of the Admiralty, and understood that business as well as he was capable

of understanding anything. They conversed every day long and freely

about the state of the shipping and the dock-yards. The result of this

intimacy was, as might have been expected, that the keen and vigilant

Frenchman conceived a great contempt for the King's abilities and

character. The world, he said, had much overrated His Britannic Majesty,

who had less capacity than Charles, and not more virtues. [54]

The two envoys of Lewis, though pursuing one object, very judiciously

took different paths. They made a partition of the court. Bonrepaux

lived chiefly with Rochester and Rochester's adherents. Barillon's

connections were chiefly with the opposite faction. The consequence was

that they sometimes saw the same event in different points of view.

The best account now extant of the contest which at this time agitated

Whitehall is to be found in their despatches.

As each of the two parties at the Court of James had the support of

foreign princes, so each had also the support of an ecclesiastical

authority to which the King paid great deference. The Supreme Pontiff

was for legal and moderate courses; and his sentiments were expressed by

the Nuncio and by the Vicar Apostolic. [55] On the other side was a body

of which the weight balanced even the weight of the Papacy, the mighty

Order of Jesus.

That at this conjuncture these two great spiritual powers, once, as it

seemed, inseparably allied, should have been opposed to each other, is

a most important and remarkable circumstance. During a period of little

less than a thousand years the regular clergy had been the chief support

of the Holy See. By that See they had been protected from episcopal

interference; and the protection which they had received had been amply

repaid. But for their exertions it is probable that the Bishop of Rome

would have been merely the honorary president of a vast aristocracy of

prelates. It was by the aid of the Benedictines that Gregory the Seventh

was enabled to contend at once against the Franconian Caesars and

against the secular priesthood. It was by the aid of the Dominicans and

Franciscans that Innocent the Third crushed the Albigensian sectaries.

In the sixteenth century the Pontificate exposed to new dangers more

formidable than had ever before threatened it, was saved by a new

religious order, which was animated by intense enthusiasm and organized

with exquisite skill. When the Jesuits came to the rescue of the Papacy,

they found it in extreme peril: but from that moment the tide of battle

turned. Protestantism, which had, during a whole generation, carried all

before it, was stopped in its progress, and rapidly beaten back from

the foot of the Alps to the shores of the Baltic. Before the Order had

existed a hundred years, it had filled the whole world with memorials

of great things done and suffered for the faith. No religious community

could produce a list of men so variously distinguished:--none had

extended its operations over so vast a space; yet in none had there ever

been such perfect unity of feeling and action. There was no region of

the globe, no walk of speculative or of active life, in which Jesuits

were not to be found. They guided the counsels of Kings. They deciphered

Latin inscriptions. They observed the motions of Jupiter's satellites.

They published whole libraries, controversy, casuistry, history,

treatises on optics, Alcaic odes, editions of the fathers, madrigals,

catechisms, and lampoons. The liberal education of youth passed almost

entirely into their hands, and was conducted by them with conspicuous

ability. They appear to have discovered the precise point to which

intellectual culture can be carried without risk of intellectual

emancipation. Enmity itself was compelled to own that, in the art of

managing and forming the tender mind, they had no equals. Meanwhile they

assiduously and successfully cultivated the eloquence of the pulpit.

With still greater assiduity and still greater success they applied

themselves to the ministry of the confessional. Throughout Catholic

Europe the secrets of every government and of almost every family of

note were in their keeping. They glided from one Protestant country

to another under innumerable disguises, as gay Cavaliers, as simple

rustics, as Puritan preachers. They wandered to countries which neither

mercantile avidity nor liberal curiosity had ever impelled any

stranger to explore. They were to be found in the garb of Mandarins,

superintending the observatory at Pekin. They were to be found, spade in

hand, teaching the rudiments of agriculture to the savages of Paraguay.

Yet, whatever might be their residence, whatever might be their

employment, their spirit was the same, entire devotion to the common

cause, implicit obedience to the central authority. None of them had

chosen his dwelling place or his vocation for himself. Whether the

Jesuit should live under the arctic circle or under the equator, whether

he should pass his life in arranging gems and collating manuscripts at

the Vatican or in persuading naked barbarians in the southern hemisphere

not to eat each other, were matters which he left with profound

submission to the decision of others. If he was wanted at Lima, he was

on the Atlantic in the next fleet. If he was wanted at Bagdad, he was

toiling through the desert with the next caravan. If his ministry was

needed in some country where his life was more insecure than that of a

wolf, where it was a crime to harbour him, where the heads and quarters

of his brethren, fixed in the public places, showed him what he had to

expect, he went without remonstrance or hesitation to his doom. Nor

is this heroic spirit yet extinct. When, in our own time, a new and

terrible pestilence passed round the globe, when, in some great cities,

fear had dissolved all the ties which hold society together, when the

secular clergy had deserted their flocks, when medical succour was

not to be purchased by gold, when the strongest natural affections

had yielded to the love of life, even then the Jesuit was found by the

pallet which bishop and curate, physician and nurse, father and mother,

had deserted, bending over infected lips to catch the faint accents of

confession, and holding up to the last, before the expiring penitent,

the image of the expiring Redeemer.

But with the admirable energy, disinterestedness, and self-devotion

which were characteristic of the Society, great vices were mingled. It

was alleged, and not without foundation, that the ardent public spirit

which made the Jesuit regardless of his ease, of his liberty, and of

his life, made him also regardless of truth and of mercy; that no means

which could promote the interest of his religion seemed to him unlawful,

and that by the interest of his religion he too often meant the interest

of his Society. It was alleged that, in the most atrocious plots

recorded in history, his agency could be distinctly traced; that,

constant only in attachment to the fraternity to which he belonged, he

was in some countries the most dangerous enemy of freedom, and in others

the most dangerous enemy of order. The mighty victories which he boasted

that he had achieved in the cause of the Church were, in the judgment of

many illustrious members of that Church, rather apparent than real. He

had indeed laboured with a wonderful show of success to reduce the world

under her laws; but he had done so by relaxing her laws to suit the

temper of the world. Instead of toiling to elevate human nature to the

noble standard fixed by divine precept and example, he had lowered

the standard till it was beneath the average level of human nature. He

gloried in multitudes of converts who had been baptized in the remote

regions of the East: but it was reported that from some of those

converts the facts on which the whole theology of the Gospel depends

had been cunningly concealed, and that others were permitted to avoid

persecution by bowing down before the images of false gods, while

internally repeating Paters and Ayes. Nor was it only in heathen

countries that such arts were said to be practised. It was not strange

that people of alt ranks, and especially of the highest ranks, crowded

to the confessionals in the Jesuit temples; for from those confessionals

none went discontented away. There the priest was all things to all men.

He showed just so much rigour as might not drive those who knelt at his

spiritual tribunal to the Dominican or the Franciscan church. If he had

to deal with a mind truly devout, he spoke in the saintly tones of the

primitive fathers, but with that very large part of mankind who have

religion enough to make them uneasy when they do wrong, and not religion

enough to keep them from doing wrong, he followed a very different

system. Since he could not reclaim them from guilt, it was his business

to save them from remorse. He had at his command an immense dispensary

of anodynes for wounded consciences. In the books of casuistry which had

been written by his brethren, and printed with the approbation of his

superiors, were to be found doctrines consolatory to transgressors of

every class. There the bankrupt was taught how he might, without sin,

secrete his goods from his creditors. The servant was taught how he

might, without sin, run off with his master's plate. The pandar was

assured that a Christian man might innocently earn his living by

carrying letters and messages between married women and their gallants.

The high spirited and punctilious gentlemen of France were gratified by

a decision in favour of duelling. The Italians, accustomed to darker and

baser modes of vengeance, were glad to learn that they might, without

any crime, shoot at their enemies from behind hedges. To deceit was

given a license sufficient to destroy the whole value of human contracts

and of human testimony. In truth, if society continued to hold together,

if life and property enjoyed any security, it was because common sense

and common humanity restrained men from doing what the Society of Jesus

assured them that they might with a safe conscience do.

So strangely were good and evil intermixed in the character of these

celebrated brethren; and the intermixture was the secret of their

gigantic power. That power could never have belonged to mere hypocrites.

It could never have belonged to rigid moralists. It was to be attained

only by men sincerely enthusiastic in the pursuit of a great end, and at

the same time unscrupulous as to the choice of means.

From the first the Jesuits had been bound by a peculiar allegiance to

the Pope. Their mission had been not less to quell all mutiny within the

Church than to repel the hostility of her avowed enemies. Their doctrine

was in the highest degree what has been called on our side of the Alps

Ultramontane, and differed almost as much from the doctrine of Bossuet

as from that of Luther. They condemned the Gallican liberties, the

claim of oecumenical councils to control the Holy See, and the claim of

Bishops to an independent commission from heaven. Lainez, in the name

of the whole fraternity, proclaimed at Trent, amidst the applause of

the creatures of Pius the Fourth, and the murmurs of French and Spanish

prelates, that the government of the faithful had been committed

by Christ to the Pope alone, that in the Pope alone all sacerdotal

authority was concentrated, and that through the Pope alone priests and

bishops derived whatever divine authority they possessed. [56] During

many years the union between the Supreme Pontiffs and the Order had

continued unbroken. Had that union been still unbroken when James the

Second ascended the English throne, had the influence of the Jesuits as

well as the influence of the Pope been exerted in favour of a moderate

and constitutional policy, it is probable that the great revolution

which in a short time changed the whole state of European affairs would

never have taken place. But, even before the middle of the seventeenth

century, the Society, proud of its services and confident in its

strength, had become impatient of the yoke. A generation of Jesuits

sprang up, who looked for protection and guidance rather to the court of

France than to the court of Rome; and this disposition was not a little

strengthened when Innocent the Eleventh was raised to the papal throne.

The Jesuits were, at that time, engaged in a war to the death against an

enemy whom they had at first disdained, but whom they had at length been

forced to regard with respect and fear. Just when their prosperity

was at the height, they were braved by a handful of opponents, who had

indeed no influence with the rulers of this world, but who were strong

in religious faith and intellectual energy. Then followed a long, a

strange, a glorious conflict of genius against power. The Jesuit called

cabinets, tribunals, universities to his aid; and they responded to

the call. Port Royal appealed, not in vain, to the hearts and to

the understandings of millions. The dictators of Christendom found

themselves, on a sudden, in the position of culprits. They were

arraigned on the charge of having systematically debased the standard of

evangelical morality, for the purpose of increasing their own influence;

and the charge was enforced in a manner which at once arrested the

attention of the whole world: for the chief accuser was Blaise Pascal.

His intellectual powers were such as have rarely been bestowed on any

of the children of men; and the vehemence of the zeal which animated him

was but too well proved by the cruel penances and vigils under which his

macerated frame sank into an early grave. His spirit was the spirit of

Saint Bernard: but the delicacy of his wit, the purity, the energy, the

simplicity of his rhetoric, had never been equalled, except by the great

masters of Attic eloquence. All Europe read and admired, laughed and

wept. The Jesuits attempted to reply: but their feeble answers were

received by the public with shouts of mockery. They wanted, it is true,

no talent or accomplishment into which men can be drilled by elaborate

discipline; but such discipline, though it may bring out the powers of

ordinary minds, has a tendency to suffocate, rather than to develop,

original genius. It was universally acknowledged that, in the literary

contest, the Jansenists were completely victorious. To the Jesuits

nothing was left but to oppress the sect which they could not confute.

Lewis the Fourteenth was now their chief support. His conscience had,

from boyhood, been in their keeping; and he had learned from them to

abhor Jansenism quite as much as he abhorred Protestantism, and very

much more than he abhorred Atheism. Innocent the Eleventh, on the other

hand, leaned to the Jansenist opinions. The consequence was, that the

Society found itself in a situation never contemplated by its founder.

The Jesuits were estranged from the Supreme Pontiff; and they were

closely allied with a prince who proclaimed himself the champion of the

Gallican liberties and the enemy of Ultramontane pretensions. Thus

the Order became in England an instrument of the designs of Lewis, and

laboured, with a success which the Roman Catholics afterwards long

and bitterly deplored, to widen the breach between the King and the

Parliament, to thwart the Nuncio, to undermine the power of the Lord

Treasurer, and to support the most desperate schemes of Tyrconnel.

Thus on one side were the Hydes and the whole body of Tory churchmen,

Powis and all the most respectable noblemen and gentlemen of the King's

own faith, the States General, the House of Austria, and the Pope. On

the other side were a few Roman Catholic adventurers, of broken fortune

and tainted reputation, backed by France and by the Jesuits.

The chief representative of the Jesuits at Whitehall was an

English brother of the Order, who had, during some time, acted as

Viceprovincial, who had been long regarded by James with peculiar

favour, and who had lately been made Clerk of the Closet. This man,

named Edward Petre, was descended from an honourable family. His manners

were courtly: his speech was flowing and plausible; but he was weak and

vain, covetous and ambitious. Of all the evil counsellors who had access

to the royal ear, he bore, perhaps, the largest part in the ruin of the

House of Stuart.

The obstinate and imperious nature of the King gave great advantages to

those who advised him to be firm, to yield nothing, and to make himself

feared. One state maxim had taken possession of his small understanding,

and was not to be dislodged by reason. To reason, indeed, he was not in

the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called,

was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed

to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and,

as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was

erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and

conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections.

[57] "I will make no concession," he often repeated; "my father made

concessions, and he was beheaded." [58] If it were true that concession had

been fatal to Charles the First, a man of sense would have known that a

single experiment is not sufficient to establish a general rule even

in sciences much less complicated than the science of government; that,

since the beginning of the world, no two political experiments were ever

made of which all the conditions were exactly alike; and that the only

way to learn civil prudence from history is to examine and compare an

immense number of cases. But, if the single instance on which the King

relied proved anything, it proved that he was in the wrong. There can be

little doubt that, if Charles had frankly made to the Short Parliament,

which met in the spring of 1640, but one half of the concessions which

he made, a few months later, to the Long Parliament, he would have

lived and died a powerful King. On the other hand, there can be no doubt

whatever that, if he had refused to make any concession to the Long

Parliament, and had resorted to arms in defence of the ship money and

of the Star Chamber, he would have seen, in the hostile ranks, Hyde and

Falkland side by side with Hollis and Hampden. But, in truth, he would

not have been able to resort to arms; for nor twenty Cavaliers would

have joined his standard. It was to his large concessions alone that he

owed the support of that great body of noblemen and gentlemen who fought

so long and so gallantly in his cause. But it would have been useless to

represent these things to James.

Another fatal delusion had taken possession of his mind, and was never

dispelled till it had ruined him. He firmly believed that, do what

he might, the members of the Church of England would act up to their

principles. It had, he knew, been proclaimed from ten thousand pulpits,

it had been solemnly declared by the University of Oxford, that even

tyranny as frightful as that of the most depraved of the Caesars did not

justify subjects in resisting the royal authority; and hence he was weak

enough to conclude that the whole body of Tory gentlemen and clergymen

would let him plunder, oppress, and insult them without lifting an

arm against him. It seems strange that any man should have passed his

fiftieth year without discovering that people sometimes do what they

think wrong: and James had only to look into his own heart for abundant

proof that even a strong sense of religious duty will not always prevent

frail human beings from indulging their passions in defiance of divine

laws, and at the risk of awful penalties. He must have been conscious

that, though he thought adultery sinful, he was an adulterer: but

nothing could convince him that any man who professed to think rebellion

sinful would ever, in any extremity, be a rebel. The Church of England

was, in his view, a passive victim, which he might, without danger,

outrage and torture at his pleasure; nor did he ever see his error till

the Universities were preparing to coin their plate for the purpose of

supplying the military chest of his enemies, and till a Bishop, long

renowned for loyalty, had thrown aside his cassock, girt on a sword, and

taken the command of a regiment of insurgents.

In these fatal follies the King was artfully encouraged by a minister

who had been an Exclusionist, and who still called himself a Protestant,

the Earl of Sunderland. The motives and conduct of this unprincipled

politician have often been misrepresented. He was, in his own lifetime,

accused by the Jacobites of having, even before the beginning of the

reign of James, determined to bring about a revolution in favour of

the Prince of Orange, and of having, with that view, recommended a

succession of outrages on the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of

the realm. This idle story has been repeated down to our own days by

ignorant writers. But no well informed historian, whatever might be his

prejudices, has condescended to adopt it: for it rests on no evidence

whatever; and scarcely any evidence would convince reasonable men that

Sunderland deliberately incurred guilt and infamy in order to bring

about a change by which it was clear that he could not possibly be a

gainer, and by which, in fact, he lost immense wealth and influence. Nor

is there the smallest reason for resorting to so strange a hypothesis.

For the truth lies on the surface. Crooked as this man's course was, the

law which determined it was simple. His conduct is to be ascribed to the

alternate influence of cupidity and fear on a mind highly susceptible of

both those passions, and quicksighted rather than farsighted. He

wanted more power and more money. More power he could obtain only at

Rochester's expense; and the obvious way to obtain power at Rochester's

expense was to encourage the dislike which the King felt for Rochester's

moderate counsels. Money could be most easily and most largely obtained

from the court of Versailles; and Sunderland was eager to sell himself

to that court. He had no jovial generous vices. He cared little for wine

or for beauty: but he desired riches with an ungovernable and insatiable

desire. The passion for play raged in him without measure, and had not

been tamed by ruinous losses. His hereditary fortune was ample. He had

long filled lucrative posts, and had neglected no art which could make

them more lucrative: but his ill luck at the hazard table was such that

his estates were daily becoming more and more encumbered. In the hope of

extricating himself from his embarrassments, he betrayed to Barillon all

the schemes adverse to France which had been meditated in the English

cabinet, and hinted that a Secretary of State could in such times

render services for which it might be wise in Lewis to pay largely. The

Ambassador told his master that six thousand guineas was the smallest

gratification that could be offered to so important a minister. Lewis

consented to go as high as twenty-five thousand crowns, equivalent to

about five thousand six hundred pounds sterling. It was agreed that

Sunderland should receive this sum yearly, and that he should, in

return, exert all his influence to prevent the reassembling of the

Parliament. [59] He joined himself therefore to the Jesuitical cabal,

and made so dexterous an use of the influence of that cabal that he

was appointed to succeed Halifax in the high dignity of Lord President

without being required to resign the far more active and lucrative post

of Secretary. [60] He felt, however, that he could never hope to obtain

paramount influence in the court while he was supposed to belong to

the Established Church. All religions were the same to him. In private

circles, indeed, he was in the habit of talking with profane contempt of

the most sacred things. He therefore determined to let the King have the

delight and glory of effecting a conversion. Some management, however,

was necessary. No man is utterly without regard for the opinion of

his fellow creatures; and even Sunderland, though not very sensible to

shame, flinched from the infamy of public apostasy. He played his part

with rare adroitness. To the world he showed himself as a Protestant. In

the royal closet he assumed the character of an earnest inquirer after

truth, who was almost persuaded to declare himself a Roman Catholic, and

who, while waiting for fuller illumination, was disposed to render every

service in his power to the professors of the old faith. James, who

was never very discerning, and who in religious matters was absolutely

blind, suffered himself, notwithstanding all that he had seen of human

knavery, of the knavery of courtiers as a class, and of the knavery of

Sunderland in particular, to be duped into the belief that divine grace

had touched the most false and callous of human hearts. During many

months the wily minister continued to be regarded at court as a

promising catechumen, without exhibiting himself to the public in the

character of a renegade. [61]

He early suggested to the King the expediency of appointing a secret

committee of Roman Catholics to advise on all matters affecting the

interests of their religion. This committee met sometimes at Chiffinch's

lodgings, and sometimes at the official apartments of Sunderland,

who, though still nominally a Protestant, was admitted to all its

deliberations, and soon obtained a decided ascendency over the other

members. Every Friday the Jesuitical cabal dined with the Secretary. The

conversation at table was free; and the weaknesses of the prince whom

the confederates hoped to manage were not spared. To Petre Sunderland

promised a Cardinal's hat; to Castelmaine a splendid embassy to Rome;

to Dover a lucrative command in the Guards; and to Tyrconnel high

employment in Ireland. Thus hound together by the strongest ties of

interest, these men addressed themselves to the task of subverting the

Treasurer's power. [62]

There were two Protestant members of the cabinet who took no decided

part in the struggle. Jeffreys was at this time tortured by a cruel

internal malady which had been aggravated by intemperance. At a dinner

which a wealthy Alderman gave to some of the leading members of the

government, the Lord Treasurer and the Lord Chancellor were so drunk

that they stripped themselves almost stark naked, and were with

difficulty prevented from climbing up a signpost to drink His Majesty's

health. The pious Treasurer escaped with nothing but the scandal of the

debauch: but the Chancellor brought on a violent fit of his complaint.

His life was for some time thought to be in serious danger. James

expressed great uneasiness at the thought of losing a minister who

suited him so well, and said, with some truth, that the loss of such a

man could not be easily repaired. Jeffreys, when he became convalescent,

promised his support to both the contending parties, and waited to

see which of them would prove victorious. Some curious proofs of his

duplicity are still extant. It has been already said that the two French

agents who were then resident in London had divided the English court

between them. Bonrepaux was constantly with Rochester; and Barillon

lived with Sunderland. Lewis was informed in the same week by Bonrepaux

that the Chancellor was entirely with the Treasurer, and by Barillon

that the Chancellor was in league with the Secretary. [63]

Godolphin, cautious and taciturn, did his best to preserve neutrality.

His opinions and wishes were undoubtedly with Rochester; but his office

made it necessary for him to be in constant attendance on the Queen; and

he was naturally unwilling to be on bad terms with her. There is indeed

reason to believe that he regarded her with an attachment more

romantic than often finds place in the hearts of veteran statesmen;

and circumstances, which it is now necessary to relate, had thrown her

entirely into the hands of the Jesuitical cabal. [64]

The King, stern as was his temper and grave as was his deportment, was

scarcely less under the influence of female attractions than his

more lively and amiable brother had been. The beauty, indeed, which

distinguished the favourite ladies of Charles was not necessary to

James. Barbara Palmer, Eleanor Gwynn, and Louisa de Querouaille were

among the finest women of their time. James, when young, had surrendered

his liberty, descended below his rank, and incurred the displeasure of

his family for the coarse features of Anne Hyde. He had soon, to the

great diversion of the whole court, been drawn away from his plain

consort by a plainer mistress, Arabella Churchill. His second wife,

though twenty years younger than himself, and of no unpleasing face or

figure, had frequent reason to complain of his inconstancy. But of

all his illicit attachments the strongest was that which bound him to

Catharine Sedley.

This woman was the daughter of Sir Charles Sedley, one of the most

brilliant and profligate wits of the Restoration. The licentiousness of

his writings is not redeemed by much grace or vivacity; but the charms

of his conversation were acknowledged even by sober men who had no

esteem for his character. To sit near him at the theatre, and to hear

his criticisms on a new play, was regarded as a privilege. [65] Dryden

had done him the honour to make him a principal interlocutor in the

Dialogue on Dramatic Poesy. The morals of Sedley were such as, even in

that age, gave great scandal. He on one occasion, after a wild revel,

exhibited himself without a shred of clothing in the balcony of a

tavern near Covent Garden, and harangued the people who were passing in

language so indecent and profane that he was driven in by a shower of

brickbats, was prosecuted for a misdemeanour, was sentenced to a heavy

fine, and was reprimanded by the Court of King's Bench in the most

cutting terms. [66] His daughter had inherited his abilities and his

impudence. Personal charms she had none, with the exception of two

brilliant eyes, the lustre of which, to men of delicate taste, seemed

fierce and unfeminine. Her form was lean, her countenance haggard.

Charles, though he liked her conversation, laughed at her ugliness, and

said that the priests must have recommended her to his brother by way of

penance. She well knew that she was not handsome, and jested freely on

her own homeliness. Yet, with strange inconsistency, she loved to

adorn herself magnificently, and drew on herself much keen ridicule

by appearing in the theatre and the ring plastered, painted, clad in

Brussels lace, glittering with diamonds, and affecting all the graces of

eighteen. [67]

The nature of her influence over James is not easily to be explained. He

was no longer young. He was a religious man; at least he was willing

to make for his religion exertions and sacrifices from which the great

majority of those who are called religious men would shrink. It seems

strange that any attractions should have drawn him into a course of life

which he must have regarded as highly criminal; and in this case

none could understand where the attraction lay. Catharine herself was

astonished by the violence of his passion. "It cannot be my beauty," she

said; "for he must see that I have none; and it cannot be my wit, for he

has not enough to know that I have any."

At the moment of the King's accession a sense of the new responsibility

which lay on him made his mind for a time peculiarly open to religious

impressions. He formed and announced many good resolutions, spoke in

public with great severity of the impious and licentious manners of the

age, and in private assured his Queen and his confessor that he would

see Catharine Sedley no more. He wrote to his mistress entreating her

to quit the apartments which she occupied at Whitehall, and to go to a

house in Saint James's Square which had been splendidly furnished for

her at his expense. He at the same time promised to allow her a large

pension from his privy purse. Catharine, clever, strongminded, intrepid,

and conscious of her power, refused to stir. In a few months it began

to be whispered that the services of Chiffinch were again employed, and

that the mistress frequently passed and repassed through that private

door through which Father Huddleston had borne the host to the bedside

of Charles. The King's Protestant ministers had, it seems, conceived a

hope that their master's infatuation for this woman might cure him

of the more pernicious infatuation which impelled him to attack their

religion. She had all the talents which could qualify her to play on his

feelings, to make game of his scruples, to set before him in a strong

light the difficulties and dangers into which he was running headlong.

Rochester, the champion of the Church, exerted himself to strengthen her

influence. Ormond, who is popularly regarded as the personification of

all that is pure and highminded in the English Cavalier, encouraged the

design. Even Lady Rochester was not ashamed to cooperate, and that in

the very worst way. Her office was to direct the jealousy of the injured

wife towards a young lady who was perfectly innocent. The whole court

took notice of the coldness and rudeness with which the Queen treated

the poor girl on whom suspicion had been thrown: but the cause of Her

Majesty's ill humour was a mystery. For a time the intrigue went on

prosperously and secretly. Catharine often told the King plainly what

the Protestant Lords of the Council only dared to hint in the most

delicate phrases. His crown, she said, was at stake: the old dotard

Arundell and the blustering Tyrconnel would lead him to his ruin. It is

possible that her caresses might have done what the united exhortations

of the Lords and the Commons, of the House of Austria and the Holy See,

had failed to do, but for a strange mishap which changed the whole face

of affairs. James, in a fit of fondness, determined to make his mistress

Countess of Dorchester in her own right. Catharine saw all the peril of

such a step, and declined the invidious honour. Her lover was obstinate,

and himself forced the patent into her hands. She at last accepted it

on one condition, which shows her confidence in her own power and in

his weakness. She made him give her a solemn promise, not that he would

never quit her, but that, if he did so, he would himself announce his

resolution to her, and grant her one parting interview.

As soon as the news of her elevation got abroad, the whole palace was

in an uproar. The warm blood of Italy boiled in the veins of the Queen.

Proud of her youth and of her charms, of her high rank and of her

stainless chastity, she could not without agonies of grief and rage

see herself deserted and insulted for such a rival. Rochester, perhaps

remembering how patiently, after a short struggle, Catharine of Braganza

had consented to treat the mistresses of Charles with politeness, had

expected that, after a little complaining and pouting, Mary of Modena

would be equally submissive. It was not so. She did not even attempt

to conceal from the eyes of the world the violence of her emotions.

Day after day the courtiers who came to see her dine observed that the

dishes were removed untasted from the table. She suffered the tears to

stream down her cheeks unconcealed in the presence of the whole circle

of ministers and envoys. To the King she spoke with wild vehemence.

"Let me go," she cried. "You have made your woman a Countess: make her

a Queen. Put my crown on her head. Only let me hide myself in some

convent, where I may never see her more." Then, more soberly, she asked

him how he reconciled his conduct to his religious professions. "You are

ready," she said, "to put your kingdom to hazard for the sake of your

soul; and yet you are throwing away your soul for the sake of that

creature." Father Petre, on bended knees, seconded these remonstrances.

It was his duty to do so; and his duty was not the less strenuously

performed because it coincided with his interest. The King went on for

a time sinning and repenting. In his hours of remorse his penances

were severe. Mary treasured up to the end of her life, and at her death

bequeathed to the convent of Chaillot, the scourge with which he had

vigorously avenged her wrongs upon his own shoulders. Nothing but

Catharine's absence could put an end to this struggle between an ignoble

love and an ignoble superstition. James wrote, imploring and commanding

her to depart. He owned that he had promised to bid her farewell in

person. "But I know too well," he added, "the power which you have over

me. I have not strength of mind enough to keep my resolution if I see

you." He offered her a yacht to convey her with all dignity and comfort

to Flanders, and threatened that if she did not go quietly she should be

sent away by force. She at one time worked on his feelings by pretending

to be ill. Then she assumed the airs of a martyr, and impudently

proclaimed herself a sufferer for the Protestant religion. Then again

she adopted the style of John Hampden. She defied the King to remove

her. She would try the right with him. While the Great Charter and the

Habeas Corpus Act were the law of the land, she would live where she

pleased. "And Flanders," she cried; "never! I have learned one thing

from my friend the Duchess of Mazarin; and that is never to trust myself

in a country where there are convents." At length she selected Ireland

as the place of her exile, probably because the brother of her patron

Rochester was viceroy there. After many delays she departed, leaving the

victory to the Queen. [68]

The history of this extraordinary intrigue would be imperfect, if

it were not added that there is still extant a religious meditation,

written by the Treasurer, with his own hand, on the very same day on

which the intelligence of his attempt to govern his master by means of

a concubine was despatched by Bonrepaux to Versailles. No composition of

Ken or Leighton breathes a spirit of more fervent and exalted piety

than this effusion. Hypocrisy cannot be suspected: for the paper was

evidently meant only for the writer's own eye, and was not published

till he had been more than a century in his grave. So much is history

stranger than fiction; and so true is it that nature has caprices which

art dares not imitate. A dramatist would scarcely venture to bring on

the stage a grave prince, in the decline of life, ready to sacrifice his

crown in order to serve the interests of his religion, indefatigable in

making proselytes, and yet deserting and insulting a wife who had youth

and beauty for the sake of a profligate paramour who had neither. Still

less, if possible, would a dramatist venture to introduce a statesman

stooping to the wicked and shameful part of a procurer, and calling in

his wife to aid him in that dishonourable office, yet, in his moments of

leisure, retiring to his closet, and there secretly pouring out his soul

to his God in penitent tears and devout ejaculations. [69]

The Treasurer soon found that, in using scandalous means for the purpose

of obtaining a laudable end, he had committed, not only a crime, but a

folly. The Queen was now his enemy. She affected, indeed, to listen with

civility while the Hydes excused their recent conduct as well as they

could; and she occasionally pretended to use her influence in their

favour: but she must have been more or less than woman if she had really

forgiven the conspiracy which had been formed against her dignity and

her domestic happiness by the family of her husband's first wife. The

Jesuits strongly represented to the King the danger which he had so

narrowly escaped. His reputation, they said, his peace, his soul, had

been put in peril by the machinations of his prime minister. The Nuncio,

who would gladly have counteracted the influence of the violent party,

and cooperated with the moderate members of the cabinet, could not

honestly or decently separate himself on this occasion from Father

Petre. James himself, when parted by the sea from the charms which had

so strongly fascinated him, could not but regard with resentment and

contempt those who had sought to govern him by means of his vices. What

had passed must have had the effect of raising his own Church in his

esteem, and of lowering the Church of England. The Jesuits, whom it

was the fashion to represent as the most unsafe of spiritual guides, as

sophists who refined away the whole system of evangelical morality, as

sycophants who owed their influence chiefly to the indulgence with which

they treated the sins of the great, had reclaimed him from a life of

guilt by rebukes as sharp and bold as those which David had heard

from Nathan and Herod from the Baptist. On the other hand, zealous

Protestants, whose favourite theme was the laxity of Popish casuists

and the wickedness of doing evil that good might come, had attempted

to obtain advantages for their own Church in a way which all Christians

regarded as highly criminal. The victory of the cabal of evil

counsellors was therefore complete. The King looked coldly on Rochester.

The courtiers and foreign ministers soon perceived that the Lord

Treasurer was prime minister only in name. He continued to offer his

advice daily, and had the mortification to find it daily rejected. Yet

he could not prevail on himself to relinquish the outward show of power

and the emoluments which he directly and indirectly derived from his

great place. He did his best, therefore, to conceal his vexations from

the public eye. But his violent passions and his intemperate habits

disqualified him for the part of a dissembler. His gloomy looks, when he

came out of the council chamber, showed how little he was pleased

with what had passed at the board; and, when the bottle had gone round

freely, words escaped him which betrayed his uneasiness. [70]

He might, indeed, well be uneasy. Indiscreet and unpopular measures

followed each other in rapid succession. All thought of returning to the

policy of the Triple Alliance was abandoned. The King explicitly avowed

to the ministers of those continental powers with which he had lately

intended to ally himself, that all his views had undergone a change, and

that England was still to be, as she had been under his grandfather,

his father, and his brother, of no account in Europe. "I am in no

condition," he said to the Spanish Ambassador, "to trouble myself about

what passes abroad. It is my resolution to let foreign affairs take

their course, to establish my authority at home, and to do something for

my religion." A few days later he announced the same intentions to the

States General. [71] From that time to the close of his ignominious

reign, he made no serious effort to escape from vassalage, though, to

the last, he could never hear, without transports of rage, that men

called him a vassal.

The two events which proved to the public that Sunderland and

Sunderland's party were victorious were the prorogation of the

Parliament from February to May, and the departure of Castelmaine for

Rome with the appointments of an Ambassador of the highest rank. [72]

Hitherto all the business of the English government at the papal court

had been transacted by John Caryl. This gentleman was known to his

contemporaries as a man of fortune and fashion, and as the author of two

successful plays, a tragedy in rhyme which had been made popular by

the action and recitation of Betterton, and a comedy which owes all

its value to scenes borrowed from Moliere. These pieces have long been

forgotten; but what Caryl could not do for himself has been done for him

by a more powerful genius. Half a line in the Rape of the Lock has made

his name immortal.

Caryl, who was, like all the other respectable Roman Catholics, an enemy

to violent courses, had acquitted himself of his delicate errand at Rome

with good sense and good feeling. The business confided to him was well

done; but he assumed no public character, and carefully avoided all

display. His mission, therefore, put the government to scarcely any

charge, and excited scarcely any murmurs. His place was now most

unwisely supplied by a costly and ostentatious embassy, offensive in the

highest degree to the people of England, and by no means welcome to the

court of Rome. Castelmaine had it in charge to demand a Cardinal's hat

for his confederate Petre.

About the same time the King began to show, in an unequivocal manner,

the feeling which he really entertained towards the banished Huguenots.

While he had still hoped to cajole his Parliament into submission and to

become the head of an European coalition against France, he had affected

to blame the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and to pity the unhappy

men whom persecution had driven from their country. He had caused it to

be announced that, at every church in the kingdom, a collection would

be made under his sanction for their benefit. A proclamation on this

subject had been drawn up in terms which might have wounded the pride of

a sovereign less sensitive and vainglorious than Lewis. But all was now

changed. The principles of the treaty of Dover were again the principles

of the foreign policy of England. Ample apologies were therefore made

for the discourtesy with which the English government had acted towards

France in showing favour to exiled Frenchmen. The proclamation which

had displeased Lewis was recalled. [73] The Huguenot ministers were

admonished to speak with reverence of their oppressor in their public

discourses, as they would answer it at their peril. James not only

ceased to express commiseration for the sufferers, but declared that he

believed them to harbour the worst designs, and owned that he had been

guilty of an error in countenancing them. One of the most eminent of the

refugees, John Claude, had published on the Continent a small volume

in which he described with great force the sufferings of his brethren.

Barillon demanded that some opprobrious mark should be put on his book.

James complied, and in full council declared it to be his pleasure

that Claude's libel should be burned by the hangman before the Royal

Exchange. Even Jeffreys was startled, and ventured to represent that

such a proceeding was without example, that the book was written in a

foreign tongue, that it had been printed at a foreign press, that it

related entirely to transactions which had taken place in a foreign

country, and that no English government had ever animadverted on

such works. James would not suffer the question to be discussed. "My

resolution," he said, "is taken. It has become the fashion to treat

Kings disrespectfully; and they must stand by each other. One King

should always take another's part: and I have particular reasons for

showing this respect to the King of France." There was silence at

the board. The order was forthwith issued; and Claude's pamphlet was

committed to the flames, not without the deep murmurs of many who had

always been reputed steady loyalists. [74]

The promised collection was long put off under various pretexts. The

King would gladly have broken his word; but it was pledged so solemnly

that he could not for very shame retract. [75] Nothing, however, which

could cool the zeal of congregations was omitted. It had been expected

that, according to the practice usual on such occasions, the people

would be exhorted to liberality from the pulpits. But James was

determined not to tolerate declamations against his religion and his

ally. The Archbishop of Canterbury was therefore commanded to inform

the clergy that they must merely read the brief, and must not presume

to preach on the sufferings of the French Protestants. [76] Nevertheless

the contributions were so large that, after all deductions, the sum of

forty thousand pounds was paid into the Chamber of London. Perhaps none

of the munificent subscriptions of our own age has borne so great a

proportion to the means of the nation. [77]

The King was bitterly mortified by the large amount of the collection

which had been made in obedience to his own call. He knew, he said, what

all this liberality meant. It was mere Whiggish spite to himself and his

religion. [78] He had already resolved that the money should be of no

use to those whom the donors wished to benefit. He had been, during some

weeks, in close communication with the French embassy on this subject,

and had, with the approbation of the court of Versailles, determined on

a course which it is not very easy to reconcile with those principles of

toleration to which he afterwards pretended to be attached. The refugees

were zealous for the Calvinistic discipline and worship. James therefore

gave orders that none should receive a crust of bread or a basket of

coals who did not first take the sacrament according to the Anglican

ritual. [79] It is strange that this inhospitable rule should have been

devised by a prince who affected to consider the Test Act as an outrage

on the rights of conscience: for, however unjustifiable it may be to

establish a sacramental test for the purpose of ascertaining whether

men are fit for civil and military office, it is surely much more

unjustifiable to establish a sacramental test for the purpose of

ascertaining whether, in their extreme distress, they are fit objects of

charity. Nor had James the plea which may be urged in extenuation of

the guilt of almost all other persecutors: for the religion which he

commanded the refugees to profess, on pain of being left to starve,

was not his own religion. His conduct towards them was therefore less

excusable than that of Lewis: for Lewis oppressed them in the hope of

bringing them over from a damnable heresy to the true Church: James

oppressed them only for the purpose of forcing them to apostatize from

one damnable heresy to another.

Several Commissioners, of whom the Chancellor was one, had been

appointed to dispense the public alms. When they met for the first time,

Jeffreys announced the royal pleasure. The refugees, he said, were too

generally enemies of monarchy and episcopacy. If they wished for relief,

they must become members of the Church of England, and must take the

sacrament from the hands of his chaplain. Many exiles, who had come full

of gratitude and hope to apply for succour, heard their sentence, and

went brokenhearted away. [80]

May was now approaching; and that month had been fixed for the meeting

of the Houses: but they were again prorogued to November. [81] It

was not strange that the King did not wish to meet them: for he had

determined to adopt a policy which he knew to be, in the highest degree,

odious to them. From his predecessors he had inherited two prerogatives,

of which the limits had never been defined with strict accuracy, and

which, if exerted without any limit, would of themselves have sufficed

to overturn the whole polity of the State and of the Church. These were

the dispensing power and the ecclesiastical supremacy. By means of the

dispensing power the King purposed to admit Roman Catholics, not merely

to civil and military, but to spiritual, offices. By means of the

ecclesiastical supremacy he hoped to make the Anglican clergy his

instruments for the destruction of their own religion.

This scheme developed itself by degrees. It was not thought safe to

begin by granting to the whole Roman Catholic body a dispensation from

all statutes imposing penalties and tests. For nothing was more fully

established than that such a dispensation was illegal. The Cabal had,

in 1672, put forth a general Declaration of Indulgence. The Commons,

as soon as they met, had protested against it. Charles the Second had

ordered it to be cancelled in his presence, and had, both by his own

mouth and by a written message, assured the Houses that the step which

had caused so much complaint should never be drawn into precedent. It

would have been difficult to find in all the Inns of Court a barrister

of reputation to argue in defence of a prerogative which the Sovereign,

seated on his throne in full Parliament, had solemnly renounced a few

years before. But it was not quite so clear that the King might not,

on special grounds, grant exemptions to individuals by name. The first

object of James, therefore, was to obtain from the courts of common

law an acknowledgment that, to this extent at least, he possessed the

dispensing power.

But, though his pretensions were moderate when compared with those which

he put forth a few months later, he soon found that he had against him

almost the whole sense of Westminster Hall. Four of the Judges gave him

to understand that they could not, on this occasion, serve his purpose;

and it is remarkable that all the four were violent Tories, and that

among them were men who had accompanied Jeffreys on the Bloody Circuit,

and who had consented to the death of Cornish and of Elizabeth Gaunt.

Jones, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, a man who had never before

shrunk from any drudgery, however cruel or servile, now held in the

royal closet language which might have become the lips of the purest

magistrates in our history. He was plainly told that he must either

give up his opinion or his place. "For my place," he answered, "I care

little. I am old and worn out in the service of the crown; but I am

mortified to find that your Majesty thinks me capable of giving a

judgment which none but an ignorant or a dishonest man could give." "I

am determined," said the King, "to have twelve Judges who will be all

of my mind as to this matter." "Your Majesty," answered Jones, "may

find twelve Judges of your mind, but hardly twelve lawyers." [82] He was

dismissed together with Montague, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, and

two puisne Judges, Neville and Charlton. One of the new Judges was

Christopher Milton, younger brother of the great poet. Of Christopher

little is known except that, in the time of the civil war, he had been

a Royalist, and that he now, in his old age, leaned towards Popery. It

does not appear that he was ever formally reconciled to the Church of

Rome: but he certainly had scruples about communicating with the Church

of England, and had therefore a strong interest in supporting the

dispensing power. [83]

The King found his counsel as refractory as his Judges. The first

barrister who learned that he was expected to defend the dispensing

power was the Solicitor General, Heneage Finch. He peremptorily refused,

and was turned out of office on the following day. [84] The Attorney

General, Sawyer, was ordered to draw warrants authorising members of

the Church of Rome to hold benefices belonging to the Church of England.

Sawyer had been deeply concerned in some of the harshest and most

unjustifiable prosecutions of that age; and the Whigs abhorred him as a

man stained with the blood of Russell and Sidney: but on this occasion

he showed no want of honesty or of resolution. "Sir," said he, "this is

not merely to dispense with a statute; it is to annul the whole statute

law from the accession of Elizabeth to this day. I dare not do it; and I

implore your Majesty to consider whether such an attack upon the rights

of the Church be in accordance with your late gracious promises." [85]

Sawyer would have been instantly dismissed as Finch had been, if the

government could have found a successor: but this was no easy matter. It

was necessary for the protection of the rights of the crown that one

at least of the crown lawyers should be a man of learning, ability, and

experience; and no such man was willing to defend the dispensing power.

The Attorney General was therefore permitted to retain his place

during some months. Thomas Powis, an insignificant man, who had no

qualification for high employment except servility, was appointed

Solicitor.

The preliminary arrangements were now complete. There was a Solicitor

General to argue for the dispensing power, and twelve Judges to decide

in favour of it. The question was therefore speedily brought to a

hearing. Sir Edward Hales, a gentleman of Kent, had been converted

to Popery in days when it was not safe for any man of note openly to

declare himself a Papist. He had kept his secret, and, when questioned,

had affirmed that he was a Protestant with a solemnity which did little

credit to his principles. When James had ascended the throne, disguise

was no longer necessary. Sir Edward publicly apostatized, and was

rewarded with the command of a regiment of foot. He had held his

commission more than three months without taking the sacrament. He was

therefore liable to a penalty of five hundred pounds, which an informer

might recover by action of debt. A menial servant was employed to bring

a suit for this sum in the Court of King's Bench. Sir Edward did not

dispute the facts alleged against him, but pleaded that he had letters

patent authorising him to hold his commission notwithstanding the Test

Act. The plaintiff demurred, that is to say, admitted Sir Edward's plea

to be true in fact, but denied that it was a sufficient answer. Thus was

raised a simple issue of law to be decided by the court. A barrister,

who was notoriously a tool of the government, appeared for the mock

plaintiff, and made some feeble objections to the defendant's plea. The

new Solicitor General replied. The Attorney General took no part in the

proceedings. Judgment was given by the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Edward

Herbert. He announced that he had submitted the question to all the

twelve Judges, and that, in the opinion of eleven of them, the King

might lawfully dispense with penal statutes in particular cases, and

for special reasons of grave importance. The single dissentient, Baron

Street, was not removed from his place. He was a man of morals so bad

that his own relations shrank from him, and that the Prince of Orange,

at the time of the Revolution, was advised not to see him. The character

of Street makes it impossible to believe that he would have been more

scrupulous than his brethren. The character of James makes it impossible

to believe that a refractory Baron of the Exchequer would have been

permitted to retain his post. There can be no reasonable doubt that the

dissenting Judge was, like the plaintiff and the plaintiff's counsel,

acting collusively. It was important that there should be a great

preponderance of authority in favour of the dispensing power; yet it

was important that the bench, which had been carefully packed for the

occasion, should appear to be independent. One Judge, therefore,

the least respectable of the twelve, was permitted, or more probably

commanded, to give his voice against the prerogative. [86]

The power which the courts of law had thus recognised was not suffered

to lie idle. Within a month after the decision of the King's Bench

had been pronounced, four Roman Catholic Lords were sworn of the Privy

Council. Two of these, Powis and Bellasyse, were of the moderate

party, and probably took their seats with reluctance and with many sad

forebodings. The other two, Arundell and Dover, had no such misgivings.

[87]

The dispensing power was, at the same time, employed for the purpose

of enabling Roman Catholics to hold ecclesiastical preferment. The new

Solicitor readily drew the warrants in which Sawyer had refused to be

concerned. One of these warrants was in favour of a wretch named Edward

Sclater, who had two livings which he was determined to keep at all

costs and through all changes. He administered the sacrament to his

parishioners according to the rites of the Church of England on Palm

Sunday 1686. On Easter Sunday, only seven days later, he was at mass.

The royal dispensation authorised him to retain the emoluments of his

benefices. To the remonstrances of the patrons from whom he had received

his preferment he replied in terms of insolent defiance, and, while the

Roman Catholic cause prospered, put forth an absurd treatise in defence

of his apostasy. But, a very few weeks after the Revolution, a great

congregation assembled at Saint Mary's in the Savoy, to see him received

again into the bosom of the Church which he had deserted. He read his

recantation with tears flowing from his eyes, and pronounced a bitter

invective against the Popish priests whose arts had seduced him. [88]

Scarcely less infamous was the conduct of Obadiah Walker. He was an aged

priest of the Church of England, and was well known in the University of

Oxford as a man of learning. He had in the late reign been suspected of

leaning towards Popery, but had outwardly conformed to the established

religion, and had at length been chosen Master of University College.

Soon after the accession of James, Walker determined to throw off the

disguise which he had hitherto worn. He absented himself from the

public worship of the Church of England, and, with some fellows and

undergraduates whom he had perverted, heard mass daily in his own

apartments. One of the first acts performed by the new Solicitor General

was to draw up an instrument which authorised Walker and his proselytes

to hold their benefices, notwithstanding their apostasy. Builders were

immediately employed to turn two sets of rooms into an oratory. In a

few weeks the Roman Catholic rites were publicly performed in University

College. A Jesuit was quartered there as chaplain. A press was

established there under royal license for the printing of Roman Catholic

tracts. During two years and a half, Walker continued to make war on

Protestantism with all the rancour of a renegade: but when fortune

turned he showed that he wanted the courage of a martyr. He was brought

to the bar of the House of Commons to answer for his conduct, and was

base enough to protest that he had never changed his religion, that he

had never cordially approved of the doctrines of the Church of Rome,

and that he had never tried to bring any other person within the pale

of that Church. It was hardly worth while to violate the most sacred

obligations of law and of plighted faith, for the purpose of making such

converts as these. [89]

In a short time the King went a step further. Sclater and Walker had

only been permitted to keep, after they became Papists, the preferment

which had been bestowed on them while they passed for Protestants. To

confer a high office in the Established Church on an avowed enemy of

that Church was a far bolder violation of the laws and of the royal

word. But no course was too bold for James. The Deanery of Christchurch

became vacant. That office was, both in dignity and in emolument, one of

the highest in the University of Oxford. The Dean was charged with the

government of a greater number of youths of high connections and of

great hopes than could then be found in any other college. He was also

the head of a Cathedral. In both characters it was necessary that he

should be a member of the Church of England. Nevertheless John Massey,

who was notoriously a member of the Church of Rome, and who had not

one single recommendation, except that he was a member of the Church of

Rome, was appointed by virtue of the dispensing power; and soon within

the walls of Christchurch an altar was decked, at which mass was daily

celebrated. [90] To the Nuncio the King said that what had been done at

Oxford should very soon be done at Cambridge. [91]

Yet even this was a small evil compared with that which Protestants

had good ground to apprehend. It seemed but too probable that the whole

government of the Anglican Church would shortly pass into the hands of

her deadly enemies. Three important sees had lately become vacant, that

of York, that of Chester, and that of Oxford. The Bishopric of Oxford

was given to Samuel Parker, a parasite, whose religion, if he had any

religion, was that of Rome, and who called himself a Protestant only

because he was encumbered with a wife. "I wished," the King said to

Adda, "to appoint an avowed Catholic: but the time is not come. Parker

is well inclined to us; he is one of us in feeling; and by degrees he

will bring round his clergy." [92] The Bishopric of Chester, vacant by the

death of John Pearson, a great name both in philology and in divinity,

was bestowed on Thomas Cartwright, a still viler sycophant than Parker.

The Archbishopric of York remained several years vacant. As no good

reason could be found for leaving so important a place unfilled, men

suspected that the nomination was delayed only till the King could

venture to place the mitre on the head of an avowed Papist. It is indeed

highly probable that the Church of England was saved from this outrage

by the good sense and good feeling of the Pope. Without a special

dispensation from Rome no Jesuit could be a Bishop; and Innocent could

not be induced to grant such a dispensation to Petre.

James did not even make any secret of his intention to exert vigorously

and systematically for the destruction of the Established Church all the

powers which he possessed as her head. He plainly said that, by a wise

dispensation of Providence, the Act of Supremacy would be the means of

healing the fatal breach which it had caused. Henry and Elizabeth had

usurped a dominion which rightfully belonged to the Holy See. That

dominion had, in the course of succession, descended to an orthodox

prince, and would be held by him in trust for the Holy See. He was

authorised by law to repress spiritual abuses; and the first spiritual

abuse which he would repress should be the liberty which the Anglican

clergy assumed of defending their own religion and of attacking the

doctrines of Rome. [93]

But he was met by a great difficulty. The ecclesiastical supremacy

which had devolved on him, was by no means the same great and terrible

prerogative which Elizabeth, James the First, and Charles the First had

possessed. The enactment which annexed to the crown an almost boundless

visitatorial authority over the Church, though it had never been

formally repealed, had really lost a great part of its force. The

substantive law remained; but it remained unaccompanied by any

formidable sanction or by any efficient system of procedure, and was

therefore little more than a dead letter.

The statute, which restored to Elizabeth the spiritual dominion assumed

by her father and resigned by her sister, contained a clause authorising

the sovereign to constitute a tribunal which might investigate, reform,

and punish all ecclesiastical delinquencies. Under the authority given

by this clause, the Court of High Commission was created. That court

was, during many years, the terror of Nonconformists, and, under the

harsh administration of Laud, became an object of fear and hatred even

to those who most loved the Established Church. When the Long Parliament

met, the High Commission was generally regarded as the most grievous

of the many grievances under which the nation laboured. An act was

therefore somewhat hastily passed, which not only took away from the

Crown the power of appointing visitors to superintend the Church, but

abolished all ecclesiastical courts without distinction.

After the Restoration, the Cavaliers who filled the House of Commons,

zealous as they were for the prerogative, still remembered with

bitterness the tyranny of the High Commission, and were by no means

disposed to revive an institution so odious. They at the same time

thought, and not without reason, that the statute which had swept away

all the courts Christian of the realm, without providing any substitute,

was open to grave objection. They accordingly repealed that statute,

with the exception of the part which related to the High Commission.

Thus, the Archidiaconal Courts, the Consistory Courts, the Court of

Arches, the Court of Peculiars, and the Court of Delegates were revived:

but the enactment by which Elizabeth and her successors had been

empowered to appoint Commissioners with visitatorial authority over

the Church was not only not revived, but was declared, with the utmost

strength of language, to be completely abrogated. It is therefore as

clear as any point of constitutional law can be that James the Second

was not competent to appoint a Commission with power to visit and govern

the Church of England. [94] But, if this were so, it was to little

purpose that the Act of Supremacy, in high sounding words, empowered

him to amend what was amiss in that Church. Nothing but a machinery as

stringent as that which the Long Parliament had destroyed could force

the Anglican clergy to become his agents for the destruction of the

Anglican doctrine and discipline. He therefore, as early as the month

of April 1686, determined to create a new Court of High Commission. This

design was not immediately executed. It encountered the opposition of

every minister who was not devoted to France and to the Jesuits. It

was regarded by lawyers as an outrageous violation of the law, and by

Churchmen as a direct attack upon the Church. Perhaps the contest

might have lasted longer, but for an event which wounded the pride and

inflamed the rage of the King. He had, as supreme ordinary, put forth

directions, charging the clergy of the establishment to abstain from

touching in their discourses on controverted points of doctrine. Thus,

while sermons in defence of the Roman Catholic religion were preached on

every Sunday and holiday within the precincts of the royal palaces, the

Church of the state, the Church of the great majority of the nation, was

forbidden to explain and vindicate her own principles. The spirit of the

whole clerical order rose against this injustice. William Sherlock,

a divine of distinguished abilities, who had written with sharpness

against Whigs and Dissenters, and had been rewarded by the government

with the Mastership of the Temple and with a pension, was one of the

first who incurred the royal displeasure. His pension was stopped, and

he was severely reprimanded. [95] John Sharp, Dean of Norwich and Rector

of St. Giles's in the Fields, soon gave still greater offence. He was

a man of learning and fervent piety, a preacher of great fame, and an

exemplary parish priest. In politics he was, like most of his brethren,

a Tory, and had just been appointed one of the royal chaplains. He

received an anonymous letter which purported to come from one of his

parishioners who had been staggered by the arguments of Roman Catholic

theologians, and who was anxious to be satisfied that the Church of

England was a branch of the true Church of Christ. No divine, not

utterly lost to all sense of religious duty and of professional honour,

could refuse to answer such a call. On the following Sunday Sharp

delivered an animated discourse against the high pretensions of the

see of Rome. Some of his expressions were exaggerated, distorted, and

carried by talebearers to Whitehall. It was falsely said that he had

spoken with contumely of the theological disquisitions which had been

found in the strong box of the late King, and which the present King

had published. Compton, the Bishop of London, received orders from

Sunderland to suspend Sharp till the royal pleasure should be further

known. The Bishop was in great perplexity. His recent conduct in the

House of Lords had given deep offence to the court. Already his name had

been struck out of the list of Privy Councillors. Already he had been

dismissed from his office in the royal chapel. He was unwilling to give

fresh provocation but the act which he was directed to perform was a

judicial act. He felt that it was unjust, and he was assured by the best

advisers that it was also illegal, to inflict punishment without giving

any opportunity for defence. He accordingly, in the humblest terms,

represented his difficulties to the King, and privately requested

Sharp not to appear in the pulpit for the present. Reasonable as were

Compton's scruples, obsequious as were his apologies, James was greatly

incensed. What insolence to plead either natural justice or positive

law in opposition to an express command of the Sovereign Sharp was

forgotten. The Bishop became a mark for the whole vengeance of the

government. [96] The King felt more painfully than ever the want of that

tremendous engine which had once coerced refractory ecclesiastics. He

probably knew that, for a few angry words uttered against his father's

government, Bishop Williams had been suspended by the High Commission

from all ecclesiastical dignities and functions. The design of reviving

that formidable tribunal was pushed on more eagerly than ever. In July

London was alarmed by the news that the King had, in direct defiance of

two acts of Parliament drawn in the strongest terms, entrusted the whole

government of the Church to seven Commissioners. [97] The words in which

the jurisdiction of these officers was described were loose, and might

be stretched to almost any extent. All colleges and grammar schools,

even those founded by the liberality of private benefactors, were placed

under the authority of the new board. All who depended for bread on

situations in the Church or in academical institutions, from the Primate

down to the youngest curate, from the Vicechancellors of Oxford and

Cambridge down to the humblest pedagogue who taught Corderius, were at

the royal mercy. If any one of those many thousands was suspected

of doing or saying anything distasteful to the government, the

Commissioners might cite him before them. In their mode of dealing

with him they were fettered by no rules. They were themselves at once

prosecutors and judges. The accused party was furnished with no copy of

the charge. He was examined and crossexamined. If his answers did not

give satisfaction, he was liable to be suspended from his office, to be

ejected from it, to be pronounced incapable of holding any preferment

in future. If he were contumacious, he might be excommunicated, or, in

other words, be deprived of all civil rights and imprisoned for life. He

might also, at the discretion of the court, be loaded with all the costs

of the proceeding by which he had been reduced to beggary. No appeal

was given. The Commissioners were directed to execute their office

notwithstanding any law which might be, or might seem to be,

inconsistent with these regulations. Lastly, lest any person should

doubt that it was intended to revive that terrible court from which the

Long Parliament had freed the nation, the new tribunal was directed to

use a seal bearing exactly the same device and the same superscription

with the seal of the old High Commission. [98]

The chief Commissioner was the Chancellor. His presence and assent were

necessary to every proceeding. All men knew how unjustly, insolently,

and barbarously he had acted in courts where he had been, to a certain

extent, restrained by the known laws of England. It was, therefore,

not difficult to foresee how he would conduct himself in a situation in

which he was at entire liberty to make forms of procedure and rules of

evidence for himself.

Of the other six Commissioners three were prelates and three laymen. The

name of Archbishop Sancroft stood first. But he was fully convinced that

the court was illegal, that all its judgments would be null, and that

by sitting in it he should incur a serious responsibility. He therefore

determined not to comply with the royal mandate. He did not, however,

act on this occasion with that courage and sincerity which he showed

when driven to extremity two years later. He begged to be excused on

the plea of business and ill health. The other members of the board,

he added, were men of too much ability to need his assistance. These

disingenuous apologies ill became the Primate of all England at such a

crisis; nor did they avert the royal displeasure. Sancroft's name was

not indeed struck out of the list of Privy Councillors: but, to the

bitter mortification of the friends of the Church, he was no longer

summoned on Council days. "If," said the King, "he is too sick or too

busy to go to the Commission, it is a kindness to relieve him from

attendance at Council." [99]

The government found no similar difficulty with Nathaniel Crewe, Bishop

of the great and opulent see of Durham, a man nobly born, and raised so

high in his profession that he could scarcely wish to rise higher, but

mean, vain, and cowardly. He had been made Dean of the Chapel Royal when

the Bishop of London was banished from the palace. The honour of being

an Ecclesiastical Commissioner turned Crewe's head. It was to no purpose

that some of his friends represented to him the risk which he ran by

sitting in an illegal tribunal. He was not ashamed to answer that he

could not live out of the royal smile, and exultingly expressed his

hope that his name would appear in history, a hope which has not been

altogether disappointed. [100]

Thomas Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, was the third clerical Commissioner.

He was a man to whose talents posterity has scarcely done justice.

Unhappily for his fame, it has been usual to print his verses in

collections of the British poets; and those who judge of him by his

verses must consider him as a servile imitator, who, without one spark

of Cowley's admirable genius, mimicked whatever was least commendable

in Cowley's manner: but those who are acquainted with Sprat's prose

writings will form a very different estimate of his powers. He was

indeed a great master of our language, and possessed at once the

eloquence of the orator, of the controversialist, and of the historian.

His moral character might have passed with little censure had he

belonged to a less sacred profession; for the worst that can be said of

him is that he was indolent, luxurious, and worldly: but such failings,

though not commonly regarded as very heinous in men of secular callings,

are scandalous in a prelate. The Archbishopric of York was vacant; Sprat

hoped to obtain it, and therefore accepted a seat at the ecclesiastical

board: but he was too goodnatured a man to behave harshly; and he was

too sensible a man not to know that he might at some future time be

called to a serious account by a Parliament. He therefore, though he

consented to act, tried to do as little mischief, and to make as few

enemies, as possible. [101]

The three remaining Commissioners were the Lord Treasurer, the Lord

President, and the Chief Justice of the King's Bench. Rochester,

disapproving and murmuring, consented to serve. Much as he had to endure

at the court, he could not bear to quit it. Much as he loved the Church,

he could not bring himself to sacrifice for her sake his white staff,

his patronage, his salary of eight thousand pounds a year, and the far

larger indirect emoluments of his office. He excused his conduct to

others, and perhaps to himself, by pleading that, as a Commissioner, he

might be able to prevent much evil, and that, if he refused to act,

some person less attached to the Protestant religion would be found to

replace him. Sunderland was the representative of the Jesuitical cabal.

Herbert's recent decision on the question of the dispensing power seemed

to prove that he would not flinch from any service which the King might

require.

As soon as the Commission had been opened, the Bishop of London was

cited before the new tribunal. He appeared. "I demand of you," said

Jeffreys, "a direct and positive answer. Why did not you suspend Dr.

Sharp?"

The Bishop requested a copy of the Commission in order that he might

know by what authority he was thus interrogated. "If you mean," said

Jeffreys, "to dispute our authority, I shall take another course with

you. As to the Commission, I do not doubt that you have seen it. At all

events you may see it in any coffeehouse for a penny." The insolence of

the Chancellor's reply appears to have shocked the other Commissioners,

and he was forced to make some awkward apologies. He then returned to

the point from which he had started. "This," he said, "is not a court in

which written charges are exhibited. Our proceedings are summary, and

by word of mouth. The question is a plain one. Why did you not obey

the King?" With some difficulty Compton obtained a brief delay, and the

assistance of counsel. When the case had been heard, it was evident

to all men that the Bishop had done only what he was bound to do. The

Treasurer, the Chief Justice, and Sprat were for acquittal. The King's

wrath was moved. It seemed that his Ecclesiastical Commission would fail

him as his Tory Parliament had failed him. He offered Rochester a

simple choice, to pronounce the Bishop guilty, or to quit the Treasury.

Rochester was base enough to yield. Compton was suspended from all

spiritual functions; and the charge of his great diocese was committed

to his judges, Sprat and Crewe. He continued, however, to reside in

his palace and to receive his revenues; for it was known that, had any

attempt been made to deprive him of his temporalities, he would have

put himself under the protection of the common law; and Herbert himself

declared that, at common law, judgment must be given against the crown.

This consideration induced the King to pause. Only a few weeks had

elapsed since he had packed the courts of Westminster Hall in order to

obtain a decision in favour of his dispensing power. He now found that,

unless he packed them again, he should not be able to obtain a decision

in favour of the proceedings of his Ecclesiastical Commission. He

determined, therefore, to postpone for a short time the confiscation of

the freehold property of refractory clergymen. [102]

The temper of the nation was indeed such as might well make him

hesitate. During some months discontent had been steadily and rapidly

increasing. The celebration of the Roman Catholic worship had long been

prohibited by Act of Parliament. During several generations no Roman

Catholic clergyman had dared to exhibit himself in any public place with

the badges of his office. Against the regular clergy, and against the

restless and subtle Jesuits by name, had been enacted a succession of

rigorous statutes. Every Jesuit who set foot in this country was

liable to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. A reward was offered for his

detection. He was not allowed to take advantage of the general rule,

that men are not bound to accuse themselves. Whoever was suspected of

being a Jesuit might be interrogated, and, if he refused to answer,

might be sent to prison for life. [103] These laws, though they had not,

except when there was supposed to be some peculiar danger, been strictly

executed, and though they had never prevented Jesuits from resorting to

England, had made disguise necessary. But all disguise was now thrown

off. Injudicious members of the King's Church, encouraged by him, took

a pride in defying statutes which were still of undoubted validity,

and feelings which had a stronger hold of the national mind than at any

former period. Roman Catholic chapels rose all over the country. Cowls,

girdles of ropes, and strings of beads constantly appeared in the

streets, and astonished a population, the oldest of whom had never seen

a conventual garb except on the stage. A convent rose at Clerkenwell on

the site of the ancient cloister of Saint John. The Franciscans occupied

a mansion in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The Carmelites were quartered in the

City. A society of Benedictine monks was lodged in Saint James's Palace.

In the Savoy a spacious house, including a church and a school, was

built for the Jesuits. [104] The skill and care with which those fathers

had, during several generations, conducted the education of youth, had

drawn forth reluctant praises from the wisest Protestants. Bacon had

pronounced the mode of instruction followed in the Jesuit colleges to

be the best yet known in the world, and had warmly expressed his regret

that so admirable a system of intellectual and moral discipline should

be subservient to the interests of a corrupt religion. [105] It was

not improbable that the new academy in the Savoy might, under royal

patronage, prove a formidable rival to the great foundations of Eton,

Westminster, and Winchester. Indeed, soon after the school was opened,

the classes consisted of four hundred boys, about one half of whom were

Protestants. The Protestant pupils were not required to attend mass: but

there could be no doubt that the influence of able preceptors, devoted

to the Roman Catholic Church, and versed in all the arts which win the

confidence and affection of youth, would make many converts.

These things produced great excitement among the populace, which is

always more moved by what impresses the senses than by what is

addressed to the reason. Thousands of rude and ignorant men, to whom the

dispensing power and the Ecclesiastical Commission were words without a

meaning, saw with dismay and indignation a Jesuit college rising on the

banks of the Thames, friars in hoods and gowns walking in the Strand,

and crowds of devotees pressing in at the doors of temples where homage

was paid to graven images. Riots broke out in several parts of the

country. At Coventry and Worcester the Roman Catholic worship was

violently interrupted. [106] At Bristol the rabble, countenanced, it was

said, by the magistrates, exhibited a profane and indecent pageant, in

which the Virgin Mary was represented by a buffoon, and in which a mock

host was carried in procession. The garrison was called out to disperse

the mob. The mob, then and ever since one of the fiercest in the

kingdom, resisted. Blows were exchanged, and serious hurts inflicted.

[107] The agitation was great in the capital, and greater in the City,

properly so called, than at Westminster. For the people of Westminster

had been accustomed to see among them the private chapels of Roman

Catholic Ambassadors: but the City had not, within living memory, been

polluted by any idolatrous exhibition. Now, however, the resident of

the Elector Palatine, encouraged by the King, fitted up a chapel in Lime

Street. The heads of the corporation, though men selected for office

on account of their known Toryism, protested against this proceeding,

which, as they said, the ablest gentlemen of the long robe regarded as

illegal. The Lord Mayor was ordered to appear before the Privy Council.

"Take heed what you do," said the King. "Obey me; and do not trouble

yourself either about gentlemen of the long robe or gentlemen of the

short robe." The Chancellor took up the word, and reprimanded the

unfortunate magistrate with the genuine eloquence of the Old Bailey

bar. The chapel was opened. All the neighbourhood was soon in commotion.

Great crowds assembled in Cheapside to attack the new mass house. The

priests were insulted. A crucifix was taken out of the building and set

up on the parish pump. The Lord Mayor came to quell the tumult, but was

received with cries of "No wooden gods." The trainbands were ordered to

disperse the crowd: but they shared in the popular feeling; and murmurs

were heard from the ranks, "We cannot in conscience fight for Popery."

[108]

The Elector Palatine was, like James, a sincere and zealous Catholic,

and was, like James, the ruler of a Protestant people; but the two

princes resembled each other little in temper and understanding. The

Elector had promised to respect the rights of the Church which he found

established in his dominions. He had strictly kept his word, and had not

suffered himself to be provoked to any violence by the indiscretion of

preachers who, in their antipathy to his faith, occasionally forgot the

respect which they owed to his person. [109] He learned, with concern,

that great offence had been given to the people of London by the

injudicious act of his representative, and, much to his honour, declared

that he would forego the privilege to which, as a sovereign prince, he

was entitled, rather than endanger the peace of a great city. "I, too,"

he wrote to James, "have Protestant subjects; and I know with how much

caution and delicacy it is necessary that a Catholic prince so situated

should act." James, instead of expressing gratitude for this humane and

considerate conduct, turned the letter into ridicule before the foreign

ministers. It was determined that the Elector should have a chapel in

the City whether he would or not, and that, if the trainbands refused to

do their duty, their place should be supplied by the Guards. [110]

The effect of these disturbances on trade was serious. The Dutch

minister informed the States General that the business of the Exchange

was at a stand. The Commissioners of the Customs reported to the King

that, during the month which followed the opening of Lime Street Chapel,

the receipt in the port of the Thames had fallen off by some thousands

of pounds. [111] Several Aldermen, who, though zealous royalists

appointed under the new charter, were deeply interested in the

commercial prosperity of their city, and loved neither Popery nor

martial law, tendered their resignations. But the King was resolved

not to yield. He formed a camp on Hounslow Heath, and collected

there, within a circumference of about two miles and a half, fourteen

battalions of foot and thirty-two squadrons of horse, amounting to

thirteen thousand fighting men. Twenty-six pieces of artillery, and

many wains laden with arms and ammunition, were dragged from the Tower

through the City to Hounslow. [112] The Londoners saw this great force

assembled in their neighbourhood with a terror which familiarity soon

diminished. A visit to Hounslow became their favourite amusement on

holidays. The camp presented the appearance of a vast fair. Mingled with

the musketeers and dragoons, a multitude of fine gentlemen and ladies

from Soho Square, sharpers and painted women from Whitefriars, invalids

in sedans, monks in hoods and gowns, lacqueys in rich liveries, pedlars,

orange girls, mischievous apprentices and gaping clowns, was constantly

passing and repassing through the long lanes of tents. From some

pavilions were heard the noises of drunken revelry, from others the

curses of gamblers. In truth the place was merely a gay suburb of the

capital. The King, as was amply proved two years later, had greatly

miscalculated. He had forgotten that vicinity operates in more ways than

one. He had hoped that his army would overawe London: but the result of

his policy was that the feelings and opinions of London took complete

possession of his army. [113]

Scarcely indeed had the encampment been formed when there were rumours

of quarrels between the Protestant and Popish soldiers. [114] A little

tract, entitled A humble and hearty Address to all English Protestants

in the Army, had been actively circulated through the ranks. The writer

vehemently exhorted the troops to use their arms in defence, not of the

mass book, but of the Bible, of the Great Charter, and of the Petition

of Right. He was a man already under the frown of power. His character

was remarkable, and his history not uninstructive.

His name was Samuel Johnson. He was a priest of the Church of England,

and had been chaplain to Lord Russell. Johnson was one of those persons

who are mortally hated by their opponents, and less loved than respected

by their allies. His morals were pure, his religious feelings ardent,

his learning and abilities not contemptible, his judgment weak,

his temper acrimonious, turbulent, and unconquerably stubborn. His

profession made him peculiarly odious to the zealous supporters of

monarchy; for a republican in holy orders was a strange and almost an

unnatural being. During the late reign Johnson had published a book

entitled Julian the Apostate. The object of this work was to show

that the Christians of the fourth century did not hold the doctrine

of nonresistance. It was easy to produce passages from Chrysostom and

Jerome written in a spirit very different from that of the Anglican

divines who preached against the Exclusion Bill. Johnson, however, went

further. He attempted to revive the odious imputation which had, for

very obvious reasons, been thrown by Libanius on the Christian soldiers

of Julian, and insinuated that the dart which slew the imperial renegade

came, not from the enemy, but from some Rumbold or Ferguson in the Roman

ranks. A hot controversy followed. Whig and Tory disputants wrangled

fiercely about an obscure passage, in which Gregory of Nazianzus praises

a pious Bishop who was going to bastinado somebody. The Whigs maintained

that the holy man was going to bastinado the Emperor; the Tories that,

at the worst, he was only going to bastinado a captain of the guard.

Johnson prepared a reply to his assailants, in which he drew an

elaborate parallel between Julian and James, then Duke of York, Julian

had, during many years, pretended to abhor idolatry, while in heart an

idolater. Julian had, to serve a turn, occasionally affected respect for

the rights of conscience. Julian had punished cities which were zealous

for the true religion, by taking away their municipal privileges. Julian

had, by his flatterers, been called the Just. James was provoked beyond

endurance. Johnson was prosecuted for a libel, convicted, and condemned

to a fine which he had no means of paying. He was therefore kept in

gaol; and it seemed likely that his confinement would end only with his

life. [115]

Over the room which he occupied in the King's Bench prison lodged

another offender whose character well deserves to be studied. This was

Hugh Speke, a young man of good family, but of a singularly base and

depraved nature. His love of mischief and of dark and crooked ways

amounted almost to madness. To cause confusion without being found

out was his business and his pastime; and he had a rare skill in using

honest enthusiasts as the instruments of his coldblooded malice. He

had attempted, by means of one of his puppets, to fasten on Charles and

James the crime of murdering Essex in the Tower. On this occasion the

agency of Speke had been traced and, though he succeeded in throwing the

greater part of the blame on his dupe, he had not escaped with impunity.

He was now a prisoner; but his fortune enabled him to live with comfort;

and he was under so little restraint that he was able to keep up regular

communication with one of his confederates who managed a secret press.