"Towards the end of Charles the Second's reign, the _High-Church-men_
and the Catholics regarded themselves as on the same side in political
questions, and not greatly divided in their temporal interests. Both
were sufferers in the plot, both were enemies of the sectaries, both
were adherents of the Stuarts. Alternate conversion had been common
between them, so early as since Milton made a reproach to the English
Universities of the converts to the Roman faith daily made within their
colleges: of those sheep--
'Whom the _grim wolf_ with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said.'"
_Life_, 3rd edit. 1834, p. 272.
I quote this passage partly because it gives Sir Walter's interpretation of
that obscure passage in _Lycidas_, respecting which I made a Query (Vol.
ii., p. 246.), but chiefly as a preface to the remark that in James II.'s
reign, and at the time these party names originated, the Roman Catholics
were in league with the Puritans or _Low Church_ party against the High
Churchmen, which increased the acrimony of both parties.
In those days religion was politics, and politics religion, with most of
the belligerents. Swift, however, as if he wished to be thought an
exception to the general rule, chose one party for its politics and the
other for its religion.
"Swift carried into the ranks of the Whigs the opinions and scruples of
a _High Church_ clergyman... Such a distinction between opinions in
Church and State has not frequently existed: the _High Churchmen_ being
usually _Tories_, and the _Low Church_ divines universally
_Whigs_."--Scott's _Life_, 2nd edit.: Edin. 1824, p. 76.
See Swift's _Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions between the Nobles
and Commons of Athens and Rome:_ Lond. 1701.
In his quaint _Argument against abolishing Christianity_, Lond. 1708, the
following passage occurs:
"There is one advantage, greater than any of the foregoing, proposed by
the abolishing of Christianity: that it will utterly extinguish parties
among us by removing those factious distinctions of _High_ and _Low
Church_, of _Whig_ and _Tory_, Presbyterian and Church of England."