A bold step taken by the Nonjurors in the year 1694 deepened and
perpetuated their schism, and some circumstances tainted their
proceedings with more disloyalty than could be involved in the mere
refusal of an oath. Sancroft, as if copying Romish pretensions,
had appointed Lloyd, ex-Bishop of Norwich, his “Vicar,” “Factor,”
“Proxy-General,” or “Nuncio.” Lloyd accordingly proceeded, in concert
with the deprived Prelates of Peterborough and Ely, to appoint two
Bishops. To soften appearances and to avoid collisions, they gave the
persons appointed the titles of Suffragans of Thetford and of Ipswich,
and, in keeping with their own Jacobitism, they consulted the Royal
Exile respecting those who should fill the offices. Dr. Hickes was
despatched on a visit to St. Germains, with a list of the Nonjurors, to
ask James to exercise the prerogative by nominating two clergymen for
these posts. He graciously received the delegate, who spent six weeks
in travelling that short distance, and in overcoming the difficulties
of access to his Court. Having consulted the Pope, the Archbishop
of Paris, and Bossuet of Meaux, whether it would be consistent with
loyalty to the Church to do what was asked, James, with their sanction,
nominated Hickes as Suffragan of Thetford, and Wagstaffe as Suffragan
of Ipswich.[455] It is plain that James made capital out of this to
further his own designs, for he was at that time deep in plans of
invasion, and his correspondence with Hickes and the Bishop of Norwich
points to them as accredited agents.[456] On the 24th of February,
1694, Hickes and Wagstaffe were admitted into the Episcopal order by
the three deprived Bishops, and the ceremony took place in a private
house in London, where the Bishop of Peterborough lodged, the Earl of
Clarendon being present on the occasion.
[Sidenote: NONJURORS.]
[Sidenote: 1694–1702.]
Great care was taken by some of the Nonjurors to ascertain the number
and circumstances of clergymen included within their party. It is the
effect of such ecclesiastical divisions to bring into bonds of closest
acquaintance those who agree upon some distinctive principle. Amongst
the _Baker MSS._ is a document containing a long list of those
who forfeited their preferment rather than take the new oath,[457]
and among them the following names occur, with some indications of
character and position appended:--
“Mr. Milner, Vicar of Leeds and Prebendary of Ripon, a very learned,
worthy person, is thought well able to live; hath a son preferred to
a good living in Sussex by the late Bishop of Chichester, his uncle,
and a daughter yet unmarried. Mr. Yorke, one of the Vicars Choral of
the Cathedral Church of York, and Curate of St. Belfrey’s, a sober,
loyal person, and zealous for our Church. He hath a wife and child,
but low in worldly circumstances; his losses might amount unto about
£80 per annum. Mr. Cressey, Vicar of Sheriff Hutton (of the yearly
value of about £50), a gentleman well born, of good principles, and
sober conversation; he married old Mr. Thinscrosse’s niece; hath with
her two children; little to live on, save the charity of relations,
and that Sir Henry Slingsbie at present retains him for his domestic
chaplain. Mr. Winshup, Curate of Malton and Prebendary of York (his
loss may be computed about £80); a very learned, good and brisk man;
hath a wife but no child, and some pretty temporal estate, and, as I am
told, is now at London, bending his studies towards the law; a great
acquaintance of late Baron Ingleby. Mr. Symms, Rector of Langton (value
about £80 per annum), a truly loyal and firmly-principled Church of
England man; was lately imprisoned through malice, when the Papists
were secured, the grief whereof (as thought) broke his wife’s heart,
who was a devout gentlewoman; he hath a daughter, and may be an object
worthy of compassion and charity. Mr. Holmes, Rector of Burstwicke and
Vicar of Paul (value about £100 per annum), a gentleman of good family,
(fellow-sufferer with Mr. Symms), sober and well deserving; hath a wife
(who was Dr. Stone’s daughter of York) and many children, and now makes
very hard shift to live. Mr. Rosse, Vicar of Scawby (valued at £40 per
annum), a man of very good parts and learning, but given to excess of
drinking, even to scandal, yet hath a wife and charge of children, and
is an object of pity and charity (if he could be reformed), and very
right in his principles. Mr. Mawburn, Minister of Crake, though within
ours, yet of the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Durham; one who is
master of too much learning, except he made better use of it, a great
complier with all the designs of the late reign, and too scandalous
in his conversation upon all accounts. I do not know of any charge he
hath, nor what is become of him, but his living was commonly reported
about £100 per annum.”
Many other names are given, some reported as “poor,” others “not poor,”
or “well to pass.”
[Sidenote: NONJURORS.]
The Nonjurors fixed their head-quarters in the Metropolis. There
Kettlewell settled after leaving his incumbency. With all his ardour
and decision he did not practically go so far as some of his brethren.
He objected to the clergy attending parish churches, because, as
he said, if only two or three joined them in private, they might
canonically minister, and have Christ in the midst of them; but he did
not object to the laity uniting in worship with clergymen who took
the oaths. Upon examining the ground of this concession, however, we
find it rests on the idea that the ministration of the ordained is
essential to the Divine acceptance of social service, and the public
devotion in which he allowed the laity to participate only consisted of
common prayer on ordinary occasions, not of special prayer connected
with national festivals.[458] He would in no way sanction the use of
intercession for William and Mary, and was himself very particular in
praying not only for King James, but in obeying the order issued before
the Revolution, for supplications on behalf of the Prince of Wales. He
reached, by a confused logical process, the high ecclesiastical ground,
“that the determination of the Church of England, so solemnly given
in her prayers, was on his side, and was so binding as it could not
be reversed by a superior authority, or even reversed at all, without
making the public voice of this Church to contradict itself.”[459] He
pushed his views of the individual responsibility of clergymen--and,
if I understand him aright, of laymen as well--to such an extent that
he reached a position of thorough independency, for he says, true and
faithful pastors are not so strictly bound to keep up external unity
and peace, as to maintain truth and righteousness and the unpolluted
worship of the Church; and that however private persons are bound to
use modesty and caution in following the “venerable ecclesiastical
judicatories on earth, yet it is not any _implicit dependence_
on men, or a _blind obedience_ to any human sentence or decision
whatsoever, but observance of the truth itself, and of what God hath
in His Word decided, that must justify them in determining themselves
whom they are to follow.”[460] This is the very protestantism of the
Protestant Religion, the very dissidence of dissent, and it affords an
example of the inconsistency which comes in the wake of circumstances,
and of the odd way in which extremes meet. Kettlewell, in fact, had
become a Nonconformist, and he justified himself only by arguments
of the same description as those which other Nonconformists employ.
From the same cause he was led to declare, there might be ground for
breaking off from any Church without incurring schism, “there being
some things not to be borne with, nor others to be parted with, for the
sake of an external union;”[461] so far he made common cause with John
Robinson and John Owen.
[Sidenote: 1694–1702.]
Kettlewell entered with sympathy into the poverty and sufferings of
his brethren. They had many of them lost all, and this benevolent
man, anxious to assuage their distress, drew up a plan for collecting
and distributing a fund for their relief, directing inquiries as to
the income and expenditure of the deprived, with a view to prevent
impositions upon charity. He proposed that the Clergy in London, who
had no business there, but remained only because it was the best
place for obtaining gifts, should be sent where they would be better
maintained at less expense, and where they might make themselves of
some service. Then, touching upon a notorious evil, he remarked, that
others would then have no excuse for frequenting coffee-houses and
hunting after benefactions, but would have time to promote their own
improvement, and he advised those who sought relief, simply to note
their sufferings, without making reflections.[462] He did not confine
himself to sectarian charity, but sought also to promote the welfare of
persons not of his own communion, of which a monument remained after
his death, in a comprehensive trust, of which he was the founder.[463]
[Sidenote: NONJURORS.]
Kettlewell remained a Nonjuror to the last, and on his death-bed
expressed his distinctive principles; but he did something better, and
beautifully uttered the language of Christian hope.
He expired April the 12th, 1695, in London, and was buried in the
parish church of All Hallows, near the Tower, in the same grave which
had contained the remains of Archbishop Laud from his death till the
Restoration. Ken was permitted by the Incumbent to read Evening Prayers
on the occasion, and to attend in his episcopal robes to perform the
burial service.
Kettlewell’s scheme of charitable relief received the sanction of the
Nonjuring Bishops, who wrote a letter in its favour. The proceeding
was laudable; yet such was the political antipathy to the Nonjurors
by those in power, that Ken had to appear before the Privy Council to
account for putting his name to the appeal; and of the interrogations
he received and the answers he gave, there remains a report under his
own hand.
[Sidenote: 1694–1702.]
Dodwell threw his whole soul into the Nonjuring cause, and continued
on its behalf, after the schism had occurred, the advocacy he had
undertaken at the beginning. His pen was busy with denunciations and
encouragements; in private letters to those whom he suspected of
timidity, he deplored the general apostacy from Church principles;
described the apostates as pretending to the name of the Church of
England, whilst acting on the principles of its adversaries; spoke of
latitudinarian notions as tincturing those of the laity who were so
warm for what they call liberty of conscience; and expressed his deep
sorrow for what he considered vacillation and cowardice.
No multitude of apostates, he declared, could ever be pleaded as an
authoritative example against a small number continuing firm. The
doctrine and practice of these faithful Abdiels, he added, had been
maintained by the Church in all the cases which had occurred from
the beginning of the Reformation to that very day. In the case of
Queen Mary and the Lady Jane Grey, in the case of Cromwell and King
Charles II., nay, in the present case, and in opposition to republican
adversaries. He believed there were few of these great lapsers but
would, a few years before, have resented it, like Hazael, as a great
calamity and scandal had they been charged with doing the things which
they had since actually done.
[Sidenote: NONJURORS.]
He denounced all compliance, eschewed all compromise, and reprobated
all “carnal politics;” warned against balancing expediency with
conscience, and against seeking to promote Protestantism by a sacrifice
of Church principles.[464] He set aside reasons for taking the oaths,
by saying there is no cause so bad but something may be said in its
support, and by referring to Carneades’ _Oration on Injustice_,
Burgess and Barnet’s _Defence of Sacrilege_, and the Hungarian’s
_Vindication of Polygamy_. As an illustration of the lengths to
which party spirit will carry people, I may cite the following passage
from Dodwell’s vehement lucubration: “It is not a particular sect or
opinion that we contend for, but the very being of a Church and of
religion. Whether there shall be any faith that shall oblige to our
own hindrance? Whether religion, which ought to add to its sacredness,
shall be made a pretence for violating it? Whether our Holy Mother, the
Church of England, which hath been famous for her loyalty, shall now be
as infamous for her apostacy? Whether there be any understanding men
who, in this incredulous age, can find in their hearts to venture the
greatest worldly interest for their religion; that is, indeed, whether
there be any that are in earnest with religion?”[465]
[Sidenote: 1694–1702.]
Yet Dodwell wrote from Shottesbrook, August 29th, 1700, to Archbishop
Tenison, requesting him to use his influence in providing Bishops
for the colonies. “The occasion of this present address,” he says,
“is not to beg any favour for myself, nor for our dear fathers and
brethren whom I follow in this excellent cause; it is for that very
body which is headed by you against us, which, we hope, will at length
unite with us on the old terms, when worldly concerns are removed.
You have an opportunity put into your hands of doing God service in
the plantations, and of entitling yourself thereby to greater rewards
from God than you can expect from any of your worldly designs.” And
in November of the same year I discover him corresponding with the
same distinguished person as to healing the Church’s wound. First,
he despatched a _feeler_ on the subject, which was civilly
received, with a request for further communication, and then he
propounded certain terms of recommunion. He thought the Clergy who had
taken the oaths might agree with the Nonjurors so far as to maintain,
in opposition to all Commonwealth’s-men, the doctrine of passive
obedience “to the lawful Prince for the time being,” each party being
left to apply the principle in his own way. As to the doctrine of the
Church’s independency, he proposed there should be “expressions as
full as possible disowning the validity of the Lay Act with regard to
conscience, and protesting against what had been done in this matter
as unfit to pass into a precedent.” As to prayers for the reigning
family, so strongly objected to by Kettlewell, he did not regard
them as obliging a separation. He took, he says in obscure language,
the right of public offices to belong to governors who might _bona
fide_ differ in opinion from their subjects, and, notwithstanding,
be included by them in their intercessions. He did not mean that men
might own those opinions as true which they believed false, yet they
might let them pass as the sense of the community of which they were
members. At the beginning Dodwell suggested, if the reconciliation
could be effected, that the remaining deprived Bishops should “hold
their places, with a third part of the profits, without taking the
oaths;” and in the end, “If you will do nothing on your part to qualify
you for union with us, our fathers will have performed their part, and
you alone must be answerable for the consequences of it.”[466]
Hickes, Suffragan Bishop of Thetford, resided in Ormond Street,
exerting an influence very different from that of Ken, Kettlewell, and
Nelson; for whilst they kept aloof from political intrigues, he plunged
deeply into the eddying whirlpool, and whilst they allowed the laity to
attend parish churches, he denounced those who did so. He most absurdly
maintained that even when no State prayers occurred in the service,
simply to hold fellowship with schismatics--and such he denominated all
except Nonjurors--was a flagrant betrayal of Christian principle.[467]
[Sidenote: NONJURORS.]
On another point he was at variance with Kettlewell. Hickes thought it
lawful to wear a military disguise that he might escape detection, and
once was introduced, in Kettlewell’s presence, as Captain or Colonel
Somebody, for which a patriotic precedent was characteristically
alleged, by quoting the case of a certain Bishop of old, who, amidst an
Arian persecution, assumed a military title. Nor did Turner object to
the practice of absconding under borrowed names. But against everything
of this kind the severely truthful Kettlewell set his face like a
flint, and would not have swerved a hair’s-breadth from the straightest
line of honesty to save his life.[468]
Eccentric individuals might be found amongst those who, by Nonjuring
sympathies, were drawn together in a city then, as now, containing
social worlds, scarcely by any chance touching each other. Such
precisians cut themselves off from general intercourse and form
narrow-minded habits, which satisfy their own consciences, but provoke
the ridicule of other people.
[Sidenote: 1694–1702.]
Amongst those who in William’s reign often met together and talked over
the affairs of the deprived Clergy, occurs the name of Dr. Francis
Lee--Rabbi Lee, as he came to be called, because of his Jewish
learning. He had been deprived of a fellowship at St. John’s College,
Oxford, and after travelling abroad and practising as a physician in
Venice for a couple of years, had returned to London in 1694, when he
joined a company of Mystics, and married the prophetess of the sect--a
wild sort of lady, who imagined that she received revelations from
God and from angels, and had been taught by them the finite duration
of future punishment. Besides this species of modern Montanism, Lee
adopted peculiar opinions on other subjects, and published proposals
to Peter the Great, Czar of Muscovy, for the better framing of his
extensive government.[469]
[Sidenote: NONJURORS.]
No layman attained such a position amongst the Nonjurors as Robert
Nelson, pupil of the Anglican Dr. George Bull, and friend of Dr.
Mapletoft, who had been educated in the family of his great-uncle,
Nicholas Farrer, of Gidding. He early imbibed influences favourable
to the adoption of High Church views. His friendship with the
Latitudinarian Archbishop Tillotson, and with the half-Puritan Bishop
Kidder, might hold in check for awhile prior tendencies, but could not
prevent their ultimately producing effect. His personal regard for
Tillotson lasted till death; he held the Primate in his arms at the
moment he expired; yet then all Nelson’s deference to his opinions had
ceased, for from the crisis of the Revolution he had been a Nonjuring
Jacobite. The conversion to Popery of his wife--an aristocratic widow,
the Lady Theophila Lucy, who had become violently enamoured of his
handsome person--did not incline him at all towards Rome, though it
could not prove inimical to the development of his Catholic tendencies.
Of his intense devoutness and religious zeal there can be no doubt,
nor of his respectable abilities; and the importance of such an
accession to the new sect was heightened by other circumstances. No
one can look at his portrait without admiring the taste of Lady Lucy.
His fine features, set off to advantage by a good complexion and the
adventitious decoration of a magnificent wig, must have given him an
imposing presence. That presence was further aided by the taste and
expensiveness of his apparel, to which should be added the recollection
of his wealth and his aristocratic connections. Thus fitted to make his
way in society, he naturally became amongst poor and persecuted people
a commanding personage--an oracle with some, a counsellor with all. He
associated with Lloyd; corresponded with Frampton; was acquainted with
Ken; for Kettlewell he felt a warm attachment; Collier and Spinckes
were numbered amongst his friends; and Hickes lived close neighbour to
him in Ormond Street, Red Lion Fields.
[Sidenote: 1694–1702.]
In his previous residence at Blackheath Nelson wrote books by which
he has become well known to posterity. Few may have heard of _The
Practice of True Devotion_, which he anonymously published in 1698,
or of his _Exhortation to Housekeepers_, which appeared in 1702;
but a lasting fame has followed his _Companion for the Festivals and
Fasts_, which issued from the press in 1704. Bodies of divinity,
founded upon the Apostles’ Creed and upon the Thirty-Nine Articles,
bearing distinguished names, were popular at the time, and books
explanatory of Church offices had attained some reputation;[470] but no
book aiming to explain theological doctrine, through ecclesiastical
associations, could vie with this in the extent of its immediate
circulation. The design struck in with tendencies then beginning to
unfold--not ritualistic in the modern acceptation of the term; but
sacramental--in the way of frequent celebration of the Eucharist and a
strict observance of sacred seasons. The production is pervaded with
a cast of thought which, though pre-eminently cherished by Nonjurors,
was not peculiar to them. Nelson believed that the Episcopal Church of
England is the great conservator of orthodoxy; that her Prayer-Book is
an unparalleled help to devotion; that Sacraments lie at the centre
of Christianity; and that holy days are seasons of blessed revival.
He wrote accordingly; and what he wrote was acceptable to members
outside his own circle, not only on account of their sympathy with
his Church views, but because there lay at the bottom of it this true
idea, that theology should be the handmaid of devotion; that faith
finds expression in worship; that religion is not a metaphysical idea,
but a life which pours itself out in prayer and praise before God,
and in justice and charity towards man. I must add, however, that the
popularity of Nelson’s publication seems in some degree due to the
patronage it received, the eulogiums pronounced upon it, and the means
adopted by religious societies for its circulation. In a literary
point of view it can pretend to little, if any merit. The form of
question and answer, as bare as any catechism, gives it no attraction.
The remarks are commonplace, without any attempt at illustration. For
whatever learning may be found in its pages the reader is indebted not
to Robert Nelson, but to Dr. Cave.
The book, prepared I presume at Blackheath, was published whilst Nelson
lived in Ormond Street, where he received the congratulations of
his friends, especially of the Nonjurors, who naturally regarded the
popularity of the work as a signal service to their cause.
[Sidenote: NONJURORS.]
Nonjuring circles in the Metropolis must often have been agitated
by rumours of plots, real or imagined. In the saloons of Jacobite
nobles, in the back rooms of city shops, in the garrets of Little
Britain, stories would be whispered of preparations made for restoring
the legitimate Sovereign. In the autumn of 1698 such tales reached
the ears of the Duke of Shrewsbury’s Secretary. A Jacobite party had
provided sixty horses: these were dispersed in Kent and about town,
some in the hands of jockeys. They had engaged a Canterbury innkeeper
to help onward their project, had raised a fund of above £1,000, were
on the tiptoe of expectation, and only waited for a signal to mount
their steeds and be off like the wind. So the Secretary heard, and,
in connection with the retailing of all this talk, he stated, that
he was on the point of apprehending a person who dealt in policies
of insurance upon James’s restoration. He paid a guinea--so runs the
letter--to receive fifty if the King or his son should reascend the
throne by the following Michaelmas--certainly a strange scheme for
promoting his return, since it became the interest of everyone who
received the guinea to keep the Royal refugee away.[471]
[Sidenote: 1694–1702.]
[Sidenote: NONJURORS.]
Centres of Nonjuring influence and activity existed in the country.
Shottesbrook Park, near Maidenhead, with its beautiful church of
decorated Gothic, and its manor-house full of convenience and
comfort--the home of Francis Cherry, a country gentleman, both handsome
and accomplished, “the idol of Berkshire”--offered a pleasant retreat
for the deprived.[472] Many could be accommodated within the spacious
Hall, for it contained not less than seventy beds; and the owner
was as free in his hospitality as he was rich in his resources. His
heart went with the exiled King, and a story is told to the effect
that once, in a hunting-field, when closely pressed by William’s
steed, he plunged into the Thames where the river was deep and broad,
hoping that the piqued monarch might be induced to follow through the
uncomfortable if not perilous passage. To Shottesbrook House, Robert
Nelson often repaired. There the Nonjuror Charles Leslie found a
welcome, and at a later period than this volume embraces, disguised
in regimentals, when, in danger of apprehension, he obtained shelter
in a neighbouring house until by Cherry’s help he made his escape,
and set out to Bar-le-duc to attempt the conversion of the Pretender.
Many a scene of excitement, many a flush of hope, many a flutter of
fear, many a pang of disappointment must have occurred under the roof
of the Shottesbrook squire, as persons deep in political intrigues
met for conference. Bowdler, Nelson’s neighbour in Ormond Street,
accompanied by his family, was a visitor to this spot; Brokesby, a
deprived clergyman of Rowley, near Hull, found in it a resting-place;
and the learned Prussian Lutheran, Dr. Grabe, who had come over to
receive orders in the Episcopal Church, cultivated friendships at
the agreeable mansion--convenient for him because not very far from
Oxford, where treasures of learning excited his curiosity and increased
his erudition. Hickes delighted in his company, and after his death
compared him to a great and mighty prince, who, dying, leaves behind
many plans of noble and curious buildings, some half, some almost,
and others entirely finished.[473] In the same place, there also
resided the famous Henry Dodwell, whose views distinguished him from
Kettlewell, and still more from Hickes. Entering into ecclesiastical
subtleties, Dodwell would say “that if there had been a synodical
deprivation of the orthodox and faithful fathers of the Church, however
in itself unjust, yet the Clergy and laity ought to have complied
with the greater obligation of owning the Episcopal College than with
the less obligation of owning any particular Bishop.” In this respect
he differed from Kettlewell, who would no more allow of a synodical
than of a secular deprivation, making, as we have seen in reference
to this question, individual conscientiousness the paramount rule of
action. And further in the same line he differed from Kettlewell, for
Kettlewell made the Church throughout subserve religion, but Dodwell
made religion subserve the Church.[474] Dodwell was really in principle
a higher Churchman, though in practice lower, than Kettlewell--much
lower than Hickes; for Hickes would not attend parish worship at all,
and Kettlewell discountenanced it in the Clergy; but Dodwell would
join in morning and evening prayer, childishly satisfying his scruples
when the name of the reigning Sovereign occurred by sliding off his
knees and sitting down on the hassock. It is amusing to notice the
methods of protest against prayers for the reigning family adopted
by Nonjurors. Some rose from their knees and stood up in the face of
the congregation; some shut their books; some turned over the leaves
so as to make a noise; some satisfied themselves by declining to say
_Amen_, or by mentally substituting the names of the exiled
Stuarts. Dodwell, whilst living with Mr. Cherry, had a remarkable pupil
in Thomas Hearne, who was patronized by the generous host, supported
at his cost, and prepared at his expense for the University, as if he
had been his own son. Hearne, as we are informed on his own authority,
was instructed “in the true principles of the Church of England”--an
expression we can easily understand; and we learn from the same
source how busily the incipient archæologist engaged at Shottesbrook
in studies and work subsidiary to literary schemes carried on by the
eminent Nonjurors there congregated together.[475]
[Sidenote: 1694–1702.]
Within a few miles of Frome, in Somersetshire, stands Longleat House, a
palatial abode, surrounded by gardens, in the midst of a wooded park,
worthy of the beauty and magnificence of the mansion. Just outside
the park paling rises the old church of Horningsham, and hard by is a
little Dissenting meeting-house, the most ancient in our island. The
place is not above twenty miles from Wells, and part of the domain
comes within the diocese. There the most eminent and the most admirable
of Nonjurors, Thomas Ken, took up his abode, at the request of Lord
Weymouth, the possessor of Longleat; and if social gatherings like
those of Shottesbrook did not occur there, the residence of the Prelate
rendered it a source of the purest Nonjuring influence. He occupied a
room at the top of the house, removed from the noise and bustle of an
English hall, “open to all comers of fashion and quality.” Surrounded
by his large library, “he wrote hymns, and sang them to his viol, and
prayed, and died.”[476] The most popular of all his sacred lays--the
Morning and Evening Hymns--were composed on the top of a hill, which,
from the prospect it commands through a break in the woods, is well
known throughout the neighbourhood by the beautiful name of “the Gate
of Heaven.”
[Sidenote: NONJURORS.]
Whether he attended the services at the parish church is matter of
controversy. One of his biographers thinks that up to the accession
of Queen Anne he enjoyed, in Lord Weymouth’s private chapel, “the
privilege of pure services, without alloy of the State prayers;” but
it is added, “During his visits to his nephew at Poulshot, or when he
was in other places where he could not find any Nonjuring assembly, we
may conclude, from what he himself says, that, rather than be debarred
the solace of Christian communion, he went to church.”[477] At all
events, Ken was distressed at the idea of perpetuating schism; he
had no sympathy with the spirit of Hickes; though he allowed excuses
for clandestine consecration, he declared his own judgment to be
against them; and though his scruples compelled him to retire from his
bishopric, he longed earnestly for the reunion of the Church.
Ken survived King William some years, but two of the Nonjuring
Prelates, in addition to those already deceased, expired before the
Sovereign whose rights they would not acknowledge.
[Sidenote: 1694–1702.]
White, Bishop of Peterborough, died in 1698. Bishop Turner sent to
the Dean of St. Paul’s to bury the deceased Bishop in St. Gregory’s
churchyard; the Dean had it intimated to him “that any clergyman
conformable to the Church and Government might bury him.” “Bishop
Turner, who was one that carried up the pall, with thirty or forty
more of the Clergy, and some few laymen, attended him from the house
where he died, and being come into the churchyard almost as far as
the grave, they espied Mr. Standish, one of the Minor Canons, in
his surplice, ready to read the office. At the sight of him they
immediately made a halt, and, after they had conferred amongst
themselves a little while, all the Clergy opened on each side to let
the corpse pass along to the grave, and went, every one of them,
back again, so that only two or three of the laity stayed to see him
interred. It seems the party renounced all manner of communion with any
person conformable to the Church and Government.”[478] I have already
pointed out that there were two classes of Nonjurors: the practically
moderate, represented by Ken and others, even indeed by Dodwell--and
the extreme, represented by Hickes; and it is apparent that the persons
who attended White’s funeral were of the latter description, and would
not in any way hold fellowship with any but their own party.
In the month of November, 1700, the Bishop who attended that funeral
followed his episcopal brother into the invisible world. Turner was
very poor--“in very needy circumstances,” says Bishop Nicholson,
“having a large family, and no support out of the common bank of
charity.” He lived in extreme retirement, and was buried in the chancel
of Therfield Church, Hertford, where he had once been rector, a single
word only being inscribed on the stone which covered his mortal
remains, but that word most expressive--_Expergiscar_.
[Sidenote: NONJURORS.]
Samuel Pepys, who lost his official appointment upon the accession of
William and Mary, and consequently at that time retired into private
life, wearied in his last days with cares and jaded with pleasures,
sought relief in the duties of religion, and inquired through Nelson
for a spiritual adviser. Nelson’s reply to his request throws a
curious light upon the circumstances of the Nonjurors’ condition:
“After the strictest inquiry, I find none of our Clergy placed in your
neighbourhood nearer than Mitcham, where lives one Mr. Higden, a very
ingenious person, who married the late Lord Stowell’s sister; but I
believe you may have one with greater ease from London, by reason of
the conveniency of public conveyances. Our friend, Dean Hickes, is at
present at Oxford; but if you will be pleased whenever your occasions
require it to send to Mr. Spinckes, who has the honour of being known
to you, he will be sure to wait upon you, and take such measures
that you may always be supplied whenever you stand in need of such
assistance. He lodges at a glazier’s in Winchester Street, near London
Wall.”[479]
Pepys died in the summer of 1703, and, in a letter to Dr. Charlett,
Hickes described the services he rendered the dying man, and the effect
which they produced upon him.
[Sidenote: 1694–1702.]
Some Jacobites who took the oaths with certain qualifications repented
afterwards, and openly threw in their lot with such as refused to
swear. One of them drew up a penitential confession, in which, with
morbid conscientiousness, he dwelt upon what he called his sinful
compliance. Acknowledgment after acknowledgment of minute particulars,
expanded in terms which magnified each, occurs in the document, closing
with the reiterated prayer: “I accuse, and judge, and condemn myself:
God be merciful to me a penitent!” Retraction was accompanied by a
petition to the ejected Bishop, in which the writer exclaims: “Blessed
Jesu! though I cannot now glory in my not having fallen, yet I will
take all the shame of my fall to myself, that I may give Thee glory;
and though I cannot now rejoice in my innocence, I desire to cause
joy in heaven (and if Thou pleasest, many penitents on earth) by my
repentance.”[480] No one who is at the trouble of perusing this tedious
composition can doubt the sincerity of the writer, but nobody of common
sense can fail to perceive his weakness, not to speak of the mischief
he did to morality and religion by exaggerations of minor casuistical
points. For though this man mentions his “first dismal step of taking
the sacred name of God in vain,” he does not dwell upon the sin of
perjury, but expatiates upon the wickedness of having connived at,
though he never used, the prayers introduced at the Revolution.
Another clergyman did what was still more astonishing: he publicly
retracted his oath, and preached upon the words: “I have sinned greatly
in that I have done; and now, I beseech Thee, O Lord, take away the
iniquity of Thy servant; for I have done very foolishly,” at the same
time he exhorted his congregation to renew their allegiance to James,
for whom, as the King of England, and for his family, he publicly
prayed. Such an act was downright rebellion, and no wonder the man got
into trouble. Being tried for his offence, he was sentenced to stand
in the pillory and to pay a fine of £200; but the Government wisely
treated him as a lunatic, and offered a pardon if he would confess his
fault. This he declined to do; consequently he remained in confinement.
Not only did other clergymen retract compliance, but a layman who
had qualified himself for office by taking the oaths, solemnly, on
his death-bed, in the presence of witnesses, signed a declaration of
penitence. The political feeling mixed up with the confession is
plain, and all these people, while professing the utmost piety, proved
themselves to be unfaithful subjects.
[Sidenote: NONJURORS.]
The political views of the Nonjurors were narrow in the extreme, and
though to be irreligious was a thing they dreaded most of all, their
views of the State were of a very irreligious kind. They took away from
it all moral and religious life, and if they consistently followed
out their own theory, they took away all conscience from the subjects
of a legitimate and anointed King. Their system exalted such a person
to the highest point of favour, and degraded the people to the lowest
step of slavery. Denuding them of political rights, they denied them
political duties, and annihilated all their political responsibilities.
In the death-blow aimed at popular power, morality and religion, in
reference to political life, were blindly smitten. Yet whilst their
creed only left scope for patience in suffering, numbers of them
did not practice this patience, but were everlastingly plotting a
counter-revolution. To them the State appeared as an instrument in the
hands of the Church--to be controlled for its use, to afford revenues
for its support, to supply means for the enforcement of its laws. The
civil power, according to their theory, has been described as “a body
constituted, it would seem, of three principal elements--an absolute
king, money-bags, and a hangman.”[481] It must be said, to the credit
of the Nonjurors, that however slavishly loyal to an absolute king,
they showed an indifference to the “money-bags” and a contempt for the
“hangman”--a fact worthy of imitation by some who entertain a different
theory from them.
[Sidenote: 1694–1702.]
To Sancroft, the Nonjurors, the ecclesiastical Tories of the period,
and all men of that stamp who clung to the notion of the divine right
of kings, may be applied the remark: “The great crises in the history
of nations have often been met by a sort of feminine positiveness and
a more obstinate reassertion of principles which have lost their hold
upon a nation. The fixed ideas of a reactionary politician may be
compared to madness. He grows more and more convinced of the truth of
his notions as he becomes more isolated, and would rather await the
inevitable than in any degree yield to circumstances.”[482]
The Nonjuring movement took a narrow and troublesome political
form, yet, notwithstanding all we have said, it was animated by
an intensely religious spirit. This movement did not proceed from
any principle founded upon reason, observation, or experience,
but from a theological dogma about the divine right of kings,
and the consequent duty, religious as it appeared to them, that
subjects should unresistingly obey the Lord’s annointed. The scheme
tended to the political enslavement of the country; it sapped the
liberties of our constitution; yet it appears to have been an honest
endeavour--prejudiced and ignorant, still an honest endeavour--to serve
God: one of a multitude of instances in which false opinions have
perverted true sentiments, and good motives have given sincerity and
disinterestedness to bad actions. No philosophy of history, but one so
wretchedly narrow as to forfeit all title to the name, will deny the
co-existence of right and wrong in the same men, however hard it may be
to untie the knot between them.
[Sidenote: NONJURORS.]
High Church theology of the Thorndike type had no adequate
representative amongst the Nonjurors. They included no one of
intellectual mark. Bull, the most distinguished scholar and the ablest
divine of the old Anglican school, remained in the Establishment;
so did all the chief theologians who leaned in the same direction
with him. But High Church sentiment of the Laudean order, and such
as belonged to Cosin and Seth Ward, drained off almost entirely into
Nonjuring channels. The Nonjurors also went beyond their predecessors
in this respect. They cast off all the Erastian trammels which were
willingly worn by the Bishops of the Restoration.
Gladly would the Nonjurors have wrought out a method of parochial
discipline which would have kept in order not merely such religionists
as agreed in their views, but the population at large, reducing
everybody to a Procrustean bed of belief and practice. No Presbyterians
under the Commonwealth could have been more rigorous apostles of
uniformity than the Nonjurors would have proved, had they but obtained
permission to do as they pleased. They would have gone beyond their
predecessors; for though Milton says presbyter is priest writ large,
a mere presbyter has not the same element of despotic force at his
command as is possessed by the genuine priest. The priest, as a steward
of mystical sacraments, becomes more potent than preacher or pastor. He
is constituted lord of a domain beyond the borders of reason and moral
authority; he carries keys which open and shut what the superstitious
imagine to be gates of heaven. The Nonjurors were priests, not with
limitations, like some of their episcopalian brethren, but out and out.
Their ministers offered sacrifice upon an altar, they did not merely
commemorate one at the Lord’s-table. Laymen imbibed their views--they
were maintained by Robert Nelson.[483]
[Sidenote: 1694–1702.]
As to modes of worship, the Nonjurors were in circumstances which
precluded ritualistic magnificence. They were proscribed, as
Nonconformist confessors had been, and therefore were forced to
serve God in obscurity. Cathedrals and churches were closed against
them--they were driven into barns and garrets. Pomp, such as is now
so fashionable, was to them an impossibility; not that I find them
manifesting any cravings in that direction. They did not follow
Archbishop Laud. High sacramental views are by no means necessarily
connected with Ritualism. Ritualism may be purely æsthetical, and quite
separate from peculiar doctrinal opinions; at the same time a belief in
the Real presence and in the Sacrifice of the Lord’s Supper may wear an
outward form not more artistic than that which obtains in a Dissenting
meeting-house.[484]
[Sidenote: NONJURORS.]
With all the political and ecclesiastical passions of that age, there
existed comparatively little of what may be properly called religious
excitement. The principal amount of religious excitement in the reign
of William III. must not be sought in the Established Church, or
amongst Presbyterians, Independents, or Baptists. It must be divided
between Nonjurors and Quakers. Dismissing the latter for the present,
it may be said that the former exhibited abundant enthusiasm. Hickes
was as much a spiritual fanatic as any of the Presbyterian army
chaplains, or any of Cromwell’s troopers. Some who reviled the madness
of the sects during the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth, were as mad
themselves after the Revolution. Of that kind of devout fervour, which
though not healthy is free from worldliness, and which draws its main
inspirations from the world to come, Kettlewell is a fair example. In
intensity of religious feelings, he resembled a staunch Methodist of
the eighteenth century.