[Sidenote: 1685.]
James II. met his Privy Councillors within an hour after his brother’s
death, on the 6th of February; and, upon taking his seat at the head
of the Council-table, he delivered an extempore speech, which was
afterwards written down from memory by Finch, the Solicitor-General.
According to his report, the King declared “I shall make it my
endeavour to preserve this Government both in Church and State, as
it is now by law established. I know the principles of the Church of
England are for monarchy, and the members of it have showed themselves
good and loyal subjects; therefore I shall always take care to defend
and support it.”[134] In explanation of this promise, coupled with so
dubious a compliment to the English Church, James afterwards, in his
own _Memoirs_, states that Finch worded “the speech as strong
as he could,” and, in the hurry, it was allowed to pass “without
reflection;” that he might have more clearly expressed himself had
he used the words “he _never would endeavour to alter_ the
established religion,” instead of the words “he would endeavour _to
preserve_ it;” and that he said he would support and defend the
_professors_ of it, not the _religion_ itself. He further
remarks, that no one could expect he would “make a conscience of
supporting what, in his conscience, he thought erroneous;”--that all he
meant, or could be expected, or was understood to say, was, simply that
he would not molest the members of the Protestant Church.[135] Read in
the light of such sophistry, the speech,--certainly at the time taken
to mean one thing, though the concealed intention of the King was to
do quite another,--shows that James must have possessed even a larger
share than his elder brother, of the inherent duplicity of the Stuart
race. Yet, unlike his brother, he evinced unmistakeable frankness in
the profession of religion; for on leaving the Council he immediately
proceeded with the Queen to the little Roman Catholic Chapel in St.
James’, leaving the door open during Divine service, that any one might
see him at worship there.[136] On Holy Thursday, accompanied by his
guards and gentlemen pensioners, he received the sacrament; and on
Easter Sunday he publicly appeared at mass--the Knights of the Garter,
in their collars, attending him, both as he went, and as he returned.
The Duke of Norfolk, who carried the Sword of State, however, stopped
at the chapel door, upon which His Majesty immediately observed to him,
“My Lord, your father would have gone further.” His Grace promptly
replied, “Your Majesty’s father would not have gone so far.” James not
only commanded an account to be published of Charles’ conforming in his
last moments to the Church of Rome, but he himself published two papers
professedly written by his brother, in favour of its doctrines. These
he showed to Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, who said, “That he did
not think the late King had been so learned in controversy, but that
the arguments in the papers were easy to refute.” James desired him
to confute them if he could. Sancroft satisfied himself with politely
answering, “It ill became him to enter into a controversy with his
Sovereign.”[137]
[Sidenote: JAMES II.]
Plenty of gossip was circulated by lip and pen respecting the conduct
of His Majesty and his sympathizing friends at this important
juncture;--of which gossip a specimen is furnished in a letter, dated
February 24, 1685, which, after being taken out of the post-bag,
instead of reaching the person addressed, found its destination among
the Secretary of State’s papers--to be transferred in the nineteenth
century to the Record Office:--
“It can be no news to acquaint you of His Majesty declaring himself
a Papist and going daily to public mass. Neither can I choose but
commend the prudence and honesty of several great and worthy lords,
who have already assured His Majesty, that they have been a long time
past Papists in their hearts, and prayed His Majesty’s leave to declare
themselves Papists, that they might be in a capacity to serve His
Majesty at the holy altar. But His Majesty, it seems, very prudently
commanded them to contain themselves till after the sitting of
Parliament, and commended their holy zeal, and gave them many thanks,
with great assurances of his favour, &c. We are also very well assured,
from very good hands, that they are already under great apprehensions,
in that God Almighty appears so early against them; since one of the
first magnitude, Beauford [the Duke of Beaufort], has very lately, with
great consternation of soul, declared themselves all undone by His
Majesty’s too forward, and ungovernable zeal, in so soon and so openly
declaring himself: for, said he, had His Majesty been pleased but
to have dissembled himself till a Parliament had been called, we had
been sure to have got through, whereas now I tremble to think of the
dreadful blow an heretical Parliament may give us.”
[Sidenote: 1685.]
In accordance with his unequivocal profession of Romanism, James
complained to the Protestant Bishops of the declamations against Popery
in the pulpits of the Church; and at his coronation, on the 23rd of
April,[138] he declined to receive the sacrament, or to take any part
in the responses, although his Catholic Queen did so devoutly. The
King’s Romanism being demonstrated from the beginning of his reign,
there appears exquisite _naïveté_ or satirical shrewdness, in
the address presented by the Quakers to him on his accession: “We are
told that thou are not of the persuasion of the Church of England, no
more than we; therefore we hope thou wilt grant us the same liberty
which thou allowest thyself; which doing, we wish thee all manner of
happiness.”
[Sidenote: JAMES II.]
The Ministry of the late King were not dismissed by his successor,
but alterations were made in the allotment of offices. Rochester was
appointed Lord Treasurer and Prime Minister. Halifax had to give up
the Privy Seal, and become President of the Council. Ormond was removed
from Dublin, where he had been Viceroy, to Whitehall, where he was to
act as Lord Steward; and Godolphin exchanged his post at the Treasury
for Chamberlainship to the Queen. Sunderland continued Secretary of
State; and Guilford retained the Great Seal; but Jeffreys--Lord Chief
Justice of the King’s Bench, and now made a Peer of Parliament,--with
a seat in the Cabinet, superseded, in political power, the Lord
Keeper. The men who chiefly influenced the councils of the Sovereign,
were Rochester, Sunderland, and Godolphin, and, in some respects, the
infamous Jeffreys.
The Tories welcomed the accession of James with immense enthusiasm;
they presented addresses of extravagant loyalty, and in the elections
for the new Parliament, exerted themselves with a zeal which provoked
the remark of one of their own party. Elections “were thought to be
very indirectly carried on in most places. God grant a better issue
of it than some expect.” “The truth is, there were many of the new
members whose elections and returns were universally censured.”[139]
When Parliament assembled, the King repeated, exactly, his reported
declaration respecting the Established Church; thus confirming the
false impression which his words were sure to produce, and this, too,
notwithstanding the acknowledgment which he records respecting it
in his _Memoirs_. “The Lords and Commons,” says the Bishop of
Norwich, “hummed joyfully, and loudly, at those parts of the speech
which concerned our religion, and the established Government.”[140]
The House of Commons, resolving itself into a Grand Committee of
Religion, determined to “stand by His Majesty” in the defence of the
Reformed faith, and to beg him to “publish a proclamation, putting the
laws in execution against all Dissenters whatsoever from the Church of
England.”[141]
[Sidenote: 1685.]
Perhaps the object of these resolutions was to embarrass the
Government, to disturb the alliance between the King and the High
Church party, and to decoy the Tories into an act, by which they
would commit themselves, and run the risk of breaking with the
Court. Certainly the resolutions tended to lay open to persecution,
directly and distinctly, not only Protestant Nonconformists,--whom
the Government and the Court, as well as the High Church party, were
anxious to repress,--but also Roman Catholics, whom the High Church
party wished to crush, the Court stood prepared to favour, and the
Government were ready to tolerate, for the sake of pleasing their
Royal Master. It has been suggested, that a reluctance in the majority
of the House to trouble Protestant Dissenters just then, produced a
reaction respecting the resolutions, but there is no foundation for
this idea; whereas, it is perfectly plain, that the King and the
Queen were exceedingly annoyed by the proceedings in the Commons’
House, and ordered the Court members to oppose them.[142] To crush
Protestant Nonconformists was a thing which, taken by itself, James
would have been very glad to do, but to persecute the members of
his own Church, was a thing from which he very naturally recoiled.
Obsequiousness to the Crown, in this case, triumphed over zeal against
Popery; and the House underwent the mortification of eating its own
words, and revoking the resolutions which had been passed in Committee,
by declaring it would rest satisfied with His Majesty’s repeated
declaration, to support the religion of the Church of England, as by
law established.[143]
[Sidenote: BAXTER’S TRIAL.]
The disposition of the Government towards Protestant Dissenters appears
in the trial of Richard Baxter. Three weeks after the King’s accession,
this distinguished minister was committed to the King’s Bench, for a
Paraphrase on the New Testament, which he published. On the 18th of
May, being then unwell, he moved for an allowance of further time, in
order to prepare his defence; but in reply to this very reasonable
application, Jeffreys, the Chief Justice, who by his behaviour on the
Bench whilst trying the venerable prisoner, has secured for himself
everlasting infamy, savagely growled out, “I will not give him a
minute’s time more, to save his life.” “Yonder stands Oates in the
pillory, and he says he suffers for the truth, and so says Baxter; but
if Baxter did but stand on the other side of the pillory with him, I
would say, two of the greatest rogues and rascals in the kingdom stood
there.”[144] Twelve days afterwards, Baxter appeared at the bar in
Guildhall, with his friends Sir Henry Ashurst, Dr. Bates, Dr. Sharp,
and Dr. Moore[145] attending by his side; when Jeffreys indulged in
that coarse, vulgar, and well-known rhetoric, a single specimen of
which is sufficient for our purpose. “What ailed the old blockhead, the
unthankful villain, that he would not conform? Was he wiser or better
than other men? He hath been ever since, the spring of the faction. I
am sure he hath poisoned the world with his linsey-woolsey doctrine.
Hang him! this one old fellow hath cast more reproach upon the
constitution and discipline of our Church, than will be wiped off this
hundred years; but I’ll handle him for it; for, by God, he deserves to
be whipped through the City.”
[Sidenote: 1685.]
An eye-witness states, that during this abuse, he himself could
but smile sometimes,--notwithstanding his own tears, and those of
others,--when he saw the Judge imitate “our modern pulpit drollery,”
and drive “on furiously, like Hannibal over the Alps, with fire and
vinegar, pouring all the contempt and scorn upon Baxter, as if he had
been a link-boy or knave.”[146] After the Judge had secured a verdict
from the Jury, the prisoner wrote a letter to the Bishop of London, to
intercede in his behalf. Whether the latter complied with this request,
we do not know; but there is reason to believe that Jeffreys wished to
see the Puritan whipped at the cart-tail, and that the prevention of
the punishment is to be attributed to the interference of his brother
Justices, who might well think it mad and brutal to treat after such
a fashion a man of the highest reputation, and one who had declined
a mitre. But the aged Divine did not escape being fined five hundred
marks, and condemned to imprisonment until he paid the sum. As he
declined to do it, he remained in the King’s Bench until the 24th of
November, 1686, when he obtained release by warrant, upon giving
sureties for his good behaviour.
[Sidenote: REBELLION.]
Scarcely had James ascended the throne, when one rebellion broke out in
Scotland, followed by the trial and execution of the Earl of Argyle;
and another broke out in the West of England, followed by the trial and
execution of the Duke of Monmouth. The latter aspiring to the Crown,
issued an absurd manifesto, took the title of King, and entered in
Royal state the Town of Bridgewater. This conduct could not be endured,
and, consequently, an Army marched against the Pretender, and defeated
him at Sedgemoor.
Mew, the warlike prelate of Winchester, who had fought both for Charles
I. and Charles II., employed his coach-horses in dragging the King’s
artillery to the field. Fell, Bishop of Oxford, assisted in organizing
a body of volunteers for the King’s service; whilst, at the same time,
Ken, whose loyalty is beyond suspicion, affected by the sight of
mutilated bodies left to rot by the roadside, remonstrated against the
cruelty of the officers; and, with an exemplary benevolence, visited
and relieved, at Wells and other places, those who had been taken
prisoners. The Church of England had made loud protestations of loyalty
to King James; but the Protestant Nonconformists, whose constitutional
loyalty in general cannot be impeached, were compromised, in the
estimation of some, by the part which a few of them took in Monmouth’s
rebellion. This unfavourable opinion received encouragement from
sympathy with Dissenters, expressed for selfish purposes, by the
unfortunate Duke himself, whose career could bring nothing but
discredit on his friends; probably, these circumstances sharpened the
severity of the persecution which marked the earlier part of James’
reign.
[Sidenote: 1685.]
Two Nonconformists suffered death from an innocent connection with some
incidents in the rebellion.
Mrs. (sometimes called Lady) Alicia Lisle stood at the bar in the City
of Winchester, before Judge Jeffreys, charged with having concealed,
after the battle of Sedgemoor, a Presbyterian minister named Hicks,
and another man named Nelson. With Nelson there is reason to believe
she had no acquaintance; but, respecting Hicks, she confessed that as
there were warrants out, to apprehend all Nonconformist clergymen, she
certainly wished to save him from apprehension. It was an office of
Christian kindness, which this good woman fulfilled for one in sorrow,
who professed with her a common faith; yet this perfectly innocent,
and, as she imagined, laudable deed, being construed into an act of
treason, the Jury, though they expressed their dissatisfaction with the
evidence, were bullied by the Judge into a verdict of guilty. Jeffreys
declared the evidence to be as plain as possible, and that upon it he
would have convicted his own mother. The aged matron, weighed down
under a load of more than seventy years, suffered from fits, and could
hear but imperfectly; yet, throughout her trial, she evinced a singular
calmness and serenity, and, save when overcome by drowsiness, exhibited
altogether a dignified deportment truly astonishing. Her behaviour on
the scaffold comported with her bearing in court; and, in the course
of a speech which she delivered to the Sheriff, she freely forgave
her enemies, and expressed a desire to possess her soul in patience.
Jeffreys had condemned her to be burnt, but the King commuted her
sentence, and this unfortunate lady perished at the block.
[Sidenote: ELIZABETH GAUNT.]
[Sidenote: 1685.]
The other sufferer was Elizabeth Gaunt, a person in humble
circumstances, and a member of a Baptist Church. The charge against her
resembled that brought against Mrs. Lisle--namely, the harbouring of
a person supposed to have been concerned in the Rye House conspiracy.
This man had professed himself to be a Nonconformist,--certainly he
proved himself a worthless villain, by becoming King’s evidence against
the woman who, to save his life, had jeopardized her own. It did
not appear that she knew that he had any share in the plot, or that
his name had been mentioned in any proclamation; want of evidence,
however, little affected the issue of a trial in those days, and this
poor person, without being permitted to call witnesses in her defence,
received a verdict of guilty, and the sentence of death. The miserable
favour which had been shown to the sufferer of higher rank reached not
so humble an individual; she had to die at the stake. Gathering round
her the materials of torture, that she might the sooner expire, she
remarked, that charity as well as faith was a part of her religion;
that her crime, at worst, was the feeding an enemy; so she hoped she
should find her reward in Him, for whose sake she did this service, how
unworthy soever the person might be who had made such an ill return for
it. She rejoiced that God had honoured her to be the first who suffered
by fire in this reign, and that her suffering would prove a martyrdom
for that religion which was all love.[147] “Thus,” to use the words of
Sir James Mackintosh, “was this poor and uninstructed woman supported
under a death of cruel torture, by the lofty consciousness of suffering
for righteousness, and by that steadfast faith in the final triumph of
justice, which can never visit the last moments of the oppressor.”[148]
There have been many martyrs for faith, but these women were martyrs
for charity, and their meek heroism in the hour of death seems worthy
of the cause for which they suffered. Such examples illustrate that
power of endurance, with which the Almighty has inspired the heart
of woman. Strong in the midst of apparent feebleness, she bears up
under trials sufficient to crush minds of the hardest texture; thus
resembling those delicate flowers which grow in Alpine regions--
“Leaning their cheeks against the thick-ribbed ice,
And looking up with brilliant eyes to Him
Who bids them bloom, unblanched, amid the waste
Of desolation.”
[Sidenote: PERSECUTION RENEWED.]
The persecution of Dissenters, commenced before the breaking out of
Monmouth’s rebellion, continued to rage, with additional vehemence,
after the rebellion had been extinguished. The trade of the informer
revived. The spiritual courts overflowed with causes. Ministers were
seized, their houses searched, their rooms and closets broken open,
and ransacked. The shopkeeper was taken from his business, the farmer
from his homestead, husbands were separated from their wives, and
parents from their children. The rich were mulcted in heavy fines,
or bribes were wrung from them by informers--a present of wine or a
few gold pieces being often sacrificed to these harpies, for the sake
of escaping imprisonment. The loss of liberty is always an object of
terror, but in those days it appeared with horrible aggravations--for
dungeons were covered with filth of the most loathsome description;
gaolers and turnkeys exercised despotic power, and extorted exorbitant
fees; prisoners of all kinds were crowded together to suffocation;
fever and pestilence were engendered and nourished; and numbers
perished before their trial. It may seem incredible, but it is
nevertheless a fact, that Ellwood the Quaker, and the friend of Milton,
when immured in Newgate for his religion, saw the quarters of those
who had been executed for treason placed close to the prisoners’
cells, and their heads tossed about like foot-balls.[149] The fear of
punishment under such circumstances induced Nonconformists, in their
worship, to return to those methods of secrecy and concealment which
have been already described. Some proved faithless to their profession,
and sought refuge from intolerant cruelty, in the bosom of the
Establishment: on the other hand, there were not wanting Episcopalians,
who seeing humanity outraged, professedly in support of the Church to
which they belonged, left it in disgust, and cast in their lot with the
sufferers for conscience’ sake.
[Sidenote: 1685.]
[Sidenote: PERSECUTION RENEWED.]
The storm continued for two years; and as it terminated the series
under the Stuarts, it seems to have been the worst--in this respect
resembling the persecution under the Emperor Diocletian. The Quakers
stated, in their petition to King James, that there had been of late
above one thousand five hundred Friends in prison, of whom one thousand
three hundred and eighty-three remained unreleased. Three hundred
and fifty had died in gaol, since the year 1660; nearly one hundred
of them since the year 1680. William Penn reckoned that altogether,
more than five thousand perished for the sake of religion;[150] and
Jeremy White is said to have collected a list of sixty thousand, who
had suffered in some way or other for conscientious opinions. Making
a large abatement from such rumours, there must have been an enormous
extent of imprisonment, exile, extortion, oppression, and misery
inflicted during those two reigns to account for such a rumour having
been listened to for a moment.[151] Sulpicius Severus, speaking of the
persecution under Diocletian, remarked, that Christians never achieved
a more glorious victory than when they could not be subdued by years of
slaughter. And, in the same spirit, Neal observes, that Nonconformists
did not decrease, amidst all the engines of intolerance which were
worked against them; their continuance and increase being attributed to
their firmness of character, their practical and awakening ministry,
their severe morality, their domestic religion, their able and learned
ministers, the disgust excited by the conduct of their adversaries,
and the reaction produced by carrying Tory principles to an unbearable
extreme. In statements of this kind an author’s eye is wont to rest
mainly on fines, imprisonments, and violent assaults. But there were
other persecutions which Nonconformists had to endure. Much is made,
by our High Church brethren, of the persecution which lingers amidst
legal toleration. They point to attacks in the newspapers, to slander
privately circulated, to innuendo and defamation, to irritation and
annoyance in subtle forms; but no social persecution complained of in
the present day, can be compared with what Nonconformists, in addition
to fines, imprisonments, and brutal treatment, had to endure, when such
a Christian gentleman and scholar as John Howe scarcely dared to walk
the streets. In the library of Canterbury Cathedral is a large volume
of MS. plays, recitations, and performances, in the reign of Charles
II., wherein Roman Catholics and Nonconformists of all kinds are
lampooned and abused with a vast deal more of coarseness than wit. Such
things impressively indicate what the state of social feelings must
have been at the time towards all who were not included within the pale
of the Establishment.