No More Learning

But all the ties which bound him to the royal
family had been sundered by the death of his cousin William. The daring,
unquiet, and vindictive seaman now sate in the councils called by the
Dutch envoy as the representative of the boldest and most eager section
of the opposition, of those men who, under the names of Roundheads,
Exclusionists, and Whigs, had maintained with various fortune a contest
of five and forty years against three successive Kings. This party,
lately prostrate and almost extinct, but now again full of life and
rapidly rising to ascendency, was troubled by none of the scruples which
still impeded the movements of Tories and Trimmers, and was prepared to
draw the sword against the tyrant on the first day on which the sword
could be drawn with reasonable hope of success.

Three men are yet to be mentioned with whom Dykvelt was in confidential
communication, and by whose help he hoped to secure the good will of
three great professions. Bishop Compton was the agent employed to manage
the clergy: Admiral Herbert undertook to exert all his influence
over the navy; and an interest was established in the army by the
instrumentality of Churchill.

The conduct of Compton and Herbert requires no explanation. Having, in
all things secular, served the crown with zeal and fidelity, they had
incurred the royal displeasure by refusing to be employed as tools
for the destruction of their own religion. Both of them had learned
by experience how soon James forgot obligations, and how bitterly he
remembered what it pleased him to consider as wrongs. The Bishop had
by an illegal sentence been suspended from his episcopal functions.
The Admiral had in one hour been reduced from opulence to penury. The
situation of Churchill was widely different. He had been raised by the
royal bounty from obscurity to eminence, and from poverty to wealth.
Having started in life a needy ensign, he was now, in his thirty-seventh
year, a Major General, a peer of Scotland, a peer of England: he
commanded a troop of Life Guards: he had been appointed to several
honourable and lucrative offices; and as yet there was no sign that he
had lost any part of the favour to which he owed so much. He was bound
to James, not only by the common obligations of allegiance, but by
military honour, by personal gratitude, and, as appeared to superficial
observers, by the strongest ties of interest. But Churchill himself was
no superficial observer. He knew exactly what his interest really was.
If his master were once at full liberty to employ Papists, not a single
Protestant would be employed. For a time a few highly favoured servants
of the crown might possibly be exempted from the general proscription in
the hope that they would be induced to change their religion. But even
these would, after a short respite, fall one by one, as Rochester had
already fallen. Churchill might indeed secure himself from this danger,
and might raise himself still higher in the royal favour, by conforming
to the Church of Rome; and it might seem that one who was not less
distinguished by avarice and baseness than by capacity and valour
was not likely to be shocked at the thought of hearing amass. But so
inconsistent is human nature that there are tender spots even in seared
consciences. And thus this man, who had owed his rise to his sister's
dishonour, who had been kept by the most profuse, imperious, and
shameless of harlots, and whose public life, to those who can look
steadily through the dazzling blaze of genius and glory, will appear a
prodigy of turpitude, believed implicitly in the religion which he had
learned as a boy, and shuddered at the thought of formally abjuring it.
A terrible alternative was before him. The earthly evil which he most
dreaded was poverty. The one crime from which his heart recoiled was
apostasy. And, if the designs of the court succeeded, he could not
doubt that between poverty and apostasy he must soon make his choice. He
therefore determined to cross those designs; and it soon appeared that
there was no guilt and no disgrace which he was not ready to incur, in
order to escape from the necessity of parting either with his places or
with his religion. [270]

It was not only as a military commander, high in rank, and distinguished
by skill and courage, that Churchill was able to render services to the
opposition. It was, if not absolutely essential, yet most important, to
the success of William's plans that his sister in law, who, in the order
of succession to the English throne, stood between his wife and himself,
should act in cordial union with him. All his difficulties would have
been greatly augmented if Anne had declared herself favourable to the
Indulgence. Which side she might take depended on the will of others.
For her understanding was sluggish; and, though there was latent in her
character a hereditary wilfulness and stubbornness which, many years
later, great power and great provocations developed, she was as yet a
willing slave to a nature far more vivacious and imperious than her
own. The person by whom she was absolutely governed was the wife of
Churchill, a woman who afterwards exercised a great influence on the
fate of England and of Europe.

The name of this celebrated favourite was Sarah Jennings. Her elder
sister, Frances, had been distinguished by beauty and levity even among
the crowd of beautiful faces and light characters which adorned and
disgraced Whitehall during the wild carnival of the Restoration. On one
occasion Frances dressed herself like an orange girl and cried fruit
about the streets. [271] Sober people predicted that a girl of so little
discretion and delicacy would not easily find a husband. She was however
twice married, and was now the wife of Tyrconnel. Baron, less regularly
beautiful, was perhaps more attractive. Her face was expressive: her
form wanted no feminine charm; and the profusion of her fine hair, not
yet disguised by powder according to that barbarous fashion which she
lived to see introduced, was the delight of numerous admirers. Among the
gallants who sued for her favour, Colonel Churchill, young, handsome,
graceful, insinuating, eloquent and brave, obtained the preference. He
must have been enamoured indeed. For he had little property except the
annuity which he had bought with the infamous wages bestowed on him by
the Duchess of Cleveland: he was insatiable of riches: Sarah was poor;
and a plain girl with a large fortune was proposed to him. His love,
after a struggle, prevailed over his avarice: marriage only strengthened
his passion; and, to the last hour of his life, Sarah enjoyed the
pleasure and distinction of being the one human being who was able to
mislead that farsighted and surefooted judgment, who was fervently
loved by that cold heart, and who was servilely feared by that intrepid
spirit.

In a worldly sense the fidelity of Churchill's love was amply rewarded.
His bride, though slenderly portioned, brought with her a dowry which,
judiciously employed, made him at length a Duke of England, a Prince
of the Empire, the captain general of a great coalition, the arbiter
between mighty princes, and, what he valued more, the wealthiest subject
in Europe. She had been brought up from childhood with the Princess
Anne; and a close friendship had arisen between the girls. In character
they resembled each other very little. Anne was slow and taciturn. To
those whom she loved she was meek. The form which her anger assumed was
sullenness. She had a strong sense of religion, and was attached even
with bigotry to the rites and government of the Church of England. Sarah
was lively and voluble, domineered over those whom she regarded with
most kindness, and, when she was offended, vented her rage in tears and
tempestuous reproaches. To sanctity she made no pretence, and, indeed,
narrowly escaped the imputation of irreligion. She was not yet what
she became when one class of vices had been fully developed in her by
prosperity, and another by adversity, when her brain had been turned by
success and flattery, when her heart had been ulcerated by disasters and
mortifications. She lived to be that most odious and miserable of human
beings, an ancient crone at war with her whole kind, at war with her own
children and grandchildren, great indeed and rich, but valuing greatness
and riches chiefly because they enabled her to brave public opinion and
to indulge without restraint her hatred to the living and the dead.
In the reign of James she was regarded as nothing worse than a fine
highspirited young woman, who could now and then be cross and arbitrary,
but whose flaws of temper might well be pardoned in consideration of her
charms.

It is a common observation that differences of taste, understanding,
and disposition, are no impediments to friendship, and that the closest
intimacies often exist between minds each of which supplies what is
wanting to the other. Lady Churchill was loved and even worshipped by
Anne. The Princess could not live apart from the object of her romantic
fondness. She married, and was a faithful and even an affectionate wife.
But Prince George, a dull man whose chief pleasures were derived from
his dinner and his bottle, acquired over her no influence comparable
to that exercised by her female friend, and soon gave himself up with
stupid patience to the dominion of that vehement and commanding spirit
by which his wife was governed. Children were born to the royal pair:
and Anne was by no means without the feelings of a mother. But the
tenderness which she felt for her offspring was languid when compared
with her devotion to the companion of her early years. At length the
Princess became impatient of the restraint which etiquette imposed on
her. She could not bear to hear the words Madam and Royal Highness
from the lips of one who was more to her than a sister. Such words
were indeed necessary in the gallery or the drawingroom; but they were
disused in the closet. Anne was Mrs. Morley: Lady Churchill was Mrs.
Freeman; and under these childish names was carried on during twenty
years a correspondence on which at last the fate of administrations and
dynasties depended. But as yet Anne had no political power and little
patronage. Her friend attended her as first Lady of the Bedchamber, with
a salary of only four hundred pounds a year. There is reason, however,
to believe that, even at this time, Churchill was able to gratify his
ruling passion by means of his wife's influence. The Princess, though
her income was large and her tastes simple, contracted debts which her
father, not without some murmurs, discharged; and it was rumoured
that her embarrassments had been caused by her prodigal bounty to her
favourite. [272]

At length the time had arrived when this singular friendship was to
exercise a great influence on public affairs. What part Anne would take
in the contest which distracted England was matter of deep anxiety.
Filial duty was on one side. The interests of the religion to which she
was sincerely attached were on the other. A less inert nature might
well have remained long in suspense when drawn in opposite directions
by motives so strong and so respectable. But the influence of the
Churchills decided the question; and their patroness became an important
member of that extensive league of which the Prince of Orange was the
head.

In June 1687 Dykvelt returned to the Hague. He presented to the States
General a royal epistle filled with eulogies of his conduct during his
residence in London. These eulogies however were merely formal. James,
in private communications written with his own hand, bitterly complained
that the Envoy had lived in close intimacy with the most factious men in
the realm, and had encouraged them in all their evil purposes. Dykvelt
carried with him also a packet of letters from the most eminent of
those with whom he had conferred during his stay in England. The writers
generally expressed unbounded reverence and affection for William, and
referred him to the bearer for fuller information as to their views.
Halifax discussed the state and prospects of the country with his
usual subtlety and vivacity, but took care not to pledge himself to any
perilous line of conduct. Danby wrote in a bolder and more determined
tone, and could not refrain from slily sneering at the fears and
scruples of his accomplished rival. But the most remarkable letter
was from Churchill. It was written with that natural eloquence which,
illiterate as he was, he never wanted on great occasions, and with an
air of magnanimity which, perfidious as he was, he could with singular
dexterity assume. The Princess Anne, he said, had commanded him to
assure her illustrious relatives at the Hague that she was fully
resolved by God's help rather to lose her life than to be guilty of
apostasy. As for himself, his places and the royal favour were as
nothing to him in comparison with his religion. He concluded by
declaring in lofty language that, though he could not pretend to have
lived the life of a saint, he should be found ready, on occasion, to die
the death of a martyr. [273]

Dykvelt's mission had succeeded so well that a pretence was soon
found for sending another agent to continue the work which had been so
auspiciously commenced. The new Envoy, afterwards the founder of a noble
English house which became extinct in our own time, was an illegitimate
cousin german of William; and bore a title taken from the lordship of
Zulestein. Zulestein's relationship to the House of Orange gave him
importance in the public eye. His bearing was that of a gallant soldier.
He was indeed in diplomatic talents and knowledge far inferior to
Dykvelt: but even this inferiority had its advantages. A military man,
who had never appeared to trouble himself about political affairs,
could, without exciting any suspicion, hold with the English aristocracy
an intercourse which, if he had been a noted master of state craft,
would have been jealously watched. Zulestein, after a short absence,
returned to his country charged with letters and verbal messages not
less important than those which had been entrusted to his predecessor. A
regular correspondence was from this time established between the Prince
and the opposition. Agents of various ranks passed and repassed between
the Thames and the Hague. Among these a Scotchman, of some parts and
great activity, named Johnstone, was the most useful. He was cousin
of Burnet, and son of an eminent covenanter who had, soon after the
Restoration, been put to death for treason, and who was honoured by his
party as a martyr.

The estrangement between the King of England and the Prince of Orange
became daily more complete. A serious dispute had arisen concerning the
six British regiments which were in the pay of the United Provinces. The
King wished to put these regiments under the command of Roman Catholic
officers. The Prince resolutely opposed this design. The King had
recourse to his favourite commonplaces about toleration. The Prince
replied that he only followed his Majesty's example. It was notorious
that loyal and able men had been turned out of office in England merely
for being Protestants. It was then surely competent to the Stadtholder
and the States General to withhold high public trusts from Papists. This
answer provoked James to such a degree that, in his rage, he lost sight
of veracity and common sense. It was false, he vehemently said, that he
had ever turned out any body on religious grounds. And if he had, what
was that to the Prince or to the States? Were they his masters? Were
they to sit in judgment on the conduct of foreign sovereigns? From that
time he became desirous to recall his subjects who were in the Dutch
service. By bringing them over to England he should, he conceived, at
once strengthen himself, and weaken his worst enemies. But there were
financial difficulties which it was impossible for him to overlook. The
number of troops already in his service was as great as his
revenue, though large beyond all precedent and though parsimoniously
administered, would support. If the battalions now in Holland were added
to the existing establishment, the Treasury would be bankrupt. Perhaps
Lewis might be induced to take them into his service. They would in that
case be removed from a country where they were exposed to the corrupting
influence of a republican government and a Calvinistic worship, and
would be placed in a country where none ventured to dispute the mandates
of the sovereign or the doctrines of the true Church. The soldiers would
soon unlearn every political and religious heresy. Their native prince
might always, at short notice, command their help, and would, on any
emergency, be able to rely on their fidelity.

A negotiation on this subject was opened between Whitehall and
Versailles. Lewis had as many soldiers as he wanted; and, had it been
otherwise, he would not have been disposed to take Englishmen into his
service; for the pay of England, low as it must seem to our generation,
was much higher than the pay of France. At the same time, it was a great
object to deprive William of so fine a brigade. After some weeks of
correspondence, Barillon was authorised to promise that, if James would
recall the British troops from Holland, Lewis would bear the charge of
supporting two thousand of them in England. This offer was accepted
by James with warm expressions of gratitude. Having made these
arrangements, he requested the States General to send back the six
regiments. The States General, completely governed by William, answered
that such a demand, in such circumstances, was not authorised by the
existing treaties, and positively refused to comply. It is remarkable
that Amsterdam, which had voted for keeping these troops in Holland when
James needed their help against the Western insurgents, now contended
vehemently that his request ought to be granted. On both occasions, the
sole object of those who ruled that great city was to cross the Prince
of Orange. [274]

The Dutch arms, however, were scarcely so formidable to James as the
Dutch presses. English books and pamphlets against his government were
daily printed at the Hague; nor could any vigilance prevent copies from
being smuggled, by tens of thousands, into the counties bordering on
the German Ocean. Among these publications, one was distinguished by
its importance, and by the immense effect which it produced. The opinion
which the Prince and Princess of Orange held respecting the Indulgence
was well known to all who were conversant with public affairs. But, as
no official announcement of that opinion had appeared, many persons who
had not access to good private sources of information were deceived
or perplexed by the confidence with which the partisans of the Court
asserted that their Highnesses approved of the King's late acts. To
contradict those assertions publicly would have been a simple and
obvious course, if the sole object of William had been to strengthen his
interest in England. But he considered England chiefly as an instrument
necessary to the execution of his great European design. Towards that
design he hoped to obtain the cooperation of both branches of the House
of Austria, of the Italian princes, and even of the Sovereign Pontiff.
There was reason to fear that any declaration which was satisfactory to
British Protestants would excite alarm and disgust at Madrid, Vienna,
Turin, and Rome. For this reason the Prince long abstained from formally
expressing his sentiments. At length it was represented to him that his
continued silence had excited much uneasiness and distrust among his
wellwishers, and that it was time to speak out. He therefore determined
to explain himself.

A Scotch Whig, named James Stewart, had fled, some years before, to
Holland, in order to avoid the boot and the gallows, and had become
intimate with the Grand Pensionary Fagel, who enjoyed a large share of
the Stadtholder's confidence and favour. By Stewart had been drawn up
the violent and acrimonious manifesto of Argyle. When the Indulgence
appeared, Stewart conceived that he had an opportunity of obtaining, not
only pardon, but reward. He offered his services to the government of
which he had been the enemy: they were accepted; and he addressed to
Fagel a letter, purporting to have been written by the direction
of James. In that letter the Pensionary was exhorted to use all his
influence with the Prince and Princess, for the purpose of inducing them
to support their father's policy. After some delay Fagel transmitted a
reply, deeply meditated, and drawn up with exquisite art. No person who
studies that remarkable document can fail to perceive that, though it
is framed in a manner well calculated to reassure and delight English
Protestants, it contains not a word which could give offence, even
at the Vatican. It was announced that William and Mary would, with
pleasure, assist in abolishing every law which made any Englishman
liable to punishment for his religious opinions. But between punishments
and disabilities a distinction was taken. To admit Roman Catholics to
office would, in the judgment of their Highnesses, be neither for the
general interest of England nor even for the interest of the Roman
Catholics themselves. This manifesto was translated into several
languages, and circulated widely on the Continent. Of the English
version, carefully prepared by Burnet, near fifty thousand copies were
introduced into the eastern shires, and rapidly distributed over the
whole kingdom. No state paper was ever more completely successful.
The Protestants of our island applauded the manly firmness with which
William declared that he could not consent to entrust Papists with any
share in the government. The Roman Catholic princes, on the other hand,
were pleased by the mild and temperate style in which his resolution
was expressed, and by the hope which he held out that, under his
administration, no member of their Church would be molested on account
of religion.

It is probable that the Pope himself was among those who read this
celebrated letter with pleasure. He had some months before dismissed
Castelmaine in a manner which showed little regard for the feelings of
Castelmaine's master. Innocent thoroughly disliked the whole domestic
and foreign policy of the English government. He saw that the unjust and
impolitic measures of the Jesuitical cabal were far more likely to make
the penal laws perpetual than to bring about an abolition of the test.
His quarrel with the court of Versailles was every day becoming more and
more serious; nor could he, either in his character of temporal prince
or in his character of Sovereign Pontiff, feel cordial friendship for
a vassal of that court. Castelmaine was ill qualified to remove these
disgusts. He was indeed well acquainted with Rome, and was, for a
layman, deeply read in theological controversy. [275] But he had none of
the address which his post required; and, even had he been a diplomatist
of the greatest ability, there was a circumstance which would have
disqualified him for the particular mission on which he had been sent.
He was known all over Europe as the husband of the most shameless of
women; and he was known in no other way. It was impossible to speak to
him or of him without remembering in what manner the very title by which
he was called had been acquired. This circumstance would have mattered
little if he had been accredited to some dissolute court, such as that
in which the Marchioness of Montespan had lately been dominant. But
there was an obvious impropriety in sending him on an embassy rather
of a spiritual than of a secular nature to a pontiff of primitive
austerity. The Protestants all over Europe sneered; and Innocent,
already unfavourably disposed to the English government, considered the
compliment which had been paid him, at so much risk and at so heavy a
cost, as little better than an affront. The salary of the Ambassador was
fixed at a hundred pounds a week. Castelmaine complained that this was
too little. Thrice the sum, he said, would hardly suffice. For at Rome
the ministers of all the great continental powers exerted themselves to
surpass one another in splendour, under the eyes of a people whom the
habit of seeing magnificent buildings, decorations, and ceremonies had
made fastidious. He always declared that he had been a loser by his
mission. He was accompanied by several young gentlemen of the best Roman
Catholic families in England, Ratcliffes, Arundells and Tichbornes. At
Rome he was lodged in the palace of the house of Pamfili on the south
of the stately Place of Navona. He was early admitted to a private
interview with Innocent: but the public audience was long delayed.
Indeed Castelmaine's preparations for that great occasion were so
sumptuous that, though commenced at Easter 1686, they were not complete
till the following November; and in November the Pope had, or pretended
to have, an attack of gout which caused another postponement. In January
1687, at length, the solemn introduction and homage were performed with
unusual pomp. The state coaches, which had been built at Rome for the
pageant, were so superb that they were thought worthy to be transmitted
to posterity in fine engravings and to be celebrated by poets in several
languages. [276] The front of the Ambassador's palace was decorated on
this great day with absurd allegorical paintings of gigantic size. There
was Saint George with his foot on the neck of Titus Cares, and Hercules
with his club crushing College, the Protestant joiner, who in vain
attempted to defend himself with his flail. After this public appearance
Castelmaine invited all the persons of note then assembled at Rome to a
banquet in that gay and splendid gallery which is adorned with paintings
of subjects from the Aeneid by Peter of Cortona. The whole city crowded
to the show; and it was with difficulty that a company of Swiss guards
could keep order among the spectators. The nobles of the Pontifical
state in return gave costly entertainments to the Ambassador; and poets
and wits were employed to lavish on him and on his master insipid and
hyperbolical adulation such as flourishes most when genius and taste are
in the deepest decay. Foremost among the flatterers was a crowned head.
More than thirty years had elapsed since Christina, the daughter of the
great Gustavus, had voluntarily descended from the Swedish throne. After
long wanderings, in the course of which she had committed many follies
and crimes, she had finally taken up her abode at Rome, where she busied
herself with astrological calculations and with the intrigues of the
conclave, and amused herself with pictures, gems, manuscripts, and
medals. She now composed some Italian stanzas in honour of the English
prince who, sprung, like herself, from a race of Kings heretofore
regarded as the champions of the Reformation, had, like herself, been
reconciled to the ancient Church. A splendid assembly met in her palace.
Her verses, set to music, were sung with universal applause: and one of
her literary dependents pronounced an oration on the same subject in a
style so florid that it seems to have offended the taste of the English
hearers. The Jesuits, hostile to the Pope, devoted to the interests of
France and disposed to pay every honour to James, received the English
embassy with the utmost pomp in that princely house where the remains of
Ignatius Loyola lie enshrined in lazulite and gold. Sculpture, painting,
poetry, and eloquence were employed to compliment the strangers: but all
these arts had sunk into deep degeneracy. There was a great display of
turgid and impure Latinity unworthy of so erudite an order; and some of
the inscriptions which adorned the walls had a fault more serious than
even a bad style.
It was said in one place that James had sent his
brother as his messenger to heaven, and in another that James had
furnished the wings with which his brother had soared to a higher
region. There was a still more unfortunate distich, which at the time
attracted little notice, but which, a few months later, was remembered
and malignantly interpreted. "O King," said the poet, "cease to sigh for
a son. Though nature may refuse your wish, the stars will find a way to
grant it. "

In the midst of these festivities Castelmaine had to suffer cruel
mortifications and humiliations. The Pope treated him with extreme
coldness and reserve. As often as the Ambassador pressed for an answer
to the request which he had been instructed to make in favour of Petre,
Innocent was taken with a violent fit of coughing, which put an end to
the conversation. The fame of these singular audiences spread over Rome.
Pasquin was not silent. All the curious and tattling population of the
idlest of cities, the Jesuits and the prelates of the French faction
only excepted, laughed at Castelmaine's discomfiture. His temper,
naturally unamiable, was soon exasperated to violence; and he circulated
a memorial reflecting on the Pope. He had now put himself in the wrong.
The sagacious Italian had got the advantage, and took care to keep
it. He positively declared that the rule which excluded Jesuits from
ecclesiastical preferment should not be relaxed in favour of Father
Petre. Castelmaine, much provoked, threatened to leave Rome. Innocent
replied, with a meek impertinence which was the more provoking because
it could scarcely be distinguished from simplicity, that his Excellency
might go if he liked. "But if we must lose him," added the venerable
Pontiff, "I hope that he will take care of his health on the road.
English people do not know how dangerous it is in this country to travel
in the heat of the day. The best way is to start before dawn, and to
take some rest at noon. " With this salutary advice and with a string
of beads, the unfortunate Ambassador was dismissed. In a few months
appeared, both in the Italian and in the English tongue, a pompous
history of the mission, magnificently printed in folio, and illustrated
with plates. The frontispiece, to the great scandal of all Protestants,
represented Castelmaine in the robes of a Peer, with his coronet in his
hand, kissing the toe of Innocent. [277]




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.