CHAPTER VIII

Consecration of the Nuncio at Saint James's Palace; his public

Reception--The Duke of Somerset--Dissolution of the Parliament; Military

Offences illegally punished--Proceedings of the High Commission; the

Universities--Proceedings against the University of Cambridge--The Earl

of Mulgrave--State of Oxford--Magdalene College, Oxford--Anthony Farmer

recommended by the King for President--Election of the President--The

Fellows of Magdalene cited before the High Commission--Parker

recommended as President; the Charterhouse--The Royal Progress--The

King at Oxford; he reprimands the Fellows of Magdalene--Penn attempts to

mediate--Special Ecclesiastical Commissioners sent to Oxford--Protest of

Hough--Parker--Ejection of the Fellows--Magdalene College turned into

a Popish Seminary--Resentment of the Clergy--Schemes of the Jesuitical

Cabal respecting the Succession--Scheme of James and Tyrconnel for

preventing the Princess of Orange from succeeding to the Kingdom

of Ireland--The Queen pregnant; general Incredulity--Feeling of the

Constituent Bodies, and of the Peers--James determines to pack a

Parliament--The Board of Regulators--Many Lords Lieutenants

dismissed; the Earl of Oxford--The Earl of Shrewsbury--The Earl of

Dorset--Questions put to the Magistrates--Their Answers; Failure of the

King's Plans--List of Sheriffs--Character of the Roman Catholic

Country Gentlemen--Feeling of the Dissenters; Regulation of

Corporations--Inquisition in all the Public Departments--Dismission of

Sawyer--Williams Solicitor General--Second Declaration of Indulgence;

the Clergy ordered to read it--They hesitate; Patriotism of the

Protestant Nonconformists of London--Consultation of the London

Clergy--Consultation at Lambeth Palace--Petition of the Seven

Bishops presented to the King--The London Clergy disobey the Royal

Order--Hesitation of the Government--It is determined to prosecute the

Bishops for a Libel--They are examined by the Privy Council--They are

committed to the Tower--Birth of the Pretender--He is generally believed

to be supposititious--The Bishops brought before the King's Bench and

bailed--Agitation of the public Mind--Uneasiness of Sunderland--He

professes himself a Roman Catholic--Trial of the Bishops--The Verdict;

Joy of the People--Peculiar State of Public Feeling at this Time

THE marked discourtesy of the Pope might well have irritated the meekest

of princes. But the only effect which it produced on James was to make

him more lavish of caresses and compliments. While Castelmaine, his

whole soul festered with angry passions, was on his road back to

England, the Nuncio was loaded with honours which his own judgment would

have led him to reject. He had, by a fiction often used in the Church

of Rome, been lately raised to the episcopal dignity without having the

charge of any see. He was called Archbishop of Amasia, a city of Pontus,

the birthplace of Strabo and Mithridates. James insisted that the

ceremony of consecration should be performed in the chapel of Saint

James's Palace. The Vicar Apostolic Leyburn and two Irish prelates

officiated. The doors were thrown open to the public; and it was

remarked that some of those Puritans who had recently turned courtiers

were among the spectators. In the evening Adda, wearing the robes of his

new office, joined the circle in the Queen's apartments. James fell on

his knees in the presence of the whole court and implored a blessing.

In spite of the restraint imposed by etiquette, the astonishment and

disgust of the bystanders could not be concealed. [278] It was long

indeed since an English sovereign had knelt to mortal man; and those who

saw the strange sight could not but think of that day of shame when John

did homage for his crown between the hands of Pandolph.

In a short time a still more ostentatious pageant was performed in

honour of the Holy See. It was determined that the Nuncio should go to

court in solemn procession. Some persons on whose obedience the King

had counted showed, on this occasion, for the first time, signs of

a mutinous spirit. Among these the most conspicuous was the second

temporal peer of the realm, Charles Seymour, commonly called the proud

Duke of Somerset. He was in truth a man in whom the pride of birth and

rank amounted almost to a disease. The fortune which he had inherited

was not adequate to the high place which he held among the English

aristocracy: but he had become possessed of the greatest estate in

England by his marriage with the daughter and heiress of the last Percy

who wore the ancient coronet of Northumberland. Somerset was only in

his twenty-fifth year, and was very little known to the public, He was a

Lord of the King's Bedchamber, and colonel of one of the regiments which

had been raised at the time of the Western insurrection. He had not

scrupled to carry the sword of state into the royal chapel on days of

festival: but he now resolutely refused to swell the pomp of the Nuncio.

Some members of his family implored him not to draw on himself the royal

displeasure: but their intreaties produced no effect. The King himself

expostulated. "I thought, my Lord," said he, "that I was doing you a

great honour in appointing you to escort the minister of the first of

all crowned heads." "Sir," said the Duke, "I am advised that I cannot

obey your Majesty without breaking the law." "I will make you fear me as

well as the law," answered the King, insolently. "Do you not know that

I am above the law?" "Your Majesty may be above the law," replied

Somerset; "but I am not; and, while I obey the law, I fear nothing."

The King turned away in high displeasure, and Somerset was instantly

dismissed from his posts in the household and in the army. [279]

On one point, however, James showed some prudence. He did not venture

to parade the Papal Envoy in state before the vast population of the

capital. The ceremony was performed, on the third of July 1687, at

Windsor. Great multitudes flocked to the little town. The visitors were

so numerous that there was neither food nor lodging for them; and many

persons of quality sate the whole day in their carriages waiting for the

exhibition. At length, late in the afternoon, the Knight Marshal's men

appeared on horseback. Then came a long train of running footmen; and

then, in a royal coach, appeared Adda, robed in purple, with a brilliant

cross on his breast. He was followed by the equipages of the principal

courtiers and ministers of state. In his train the crowd recognised

with disgust the arms and liveries of Crewe, Bishop of Durham, and of

Cartwright, Bishop of Chester. [280]

On the following day appeared in the Gazette a proclamation dissolving

that Parliament which of all the fifteen Parliaments held by the Stuarts

had been the most obsequious. [281]

Meanwhile new difficulties had arisen in Westminster Hall. Only a few

months had elapsed since some Judges had been turned out and others put

in for the purpose of obtaining a decision favourable to the crown in

the case of Sir Edward Hales; and already fresh changes were necessary.

The King had scarcely formed that army on which he chiefly depended for

the accomplishing of his designs when he found that he could not himself

control it. When war was actually raging in the kingdom a mutineer or

a deserter might be tried by a military tribunal and executed by the

Provost Marshal. But there was now profound peace. The common law of

England, having sprung up in an age when all men bore arms occasionally

and none constantly, recognised no distinction, in time of peace,

between a soldier and any other subject; nor was there any Act

resembling that by which the authority necessary for the government

of regular troops is now annually confided to the Sovereign. Some old

statutes indeed made desertion felony in certain specified cases. But

those statutes were applicable only to soldiers serving the King in

actual war, and could not without the grossest disingenuousness be so

strained as to include the case of a man who, in a time of profound

tranquillity at home and abroad, should become tired of the camp at

Hounslow and should go back to his native village. The government

appears to have had no hold on such a man, except the hold which master

bakers and master tailors have on their journeymen. He and his officers

were, in the eye of the law, on a level. If he swore at them he might be

fined for an oath. If he struck them he might be prosecuted for assault

and battery. In truth the regular army was under less restraint than the

militia. For the militia was a body established by an Act of Parliament,

and it had been provided by that Act that slight punishments might be

summarily inflicted for breaches of discipline.

It does not appear that, during the reign of Charles the Second, the

practical inconvenience arising from this state of the law had been much

felt. The explanation may perhaps be that, till the last year of his

reign, the force which he maintained in England consisted chiefly of

household troops, whose pay was so high that dismission from the service

would have been felt by most of them as a great calamity. The stipend

of a private in the Life Guards was a provision for the younger son of a

gentleman. Even the Foot Guards were paid about as high as manufacturers

in a prosperous season, and were therefore in a situation which the

great body of the labouring population might regard with envy. The

return of the garrison of Tangier and the raising of the new regiments

had made a great change. There were now in England many thousands of

soldiers, each of whom received only eightpence a day. The dread of

dismission was not sufficient to keep them to their duty: and corporal

punishment their officers could not legally inflict. James had therefore

one plain choice before him, to let his army dissolve itself, or to

induce the judges to pronounce that the law was what every barrister in

the Temple knew that it was not.

It was peculiarly important to secure the cooperation of two courts;

the court of King's Bench, which was the first criminal tribunal in the

realm, and the court of gaol delivery which sate at the Old Bailey, and

which had jurisdiction over offences committed in the capital. In both

these courts there were great difficulties. Herbert, Chief Justice of

the King's Bench, servile as he had hitherto been, would go no further.

Resistance still more sturdy was to be expected from Sir John Holt, who,

as Recorder of the City of London, occupied the bench at the Old Bailey.

Holt was an eminently learned and clear headed lawyer: he was an

upright and courageous man; and, though he had never been factious,

his political opinions had a tinge of Whiggism. All obstacles,

however, disappeared before the royal will. Holt was turned out of the

recordership. Herbert and another Judge were removed from the King's

Bench; and the vacant places were filled by persons in whom the

government could confide. It was indeed necessary to go very low down

in the legal profession before men could be found willing to render such

services as were now required. The new Chief justice, Sir Robert Wright,

was ignorant to a proverb; yet ignorance was not his worst fault. His

vices had ruined him. He had resorted to infamous ways of raising money,

and had, on one occasion, made a false affidavit in order to obtain

possession of five hundred pounds. Poor, dissolute, and shameless,

he had become one of the parasites of Jeffreys, who promoted him and

insulted him. Such was the man who was now selected by James to be

Lord Chief justice of England. One Richard Allibone, who was even more

ignorant of the law than Wright, and who, as a Roman Catholic, was

incapable of holding office, was appointed a puisne judge of the King's

Bench. Sir Bartholomew Shower, equally notorious as a servile Tory and

a tedious orator, became Recorder of London. When these changes had been

made, several deserters were brought to trial. They were convicted

in the face of the letter and of the spirit of the law. Some received

sentence of death at the bar of the King's Bench, some at the Old

Bailey. They were hanged in sight of the regiments to which they had

belonged; and care was taken that the executions should be announced in

the London Gazette, which very seldom noticed such events. [282]

It may well be believed, that the law, so grossly insulted by courts

which derived from it all their authority, and which were in the habit

of looking to it as their guide, would be little respected by a tribunal

which had originated in tyrannical caprice. The new High Commission had,

during the first months of its existence, merely inhibited clergymen

from exercising spiritual functions. The rights of property had remained

untouched. But, early in the year 1687, it was determined to strike at

freehold interests, and to impress on every Anglican priest and prelate

the conviction that, if he refused to lend his aid for the purpose of

destroying the Church of which he was a minister, he would in an hour be

reduced to beggary.

It would have been prudent to try the first experiment on some obscure

individual. But the government was under an infatuation such as, in a

more simple age, would have been called judicial. War was therefore at

once declared against the two most venerable corporations of the realm,

the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

The power of those bodies has during many ages been great; but it was

at the height during the latter part of the seventeenth century. None

of the neighbouring countries could boast of such splendid and opulent

seats of learning. The schools of Edinburgh and Glasgow, of Leyden and

Utrecht, of Louvain and Leipzig, of Padua and Bologna, seemed mean to

scholars who had been educated in the magnificent foundations of Wykeham

and Wolsey, of Henry the Sixth and Henry the Eighth. Literature and

science were, in the academical system of England, surrounded with

pomp, armed with magistracy, and closely allied with all the most august

institutions of the state. To be the Chancellor of an University was a

distinction eagerly sought by the magnates of the realm. To represent

an University in Parliament was a favourite object of the ambition

of statesmen. Nobles and even princes were proud to receive from an

University the privilege of wearing the doctoral scarlet. The curious

were attracted to the Universities by ancient buildings rich with the

tracery of the middle ages, by modern buildings which exhibited the

highest skill of Jones and Wren, by noble halls and chapels, by museums,

by botanical gardens, and by the only great public libraries which the

kingdom then contained. The state which Oxford especially displayed

on solemn occasions rivalled that of sovereign princes. When her

Chancellor, the venerable Duke of Ormond, sate in his embroidered mantle

on his throne under the painted ceiling of the Sheldonian theatre,

surrounded by hundreds of graduates robed according to their rank,

while the noblest youths of England were solemnly presented to him as

candidates for academical honours, he made an appearance scarcely

less regal than that which his master made in the Banqueting House of

Whitehall. At the Universities had been formed the minds of almost all

the eminent clergymen, lawyers, physicians, wits, poets, and orators of

the land, and of a large proportion of the nobility and of the opulent

gentry. It is also to be observed that the connection between the

scholar and the school did not terminate with his residence. He often

continued to be through life a member of the academical body, and to

vote as such at all important elections. He therefore regarded his old

haunts by the Cam and the Isis with even more than the affection which

educated men ordinarily feel for the place of their education. There

was no corner of England in which both Universities had not grateful and

zealous sons. Any attack on the honour or interests of either Cambridge

or Oxford was certain to excite the resentment of a powerful, active,

and intelligent class scattered over every county from Northumberland to

Cornwall.

The resident graduates, as a body, were perhaps not superior positively

to the resident graduates of our time: but they occupied a far higher

position as compared with the rest of the community. For Cambridge and

Oxford were then the only two provincial towns in the kingdom in which

could be found a large number of men whose understandings had been

highly cultivated. Even the capital felt great respect for the authority

of the Universities, not only on questions of divinity, of natural

philosophy, and of classical antiquity, but also on points on which

capitals generally claim the right of deciding in the last resort. From

Will's coffee house, and from the pit of the theatre royal in Drury

Lane, an appeal lay to the two great national seats of taste and

learning. Plays which had been enthusiastically applauded in London

were not thought out of danger till they had undergone the more severe

judgment of audiences familiar with Sophocles and Terence. [283]

The great moral and intellectual influence of the English Universities

had been strenuously exerted on the side of the crown. The head quarters

of Charles the First had been at Oxford; and the silver tankards and

salvers of all the colleges had been melted down to supply his military

chest. Cambridge was not less loyally disposed. She had sent a large

part of her plate to the royal camp; and the rest would have followed

had not the town been seized by the troops of the Parliament. Both

Universities had been treated with extreme severity by the victorious

Puritans. Both had hailed the restoration with delight. Both had

steadily opposed the Exclusion Bill. Both had expressed the deepest

horror at the Rye House Plot. Cambridge had not only deposed her

Chancellor Monmouth, but had marked her abhorrence of his treason in a

manner unworthy of a scat of learning, by committing to the flames the

canvass on which his pleasing face and figure had been portrayed by the

utmost skill of Kneller. [284] Oxford, which lay nearer to the Western

insurgents, had given still stronger proofs of loyalty. The students,

under the sanction of their preceptors, had taken arms by hundreds

in defence of hereditary right. Such were the bodies which James now

determined to insult and plunder in direct defiance of the laws and of

his plighted faith.

Several Acts of Parliament, as clear as any that were to be found in

the statute book, had provided that no person should be admitted to any

degree in either University without taking the oath of supremacy,

and another oath of similar character called the oath of obedience.

Nevertheless, in February 1687, a royal letter was sent to Cambridge

directing that a Benedictine monk, named Alban Francis, should be

admitted a Master of Arts.

The academical functionaries, divided between reverence for the King

and reverence for the law, were in great distress. Messengers were

despatched in all haste to the Duke of Albemarle, who had succeeded

Monmouth as Chancellor of the University. He was requested to represent

the matter properly to the King. Meanwhile the Registrar and Bedells

waited on Francis, and informed him that, if he would take the oaths

according to law, he should be instantly admitted. He refused to

be sworn, remonstrated with the officers of the University on their

disregard of the royal mandate, and, finding them resolute, took horse,

and hastened to relate his grievances at Whitehall.

The heads of the colleges now assembled in council. The best legal

opinions were taken, and were decidedly in favour of the course which

had been pursued. But a second letter from Sunderland, in high and

menacing terms, was already on the road. Albemarle informed the

University, with many expressions of concern, that he had done his best,

but that he had been coldly and ungraciously received by the King. The

academical body, alarmed by the royal displeasure, and conscientiously

desirous to meet the royal wishes, but determined not to violate the

clear law of the land, submitted the humblest and most respectful

explanations, but to no purpose. In a short time came down a summons

citing the Vicechancellor and the Senate to appear before the new

High Commission at Westminster on the twenty-first of April. The

Vicechancellor was to attend in person; the Senate, which consists of

all the Doctors and Masters of the University, was to send deputies.

When the appointed day arrived, a great concourse filled the Council

chamber. Jeffreys sate at the head of the board. Rochester, since the

white staff had been taken from him, was no longer a member. In his

stead appeared the Lord Chamberlain, John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave.

The fate of this nobleman has, in one respect, resembled the fate of his

colleague Sprat. Mulgrave wrote verses which scarcely ever rose above

absolute mediocrity: but, as he was a man of high note in the political

and fashionable world, these verses found admirers. Time dissolved the

charm, but, unfortunately for him, not until his lines had acquired a

prescriptive right to a place in all collections of the works of English

poets. To this day accordingly his insipid essays in rhyme and his

paltry songs to Amoretta and Gloriana are reprinted in company with

Comus and Alexander's Feast. The consequence is that our generation

knows Mulgrave chiefly as a poetaster, and despises him as such. In

truth however he was, by the acknowledgment of those who neither

loved nor esteemed him, a man distinguished by fine parts, and in

parliamentary eloquence inferior to scarcely any orator of his time. His

moral character was entitled to no respect. He was a libertine without

that openness of heart and hand which sometimes makes libertinism

amiable, and a haughty aristocrat without that elevation of sentiment

which sometimes makes aristocratical haughtiness respectable. The

satirists of the age nicknamed him Lord Allpride. Yet was his pride

compatible with all ignoble vices. Many wondered that a man who had so

exalted a sense of his dignity could be so hard and niggardly in all

pecuniary dealings. He had given deep offence to the royal family by

venturing to entertain the hope that he might win the heart and hand of

the Princess Anne. Disappointed in this attempt, he had exerted himself

to regain by meanness the favour which he had forfeited by presumption.

His epitaph, written by himself, still informs all who pass through

Westminster Abbey that he lived and died a sceptic in religion; and we

learn from the memoirs which he wrote that one of his favourite subjects

of mirth was the Romish superstition. Yet he began, as soon as James was

on the throne, to express a strong inclination towards Popery, and at

length in private affected to be a convert. This abject hypocrisy had

been rewarded by a place in the Ecclesiastical Commission. [285]

Before that formidable tribunal now appeared the Vicechancellor of the

University of Cambridge, Doctor John Pechell. He was a man of no

great ability or vigour, but he was accompanied by eight distinguished

academicians, elected by the Senate. One of these was Isaac Newton,

Fellow of Trinity College, and Professor of mathematics. His genius was

then in the fullest vigour. The great work, which entitles him to the

highest place among the geometricians and natural philosophers of all

ages and of all nations, had been some time printing under the sanction

of the Royal Society, and was almost ready for publication. He was the

steady friend of civil liberty and of the Protestant religion: but

his habits by no means fitted him for the conflicts of active life. He

therefore stood modestly silent among the delegates, and left to men

more versed in practical business the task of pleading the cause of his

beloved University.

Never was there a clearer case. The law was express. The practice had

been almost invariably in conformity with the law. It might perhaps have

happened that, on a day of great solemnity, when many honorary degrees

were conferred, a person who had not taken the oaths might have passed

in the crowd. But such an irregularity, the effect of mere haste and

inadvertence, could not be cited as a precedent. Foreign ambassadors of

various religions, and in particular one Mussulman, had been admitted

without the oaths. But it might well be doubted whether such cases fell

within the reason and spirit of the Acts of Parliament. It was not even

pretended that any person to whom the oaths had been tendered and who

had refused them had ever taken a degree; and this was the situation in

which Francis stood. The delegates offered to prove that, in the late

reign, several royal mandates had been treated as nullities because

the persons recommended had not chosen to qualify according to law, and

that, on such occasions, the government had always acquiesced in the

propriety of the course taken by the University. But Jeffreys would hear

nothing. He soon found out that the Vice chancellor was weak, ignorant,

and timid, and therefore gave a loose to all that insolence which

had long been the terror of the Old Bailey. The unfortunate Doctor,

unaccustomed to such a presence and to such treatment, was soon harassed

and scared into helpless agitation. When other academicians who were

more capable of defending their cause attempted to speak they were

rudely silenced. "You are not Vicechancellor. When you are, you may

talk. Till then it will become you to hold your peace." The defendants

were thrust out of the court without a hearing. In a short time

they were called in, again, and informed that the Commissioners had

determined to deprive Pechell of the Vicechancellorship, and to suspend

him from all the emoluments to which he was entitled as Master of

a college, emoluments which were strictly of the nature of freehold

property. "As for you," said Jeffreys to the delegates, "most of you are

divines. I will therefore send you home with a text of scripture, 'Go

your way and sin no more, lest a worse thing happen to you.'" [286]

These proceedings might seem sufficiently unjust and violent. But the

King had already begun to treat Oxford with such rigour that the rigour

shown towards Cambridge might, by comparison, be called lenity. Already

University College had been turned by Obadiah Walker into a Roman

Catholic seminary. Already Christ Church was governed by a Roman

Catholic Dean. Mass was already said daily in both those colleges.

The tranquil and majestic city, so long the stronghold of monarchical

principles, was agitated by passions which it had never before known.

The undergraduates, with the connivance of those who were in authority

over them, hooted the members of Walker's congregation, and chanted

satirical ditties under his windows. Some fragments of the serenades

which then disturbed the High Street have been preserved. The burden of

one ballad was this:

"Old Obadiah Sings Ave Maria."

When the actors came down to Oxford, the public feeling was expressed

still more strongly. Howard's Committee was performed. This play,

written soon after the Restoration, exhibited the Puritans in an odious

and contemptible light, and had therefore been, during a quarter of

a century, a favourite with Oxonian audiences. It was now a greater

favourite than ever; for, by a lucky coincidence, one of the most

conspicuous characters was an old hypocrite named Obadiah. The audience

shouted with delight when, in the last scene, Obadiah was dragged in

with a halter round his neck; and the acclamations redoubled when one of

the players, departing from the written text of the comedy, proclaimed

that Obadiah should be hanged because he had changed his religion. The

King was much provoked by this insult. So mutinous indeed was the temper

of the University that one of the newly raised regiments, the same which

is now called the Second Dragoon Guards, was quartered at Oxford for the

purpose of preventing an outbreak. [287]

These events ought to have convinced James that he had entered on a

course which must lead him to his ruin. To the clamours of London he

had been long accustomed. They had been raised against him, sometimes

unjustly, and sometimes vainly. He had repeatedly braved them, and

might brave them still. But that Oxford, the scat of loyalty, the head

quarters of the Cavalier army, the place where his father and brother

had held their court when they thought themselves insecure in their

stormy capital, the place where the writings of the great republican

teachers had recently been committed to the flames, should now be in a

ferment of discontent, that those highspirited youths who a few months

before had eagerly volunteered to march against the Western insurgents

should now be with difficulty kept down by sword and carbine, these were

signs full of evil omen to the House of Stuart. The warning, however,

was lost on the dull, stubborn, self-willed tyrant. He was resolved

to transfer to his own Church all the wealthiest and most splendid

foundations of England. It was to no purpose that the best and wisest

of his Roman Catholic counsellors remonstrated. They represented to him

that he had it in his power to render a great service to the cause of

his religion without violating the rights of property. A grant of two

thousand pounds a year from his privy purse would support a Jesuit

college at Oxford. Such a sum he might easily spare. Such a college,

provided with able, learned, and zealous teachers, would be a formidable

rival to the old academical institutions, which exhibited but too many

symptoms of the languor almost inseparable from opulence and security.

King James's College would soon be, by the confession even of

Protestants, the first place of education in the island, as respected

both science and moral discipline. This would be the most effectual

and the least invidious method by which the Church of England could be

humbled and the Church of Rome exalted. The Earl of Ailesbury, one of

the most devoted servants of the royal family, declared that, though a

Protestant, and by no means rich, he would himself contribute a thousand

pounds towards this design, rather than that his master should violate

the rights of property, and break faith with the Established Church.

[288] The scheme, however, found no favour in the sight of the King. It

was indeed ill suited in more ways than one, to his ungentle nature. For

to bend and break the spirits of men gave him pleasure; and to part with

his money gave him pain. What he had not the generosity to do at his own

expense he determined to do at the expense of others. When once he was

engaged, pride and obstinacy prevented him from receding; and he was

at length led, step by step, to acts of Turkish tyranny, to acts which

impressed the nation with a conviction that the estate of a Protestant

English freeholder under a Roman Catholic King must be as insecure as

that of a Greek under Moslem domination.

Magdalene College at Oxford, founded in the fifteenth century by William

of Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester and Lord High Chancellor, was one of

the most remarkable of our academical institutions. A graceful tower, on

the summit of which a Latin hymn was annually chanted by choristers at

the dawn of May day, caught far off the eye of the traveller who came

from London. As he approached he found that this tower rose from an

embattled pile, low and irregular, yet singularly venerable, which,

embowered in verdure, overhung the slugish waters of the Cherwell. He

passed through a gateway overhung by a noble orie [289], and found himself

in a spacious cloister adorned with emblems of virtues and vices, rudely

carved in grey stone by the masons of the fifteenth century. The table

of the society was plentifully spread in a stately refectory hung with

paintings, and rich with fantastic carving. The service of the Church

was performed morning and evening in a chapel which had suffered much

violence from the Reformers, and much from the Puritans, but which was,

under every disadvantage, a building of eminent beauty, and which has,

in our own time, been restored with rare taste and skill. The spacious

gardens along the river side were remarkable for the size of the trees,

among which towered conspicuous one of the vegetable wonders of the

island, a gigantic oak, older by a century, men said, than the oldest

college in the University.

The statutes of the society ordained that the Kings of England and

Princes of Wales should be lodged in Magdalene. Edward the Fourth had

inhabited the building while it was still unfinished. Richard the

Third had held his court there, had heard disputations in the hall,

had feasted there royally, and had mended the cheer of his hosts by a

present of fat bucks from his forests. Two heirs apparent of the crown

who had been prematurely snatched away, Arthur the elder brother of

Henry the Eighth, and Henry the elder brother of Charles the First, had

been members of the college. Another prince of the blood, the last

and best of the Roman Catholic Archbishops of Canterbury, the gentle

Reginald Pole, had studied there. In the time of the civil war Magdalene

had been true to the cause of the crown. There Rupert had fixed his

quarters; and, before some of his most daring enterprises, his trumpets

had been heard sounding to horse through those quiet cloisters. Most of

the Fellows were divines, and could aid the King only by their prayers

and their pecuniary contributions. But one member of the body, a Doctor

of Civil Law, raised a troop of undergraduates, and fell fighting

bravely at their head against the soldiers of Essex. When hostilities

had terminated, and the Roundheads were masters of England, six sevenths

of the members of the foundation refused to make any submission to

usurped authority. They were consequently ejected from their dwellings

and deprived of their revenues. After the Restoration the survivors

returned to their pleasant abode. They had now been succeeded by a new

generation which inherited their opinions and their spirit. During the

Western rebellion such Magdalene men as were not disqualified by their

age or profession for the use of arms had eagerly volunteered to fight

for the crown. It would be difficult to name any corporation in the

kingdom which had higher claims to the gratitude of the House of Stuart.

[290]

The society consisted of a President, of forty Fellows, of thirty

scholars called Demies, and of a train of chaplains, clerks, and

choristers. At the time of the general visitation in the reign of Henry

the Eighth the revenues were far greater than those of any similar

institution in the realm, greater by nearly one half than those of the

magnificent foundation of Henry the Sixth at Cambridge, and considerably

more than double those which William of Wykeham had settled on his

college at Oxford. In the days of James the Second the riches of

Magdalene were immense, and were exaggerated by report. The college

was popularly said to be wealthier than the wealthiest abbeys of the

Continent. When the leases fell in,--so ran the vulgar rumour,--the

rents would be raised to the prodigious sum of forty thousand pounds a

year. [291]

The Fellows were, by the statutes which their founder had drawn up,

empowered to select their own President from among persons who were, or

had been, Fellows either of their society or of New College. This power

had generally been exercised with freedom. But in some instances royal

letters had been received recommending to the choice of the corporation

qualified persons who were in favour at court; and on such occasions it

had been the practice to show respect to the wishes of the sovereign.

In March 1687, the President of the college died. One of the Fellows,

Doctor Thomas Smith, popularly nicknamed Rabbi Smith, a distinguished

traveller, book-collector, antiquary, and orientalist, who had been

chaplain to the embassy at Constantinople, and had been employed to

collate the Alexandrian manuscript, aspired to the vacant post. He

conceived that he had some claims on the favour of the government as

a man of learning and as a zealous Tory. His loyalty was in truth as

fervent and as steadfast as was to be found in the whole Church of

England. He had long been intimately acquainted with Parker, Bishop

of Oxford, and hoped to obtain by the interest of that prelate a royal

letter to the college. Parker promised to do his best, but soon reported

that he had found difficulties. "The King," he said, "will recommend no

person who is not a friend to His Majesty's religion. What can you do

to pleasure him as to that matter?" Smith answered that, if he

became President, he would exert himself to promote learning, true

Christianity, and loyalty. "That will not do," said the Bishop. "If so,"

said Smith manfully, "let who will be President: I can promise nothing

more."

The election had been fixed for the thirteenth of April, and the Fellows

were summoned to attend. It was rumoured that a royal letter would come

down recommending one Anthony Farmer to the vacant place. This man's

life had been a series of shameful acts. He had been a member of the

University of Cambridge, and had escaped expulsion only by a timely

retreat. He had then joined the Dissenters. Then he had gone to Oxford,

had entered himself at Magdalene, and had soon become notorious there

for every kind of vice. He generally reeled into his college at

night speechless with liquor. He was celebrated for having headed a

disgraceful riot at Abingdon. He had been a constant frequenter of noted

haunts of libertines. At length he had turned pandar, had exceeded even

the ordinary vileness of his vile calling, and had received money from

dissolute young gentlemen commoners for services such as it is not good

that history should record. This wretch, however, had pretended to

turn Papist. His apostasy atoned for all his vices; and, though still

a youth, he was selected to rule a grave and religious society in which

the scandal given by his depravity was still fresh.

As a Roman Catholic he was disqualified for academical office by the

general law of the land. Never having been a Fellow of Magdalene College

or of New College, he was disqualified for the vacant presidency by a

special ordinance of William of Waynflete. William of Waynflete had also

enjoined those who partook of his bounty to have a particular regard to

moral character in choosing their head; and, even if he had left no such

injunction, a body chiefly composed of divines could not with decency

entrust such a man as Farmer with the government of a place of

education.

The Fellows respectfully represented to the King the difficulty in which

they should be placed, if, as was rumoured, Farmer should be recommended

to them, and begged that, if it were His Majesty's pleasure to

interfere in the election, some person for whom they could legally

and conscientiously vote might be proposed. Of this dutiful request no

notice was taken. The royal letter arrived. It was brought down by one

of the Fellows who had lately turned Papist, Robert Charnock, a man of

parts and spirit, but of a violent and restless temper, which impelled

him a few years later to an atrocious crime and to a terrible fate. On

the thirteenth of April the society met in the chapel. Some hope was

still entertained that the King might be moved by the remonstrance which

had been addressed to him. The assembly therefore adjourned till the

fifteenth, which was the last day on which, by the constitution of the

college, the election could take place.

The fifteenth of April came. Again the Fellows repaired to their chapel.

No answer had arrived from Whitehall. Two or three of the Seniors, among

whom was Smith, were inclined to postpone the election once more rather

than take a step which might give offence to the King. But the language

of the statutes was clear. Those statutes the members of the foundation

had sworn to observe. The general opinion was that there ought to be no

further delay. A hot debate followed. The electors were too much excited

to take their seats; and the whole choir was in a tumult. Those who were

for proceeding appealed to their oaths and to the rules laid down by the

founder whose bread they had eaten. The King, they truly said, had no

right to force on them even a qualified candidate. Some expressions

unpleasing to Tory ears were dropped in the course of the dispute;

and Smith was provoked into exclaiming that the spirit of Ferguson had

possessed his brethren. It was at length resolved by a great majority

that it was necessary to proceed immediately to the election. Charnock

left the chapel. The other Fellows, having first received the sacrament,

proceeded to give their voices. The choice fell on John Hough, a man

of eminent virtue and prudence, who, having borne persecution with

fortitude and prosperity with meekness, having risen to high honours and

having modestly declined honours higher still, died in extreme old

age yet in full vigour of mind, more than fifty-six years after this

eventful day.

The society hastened to acquaint the King with the circumstances which

had made it necessary to elect a President without further delay, and

requested the Duke of Ormond, as patron of the whole University, and the

Bishop of Winchester, as visitor of Magdalene College, to undertake the

office of intercessors: but the King was far too angry and too dull to

listen to explanations.

Early in June the Fellows were cited to appear before the High

Commission at Whitehall. Five of them, deputed by the rest, obeyed the

summons. Jeffreys treated them after his usual fashion. When one of

them, a grave Doctor named Fairfax, hinted some doubt as to the validity

of the Commission, the Chancellor began to roar like a wild beast. "Who

is this man? What commission has he to be impudent here? Seize him. Put

him into a dark room. What does he do without a keeper? He is under

my care as a lunatic. I wonder that nobody has applied to me for the

custody of him." But when this storm had spent its force, and the

depositions concerning the moral character of the King's nominee had

been read, none of the Commissioners had the front to pronounce that

such a man could properly be made the head of a great college. Obadiah

Walker and the other Oxonian Papists who were in attendance to support

their proselyte were utterly confounded. The Commission pronounced

Hough's election void, and suspended Fairfax from his fellowship: but

about Farmer no more was said; and, in the month of August, arrived a

royal letter recommending Parker, Bishop of Oxford, to the Fellows.

Parker was not an avowed Papist. Still there was an objection to him

which, even if the presidency had been vacant, would have been decisive:

for he had never been a Fellow of either New College or Magdalene. But

the presidency was not vacant: Hough had been duly elected; and all the

members of the college were bound by oath to support him in his office.

They therefore, with many expressions of loyalty and concern, excused

themselves from complying with the King's mandate.

While Oxford was thus opposing a firm resistance to tyranny, a stand not

less resolute was made in another quarter. James had, some time before,

commanded the trustees of the Charterhouse, men of the first rank and

consideration in the kingdom, to admit a Roman Catholic named Popham

into the hospital which was under their care. The Master of the house,

Thomas Burnet, a clergyman of distinguished genius, learning, and

virtue, had the courage to represent to them, though the ferocious

Jeffreys sate at the board, that what was required of them was contrary

both to the will of the founder and to an Act of Parliament. "What is

that to the purpose?" said a courtier who was one of the governors. "It

is very much to the purpose, I think," answered a voice, feeble with

age and sorrow, yet not to be heard without respect by any assembly,

the voice of the venerable Ormond. "An Act of Parliament," continued the

patriarch of the Cavalier party, "is, in my judgment, no light thing."

The question was put whether Popham should be admitted, and it was

determined to reject him. The Chancellor, who could not well case

himself by cursing and swearing at Ormond, flung away in a rage, and was

followed by some of the minority. The consequence was that there was

not a quorum left, and that no formal reply could be made to the royal

mandate.

The next meeting took place only two days after the High Commission

had pronounced sentence of deprivation against Hough, and of suspension

against Fairfax. A second mandate under the Great Seal was laid before

the trustees: but the tyrannical manner in which Magdalene College had

been treated had roused instead of subduing their spirit. They drew up a

letter to Sunderland in which they requested him to inform the King that

they could not, in this matter, obey His Majesty without breaking the

law and betraying their trust.

There can be little doubt that, had ordinary signatures been appended to

this document, the King would have taken some violent course. But

even he was daunted by the great names of Ormond, Halifax, Danby, and

Nottingham, the chiefs of all the sections of that great party to

which he owed his crown. He therefore contented himself with directing

Jeffreys to consider what course ought to be taken. It was announced at

one time that a proceeding would be instituted in the King's Bench, at

another that the Ecclesiastical Commission would take up the case: but

these threats gradually died away. [292]

The summer was now far advanced; and the King set out on a progress, the

longest and the most splendid that had been known for many years. From

Windsor he went on the sixteenth of August to Portsmouth, walked round

the fortifications, touched some scrofulous people, and then proceeded

in one of his yachts to Southampton. From Southampton he travelled to

Bath, where he remained a few days, and where he left the Queen. When he

departed, he was attended by the High Sheriff of Somersetshire and by

a large body of gentlemen to the frontier of the county, where the High

Sheriff of Gloucestershire, with a not less splendid retinue, was

in attendance. The Duke of Beaufort soon met the royal coaches, and

conducted them to Badminton, where a banquet worthy of the fame which

his splendid housekeeping had won for him was prepared. In the afternoon

the cavalcade proceeded to Gloucester. It was greeted two miles from the

city by the Bishop and clergy. At the South Gate the Mayor waited with

the keys. The bells rang and the conduits flowed with wine as the King

passed through the streets to the close which encircles the venerable

Cathedral. He lay that night at the deanery, and on the following

morning set out for Worcester. From Worcester he went to Ludlow,

Shrewsbury, and Chester, and was everywhere received with outward signs

of joy and respect, which he was weak enough to consider as proofs that

the discontent excited by his measures had subsided, and that an easy

Victory was before him. Barillon, more sagacious, informed Lewis that

the King of England was under a delusion that the progress had done

no real good, and that those very gentlemen of Worcestershire and

Shropshire who had thought it their duty to receive their Sovereign and

their guest with every mark of honour would be found as refractory as

ever when the question of the test should come on. [293]

On the road the royal train was joined by two courtiers who in temper

and opinions differed widely from each other. Penn was at Chester on

a pastoral tour. His popularity and authority among his brethren had

greatly declined since he had become a tool of the King and of the

Jesuits. [294] He was, however, most graciously received by James, and,

on the Sunday, was permitted to harangue in the tennis court, while

Cartwright preached in the Cathedral, and while the King heard mass at

an altar which had been decked in the Shire Hall. It is said, indeed,

that His Majesty deigned to look into the tennis court and to listen

with decency to his friend's melodious eloquence. [295]

The furious Tyrconnel had crossed the sea from Dublin to give an account

of his administration. All the most respectable English Catholics

looked coldly on him as on an enemy of their race and a scandal to their

religion. But he was cordially welcomed by his master, and dismissed

with assurances of undiminished confidence and steady support. James

expressed his delight at learning that in a short time the whole

government of Ireland would be in Roman Catholic hands. The English

colonists had already been stripped of all political power. Nothing

remained but to strip them of their property; and this last outrage was

deferred only till the cooperation of an Irish Parliament should have

been secured. [296]

From Cheshire the King turned southward, and, in the full belief that

the Fellows of Magdalene College, however mutinous they might be, would

not dare to disobey a command uttered by his own lips, directed his

course towards Oxford. By the way he made some little excursions to

places which peculiarly interested him, as a King, a brother, and a son.

He visited the hospitable roof of Boscobel and the remains of the oak

so conspicuous in the history of his house. He rode over the field of

Edgehill, where the Cavaliers first crossed swords with the soldiers of

the Parliament. On the third of September he dined in great state at

the palace of Woodstock, an ancient and renowned mansion, of which not

a stone is now to be seen, but of which the site is still marked on

the turf of Blenheim Park by two sycamores which grow near the stately

bridge. In the evening he reached Oxford. He was received there with

the wonted honours. The students in their academical garb were ranged to

welcome him on the right hand and on the left, from the entrance of

the city to the great gate of Christ Church. He lodged at the deanery,

where, among other accommodations, he found a chapel fitted up for the

celebration of the Mass. [297] On the day after his arrival, the Fellows

of Magdalene College were ordered to attend him. When they appeared

before him he treated them with an insolence such as had never been

shown to their predecessors by the Puritan visitors. "You have not dealt

with me like gentlemen," he exclaimed. "You have been unmannerly as

well as undutiful." They fell on their knees and tendered a petition. He

would not look at it. "Is this your Church of England loyalty? I could

not have believed that so many clergymen of the Church of England would

have been concerned in such a business. Go home. Get you gone. I am

King. I will be obeyed. Go to your chapel this instant; and admit the

Bishop of Oxford. Let those who refuse look to it. They shall feel

the whole weight of my hand. They shall know what it is to incur the

displeasure of their Sovereign." The Fellows, still kneeling before him,

again offered him their petition. He angrily flung it down. "Get you

gone, I tell you. I will receive nothing from you till you have admitted

the Bishop."

They retired and instantly assembled in their chapel. The question was

propounded whether they would comply with His Majesty's command. Smith

was absent. Charnock alone answered in the affirmative. The other

Fellows who were at the meeting declared that in all things lawful

they were ready to obey the King, but that they would not violate their

statutes and their oaths.

The King, greatly incensed and mortified by his defeat, quitted Oxford

and rejoined the Queen at Bath. His obstinacy and violence had brought

him into an embarrassing position. He had trusted too much to the effect

of his frowns and angry tones, and had rashly staked, not merely the

credit of his administration, but his personal dignity, on the issue of

the contest. Could he yield to subjects whom he had menaced with raised

voice and furious gestures? Yet could he venture to eject in one day

a crowd of respectable clergymen from their homes, because they had

discharged what the whole nation regarded as a sacred duty? Perhaps

there might be an escape from this dilemma. Perhaps the college might

still be terrified, caressed, or bribed into submission. The agency

of Penn was employed. He had too much good feeling to approve of the

violent and unjust proceedings of the government, and even ventured to

express part of what he thought. James was, as usual, obstinate in the

wrong. The courtly Quaker, therefore, did his best to seduce the college

from the path of right. He first tried intimidation. Ruin, he said,

impended over the society. The King was highly incensed. The case might

be a hard one. Most people thought it so. But every child knew that His

Majesty loved to have his own way and could not bear to be thwarted.

Penn, therefore, exhorted the Fellows not to rely on the goodness of

their cause, but to submit, or at least to temporise. Such counsel came

strangely from one who had himself been expelled from the University

for raising a riot about the surplice, who had run the risk of being

disinherited rather than take off his hat to the princes of the blood,

and who had been more than once sent to prison for haranguing in

conventicles. He did not succeed in frightening the Magdalene men. In

answer to his alarming hints he was reminded that in the last generation

thirty-four out of the forty Fellows had cheerfully left their beloved

cloisters and gardens, their hall and their chapel, and had gone forth

not knowing where they should find a meal or a bed, rather than violate

the oath of allegiance. The King now wished them to violate another

oath. He should find that the old spirit was not extinct.

Then Penn tried a gentler tone. He had an interview with Hough and

with some of the Fellows, and, after many professions of sympathy and

friendship, began to hint at a compromise. The King could not bear to be

crossed. The college must give way. Parker must be admitted. But he was

in very bad health. All his preferments would soon be vacant. "Doctor

Hough," said Penn, "may then be Bishop of Oxford. How should you like

that, gentlemen?" Penn had passed his life in declaiming against a

hireling ministry. He held that he was bound to refuse the payment of

tithes, and this even when he had bought land chargeable with tithes,

and hallowed the value of the tithes in the purchase money. According

to his own principles, he would have committed a great sin if he

had interfered for the purpose of obtaining a benefice on the most

honourable terms for the most pious divine. Yet to such a degree had

his manners been corrupted by evil communications, and his understanding

obscured by inordinate zeal for a single object, that he did not scruple

to become a broker in simony of a peculiarly discreditable kind, and to

use a bishopric as a bait to tempt a divine to perjury. Hough replied

with civil contempt that he wanted nothing from the crown but common

justice. "We stand," he said, "on our statutes and our oaths: but, even

setting aside our statutes and oaths, we feel that we have our religion

to defend. The Papists have robbed us of University College. They have

robbed us of Christ Church. The fight is now for Magdalene. They will

soon have all the rest."

Penn was foolish enough to answer that he really believed that the

Papists would now be content. "University," he said, "is a pleasant

college. Christ Church is a noble place. Magdalene is a fine building.

The situation is convenient. The walks by the river are delightful. If

the Roman Catholics are reasonable they will be satisfied with these."

This absurd avowal would alone have made it impossible for Hough and his

brethren to yield. The negotiation was broken off; and the King hastened

to make the disobedient know, as he had threatened, what it was to incur

his displeasure.

A special commission was directed to Cartwright, Bishop of Chester, to

Wright, Chief justice of the King's Bench, and to Sir Thomas Jenner,

a Baron of the Exchequer, appointing them to exercise visitatorial

jurisdiction over the college. On the twentieth of October they arrived

at Oxford, escorted by three troops of cavalry with drawn swords. On

the following morning the Commissioners took their seats in the hall

of Magdalene. Cartwright pronounced a loyal oration which, a few years

before, would have called forth the acclamations of an Oxonian audience,

but which was now heard with sullen indignation. A long dispute

followed. The President defended his rights with skill, temper, and

resolution. He professed great respect for the royal authority. But

he steadily maintained that he had by the laws of England a freehold

interest in the house and revenues annexed to the presidency. Of

that interest he could not be deprived by an arbitrary mandate of the

Sovereign. "Will you submit", said the Bishop, "to our visitation?"

"I submit to it," said Hough with great dexterity, "so far as it is

consistent with the laws, and no farther." "Will you deliver up the key

of your lodgings?" said Cartwright. Hough remained silent. The question

was repeated; and Hough returned a mild but resolute refusal. The

Commissioners pronounced him an intruder, and charged the Fellows no

longer to recognise his authority, and to assist at the admission of the

Bishop of Oxford. Charneck eagerly promised obedience; Smith returned an

evasive answer: but the great body of the members of the college firmly

declared that they still regarded Hough as their rightful head.

And now Hough himself craved permission to address a few words to the

Commissioners. They consented with much civility, perhaps expecting

from the calmness and suavity of his manner that he would make some

concession. "My Lords," said he, "you have this day deprived me of my

freehold: I hereby protest against all your proceedings as illegal,

unjust, and null; and I appeal from you to our sovereign Lord the King

in his courts of justice." A loud murmur of applause arose from the

gownsmen who filled the hall. The Commissioners were furious. Search was

made for the offenders, but in vain. Then the rage of the whole board

was turned against Hough. "Do not think to huff us, sir," cried

Jenner, punning on the President's name. "I will uphold His Majesty's

authority," said Wright, "while I have breath in my body. All this comes

of your popular protest. You have broken the peace. You shall answer it

in the King's Bench. I bind you over in one thousand pounds to appear

there next term. I will see whether the civil power cannot manage you.

If that is not enough, you shall have the military too." In truth Oxford

was in a state which made the Commissioners not a little uneasy. The

soldiers were ordered to have their carbines loaded. It was said that an

express was sent to London for the purpose of hastening the arrival of

more troops. No disturbance however took place. The Bishop of Oxford was

quietly installed by proxy: but only two members of Magdalene College

attended the ceremony. Many signs showed that the spirit of resistance

had spread to the common people. The porter of the college threw down

his keys. The butler refused to scratch Hough's name out of the buttery

book, and was instantly dismissed. No blacksmith could be found in the

whole city who would force the lock of the President's lodgings. It was

necessary for the Commissioners to employ their own servants, who broke

open the door with iron bars. The sermons which on the following Sunday

were preached in the University church were full of reflections such as

stung Cartwright to the quick, though such as he could not discreetly

resent.

And here, if James had not been infatuated, the matter might have

stopped. The Fellows in general were not inclined to carry their

resistance further. They were of opinion that, by refusing to assist

in the admission of the intruder, they had sufficiently proved their

respect for their statutes and oaths, and that, since he was now in

actual possession, they might justifiably submit to him as their head,

till he should be removed by sentence of a competent court. Only one

Fellow, Doctor Fairfax, refused to yield even to this extent. The

Commissioners would gladly have compromised the dispute on these terms;

and during a few hours there was a truce which many thought likely to

end in an amicable arrangement: but soon all was again in confusion.

The Fellows found that the popular voice loudly accused them of

pusillanimity. The townsmen already talked ironically of a Magdalene

conscience, and exclaimed that the brave Hough and the honest Fairfax

had been betrayed and abandoned. Still more annoying were the sneers

of Obadiah Walker and his brother renegades. This then, said those

apostates, was the end of all the big words in which the society had

declared itself resolved to stand by its lawful President and by its

Protestant faith. While the Fellows, bitterly annoyed by the public

censure, were regretting the modified submission which they had

consented to make, they learned that this submission was by no means

satisfactory to the King. It was not enough, he said, that they offered

to obey the Bishop of Oxford as President in fact. They must distinctly

admit the Commission and all that had been done under it to be legal.

They must acknowledge that they had acted undutifully; they must declare

themselves penitent; they must promise to behave better in future,

must implore His Majesty's pardon, and lay themselves at his feet. Two

Fellows of whom the King had no complaint to make, Charnock and Smith,

were excused from the obligation of making these degrading apologies.

Even James never committed a grosser error. The Fellows, already angry

with themselves for having conceded so much, and galled by the censure

of the world, eagerly caught at the opportunity which was now offered

them of regaining the public esteem. With one voice they declared that

they would never ask pardon for being in the right, or admit that the

visitation of their college and the deprivation of their President had

been legal.

Then the King, as he had threatened, laid on them the whole weight of

his hand. They were by one sweeping edict condemned to expulsion.

Yet this punishment was not deemed sufficient. It was known that many

noblemen and gentlemen who possessed church patronage would be disposed

to provide for men who had suffered so much for the laws of England

or men and for the Protestant religion. The High Commission therefore

pronounced the ejected Fellows incapable of ever holding any church

preferment. Such of them as were not yet in holy orders were pronounced

incapable of receiving the clerical character. James might enjoy the

thought that he had reduced many of them from a situation in which

they were surrounded by comforts, and had before them the fairest

professional prospects, to hopeless indigence.

But all these severities produced an effect directly the opposite of

that which he had anticipated. The spirit of Englishmen, that sturdy

spirit which no King of the House of Stuart could ever be taught by

experience to understand, swelled up high and strong against injustice.

Oxford, the quiet scat of learning and loyalty, was in a state

resembling that of the City of London on the morning after the attempt

of Charles the First to seize the five members. The Vicechancellor had

been asked to dine with the Commissioners on the day of the expulsion.

He refused. "My taste," he said, "differs from that of Colonel Kirke. I

cannot eat my meals with appetite under a gallows." The scholars refused

to pull off their caps to the new rulers of Magdalene College. Smith was

nicknamed Doctor Roguery, and was publicly insulted in a coffeehouse.

When Charnock summoned the Demies to perform their academical exercises

before him, they answered that they were deprived of their lawful

governors and would submit to no usurped authority. They assembled apart

both for study and for divine service. Attempts were made to corrupt

them by offers of the lucrative fellowships which had just been declared

vacant: but one undergraduate after another manfully answered that his

conscience would not suffer him to profit by injustice. One lad who was

induced to take a fellowship was turned out of the hall by the rest.

Youths were invited from other colleges, but with small success. The

richest foundation in the kingdom seemed to have lost all attractions

for needy students. Meanwhile, in London and all over the country, money

was collected for the support of the ejected Fellows. The Princess of

Orange, to the great joy of all Protestants, subscribed two hundred

pounds. Still, however, the King held on his course. The expulsion of

the Fellows was soon followed by the expulsion of a crowd of Demies.

All this time the new President was fast sinking under bodily and mental

disease. He had made a last feeble effort to serve the government by

publishing, at the very time when the college was in a state of open

rebellion against his authority, a defence of the Declaration of

Indulgence, or rather a defence of the doctrine of transubstantiation.

This piece called forth many answers, and particularly one from Burnet,

written with extraordinary vigour and acrimony. A few weeks after

the expulsion of the Demies, Parker died in the house of which he

had violently taken possession. Men said that his heart was broken by

remorse and shame. He lies in the beautiful antechapel of the college:

but no monument marks his grave.

Then the King's whole plan was carried into full effect. The college was

turned into a Popish seminary. Bonaventure Giffard, the Roman Catholic

Bishop of Madura, was appointed President. The Roman Catholic service

was performed in the chapel. In one day twelve Roman Catholics were

admitted Fellows. Some servile Protestants applied for fellowships, but

met with refusals. Smith, an enthusiast in loyalty, but still a sincere

member of the Anglican Church, could not bear to see the altered

aspect of the house. He absented himself; he was ordered to return into

residence: he disobeyed: he was expelled; and the work of spoliation was

complete. [298]

The nature of the academical system of England is such that no event

which seriously affects the interests and honour of either University

can fail to excite a strong feeling throughout the country. Every

successive blow, therefore, which fell on Magdalene College, was felt

to the extremities of the kingdom. In the coffeehouses of London, in the

Inns of Court, in the closes of all the Cathedral towns, in parsonages

and manor houses scattered over the remotest shires, pity for the

sufferers and indignation against the government went on growing. The

protest of Hough was everywhere applauded: the forcing of his door was

everywhere mentioned with abhorrence: and at length the sentence of

deprivation fulminated against the Fellows dissolved those ties, once

so close and dear, which had bound the Church of England to the House of

Stuart. Bitter resentment and cruel apprehension took the place of love

and confidence. There was no prebendary, no rector, no vicar, whose mind

was not haunted by the thought that, however quiet his temper, however

obscure his situation, he might, in a few months, be driven from his

dwelling by an arbitrary edict to beg in a ragged cassock with his wife

and children, while his freehold, secured to him by laws of immemorial

antiquity and by the royal word, was occupied by some apostate. This

then was the reward of that heroic loyalty never once found wanting

through the vicissitudes of fifty tempestuous years. It was for this

that the clergy had endured spoliation and persecution in the cause of

Charles the First. It was for this that they had supported Charles the

Second in his hard contest with the Whig opposition. It was for this

that they had stood in the front of the battle against those who sought

to despoil James of his birthright. To their fidelity alone their

oppressor owed the power which he was now employing to their ruin. They

had long been in the habit of recounting in acrimonious language all

that they had suffered at the hand of the Puritan in the day of his

power. Yet for the Puritan there was some excuse. He was an avowed

enemy: he had wrongs to avenge; and even he, while remodelling the

ecclesiastical constitution of the country, and ejecting all who would

not subscribe his Covenant, had not been altogether without compassion.

He had at least granted to those whose benefices he seized a pittance

sufficient to support life. But the hatred felt by the King towards that

Church which had saved him from exile and placed him on a throne was

not to be so easily satiated. Nothing but the utter ruin of his victims

would content him. It was not enough that they were expelled from their

homes and stripped of their revenues. They found every walk of life

towards which men of their habits could look for a subsistence closed

against them with malignant care, and nothing left to them but the

precarious and degrading resource of alms.

The Anglican clergy therefore, and that portion of the laity which was

strongly attached to Protestant episcopacy, now regarded the King with

those feelings which injustice aggravated by ingratitude naturally

excites. Yet had the Churchman still many scruples of conscience

and honour to surmount before he could bring himself to oppose the

government by force. He had been taught that passive obedience was

enjoined without restriction or exception by the divine law. He had

professed this opinion ostentatiously. He had treated with contempt the

suggestion that an extreme case might possibly arise which would justify

a people in drawing the sword against regal tyranny. Both principle

and shame therefore restrained him from imitating the example of

the rebellious Roundheads, while any hope of a peaceful and legal

deliverance remained; and such a hope might reasonably be cherished as

long as the Princess of Orange stood next in succession to the crown. If

he would but endure with patience this trial of his faith, the laws

of nature would soon do for him what he could not, without sin and

dishonour, do for himself. The wrongs of the Church would be redressed,

her property and dignity would be fenced by new guarantees; and those

wicked ministers who had injured and insulted her in the day of her

adversity would be signally punished.

The event to which the Church of England looked forward as to an

honourable and peaceful termination of her troubles was one of which

even the most reckless members of the Jesuitical cabal could not think

without painful apprehensions. If their master should die, leaving them

no better security against the penal laws than a Declaration which the

general voice of the nation pronounced to be a nullity, if a Parliament,

animated by the same spirit which had prevailed in the Parliament of

Charles the Second, should assemble round the throne of a Protestant

sovereign, was it not probable that a terrible retribution would be

exacted, that the old laws against Popery would be rigidly enforced, and

that new laws still more severe would be added to the statute book? The

evil counsellors had long been tormented by these gloomy apprehensions,

and some of them had contemplated strange and desperate remedies. James

had scarcely mounted the throne when it began to be whispered about

Whitehall that, if the Lady Anne would turn Roman Catholic, it might not

be impossible, with the help of Lewis, to transfer to her the birthright

of her elder sister. At the French embassy this scheme was warmly

approved; and Bonrepaux gave it as his opinion that the assent of James

would be easily obtained. [299] Soon, however, it became manifest that

Anne was unalterably attached to the Established Church. All thought of

making her Queen was therefore relinquished. Nevertheless, a small knot

of fanatics still continued to cherish a wild hope that they might be

able to change the order of succession. The plan formed by these men

was set forth in a minute of which a rude French translation has been

preserved. It was to be hoped, they said, that the King might be able to

establish the true faith without resorting to extremities; but, in the

worst event, he might leave his crown at the disposal of Lewis. It was

better for Englishmen to be the vassals of France than the slaves of the

Devil. [300] This extraordinary document was handed about from Jesuit

to Jesuit, and from courtier to courtier, till some eminent Roman

Catholics, in whom bigotry had not extinguished patriotism, furnished

the Dutch Ambassador with a copy. He put the paper into the hands of

James. James, greatly agitated, pronounced it a vile forgery contrived

by some pamphleteer in Holland. The Dutch minister resolutely

answered that he could prove the contrary by the testimony of several

distinguished members of His Majesty's own Church, nay, that there would

be no difficulty in pointing out the writer, who, after all, had written

only what many priests and many busy politicians said every day in the

galleries of the palace. The King did not think it expedient to ask who

the writer was, but, abandoning the charge of forgery, protested, with

great vehemence and solemnity, that no thought of disinheriting his

eldest daughter had ever crossed his mind. "Nobody," he said, "ever

dared to hint such a thing to me. I never would listen to it. God does

not command us to propagate the true religion by injustice and this

would be the foulest, the most unnatural injustice." [301] Notwithstanding

all these professions, Barillon, a few days later, reported to his court

that James had begun to listen to suggestions respecting a change in the

order of succession, that the question was doubtless a delicate one,

but that there was reason to hope that, with time and management, a

way might be found to settle the crown on some Roman Catholic to the

exclusion of the two Princesses. [302] During many months this subject

continued to be discussed by the fiercest and most extravagant Papists

about the court; and candidates for the regal office were actually

named. [303]

It is not probable however that James ever meant to take a course so

insane. He must have known that England would never bear for a single

day the yoke of an usurper who was also a Papist, and that any attempt

to set aside the Lady Mary would have been withstood to the death, both

by all those who had supported the Exclusion Bill, and by all those

who had opposed it. There is however no doubt that the King was an

accomplice in a plot less absurd, but not less unjustifiable,

against the rights of his children. Tyrconnel had, with his master's

approbation, made arrangements for separating Ireland from the empire,

and for placing her under the protection of Lewis, as soon as the crown

should devolve on a Protestant sovereign. Bonrepaux had been consulted,

had imparted the design to his court, and had been instructed to assure

Tyrconnel that France would lend effectual aid to the accomplishment of

this great project. [304] These transactions, which, though perhaps

not in all parts accurately known at the Hague, were strongly suspected

there, must not be left out of the account if we would pass a just

judgment on the course taken a few months later by the Princess of

Orange. Those who pronounce her guilty of a breach of filial duty must

admit that her fault was at least greatly extenuated by her wrongs. If,

to serve the cause of her religion, she broke through the most sacred

ties of consanguinity, she only followed her father's example. She did

not assist to depose him till he had conspired to disinherit her.

Scarcely had Bonrepaux been informed that Lewis had resolved to assist

the enterprise of Tyrconnel when all thoughts of that enterprise were

abandoned. James had caught the first glimpse of a hope which delighted

and elated him. The Queen was with child.

Before the end of October 1687 the great news began to be whispered.

It was observed that Her Majesty had absented herself from some public

ceremonies, on the plea of indisposition. It was said that many relics,

supposed to possess extraordinary virtue, had been hung about her.

Soon the story made its way from the palace to the coffeehouses of the

capital, and spread fast over the country. By a very small minority the

rumour was welcomed with joy. The great body of the nation listened with

mingled derision and fear. There was indeed nothing very extraordinary

in what had happened.

The King had but just completed his fifty-fourth year. The Queen was

in the summer of life. She had already borne four children who had

died young; and long afterwards she was delivered of another child

whom nobody had any interest in treating as supposititious, and who was

therefore never said to be so. As, however, five years had elapsed since

her last pregnancy, the people, under the influence of that delusion

which leads men to believe what they wish, had ceased to entertain any

apprehension that she would give an heir to the throne. On the other

hand, nothing seemed more natural and probable than that the Jesuits

should have contrived a pious fraud. It was certain that they must

consider the accession of the Princess of Orange as one of the greatest

calamities which could befall their Church. It was equally certain

that they would not be very scrupulous about doing whatever might be

necessary to save their Church from a great calamity. In books written

by eminent members of the Society, and licensed by its rulers, it was

distinctly laid down that means even more shocking to all notions of

justice and humanity than the introduction of a spurious heir into

a family might lawfully be employed for ends less important than the

conversion of a heretical kingdom. It had got abroad that some of the

King's advisers, and even the King himself, had meditated schemes for

defrauding the Lady Mary, either wholly or in part, of her rightful

inheritance. A suspicion, not indeed well founded, but by no means so

absurd as is commonly supposed, took possession of the public mind. The

folly of some Roman Catholics confirmed the vulgar prejudice. They spoke

of the auspicious event as strange, as miraculous, as an exertion of the

same Divine power which had made Sarah proud and happy in Isaac, and

had given Samuel to the prayers of Hannah. Mary's mother, the Duchess of

Modena, had lately died. A short time before her death, she had, it

was said, implored the Virgin of Loretto, with fervent vows and rich

offerings, to bestow a son on James. The King himself had, in the

preceding August, turned aside from his progress to visit the Holy

Well, and had there besought Saint Winifred to obtain for him that boon

without which his great designs for the propagation of the true faith

could be but imperfectly executed. The imprudent zealots who dwelt on

these tales foretold with confidence that the unborn infant would be a

boy, and offered to back their opinion by laying twenty guineas to one.

Heaven, they affirmed, would not have interfered but for a great end.

One fanatic announced that the Queen would give birth to twins, of whom

the elder would be King of England, and the younger Pope of Rome. Mary

could not conceal the delight with which she heard this prophecy; and

her ladies found that they could not gratify her more than by talking of

it. The Roman Catholics would have acted more wisely if they had spoken

of the pregnancy as of a natural event, and if they had borne with

moderation their unexpected good fortune. Their insolent triumph excited

the popular indignation. Their predictions strengthened the popular

suspicions. From the Prince and Princess of Denmark down to porters and

laundresses nobody alluded to the promised birth without a sneer. The

wits of London described the new miracle in rhymes which, it may well be

supposed, were not the most delicate. The rough country squires roared

with laughter if they met with any person simple enough to believe that

the Queen was really likely to be again a mother. A royal proclamation

appeared commanding the clergy to read a form of prayer and thanksgiving

which had been prepared for this joyful occasion by Crewe and Sprat.

The clergy obeyed: but it was observed that the congregations made no

responses and showed no signs of reverence. Soon in all the coffeehouses

was handed about a brutal lampoon on the courtly prelates whose pens the

King had employed. Mother East had also her full share of abuse. Into

that homely monosyllable our ancestors had degraded the name of the

great house of Este which reigned at Modena. [305]

The new hope which elated the King's spirits was mingled with many

fears. Something more than the birth of a Prince of Wales was necessary

to the success of the plans formed by the Jesuitical party. It was

not very likely that James would live till his son should be of age to

exercise the regal functions. The law had made no provision for the

case of a minority. The reigning sovereign was not competent to make

provision for such a case by will. The legislature only could supply the

defect. If James should die before the defect had been supplied, leaving

a successor of tender years, the supreme power would undoubtedly devolve

on Protestants. Those Tories who held most firmly the doctrine that

nothing could justify them in resisting their liege lord would have no

scruple about drawing their swords against a Popish woman who should

dare to usurp the guardianship of the realm and of the infant sovereign.

The result of a contest could scarcely be matter of doubt. The Prince of

Orange or his wife, would be Regent. The young King would be placed in

the hands of heretical instructors, whose arts might speedily efface

from his mind the impressions which might have been made on it in the

nursery. He might prove another Edward the Sixth; and the blessing

granted to the intercession of the Virgin Mother and of Saint Winifred

might be turned into a curse. [306] This was a danger against which

nothing but, an Act of Parliament could be a security; and to obtain

such an Act was not easy. Everything seemed to indicate that, if the

Houses were convoked, they would come up to Westminster animated by

the spirit of 1640. The event of the county elections could hardly be

doubted. The whole body of freeholders, high and low, clerical and lay,

was strongly excited against the government. In the great majority of

those towns where the right of voting depended on the payment of local

taxes, or on the occupation of a tenement, no courtly candidate could

dare to show his face. A very large part of the House of Commons was

returned by members of municipal corporations. These corporations had

recently been remodelled for the purpose of destroying the influence

of the Whigs and Dissenters. More than a hundred constituent bodies had

been deprived of their charters by tribunals devoted to the crown,

or had been induced to avert compulsory disfranchisement by voluntary

surrender. Every Mayor, every Alderman, every Town Clerk, from Berwick

to Helstone, was a Tory and a Churchman: but Tories and Churchmen were

now no longer devoted to the sovereign. The new municipalities were

more unmanageable than the old municipalities had ever been, and would

undoubtedly return representatives whose first act would be to impeach

all the Popish Privy Councillors, and all the members of the High

Commission.

In the Lords the prospect was scarcely less gloomy than in the Commons.

Among the temporal peers it was certain that an immense majority would

be against the King's measures: and on that episcopal bench, which

seven years before had unanimously supported him against those who

had attempted to deprive him of his birthright, he could now look for

support only to four or five sycophants despised by their profession and

by their country. [307]

To all men not utterly blinded by passion these difficulties appeared

insuperable. The most unscrupulous slaves of power showed signs of

uneasiness. Dryden muttered that the King would only make matters worse

by trying to mend them, and sighed for the golden days of the careless

and goodnatured Charles. [308] Even Jeffreys wavered. As long as he

was poor, he was perfectly ready to face obloquy and public hatred for

lucre. But he had now, by corruption and extortion, accumulated great

riches; and he was more anxious to secure them than to increase them.

His slackness drew on him a sharp reprimand from the royal lips. In

dread of being deprived of the Great Seal, he promised whatever was

required of him: but Barillon, in reporting this circumstance to Lewis,

remarked that the King of England could place little reliance on any man

who had any thing to lose. [309]

Nevertheless James determined to persevere. The sanction of a Parliament

was necessary to his system. The sanction of a free and lawful

Parliament it was evidently impossible to obtain: but it might not be

altogether impossible to bring together by corruption, by intimidation,

by violent exertions of prerogative, by fraudulent distortions of law,

an assembly which might call itself a Parliament, and might be willing

to register any edict of the Sovereign. Returning officers must be

appointed who would avail themselves of the slightest pretence to

declare the King's friends duly elected. Every placeman, from the

highest to the lowest, must be made to understand that, if he wished to

retain his office, he must, at this conjuncture, support the throne by

his vote and interest. The High Commission meanwhile would keep its eye

on the clergy. The boroughs, which had just been remodelled to serve one

turn, might be remodelled again to serve another. By such means the

King hoped to obtain a majority in the House of Commons. The Upper

House would then be at his mercy. He had undoubtedly by law the power of

creating peers without limit: and this power he was fully determined

to use. He did not wish, and indeed no sovereign can wish, to make the

highest honour which is in the gift of the crown worthless. He cherished

the hope that, by calling up some heirs apparent to the assembly in

which they must ultimately sit, and by conferring English titles on some

Scotch and Irish Lords, he might be able to secure a majority without

ennobling new men in such numbers as to bring ridicule on the coronet

and the ermine. But there was no extremity to which he was not prepared

to go in case of necessity. When in a large company an opinion was

expressed that the peers would prove intractable, "Oh, silly," cried

Sunderland, turning to Churchill, "your troop of guards shall be called

up to the House of Lords." [310]

Having determined to pack a Parliament, James set himself energetically

and methodically to the work. A proclamation appeared in the Gazette,

announcing that the King had determined to revise the Commissions of

Peace and of Lieutenancy, and to retain in public employment only such

gentlemen as should be disposed to support his policy. [311] A committee

of seven Privy Councillors sate at Whitehall, for the purpose of

regulating--such was the phrase--the municipal corporations. In this

committee Jeffreys alone represented the Protestant interest. Powis

alone represented the moderate Roman Catholics. All the other members

belonged to the Jesuitical faction. Among them was Petre, who had just

been sworn of the Council. Till he took his seat at the board, his

elevation had been kept a profound secret from everybody but Sunderland.

The public indignation at this new violation of the law was clamorously

expressed; and it was remarked that the Roman Catholics were even louder

in censure than the Protestants. The vain and ambitious Jesuit was now

charged with the business of destroying and reconstructing half

the constituent bodies in the kingdom. Under the committee of Privy

Councillors a subcommittee consisting of bustling agents less eminent in

rank was entrusted with the management of details. Local subcommittees

of regulators all over the country corresponded with the central board

at Westminster. [312]

The persons on whom James chiefly relied for assistance in his new and

arduous enterprise were the Lords Lieutenants. Every Lord Lieutenant

received written orders directing him to go down immediately into his

county. There he was to summon before him all his deputies, and all the

justices of the Peace, and to put to them a series of interrogatories

framed for the purpose of ascertaining how they would act at a general

election. He was to take down the answers in writing, and to transmit

them to the government. He was to furnish a list of such Roman

Catholics, and such Protestant Dissenters, as might be best qualified

for the bench and for commands in the militia. He was also to examine

into the state of all the boroughs in his county, and to make such

reports as might be necessary to guide the operations of the board of

regulators. It was intimated to him that he must himself perform these

duties, and that he could not be permitted to delegate them to any other

person. [313]

The first effect produced by these orders would have at once sobered a

prince less infatuated than James. Half the Lords Lieutenants of England

peremptorily refused to stoop to the odious service which was required

of them. They were immediately dismissed. All those who incurred this

glorious disgrace were peers of high consideration; and all had hitherto

been regarded as firm supporters of monarchy. Some names in the list

deserve especial notice.

The noblest subject in England, and indeed, as Englishmen loved to say,

the noblest subject in Europe, was Aubrey de Vere, twentieth and last of

the old Earls of Oxford. He derived his title through an uninterrupted

male descent from a time when the families of Howard and Seymour were

still obscure, when the Nevilles and Percies enjoyed only a provincial

celebrity, and when even the great name of Plantagenet had not yet

been heard in England. One chief of the house of De Vere had held high

command at Hastings: another had marched, with Godfrey and Tancred, over

heaps of slaughtered Moslem, to the sepulchre of Christ. The first Earl

of Oxford had been minister of Henry Beauclerc. The third Earl had been

conspicuous among the Lords who extorted the Great Charter from John.

The seventh Earl had fought bravely at Cressy and Pointiers. The

thirteenth Earl had, through many vicissitudes of fortune, been the

chief of the party of the Red Rose, and had led the van on the decisive

day of Bosworth. The seventeenth Earl had shone at the court of

Elizabeth, and had won for himself an honourable place among the early

masters of English poetry. The nineteenth Earl had fallen in arms for

the Protestant religion and for the liberties of Europe under the walls

of Maastricht. His son Aubrey, in whom closed the longest and most

illustrious line of nobles that England has seen, a man of loose morals,

but of inoffensive temper and of courtly manners, was Lord Lieutenant

of Essex, and Colonel of the Blues. His nature was not factious; and his

interest inclined him to avoid a rupture with the court; for his estate

was encumbered, and his military command lucrative. He was summoned

to the royal closet; and an explicit declaration of his intentions was

demanded from him. "Sir," answered Oxford, "I will stand by your Majesty

against all enemies to the last drop of my blood. But this is matter

of conscience, and I cannot comply." He was instantly deprived of his

lieutenancy and of his regiment. [314]

Inferior in antiquity and splendour to the house of De Vere, but to the

house of De Vere alone, was the house of Talbot. Ever since the reign of

Edward the Third, the Talbots had sate among the peers of the realm. The

earldom of Shrewsbury had been bestowed, in the fifteenth century, on

John Talbot, the antagonist of the Maid of Orleans. He had been long

remembered by his countrymen with tenderness and reverence as one of

the most illustrious of those warriors who had striven to erect a great

English empire on the Continent of Europe. The stubborn courage which he

had shown in the midst of disasters had made him an object of interest

greater than more fortunate captains had inspired, and his death had

furnished a singularly touching scene to our early stage. His posterity

had, during two centuries, flourished in great honour. The head of the

family at the time of the Restoration was Francis, the eleventh Earl,

a Roman Catholic. His death had been attended by circumstances such as,

even in those licentious times which immediately followed the downfall

of the Puritan tyranny, had moved men to horror and pity. The Duke

of Buckingham in the course of his vagrant amours was for a moment

attracted by the Countess of Shrewsbury. She was easily won. Her lord

challenged the gallant, and fell. Some said that the abandoned woman

witnessed the combat in man's attire, and others that she clasped her

victorious lover to her bosom while his shirt was still dripping with

the blood of her husband. The honours of the murdered man descended to

his infant son Charles. As the orphan grew up to man's estate, it was

generally acknowledged that of the young nobility of England none had

been so richly gifted by nature. His person was pleasing, his temper

singularly sweet, his parts such as, if he had been born in a humble

rank, might well have raised him to the height of civil greatness. All

these advantages he had so improved that, before he was of age, he was

allowed to be one of the finest gentlemen and finest scholars of his

time. His learning is proved by notes which are still extant in his

handwriting on books in almost every department of literature. He

spoke French like a gentleman of Lewis's bedchamber, and Italian like a

citizen of Florence. It was impossible that a youth of such parts should

not be anxious to understand the grounds on which his family had refused

to conform to the religion of the state. He studied the disputed points

closely, submitted his doubts to priests of his own faith, laid their

answers before Tillotson, weighed the arguments on both sides long

and attentively, and, after an investigation which occupied two years,

declared himself a Protestant. The Church of England welcomed the

illustrious convert with delight. His popularity was great, and became

greater when it was known that royal solicitations and promises had

been vainly employed to seduce him back to the superstition which he had

abjured. The character of the young Earl did not however develop itself

in a manner quite satisfactory to those who had borne the chief part

in his conversion. His morals by no means escaped the contagion of

fashionable libertinism. In truth the shock which had overturned his

early prejudices had at the same time unfixed all his opinions, and

left him to the unchecked guidance of his feelings. But, though his

principles were unsteady, his impulses were so generous, his temper so

bland, his manners so gracious and easy, that it was impossible not to

love him. He was early called the King of Hearts, and never, through a

long, eventful, and chequered life, lost his right to that name. [315]

Shrewsbury was Lord Lieutenant of Staffordshire and Colonel of one

of the regiments of horse which had been raised in consequence of

the Western insurrection. He now refused to act under the board of

regulators, and was deprived of both his commissions.

None of the English nobles enjoyed a larger measure of public favour

than Charles Sackville Earl of Dorset. He was indeed a remarkable man.

In his youth he had been one of the most notorious libertines of the

wild time which followed the Restoration. He had been the terror of the

City watch, had passed many nights in the round house, and had at least

once occupied a cell in Newgate. His passion for Betty Morrice, and for

Nell Gwynn, who called him her Charles the First, had given no small

amusement and scandal to the town. [316] Yet, in the midst of follies

and vices, his courageous spirit, his fine understanding, and his

natural goodness of heart, had been conspicuous. Men said that the

excesses in which he indulged were common between him and the whole race

of gay young Cavaliers, but that his sympathy with human suffering and

the generosity with which he made reparation to those whom his freaks

had injured were all his own. His associates were astonished by the

distinction which the public made between him and them. "He may do what

he chooses," said Wilmot; "he is never in the wrong." The judgment

of the world became still more favourable to Dorset when he had been

sobered by time and marriage. His graceful manners, his brilliant

conversation, his soft heart, his open hand, were universally praised.

No day passed, it was said, in which some distressed family had not

reason to bless his name. And yet, with all his goodnature, such was

the keenness of his wit that scoffers whose sarcasm all the town feared

stood in craven fear of the sarcasm of Dorset. All political parties

esteemed and caressed him; but politics were not much to his taste. Had

he been driven by necessity to exert himself, he would probably have

risen to the highest posts in the state; but he was born to rank so high

and wealth so ample that many of the motives which impel men to engage

in public affairs were wanting to him. He took just so much part in

parliamentary and diplomatic business as sufficed to show that he wanted

nothing but inclination to rival Danby and Sunderland, and turned away

to pursuits which pleased him better. Like many other men who, with

great natural abilities, are constitutionally and habitually indolent,

he became an intellectual voluptuary, and a master of all those pleasing

branches of knowledge which can be acquired without severe application.

He was allowed to be the best judge of painting, of sculpture, of

architecture, of acting, that the court could show. On questions of

polite learning his decisions were regarded at all the coffeehouses as

without appeal. More than one clever play which had failed on the first

representation was supported by his single authority against the whole

clamour of the pit, and came forth successful from the second trial.

The delicacy of his taste in French composition was extolled by Saint

Evremond and La Fontaine. Such a patron of letters England had never

seen. His bounty was bestowed with equal judgment and liberality, and

was confined to no sect or faction. Men of genius, estranged from each

other by literary jealousy or by difference of political opinion, joined

in acknowledging his impartial kindness. Dryden owned that he had been

saved from ruin by Dorset's princely generosity. Yet Montague and Prior,

who had keenly satirised Dryden, were introduced by Dorset into public

life; and the best comedy of Dryden's mortal enemy, Shadwell, was

written at Dorset's country seat. The munificent Earl might, if such had

been his wish, have been the rival of those of whom he was content to be

the benefactor. For the verses which he occasionally composed,

unstudied as they are, exhibit the traces of a genius which, assiduously

cultivated, would have produced something great. In the small volume of

his works may be found songs which have the easy vigour of Suckling,

and little satires which sparkle with wit as splendid as that of Butler.

[317]

Dorset was Lord Lieutenant of Sussex: and to Sussex the board of

regulators looked with great anxiety: for in no other county, Cornwall

and Wiltshire excepted, were there so many small boroughs. He was

ordered to repair to his post. No person who knew him expected that he

would obey. He gave such an answer as became him, and was informed that

his services were no longer needed. The interest which his many noble

and amiable qualities inspired was heightened when it was known that he

had received by the post an anonymous billet telling him that, if he did

not promptly comply with the King's wishes, all his wit and popularity

should not save him from assassination. A similar warning was sent

to Shrewsbury. Threatening letters were then much more rare than they

afterwards became. It is therefore not strange that the people, excited

as they were, should have been disposed to believe that the best and

noblest Englishmen were really marked out for Popish daggers. [318] Just

when these letters were the talk of all London, the mutilated corpse of

a noted Puritan was found in the streets. It was soon discovered that

the murderer had acted from no religious or political motive. But

the first suspicions of the populace fell on the Papists. The mangled

remains were carried in procession to the house of the Jesuits in the

Savoy; and during a few hours the fear and rage of the populace were

scarcely less violent than on the day when Godfrey was borne to his

grave. [319]

The other dismissions must be more concisely related. The Duke of

Somerset, whose regiment had been taken from him some months before, was

now turned out of the lord lieutenancy of the East Riding of Yorkshire.

The North Riding was taken from Viscount Fauconberg, Shropshire from

Viscount Newport, and Lancashire from the Earl of Derby, grandson of

that gallant Cavalier who had faced death so bravely, both on the field

of battle and on the scaffold, for the House of Stuart. The Earl of

Pembroke, who had recently served the crown with fidelity and spirit

against Monmouth, was displaced in Wiltshire, the Earl of Husband in

Leicestershire, the Earl of Bridgewater in Buckinghamshire, the Earl of

Thanet in Cumberland, the Earl of Northampton in Warwickshire, the Earl

of Abingdon in Oxfordshire, and the Earl of Scarsdale in Derbyshire.

Scarsdale was also deprived of a regiment of cavalry, and of an office

in the household of the Princess of Denmark. She made a struggle to

retain his services, and yielded only to a peremptory command of

her father. The Earl of Gainsborough was rejected, not only from the

lieutenancy of Hampshire, but also from the government of Portsmouth and

the rangership of the New Forest, two places for which he had, only a

few months before, given five thousand pounds. [320]

The King could not find Lords of great note, or indeed Protestant Lords

of any sort, who would accept the vacant offices. It was necessary

to assign two shires to Jeffreys, a new man whose landed property was

small, and two to Preston who was not even an English peer. The other

counties which had been left without governors were entrusted, with

scarcely an exception, to known Roman Catholics, or to courtiers who had

secretly promised the King to declare themselves Roman Catholics as soon

as they could do so with prudence.

At length the new machinery was put in action; and soon from every

corner of the realm arrived the news of complete and hopeless failure.

The catechism by which the Lords Lieutenants had been directed to test

the sentiments of the country gentlemen consisted of three questions.

Every magistrate and Deputy Lieutenant was to be asked, first, whether,

if he should be chosen to serve in Parliament, he would vote for a bill

framed on the principles of the Declaration of Indulgence; secondly,

whether, as an elector, he would support candidates who would engage to

vote for such a bill and, thirdly, whether, in his private capacity,

he would aid the King's benevolent designs by living in friendship with

people of all religious persuasions. [321]

As soon as the questions got abroad, a form of answer, drawn up with

admirable skill, was circulated all over the kingdom, and was generally

adopted. It was to the following effect: "As a member of the House of

Commons, should I have the honour of a seat there, I shall think it my

duty carefully to weigh such reasons as may be adduced in debate for

and against a Bill of Indulgence, and then to vote according to my

conscientious conviction. As an elector, I shall give my support to

candidates whose notions of the duty of a representative agree with my

own. As a private man, it is my wish to live in peace and charity with

every body." This answer, far more provoking than a direct refusal,

because slightly tinged with a sober and decorous irony which could not

well be resented, was all that the emissaries of the court could extract

from most of the country gentlemen. Arguments, promises, threats, were

tried in vain. The Duke of Norfolk, though a Protestant, and though

dissatisfied with the proceedings of the government, had consented to

become its agent in two counties. He went first to Surrey, where he soon

found that nothing could be done. [322] He then repaired to Norfolk, and

returned to inform the King that, of seventy gentlemen of note who bore

office in that great province, only six had held out hopes that they

should support the policy of the court. [323] The Duke of Beaufort,

whose authority extended over four English shires and over the whole

principality of Wales, came up to Whitehall with an account not less

discouraging. [324] Rochester was Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire. All

his little stock of virtue had been expended in his struggle against the

strong temptation to sell his religion for lucre. He was still bound to

the court by a pension of four thousand pounds a year; and in return for

this pension he was willing to perform any service, however illegal or

degrading, provided only that he were not required to go through the

forms of a reconciliation with Rome. He had readily undertaken to manage

his county; and he exerted himself, as usual, with indiscreet heat and

violence. But his anger was thrown away on the sturdy squires to whom he

addressed himself. They told him with one voice that they would send up

no man to Parliament who would vote for taking away the safeguards

of the Protestant religion. [325] The same answer was given to the

Chancellor in Buckinghamshire. [326] The gentry of Shropshire, assembled

at Ludlow, unanimously refused to fetter themselves by the pledge which

the King demanded of them. [327] The Earl of Yarmouth reported from

Wiltshire that, of sixty magistrates and Deputy Lieutenants with whom

he had conferred, only seven had given favourable answers, and that even

those seven could not be trusted. [328] The renegade Peterborough made

no progress in Northamptonshire. [329] His brother renegade Dover was

equally unsuccessful in Cambridgeshire. [330] Preston brought cold news

from Cumberland and Westmoreland. Dorsetshire and Huntingdonshire were

animated by the same spirit. The Earl of Bath, after a long canvass,

returned from the West with gloomy tidings. He had been authorised to

make the most tempting offers to the inhabitants of that region. In

particular he had promised that, if proper respect were shown to the

royal wishes, the trade in tin should be freed from the oppressive

restrictions under which it lay. But this lure, which at another time

would have proved irresistible, was now slighted. All the justices

and Deputy Lieutenants of Devonshire and Cornwall, without a single

dissenting voice, declared that they would put life and property in

jeopardy for the King, but that the Protestant religion was dearer

to them than either life or property. "And, sir," said Bath, "if your

Majesty should dismiss all these gentlemen, their successors would give

exactly the same answer." [331] If there was any district in which the

government might have hoped for success, that district was Lancashire.

Considerable doubts had been felt as to the result of what was passing

there. In no part of the realm had so many opulent and honourable

families adhered to the old religion. The heads of many of those

families had already, by virtue of the dispensing power, been made

justices of the Peace and entrusted with commands in the militia. Yet

from Lancashire the new Lord Lieutenant, himself a Roman Catholic,

reported that two thirds of his deputies and of the magistrates were

opposed to the court. [332] But the proceedings in Hampshire wounded the

King's pride still more deeply. Arabella Churchill had, more than twenty

years before, borne him a son, widely renowned, at a later period,

as one of the most skilful captains of Europe. The youth, named

James Fitzjames, had as yet given no promise of the eminence which he

afterwards attained: but his manners were so gentle and inoffensive that

he had no enemy except Mary of Modena, who had long hated the child of

the concubine with the bitter hatred of a childless wife. A small part

of the Jesuitical faction had, before the pregnancy of the Queen was

announced, seriously thought of setting him up as a competitor of the

Princess of Orange. [333] When it is remembered how signally Monmouth,

though believed by the populace to be legitimate, and though the

champion of the national religion, had failed in a similar competition,

it must seem extraordinary that any man should have been so much

blinded by fanaticism as to think of placing on the throne one who was

universally known to be a Popish bastard. It does not appear that this

absurd design was ever countenanced by the King. The boy, however, was

acknowledged; and whatever distinctions a subject, not of the royal

blood, could hope to attain were bestowed on him. He had been created

Duke of Berwick; and he was now loaded with honourable and lucrative

employments, taken from those noblemen who had refused to comply with

the royal commands. He succeeded the Earl of Oxford as Colonel of the

Blues, and the Earl of Gainsborough as Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire,

Ranger of the New Forest, and Governor of Portsmouth. On the frontier of

Hampshire Berwick expected to have been met, according to custom, by a

long cavalcade of baronets, knights and squires: but not a single person

of note appeared to welcome him. He sent out letters commanding the

attendance of the gentry: but only five or six paid the smallest

attention to his summons. The rest did not wait to be dismissed.

They declared that they would take no part in the civil or military

government of their county while the King was represented there by a

Papist, and voluntarily laid down their commissions. [334]

Sunderland, who had been named Lord Lieutenant of Warwickshire in the

room of the Earl of Northampton, found some excuse for not going down to

face the indignation and contempt of the gentry of that shire; and his

plea was the more readily admitted because the King had, by that time,

begun to feel that the spirit of the rustic gentry was not to be bent.

[335]