1689.
I proceed now to the year 1689, in the beginning of which the peers
of the realm, &c. offered the administration of the government to the
prince of Orange, which he accepted of. Not long after he called a
convention of the commons; for a parliament it could not be named,
since in England none but a king has power to call a parliament. In the
meanwhile the prince had caused the princess his consort, to come over
from Holland, into England; and at length the convention, after many
great debates, came to this resolution, that the throne was vacant;
the consequence of which was, that the prince and princess of Orange
were declared by the names of William the third, and Mary the second,
king and queen of England, &c. and according were afterwards crowned.
A large relation thereof is to be found in several books. By the way
I will only say, that the coronation was performed by the bishop of
London, the archbishop of Canterbury having refused to act in that
solemnity; at the performance of which the king and queen were asked
by the bishop, ‘Will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the
people of this kingdom of England, and the dominions thereto belonging,
according to the statutes in parliament agreed to, and the laws and
customs of the same?’ To which the king and queen having answered, ‘I
solemnly promise so to do;’ the bishop asked, ‘Will you to your power
cause law in justice and mercy to be executed in all your judgments?’
Answer was made, ‘I will.’ The next question was, ‘Will you to the
utmost of your power maintain the law of God, the true profession of
the gospel, and the Protestant Reformed religion established by law?
And will you preserve unto the bishops and clergy of this realm, and to
the churches committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges
as by law do or shall appertain to them, or any of them?’ To which the
king and queen answered, ‘All this I promise to do.’ After this they
laying each of them their hands upon the book of the gospel, said,
‘These things which I have here before promised, I will perform and
keep. So help me God.’ Under these punctual and nice questions was more
hidden than some would think. For the king having answered so as hath
been said, could not now free any from paying tithes to the clergy,
without violation of his oath.
Not long after William and Mary were thus made king and queen of
England, they were also in Scotland declared king and queen of
Scotland. And somebody in Holland denoted the year of his being made
king in this manner: ‘VVILheLMVs tertIVs angLIæ VInDeX.’ Not long after
this a war was proclaimed against France, and the late king, James,
supported by the French king, went over to Ireland, from whence in
process of time he was driven away by king William, after the bloody
battle near the river Boyne; but that not belonging to this history, I
will not detain my reader with a relation thereof.
A king having now mounted the throne, the convention was turned into
a parliament; and then this august assembly made it their business to
restrain the forcing of conscience; and an act passed for exempting
Protestant dissenters from the penal laws, by which some dissenters,
and especially the Quakers, had suffered and been persecuted many
years. Yet care was taken to keep that law in force by which Papists
were excluded from sitting in parliament. And those penal laws,
of which mention hath been made heretofore in due place, were now
restrained, except the test act, properly required for serving in high
offices, and to keep out the Papists. The aforesaid act gave also
liberty to dissenters to keep religious meetings, provided the doors
were not locked, barred or bolted, during the time of such meeting. But
none of these dissenters were freed from paying tithes, or other church
duties, so called, to the clergy, nor from being cited before bishops’
courts. But this liberty of keeping public meetings was not allowed
to Papists; for all that would participate of the said liberty, were
required to take the oath of allegiance; yet to comply with the people
called Quakers, who for conscience-sake scrupled to take any oath, this
act enjoined that they should subscribe the following declaration:
‘I _A. B._ do sincerely promise and solemnly declare, before
God and the world, that I will be true and faithful to king
William and queen Mary; and I do solemnly profess and declare,
that I do from my heart abhor, detest and renounce, as impious
and heretical, that damnable doctrine and position, that princes
excommunicated or deprived by the pope, or any authority of
the see of Rome, may be deposed or murdered by their subjects,
or any other whatsoever. And I declare that no foreign prince,
person, prelate, state, or potentate, hath, or ought to have any
power, jurisdiction, superiority, pre-eminence, or authority,
ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm.’
Besides this they were obliged to subscribe also another, with respect
to their orthodoxy, and for excluding Socinianism.
‘I _A. B._ profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ
his eternal Son, the true God, and in the holy Spirit, one God,
blessed for evermore: and do acknowledge the holy Scriptures of
the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.’
And lest any Papist might make use of this declaration, there were
required sufficient Protestant witnesses that the declarer was a
Protestant dissenter. Besides no congregation or assembly for
religious worship was permitted or allowed by this act, until the place
of such meeting should be certified to the bishop of the diocese, or to
the archdeacon of the archdeaconry; or to the justices of the peace at
the general or quarter-sessions of the peace for the county, city, or
place, in which such meeting should be held, and registered in the said
bishop’s or archdeacon’s court respectively, or recorded at the said
general or quarter-sessions: for which the register or clerk should not
take greater fee or reward than sixpence.
By this we now see the religion of the Quakers acknowledged and
tolerated by an act of parliament; and themselves released from all
persecution for performance of their public worship, and their refusal
of the oath of allegiance. This was a work reserved for that great
prince king William, who being born in a country where force upon
conscience was abrogated, when a Protestant government was settled
there, now also according to his ability introduced the like Christian
liberty in England: but to release from the payment of tithes was
beyond his reach, how unreasonably soever the clergy acted in this
case; whereof about this time a notable instance was published in
print, of one John Bishop, a countryman at Wortham, from whom for
two years tithes there had been taken, horses, kine, and sheep, to
the value of about seventy-six pounds, according to the estimate of
impartial persons, though rated by himself at eighty-three pounds. And
yet the priest, Thomas Thurlow, had declared upon his oath, that he
believed that the tithes of every year’s growth of the said Bishop, did
amount one year with another, to three pounds seventeen shillings and
sixpence; but the charges were reckoned so high, and the rating of the
distrained goods was so very much beneath the real value, that the loss
thereby sustained was exceeding great.
In Barbadoes, in the West Indies, where the inhabitants were marshalled
to bear arms, the Quakers, notwithstanding what had been ordered in
their favour by king James, continued yet under hard sufferings, of
which more in the sequel. They now that were thus oppressed, sent over
a petition to the king, wherein they set forth how they were molested,
and prayed for relief; which had such effect, that the king issued
forth the following order:
‘_At the Council at Whitehall, Dec. 12, 1689._
‘Present the king’s most excellent majesty in council.
‘Upon reading a petition of the people called Quakers, inhabiting
the island of Barbadoes, setting forth, that because the said
Quakers could not bear arms, nor take an oath in any case, they
have suffered much by virtue of an act made to settle the militia
in the said island; as in the petition hereunto annexed, is more
at large expressed; his majesty in council is graciously pleased
to refer the matter of the said petition to the examination
of James Kendal, esq. his majesty’s governor of Barbadoes for
the time being, who is to give the petitioners such relief in
relation to the militia, as to him shall seem just and reasonable
to answer their particular circumstances, and to make report
thereof to his majesty.