No More Learning

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. "As for you," said Jeffreys to the delegates, "most of you are
divines. I will therefore send you home with a text of scripture, 'Go
your way and sin no more, lest a worse thing happen to you. '" [286]

These proceedings might seem sufficiently unjust and violent. But the
King had already begun to treat Oxford with such rigour that the rigour
shown towards Cambridge might, by comparison, be called lenity. Already
University College had been turned by Obadiah Walker into a Roman
Catholic seminary. Already Christ Church was governed by a Roman
Catholic Dean. Mass was already said daily in both those colleges.
The tranquil and majestic city, so long the stronghold of monarchical
principles, was agitated by passions which it had never before known.
The undergraduates, with the connivance of those who were in authority
over them, hooted the members of Walker's congregation, and chanted
satirical ditties under his windows. Some fragments of the serenades
which then disturbed the High Street have been preserved. The burden of
one ballad was this:

"Old Obadiah Sings Ave Maria. "

When the actors came down to Oxford, the public feeling was expressed
still more strongly. Howard's Committee was performed. This play,
written soon after the Restoration, exhibited the Puritans in an odious
and contemptible light, and had therefore been, during a quarter of
a century, a favourite with Oxonian audiences. It was now a greater
favourite than ever; for, by a lucky coincidence, one of the most
conspicuous characters was an old hypocrite named Obadiah. The audience
shouted with delight when, in the last scene, Obadiah was dragged in
with a halter round his neck; and the acclamations redoubled when one of
the players, departing from the written text of the comedy, proclaimed
that Obadiah should be hanged because he had changed his religion. The
King was much provoked by this insult. So mutinous indeed was the temper
of the University that one of the newly raised regiments, the same which
is now called the Second Dragoon Guards, was quartered at Oxford for the
purpose of preventing an outbreak. [287]

These events ought to have convinced James that he had entered on a
course which must lead him to his ruin. To the clamours of London he
had been long accustomed. They had been raised against him, sometimes
unjustly, and sometimes vainly. He had repeatedly braved them, and
might brave them still. But that Oxford, the scat of loyalty, the head
quarters of the Cavalier army, the place where his father and brother
had held their court when they thought themselves insecure in their
stormy capital, the place where the writings of the great republican
teachers had recently been committed to the flames, should now be in a
ferment of discontent, that those highspirited youths who a few months
before had eagerly volunteered to march against the Western insurgents
should now be with difficulty kept down by sword and carbine, these were
signs full of evil omen to the House of Stuart. The warning, however,
was lost on the dull, stubborn, self-willed tyrant. He was resolved
to transfer to his own Church all the wealthiest and most splendid
foundations of England. It was to no purpose that the best and wisest
of his Roman Catholic counsellors remonstrated. They represented to him
that he had it in his power to render a great service to the cause of
his religion without violating the rights of property. A grant of two
thousand pounds a year from his privy purse would support a Jesuit
college at Oxford. Such a sum he might easily spare. Such a college,
provided with able, learned, and zealous teachers, would be a formidable
rival to the old academical institutions, which exhibited but too many
symptoms of the languor almost inseparable from opulence and security.
King James's College would soon be, by the confession even of
Protestants, the first place of education in the island, as respected
both science and moral discipline. This would be the most effectual
and the least invidious method by which the Church of England could be
humbled and the Church of Rome exalted. The Earl of Ailesbury, one of
the most devoted servants of the royal family, declared that, though a
Protestant, and by no means rich, he would himself contribute a thousand
pounds towards this design, rather than that his master should violate
the rights of property, and break faith with the Established Church.
[288] The scheme, however, found no favour in the sight of the King. It
was indeed ill suited in more ways than one, to his ungentle nature. For
to bend and break the spirits of men gave him pleasure; and to part with
his money gave him pain. What he had not the generosity to do at his own
expense he determined to do at the expense of others. When once he was
engaged, pride and obstinacy prevented him from receding; and he was
at length led, step by step, to acts of Turkish tyranny, to acts which
impressed the nation with a conviction that the estate of a Protestant
English freeholder under a Roman Catholic King must be as insecure as
that of a Greek under Moslem domination.

Magdalene College at Oxford, founded in the fifteenth century by William
of Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester and Lord High Chancellor, was one of
the most remarkable of our academical institutions. A graceful tower, on
the summit of which a Latin hymn was annually chanted by choristers at
the dawn of May day, caught far off the eye of the traveller who came
from London. As he approached he found that this tower rose from an
embattled pile, low and irregular, yet singularly venerable, which,
embowered in verdure, overhung the slugish waters of the Cherwell. He
passed through a gateway overhung by a noble orie [289], and found himself
in a spacious cloister adorned with emblems of virtues and vices, rudely
carved in grey stone by the masons of the fifteenth century. The table
of the society was plentifully spread in a stately refectory hung with
paintings, and rich with fantastic carving. The service of the Church
was performed morning and evening in a chapel which had suffered much
violence from the Reformers, and much from the Puritans, but which was,
under every disadvantage, a building of eminent beauty, and which has,
in our own time, been restored with rare taste and skill. The spacious
gardens along the river side were remarkable for the size of the trees,
among which towered conspicuous one of the vegetable wonders of the
island, a gigantic oak, older by a century, men said, than the oldest
college in the University.

The statutes of the society ordained that the Kings of England and
Princes of Wales should be lodged in Magdalene. Edward the Fourth had
inhabited the building while it was still unfinished. Richard the
Third had held his court there, had heard disputations in the hall,
had feasted there royally, and had mended the cheer of his hosts by a
present of fat bucks from his forests. Two heirs apparent of the crown
who had been prematurely snatched away, Arthur the elder brother of
Henry the Eighth, and Henry the elder brother of Charles the First, had
been members of the college. Another prince of the blood, the last
and best of the Roman Catholic Archbishops of Canterbury, the gentle
Reginald Pole, had studied there. In the time of the civil war Magdalene
had been true to the cause of the crown. There Rupert had fixed his
quarters; and, before some of his most daring enterprises, his trumpets
had been heard sounding to horse through those quiet cloisters. Most of
the Fellows were divines, and could aid the King only by their prayers
and their pecuniary contributions. But one member of the body, a Doctor
of Civil Law, raised a troop of undergraduates, and fell fighting
bravely at their head against the soldiers of Essex. When hostilities
had terminated, and the Roundheads were masters of England, six sevenths
of the members of the foundation refused to make any submission to
usurped authority. They were consequently ejected from their dwellings
and deprived of their revenues. After the Restoration the survivors
returned to their pleasant abode. They had now been succeeded by a new
generation which inherited their opinions and their spirit. During the
Western rebellion such Magdalene men as were not disqualified by their
age or profession for the use of arms had eagerly volunteered to fight
for the crown. It would be difficult to name any corporation in the
kingdom which had higher claims to the gratitude of the House of Stuart.
[290]

The society consisted of a President, of forty Fellows, of thirty
scholars called Demies, and of a train of chaplains, clerks, and
choristers. At the time of the general visitation in the reign of Henry
the Eighth the revenues were far greater than those of any similar
institution in the realm, greater by nearly one half than those of the
magnificent foundation of Henry the Sixth at Cambridge, and considerably
more than double those which William of Wykeham had settled on his
college at Oxford. In the days of James the Second the riches of
Magdalene were immense, and were exaggerated by report. The college
was popularly said to be wealthier than the wealthiest abbeys of the
Continent. When the leases fell in,--so ran the vulgar rumour,--the
rents would be raised to the prodigious sum of forty thousand pounds a
year. [291]

The Fellows were, by the statutes which their founder had drawn up,
empowered to select their own President from among persons who were, or
had been, Fellows either of their society or of New College. This power
had generally been exercised with freedom. But in some instances royal
letters had been received recommending to the choice of the corporation
qualified persons who were in favour at court; and on such occasions it
had been the practice to show respect to the wishes of the sovereign.

In March 1687, the President of the college died. One of the Fellows,
Doctor Thomas Smith, popularly nicknamed Rabbi Smith, a distinguished
traveller, book-collector, antiquary, and orientalist, who had been
chaplain to the embassy at Constantinople, and had been employed to
collate the Alexandrian manuscript, aspired to the vacant post. He
conceived that he had some claims on the favour of the government as
a man of learning and as a zealous Tory. His loyalty was in truth as
fervent and as steadfast as was to be found in the whole Church of
England. He had long been intimately acquainted with Parker, Bishop
of Oxford, and hoped to obtain by the interest of that prelate a royal
letter to the college. Parker promised to do his best, but soon reported
that he had found difficulties. "The King," he said, "will recommend no
person who is not a friend to His Majesty's religion. What can you do
to pleasure him as to that matter? " Smith answered that, if he
became President, he would exert himself to promote learning, true
Christianity, and loyalty. "That will not do," said the Bishop. "If so,"
said Smith manfully, "let who will be President: I can promise nothing
more. "

The election had been fixed for the thirteenth of April, and the Fellows
were summoned to attend. It was rumoured that a royal letter would come
down recommending one Anthony Farmer to the vacant place. This man's
life had been a series of shameful acts. He had been a member of the
University of Cambridge, and had escaped expulsion only by a timely
retreat. He had then joined the Dissenters. Then he had gone to Oxford,
had entered himself at Magdalene, and had soon become notorious there
for every kind of vice. He generally reeled into his college at
night speechless with liquor. He was celebrated for having headed a
disgraceful riot at Abingdon. He had been a constant frequenter of noted
haunts of libertines. At length he had turned pandar, had exceeded even
the ordinary vileness of his vile calling, and had received money from
dissolute young gentlemen commoners for services such as it is not good
that history should record. This wretch, however, had pretended to
turn Papist. His apostasy atoned for all his vices; and, though still
a youth, he was selected to rule a grave and religious society in which
the scandal given by his depravity was still fresh.

As a Roman Catholic he was disqualified for academical office by the
general law of the land. Never having been a Fellow of Magdalene College
or of New College, he was disqualified for the vacant presidency by a
special ordinance of William of Waynflete. William of Waynflete had also
enjoined those who partook of his bounty to have a particular regard to
moral character in choosing their head; and, even if he had left no such
injunction, a body chiefly composed of divines could not with decency
entrust such a man as Farmer with the government of a place of
education.

The Fellows respectfully represented to the King the difficulty in which
they should be placed, if, as was rumoured, Farmer should be recommended
to them, and begged that, if it were His Majesty's pleasure to
interfere in the election, some person for whom they could legally
and conscientiously vote might be proposed. Of this dutiful request no
notice was taken. The royal letter arrived. It was brought down by one
of the Fellows who had lately turned Papist, Robert Charnock, a man of
parts and spirit, but of a violent and restless temper, which impelled
him a few years later to an atrocious crime and to a terrible fate. On
the thirteenth of April the society met in the chapel. Some hope was
still entertained that the King might be moved by the remonstrance which
had been addressed to him. The assembly therefore adjourned till the
fifteenth, which was the last day on which, by the constitution of the
college, the election could take place.

The fifteenth of April came. Again the Fellows repaired to their chapel.
No answer had arrived from Whitehall. Two or three of the Seniors, among
whom was Smith, were inclined to postpone the election once more rather
than take a step which might give offence to the King. But the language
of the statutes was clear. Those statutes the members of the foundation
had sworn to observe. The general opinion was that there ought to be no
further delay. A hot debate followed. The electors were too much excited
to take their seats; and the whole choir was in a tumult. Those who were
for proceeding appealed to their oaths and to the rules laid down by the
founder whose bread they had eaten. The King, they truly said, had no
right to force on them even a qualified candidate. Some expressions
unpleasing to Tory ears were dropped in the course of the dispute;
and Smith was provoked into exclaiming that the spirit of Ferguson had
possessed his brethren. It was at length resolved by a great majority
that it was necessary to proceed immediately to the election. Charnock
left the chapel. The other Fellows, having first received the sacrament,
proceeded to give their voices. The choice fell on John Hough, a man
of eminent virtue and prudence, who, having borne persecution with
fortitude and prosperity with meekness, having risen to high honours and
having modestly declined honours higher still, died in extreme old
age yet in full vigour of mind, more than fifty-six years after this
eventful day.

The society hastened to acquaint the King with the circumstances which
had made it necessary to elect a President without further delay, and
requested the Duke of Ormond, as patron of the whole University, and the
Bishop of Winchester, as visitor of Magdalene College, to undertake the
office of intercessors: but the King was far too angry and too dull to
listen to explanations.