No More Learning

The King declared that he had
unwillingly persecuted the separatists only because his affairs had been
in such a state that he could not venture to disoblige the established
clergy. The established clergy protested that they had borne a part
in severity uncongenial to their feelings only from deference to the
authority of the King. The King got together a collection of stories
about rectors and vicars who had by threats of prosecution wrung
money out of Protestant Dissenters. He talked on this subject much and
publicly, threatened to institute an inquiry which would exhibit the
parsons in their true character to the whole world, and actually issued
several commissions empowering agents on whom he thought that he could
depend to ascertain the amount of the sums extorted in different parts
of the country by professors of the dominant religion from sectaries.
The advocates of the Church, on the other hand, cited instances of
honest parish priests who had been reprimanded and menaced by the court
for recommending toleration in the pulpit, and for refusing to spy out
and hunt down little congregations of Nonconformists. The King asserted
that some of the Churchmen whom he had closeted had offered to make
large concessions to the Catholics, on condition that the persecution
of the Puritans might go on. The accused Churchmen vehemently denied the
truth of this charge; and alleged that, if they would have complied
with what he demanded for his own religion, he would most gladly
have suffered them to indemnify themselves by harassing and pillaging
Protestant Dissenters. [240]

The court had changed its face. The scarf and cassock could hardly
appear there without calling forth sneers and malicious whispers. Maids
of honour forbore to giggle, and Lords of the Bedchamber bowed low, when
the Puritanical visage and the Puritanical garb, so long the favourite
subjects of mockery in fashionable circles, were seen in the galleries.
Taunton, which had been during two generations the stronghold of the
Roundhead party in the West, which had twice resolutely repelled the
armies of Charles the First, which had risen as one man to support
Monmouth, and which had been turned into a shambles by Kirke and
Jeffreys, seemed to have suddenly succeeded to the place which Oxford
had once occupied in the royal favour. [241] The King constrained
himself to show even fawning courtesy to eminent Dissenters. To some
he offered money, to some municipal honours, to some pardons for their
relations and friends who, having been implicated in the Rye House Plot,
or having joined the standard of Monmouth, were now wandering on the
Continent, or toiling among the sugar canes of Barbadoes. He affected
even to sympathize with the kindness which the English Puritans felt for
their foreign brethren. A second and a third proclamation were published
at Edinburgh, which greatly extended the nugatory toleration granted
to the Presbyterians by the edict of February. [242] The banished
Huguenots, on whom the King had frowned during many months, and whom he
had defrauded of the alms contributed by the nation, were now relieved
and caressed. An Order in Council was issued, appealing again in their
behalf to the public liberality. The rule which required them to qualify
themselves for the receipt of charity, by conforming to the Anglican
worship, seems to have been at this time silently abrogated; and the
defenders of the King's policy had the effrontery to affirm that this
rule, which, as we know from the best evidence, was really devised by
himself in concert with Barillon, had been adopted at the instance of
the prelates of the Established Church. [243]

While the King was thus courting his old adversaries, the friends of
the Church were not less active. Of the acrimony and scorn with which
prelates and priests had, since the Restoration, been in the habit of
treating the sectaries scarcely a trace was discernible. Those who had
lately been designated as schismatics and fanatics were now dear fellow
Protestants, weak brethren it might be, but still brethren, whose
scruples were entitled to tender regard. If they would but be true at
this crisis to the cause of the English constitution and of the reformed
religion, their generosity should be speedily and largely rewarded. They
should have, instead of an indulgence which was of no legal validity, a
real indulgence, secured by Act of Parliament. Nay, many Churchmen, who
had hitherto been distinguished by their inflexible attachment to every
gesture and every word prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer, now
declared themselves favourable, not only to toleration, but even to
comprehension. The dispute, they said, about surplices and attitudes,
had too long divided those who were agreed as to the essentials of
religion. When the struggle for life and death against the common enemy
was over, it would be found that the Anglican clergy would be ready to
make every fair concession. If the Dissenters would demand only what was
reasonable, not only civil but ecclesiastical dignities would be open
to them; and Baxter and Howe would be able, without any stain on their
honour or their conscience, to sit on the episcopal bench.

Of the numerous pamphlets in which the cause of the Court and the cause
of the Church were at this time eagerly and anxiously pleaded before the
Puritan, now, by a strange turn of fortune, the arbiter of the fate
of his persecutors, one only is still remembered, the Letter to a
Dissenter. In this masterly little tract, all the arguments which could
convince a Nonconformist that it was his duty and his interest to prefer
an alliance with the Church to an alliance with the Court were condensed
into the smallest compass, arranged in the most perspicuous order,
illustrated with lively wit, and enforced by an eloquence earnest
indeed, yet never in its utmost vehemence transgressing the limits
of exact good sense and good breeding. The effect of this paper was
immense; for, as it was only a single sheet, more than twenty thousand
copies were circulated by the post; and there was no corner of the
kingdom in which the effect was not felt. Twenty-four answers were
published, but the town pronounced that they were all bad, and that
Lestrange's was the worst of the twenty-four. [244] The government was
greatly irritated, and spared no pains to discover the author of the
Letter: but it was found impossible to procure legal evidence against
him. Some imagined that they recognised the sentiments and diction of
Temple. [245] But in truth that amplitude and acuteness of intellect,
that vivacity of fancy, that terse and energetic style, that placid
dignity, half courtly half philosophical, which the utmost excitement
of conflict could not for a moment derange, belonged to Halifax, and to
Halifax alone.

The Dissenters wavered; nor is it any reproach to them that they did so.
They were suffering, and the King had given them relief. Some eminent
pastors had emerged from confinement; others had ventured to return
from exile. Congregations, which had hitherto met only by stealth and in
darkness, now assembled at noonday, and sang psalms aloud in the hearing
of magistrates, churchwardens, and constables. Modest buildings for the
worship of God after the Puritan fashion began to rise all over England.
An observant traveller will still remark the date of 1687 on some of the
oldest meeting houses. Nevertheless the offers of the Church were, to
a prudent Dissenter, far more attractive than those of the King. The
Declaration was, in the eye of the law, a nullity. It suspended the
penal statutes against nonconformity only for so long a time as the
fundamental principles of the constitution and the rightful authority
of the legislature should remain suspended. What was the value of
privileges which must be held by a tenure at once so ignominious and
so insecure? There might soon be a demise of the crown. A sovereign
attached to the established religion might sit on the throne. A
Parliament composed of Churchmen might be assembled. How deplorable
would then be the situation of Dissenters who had been in league with
Jesuits against the constitution. The Church offered an indulgence very
different from that granted by James, an indulgence as valid and as
sacred as the Great Charter. Both the contending parties promised
religious liberty to the separatist: but one party required him to
purchase it by sacrificing civil liberty; the other party invited him to
enjoy civil and religious liberty together.

For these reasons, even if it could be believed that the Court was
sincere, a Dissenter might reasonably have determined to cast in his lot
with the Church. But what guarantee was there for the sincerity of the
Court? All men knew what the conduct of James had been tip to that
very time. It was not impossible, indeed, that a persecutor might be
convinced by argument and by experience of the advantages of toleration.
But James did not pretend to have been recently convinced. On the
contrary, he omitted no opportunity of protesting that he had, during
many years, been, on principle, adverse to all intolerance. Yet, within
a few months, he had persecuted men, women, young girls, to the death
for their religion. Had he been acting against light and against the
convictions of his conscience then? Or was he uttering a deliberate
falsehood now? From this dilemma there was no escape; and either of the
two suppositions was fatal to the King's character for honesty. It was
notorious also that he had been completely subjugated by the Jesuits.
Only a few days before the publication of the Indulgence, that Order had
been honoured, in spite of the well known wishes of the Holy See, with
a new mark of his confidence and approbation. His confessor, Father
Mansuete, a Franciscan, whose mild temper and irreproachable life
commanded general respect, but who had long been hated by Tyrconnel
and Petre, had been discarded. The vacant place had been filled by an
Englishman named Warner, who had apostatized from the religion of his
country and had turned Jesuit. To the moderate Roman Catholics and to
the Nuncio this change was far from agreeable. By every Protestant it
was regarded as a proof that the dominion of the Jesuits over the royal
mind was absolute. [246] Whatever praises those fathers might justly
claim, flattery itself could not ascribe to them either wide liberality
or strict veracity. That they had never scrupled, when the interest of
their Order was at stake, to call in the aid of the civil sword, or to
violate the laws of truth and of good faith, had been proclaimed to
the world, not only by Protestant accusers, but by men whose virtue and
genius were the glory of the Church of Rome. It was incredible that
a devoted disciple of the Jesuits should be on principle zealous for
freedom of conscience: but it was neither incredible nor improbable that
he might think himself justified in disguising his real sentiments, in
order to render a service to his religion. It was certain that the King
at heart preferred the Churchmen to the Puritans. It was certain that,
while he had any hope of gaining the Churchmen, he had never shown the
smallest kindness to the Puritans. Could it then be doubted that, if
the Churchmen would even now comply with his wishes, he would willingly
sacrifice the Puritans? His word, repeatedly pledged, had not restrained
him from invading the legal rights of that clergy which had given such
signal proofs of affection and fidelity to his house. What security then
could his word afford to sects divided from him by the recollection of a
thousand inexpiable wounds inflicted and endured?

When the first agitation produced by the publication of the Indulgence
had subsided, it appeared that a breach had taken place in the Puritan
party. The minority, headed by a few busy men whose judgment was
defective or was biassed by interest, supported the King. Henry Care,
who had long been the bitterest and most active pamphleteer among the
Nonconformists, and who had, in the days of the Popish plot, assailed
James with the utmost fury in a weekly journal entitled the Packet of
Advice from Rome, was now as loud in adulation, as he had formerly been
in calumny and insult. [247] The chief agent who was employed by the
government to manage the Presbyterians was Vincent Alsop, a divine of
some note both as a preacher and as a writer. His son, who had incurred
the penalties of treason, received a pardon; and the whole influence of
the father was thus engaged on the side of the Court. [248] With Alsop
was joined Thomas Rosewell. Rosewell had, during that persecution of
the Dissenters which followed the detection of the Rye House Plot, been
falsely accused of preaching against the government, had been tried for
his life by Jeffreys, and had, in defiance of the clearest evidence,
been convicted by a packed jury. The injustice of the verdict was so
gross that the very courtiers cried shame. One Tory gentleman who had
heard the trial went instantly to Charles, and declared that the neck
of the most loyal subject in England would not be safe if Rosewell
suffered. The jurymen themselves were stung by remorse when they thought
over what they had done, and exerted themselves to save the life of the
prisoner. At length a pardon was granted; but Rosewell remained
bound under heavy recognisances to good behaviour during life, and to
periodical appearance in the Court of King's Bench. His recognisances
were now discharged by the royal command; and in this way his services
were secured. [249]

The business of gaining the Independents was principally intrusted to
one of their ministers named Stephen Lobb. Lobb was a weak, violent, and
ambitious man. He had gone such lengths in opposition to the government,
that he had been by name proscribed in several proclamations. He now
made his peace, and went as far in servility as he had ever done
in faction. He joined the Jesuitical cabal, and eagerly recommended
measures from which the wisest and most honest Roman Catholics recoiled.
It was remarked that he was constantly at the palace and frequently in
the closet, that he lived with a splendour to which the Puritan divines
were little accustomed, and that he was perpetually surrounded by
suitors imploring his interest to procure them offices or pardons. [250]

With Lobb was closely connected William Penn. Penn had never been a
strongheaded man: the life which he had been leading during two years
had not a little impaired his moral sensibility; and, if his conscience
ever reproached him, he comforted himself by repeating that he had a
good and noble end in view, and that he was not paid for his services in
money.

By the influence of these men, and of others less conspicuous, addresses
of thanks to the King were procured from several bodies of Dissenters.
Tory writers have with justice remarked that the language of these
compositions was as fulsomely servile as anything that could be found in
the most florid eulogies pronounced by Bishops on the Stuarts. But, on
close inquiry, it will appear that the disgrace belongs to but a small
part of the Puritan party. There was scarcely a market town in England
without at least a knot of separatists. No exertion was spared to induce
them to express their gratitude for the Indulgence. Circular letters,
imploring them to sign, were sent to every corner of the kingdom in such
numbers that the mail bags, it was sportively said, were too heavy for
the posthorses. Yet all the addresses which could be obtained from all
the Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists scattered over England did
not in six months amount to sixty; nor is there any reason to believe
that these addresses were numerously signed. [251]

The great body of Protestant Nonconformists, firmly attached to civil
liberty, and distrusting the promises of the King and of the Jesuits,
steadily refused to return thanks for a favour which, it might well
be suspected, concealed a snare. This was the temper of all the most
illustrious chiefs of the party. One of these was Baxter. He had, as we
have seen, been brought to trial soon after the accession of James, had
been brutally insulted by Jeffreys, and had been convicted by a jury,
such as the courtly Sheriffs of those times were in the habit of
selecting. Baxter had been about a year and a half in prison when the
court began to think seriously of gaining the Nonconformists. He was
not only set at liberty, but was informed that, if he chose to reside in
London, he might do so without fearing that the Five Mile Act would
be enforced against him. The government probably hoped that the
recollection of past sufferings and the sense of present ease would
produce the same effect on him as on Rosewell and Lobb. The hope was
disappointed. Baxter was neither to be corrupted nor to be deceived. He
refused to join in an address of thanks for the Indulgence, and exerted
all his influence to promote good feeling between the Church and the
Presbyterians. [252]

If any man stood higher than Baxter in the estimation of the Protestant
Dissenters, that man was John Howe. Howe had, like Baxter, been
personally a gainer by the recent change of policy. The same tyranny
which had flung Baxter into gaol had driven Howe into banishment; and,
soon after Baxter had been let out of the King's Bench prison, Howe
returned from Utrecht to England. It was expected at Whitehall that Howe
would exert in favour of the court all the authority which he possessed
over his brethren. The King himself condescended to ask the help of the
subject whom he had oppressed. Howe appears to have hesitated: but the
influence of the Hampdens, with whom he was on terms of close intimacy,
kept him steady to the cause of the constitution. A meeting of
Presbyterian ministers was held at his house, to consider the state of
affairs, and to determine on the course to be adopted. There was great
anxiety at the palace to know the result. Two royal messengers were in
attendance during the discussion. They carried back the unwelcome news
that Howe had declared himself decidedly adverse to the dispensing
power, and that he had, after long debate, carried with him the majority
of the assembly. [253]

To the names of Baxter and Howe must be added the name of a man far
below them in station and in acquired knowledge, but in virtue their
equal, and in genius their superior, John Bunyan. Bunyan had been bred
a tinker, and had served as a private soldier in the parliamentary army.
Early in his life he had been fearfully tortured by remorse for his
youthful sins, the worst of which seem, however, to have been such
as the world thinks venial. His keen sensibility and his powerful
imagination made his internal conflicts singularly terrible. He fancied
that he was under sentence of reprobation, that he had committed
blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, that he had sold Christ, that he was
actually possessed by a demon. Sometimes loud voices from heaven cried
out to warn him. Sometimes fiends whispered impious suggestions in his
ear. He saw visions of distant mountain tops, on which the sun shone
brightly, but from which he was separated by a waste of snow. He felt
the Devil behind him pulling his clothes. He thought that the brand of
Cain had been set upon him. He feared that he was about to burst asunder
like Judas. His mental agony disordered his health. One day he shook
like a man in the palsy. On another day he felt a fire within his
breast. It is difficult to understand how he survived sufferings so
intense, and so long continued. At length the clouds broke. From the
depths of despair, the penitent passed to a state of serene felicity. An
irresistible impulse now urged him to impart to others the blessing of
which he was himself possessed. [254] He joined the Baptists, and became
a preacher and writer. His education had been that of a mechanic. He
knew no language but the English, as it was spoken by the common people.
He had studied no great model of composition, with the exception, an
important exception undoubtedly, of our noble translation of the Bible.
His spelling was bad. He frequently transgressed the rules of grammar.
Yet his native force of genius, and his experimental knowledge of all
the religious passions, from despair to ecstasy, amply supplied in him
the want of learning. His rude oratory roused and melted hearers who
listened without interest to the laboured discourses of great logicians
and Hebraists. His works were widely circulated among the humbler
classes. One of them, the Pilgrim's Progress, was, in his own lifetime,
translated into several foreign languages. It was, however, scarcely
known to the learned and polite, and had been, during near a century,
the delight of pious cottagers and artisans before it was publicly
commended by any man of high literary eminence. At length critics
condescended to inquire where the secret of so wide and so durable a
popularity lay. They were compelled to own that the ignorant multitude
had judged more correctly than the learned, and that the despised little
book was really a masterpiece. Bunyan is indeed as decidedly the first
of allegorists, as Demosthenes is the first of orators, or Shakspeare
the first of dramatists. Other allegorists have shown equal ingenuity
but no other allegorist has ever been able to touch the heart, and to
make abstractions objects of terror, of pity, and of love. [255]

It may be doubted whether any English Dissenter had suffered more
severely under the penal laws than John Bunyan. Of the twenty-seven
years which had elapsed since the Restoration, he had passed twelve in
confinement. He still persisted in preaching; but, that he might preach,
he was under the necessity of disguising himself like a carter. He was
often introduced into meetings through back doors, with a smock frock on
his back, and a whip in his hand. If he had thought only of his own ease
and safety, he would have hailed the Indulgence with delight. He was
now, at length, free to pray and exhort in open day. His congregation
rapidly increased, thousands hung upon his words; and at Bedford, where
he ordinarily resided, money was plentifully contributed to build a
meeting house for him. His influence among the common people was such
that the government would willingly have bestowed on him some municipal
office: but his vigorous understanding and his stout English heart were
proof against all delusion and all temptation. He felt assured that
the proffered toleration was merely a bait intended to lure the Puritan
party to destruction; nor would he, by accepting a place for which he
was not legally qualified, recognise the validity of the dispensing
power. One of the last acts of his virtuous life was to decline an
interview to which he was invited by an agent of the government. [256]

Great as was the authority of Bunyan with the Baptists, that of William
Kiffin was still greater. Kiffin was the first man among them in wealth
and station. He was in the habit of exercising his spiritual gifts at
their meetings: but he did not live by preaching. He traded largely; his
credit on the Exchange of London stood high; and he had accumulated an
ample fortune. Perhaps no man could, at that conjuncture, have rendered
more valuable services to the Court. But between him and the Court was
interposed the remembrance of one terrible event. He was the grandfather
of the two Hewlings, those gallant youths who, of all the victims of the
Bloody Assizes, had been the most generally lamented. For the sad fate
of one of them James was in a peculiar manner responsible. Jeffreys had
respited the younger brother. The poor lad's sister had been ushered
by Churchill into the royal presence, and had begged for mercy; but the
King's heart had been obdurate. The misery of the whole family had been
great: but Kiffin was most to be pitied. He was seventy years old when
he was left desolate, the survivor of those who should have survived
him. The heartless and venal sycophants of Whitehall, judging by
themselves, thought that the old man would be easily propitiated by
an Alderman's gown, and by some compensation in money for the property
which his grandsons had forfeited. Penn was employed in the work of
seduction, but to no purpose. The King determined to try what effect
his own civilities would produce. Kiffin was ordered to attend at the
palace. He found a brilliant circle of noblemen and gentlemen assembled.
James immediately came to him, spoke to him very graciously, and
concluded by saying, "I have put you down, Mr. Kiffin, for an Alderman
of London. " The old man looked fixedly at the King, burst into tears,
and made answer, "Sir, I am worn out: I am unfit to serve your Majesty
or the City. And, sir, the death of my poor boys broke my heart. That
wound is as fresh as ever. I shall carry it to my grave. " The King stood
silent for a minute in some confusion, and then said, "Mr. Kiffin, I
will find a balsam for that sore. " Assuredly James did not mean to say
anything cruel or insolent: on the contrary, he seems to have been in
an unusually gentle mood. Yet no speech that is recorded of him gives so
unfavourable a notion of his character as these few words. They are
the words of a hardhearted and lowminded man, unable to conceive any
laceration of the affections for which a place or a pension would not be
a full compensation. [257]

That section of the dissenting body which was favourable to the King's
new policy had from the first been a minority, and soon began to
diminish. For the Nonconformists perceived in no long time that their
spiritual privileges had been abridged rather than extended by the
Indulgence. The chief characteristic of the Puritan was abhorrence of
the peculiarities of the Church of Rome. He had quitted the Church of
England only because he conceived that she too much resembled her
superb and voluptuous sister, the sorceress of the golden cup and of the
scarlet robe. He now found that one of the implied conditions of that
alliance which some of his pastors had formed with the Court was that
the religion of the Court should be respectfully and tenderly treated.
He soon began to regret the days of persecution. While the penal laws
were enforced, he had heard the words of life in secret and at his
peril: but still he had heard them. When the brethren were assembled in
the inner chamber, when the sentinels had been posted, when the doors
had been locked, when the preacher, in the garb of a butcher or a
drayman, had come in over the tiles, then at least God was truly
worshipped.
No portion of divine truth was suppressed or softened down
for any worldly object. All the distinctive doctrines of the Puritan
theology were fully, and even coarsely, set forth. To the Church of Rome
no quarter was given. The Beast, the Antichrist, the Man of Sin, the
mystical Jezebel, the mystical Babylon, were the phrases ordinarily
employed to describe that august and fascinating superstition. Such
had been once the style of Alsop, of Lobb, of Rosewell, and of other
ministers who had of late been well received at the palace: but such was
now their style no longer. Divines who aspired to a high place in the
King's favour and confidence could not venture to speak with asperity
of the King's religion. Congregations therefore complained loudly that,
since the appearance of the Declaration which purported to give them
entire freedom of conscience, they had never once heard the Gospel
boldly and faithfully preached. Formerly they had been forced to snatch
their spiritual nutriment by stealth; but, when they had snatched it,
they had found it seasoned exactly to their taste. They were now at
liberty to feed: but their food had lost all its savour. They met by
daylight, and in commodious edifices: but they heard discourses far less
to their taste than they would have heard from the rector. At the parish
church the will worship and idolatry of Rome were every Sunday attacked
with energy: but, at the meeting house, the pastor, who had a few months
before reviled the established clergy as little better than Papists, now
carefully abstained from censuring Popery, or conveyed his censures in
language too delicate to shock even the ears of Father Petre. Nor was
it possible to assign any creditable reason for this change. The Roman
Catholic doctrines had undergone no alteration. Within living memory
never had Roman Catholic priests been so active in the work of making
proselytes: never had so many Roman Catholic publications issued from
the press; never had the attention of all who cared about religion been
so closely fixed on the dispute between the Roman Catholics and the
Protestants. What could be thought of the sincerity of theologians who
had never been weary of railing at Popery when Popery was comparatively
harmless and helpless, and who now, when a time of real danger to the
reformed faith had arrived, studiously avoided tittering one word
which could give offence to a Jesuit? Their conduct was indeed easily
explained. It was known that some of them had obtained pardons. It was
suspected that others had obtained money. Their prototype might be found
in that weak apostle who from fear denied the Master to whom he had
boastfully professed the firmest attachment, or in that baser apostle
who sold his Lord for a handful of silver. [258]

Thus the dissenting ministers who had been gained by the Court were
rapidly losing the influence which they had once possessed over their
brethren. On the other hand, the sectaries found themselves attracted
by a strong religious sympathy towards those prelates and priests of
the Church of England who, spite of royal mandates, of threats, and of
promises, were waging vigorous war with the Church of Rome. The Anglican
body and the Puritan body, so long separated by a mortal enmity, were
daily drawing nearer to each other, and every step which they made
towards union increased the influence of him who was their common head.
William was in all things fitted to be a mediator between these two
great sections of the English nation. He could not be said to be a
member of either. Yet neither, when in a reasonable mood, could refuse
to regard him as a friend. His system of theology agreed with that of
the Puritans. At the same time, he regarded episcopacy not indeed as a
divine institution, but as a perfectly lawful and an eminently useful
form of church government. Questions respecting postures, robes,
festivals and liturgies, he considered as of no vital importance. A
simple worship, such as that to which he had been early accustomed,
would have been most to his personal taste. But he was prepared to
conform to any ritual which might be acceptable to the nation, and
insisted only that he should not be required to persecute his brother
Protestants whose consciences did not permit them to follow his example.
Two years earlier he would have been pronounced by numerous bigots on
both sides a mere Laodicean, neither cold nor hot, and fit only to be
spewed out. But the zeal which had inflamed Churchmen against Dissenters
and Dissenters against Churchmen had been so tempered by common
adversity and danger that the lukewarmness which had once been imputed
to him as a crime was now reckoned among his chief virtues.

All men were anxious to know what he thought of the Declaration of
Indulgence. For a time hopes were entertained at Whitehall that his
known respect for the rights of conscience would at least prevent him
from publicly expressing disapprobation of a policy which had a specious
show of liberality. Penn sent copious disquisitions to the Hague, and
even went thither, in the hope that his eloquence, of which he had a
high opinion, would prove irresistible. But, though he harangued on
his favourite theme with a copiousness which tired his hearers out, and
though he assured them that the approach of a golden age of religious
liberty had been revealed to him by a man who was permitted to converse
with angels, no impression was made on the Prince. [259] "You ask me,"
said William to one of the King's agents, "to countenance an attack on
my own religion. I cannot with a safe conscience do it, and I will not,
no, not for the crown of England, nor for the empire of the world. "
These words were reported to the King and disturbed him greatly. [260]
He wrote urgent letters with his own hand. Sometimes he took the tone
of an injured man. He was the head of the royal family, he was as such
entitled to expect the obedience of the younger branches and it was very
hard that he was to be crossed in a matter on which his heart was set.
At other times a bait which was thought irresistible was offered. If
William would but give way on this one point, the English government
would, in return, cooperate with him strenuously against France. He
was not to be so deluded. He knew that James, without the support of a
Parliament, would, even if not unwilling, be unable to render effectual
service to the common cause of Europe; and there could be no doubt that,
if a Parliament were assembled, the first demand of both Houses would be
that the Declaration should he cancelled.

The Princess assented to all that was suggested by her husband. Their
joint opinion was conveyed to the King in firm but temperate terms. They
declared that they deeply regretted the course which His Majesty had
adopted. They were convinced that he had usurped a prerogative which did
not by law belong to him. Against that usurpation they protested, not
only as friends to civil liberty, but as members of the royal house, who
had a deep interest in maintaining the rights of that crown which they
might one day wear. For experience had shown that in England arbitrary
government could not fail to produce a reaction even more pernicious
than itself; and it might reasonably be feared that the nation, alarmed
and incensed by the prospect of despotism, might conceive a disgust even
for constitutional monarchy. The advice, therefore, which they tendered
to the King was that he would in all things govern according to law.
They readily admitted that the law might with advantage be altered by
competent authority, and that some part of his Declaration well deserved
to be embodied in an Act of Parliament. They were not persecutors.
They should with pleasure see Roman Catholics as well as Protestant
Dissenters relieved in a proper manner from all penal statutes. They
should with pleasure see Protestant Dissenters admitted in a proper
manner to civil office. At that point their Highnesses must stop. They
could not but entertain grave apprehensions that, if Roman Catholics
were made capable of public trust, great evil would ensue; and it was
intimated not obscurely that these apprehensions arose chiefly from the
conduct of James. [261]

The opinion expressed by the Prince and Princess respecting the
disabilities to which the Roman Catholics were subject was that of
almost all the statesmen and philosophers who were then zealous
for political and religious freedom. In our age, on the contrary,
enlightened men have often pronounced, with regret, that, on this one
point, William appears to disadvantage when compared with his father in
law. The truth is that some considerations which are necessary to the
forming of a correct judgment seem to have escaped the notice of many
writers of the nineteenth century.

There are two opposite errors into which those who study the annals of
our country are in constant danger of falling, the error of judging the
present by the past, and the error of judging the past by the present.
The former is the error of minds prone to reverence whatever is old, the
latter of minds readily attracted by whatever is new. The former
error may perpetually be observed in the reasonings of conservative
politicians on the questions of their own day. The latter error
perpetually infects the speculations of writers of the liberal school
when they discuss the transactions of an earlier age. The former error
is the more pernicious in a statesman, and the latter in a historian.

It is not easy for any person who, in our time, undertakes to treat of
the revolution which overthrew the Stuarts, to preserve with steadiness
the happy mean between these two extremes. The question whether members
of the Roman Catholic Church could be safely admitted to Parliament and
to office convulsed our country during the reign of James the Second,
was set at rest by his downfall, and, having slept during more than
a century, was revived by that great stirring of the human mind which
followed, the meeting of the National Assembly of France. During
thirty years the contest went on in both Houses of Parliament, in every
constituent body, in every social circle. It destroyed administrations,
broke up parties, made all government in one part of the empire
impossible, and at length brought us to the verge of civil war. Even
when the struggle had terminated, the passions to which it had given
birth still continued to rage. It was scarcely possible for any man
whose mind was under the influence of those passions to see the events
of the years 1687 and 1688 in a perfectly correct light.

One class of politicians, starting from the true proposition that the
Revolution had been a great blessing to our country, arrived at the
false conclusion that no test which the statesmen of the Revolution had
thought necessary for the protection of our religion and our freedom
could be safely abolished. Another class, starting from the true
proposition that the disabilities imposed on the Roman Catholics had
long been productive of nothing but mischief, arrived at the false
conclusion that there never could have been a time when those
disabilities could have been useful and necessary. The former fallacy
pervaded the speeches of the acute and learned Eldon. The latter was
not altogether without influence even on an intellect so calm and
philosophical as that of Mackintosh.

Perhaps, however, it will be found on examination that we may vindicate
the course which was unanimously approved by all the great English
statesmen of the seventeenth century, without questioning the wisdom of
the course which was as unanimously approved by all the great English
statesmen of our own time.

Undoubtedly it is an evil that any citizen should be excluded from civil
employment on account of his religious opinions: but a choice between
evils is sometimes all that is left to human wisdom. A nation may
be placed in such a situation that the majority must either impose
disabilities or submit to them, and that what would, under ordinary
circumstances, be justly condemned as persecution, may fall within the
bounds of legitimate selfdefence: and such was in the year 1687 the
situation of England.

According to the constitution of the realm, James possessed the right
of naming almost all public functionaries, political, judicial,
ecclesiastical, military, and naval. In the exercise of this right he
was not, as our sovereigns now are, under the necessity of acting
in conformity with the advice of ministers approved by the House of
Commons. It was evident therefore that, unless he were strictly bound by
law to bestow office on none but Protestants, it would be in his power
to bestow office on none but Roman Catholics. The Roman Catholics were
few in number; and among them was not a single man whose services could
be seriously missed by the commonwealth. The proportion which they bore
to the population of England was very much smaller than at present.
For at present a constant stream of emigration runs from Ireland to our
great towns: but in the seventeenth century there was not even in London
an Irish colony. Forty-nine fiftieths of the inhabitants of the kingdom,
forty-nine fiftieths of the property of the kingdom, almost all the
political, legal, and military ability and knowledge to be found in
the kingdom, were Protestant. Nevertheless the King, under a strong
infatuation, had determined to use his vast patronage as a means of
making proselytes. To be of his Church was, in his view, the first
of all qualifications for office. To be of the national Church was a
positive disqualification. He reprobated, it is true, in language which
has been applauded by some credulous friends of religious liberty, the
monstrous injustice of that test which excluded a small minority of the
nation from public trust: but he was at the same time instituting a test
which excluded the majority. He thought it hard that a man who was a
good financier and a loyal subject should be excluded from the post of
Lord Treasurer merely for being a Papist. But he had himself turned out
a Lord Treasurer whom he admitted to be a good financier and a loyal
subject merely for being a Protestant. He had repeatedly and distinctly
declared his resolution never to put the white staff in the hands of any
heretic. With many other great offices of state he had dealt in the
same way. Already the Lord President, the Lord Privy Seal, the Lord
Chamberlain, the Groom of the Stole, the First Lord of the Treasury,
a Secretary of State, the Lord High Commissioner of Scotland, the
Chancellor of Scotland, the Secretary of Scotland, were, or pretended
to be, Roman Catholics. Most of these functionaries had been bred
Churchmen, and had been guilty of apostasy, open or secret, in order to
obtain or to keep their high places. Every Protestant who still held
an important post in the government held it in constant uncertainty
and fear. It would be endless to recount the situations of a lower rank
which were filled by the favoured class. Roman Catholics already swarmed
in every department of the public service. They were Lords Lieutenants,
Deputy Lieutenants, judges, justices of the Peace, Commissioners of the
Customs, Envoys to foreign courts, Colonels of regiments, Governors of
fortresses. The share which in a few months they had obtained of the
temporal patronage of the crown was much more than ten times as great
as they would have had under an impartial system. Yet this was not
the worst. They were made rulers of the Church of England. Men who had
assured the King that they held his faith sate in the High Commission,
and exercised supreme jurisdiction in spiritual things over all the
prelates and priests of the established religion. Ecclesiastical
benefices of great dignity had been bestowed, some on avowed Papists,
and some on half concealed Papists. And all this had been done while the
laws against Popery were still unrepealed, and while James had still a
strong interest in affecting respect for the rights of conscience. What
then was his conduct likely to be, if his subjects consented to free
him, by a legislative act, from even the shadow of restraint? Is it
possible to doubt that Protestants would have been as effectually
excluded from employment, by a strictly legal use of the royal
prerogative, as ever Roman Catholics had been by Act of Parliament?

How obstinately James was determined to bestow on the members of his
own Church a share of patronage altogether out of proportion to their
numbers and importance is proved by the instructions which, in exile
and old age, he drew up for the guidance of his son. It is impossible
to read without mingled pity and derision those effusions of a mind on
which all the discipline of experience and adversity had been exhausted
in vain. The Pretender is advised if ever he should reign in England, to
make a partition of offices, and carefully to reserve for the members of
the Church of Rome a portion which might have sufficed for them if
they had been one half instead of one fiftieth part of the nation. One
Secretary of State, one Commissioner of the Treasury, the Secretary
at War, the majority of the great dignitaries of the household, the
majority of the officers of the army, are always to be Catholics. Such
were the designs of James after his perverse bigotry had drawn on him
a punishment which had appalled the whole world. Is it then possible
to doubt what his conduct would have been if his people, deluded by the
empty name of religious liberty, had suffered him to proceed without any
check?

Even Penn, intemperate and undiscerning as was his zeal for the
Declaration, seems to have felt that the partiality with which honours
and emoluments were heaped on Roman Catholics, might not unnaturally
excite the jealousy of the nation. He owned that, if the Test Act were
repealed, the Protestants were entitled to an equivalent, and went
so far as to suggest several equivalents. During some weeks the word
equivalent, then lately imported from France, was in the mouths of all
the coffee-house orators, but at length a few pages of keen logic and
polished sarcasm written by Halifax put an end to these idle projects.
One of Penn's schemes was that a law should be passed dividing the
patronage of the crown into three equal parts; and that to one only of
those parts members of the Church of Rome should be admitted. Even
under such an arrangement the members of the Church of Rome would have
obtained near twenty times their fair portion of official appointments;
and yet there is no reason to believe that even to such an arrangement
the King would have consented. But, had he consented, what guarantee
could he give that he would adhere to his bargain? The dilemma
propounded by Halifax was unanswerable. If laws are binding on you,
observe the law which now exists. If laws are not binding on you, it is
idle to offer us a law as a security. [262]

It is clear, therefore, that the point at issue was not whether secular
offices should be thrown open to all sects indifferently. While James
was King it was inevitable that there should be exclusion; and the only
question was who should be excluded, Papists or Protestants, the few or
the many, a hundred thousand Englishmen or five millions.

Such are the weighty arguments by which the conduct of the Prince of
Orange towards the English Roman Catholics may be reconciled with the
principles of religious liberty. These arguments, it will be observed,
have no reference to any part of the Roman Catholic theology. It will
also be observed that they ceased to have any force when the crown had
been settled on a race of Protestant sovereigns, and when the power of
the House of Commons in the state had become so decidedly preponderant
that no sovereign, whatever might have been his opinions or his
inclinations, could have imitated the example of James. The nation,
however, after its terrors, its struggles, its narrow escape, was in
a suspicious and vindictive mood. Means of defence therefore which
necessity had once justified, and which necessity alone could justify,
were obstinately used long after the necessity had ceased to exist, and
were not abandoned till vulgar prejudice had maintained a contest of
many years against reason. But in the time of James reason and vulgar
prejudice were on the same side. The fanatical and ignorant wished to
exclude the Roman Catholic from office because he worshipped stocks and
stones, because he had the mark of the Beast, because he had burned down
London, because he had strangled Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey; and the most
judicious and tolerant statesman, while smiling at the delusions which
imposed on the populace, was led, by a very different road, to the same
conclusion.

The great object of William now was to unite in one body the numerous
sections of the community which regarded him as their common head. In
this work he had several able and trusty coadjutors, among whom two were
preeminently useful, Burnet and Dykvelt.

The services of Burnet indeed it was necessary to employ with some
caution. The kindness with which he had been welcomed at the Hague had
excited the rage of James. Mary received from her father two letters
filled with invectives against the insolent and seditious divine whom
she protected. But these accusations had so little effect on her that
she sent back answers dictated by Burnet himself. At length, in January
1687, the King had recourse to stronger measures. Skelton, who had
represented the English government in the United Provinces, was removed
to Paris, and was succeeded by Albeville, the weakest and basest of all
the members of the Jesuitical cabal. Money was Albeville's one object;
and he took it from all who offered it. He was paid at once by France
and by Holland. Nay, he stooped below even the miserable dignity of
corruption, and accepted bribes so small that they seemed better suited
to a porter or a lacquey than to an Envoy who had been honoured with an
English baronetcy and a foreign marquisate. On one occasion he pocketed
very complacently a gratuity of fifty pistoles as the price of a service
which he had rendered to the States General. This man had it in charge
to demand that Burnet should no longer be countenanced at the Hague.
William, who was not inclined to part with a valuable friend, answered
at first with his usual coldness; "I am not aware, sir, that, since the
Doctor has been here, he has done or said anything of which His Majesty
can justly complain. " But James was peremptory; the time for an open
rupture had not arrived; and it was necessary to give way. During more
than eighteen months Burnet never came into the presence of either the
Prince or the Princess: but he resided near them; he was fully informed
of all that was passing; his advice was constantly asked; his pen was
employed on all important occasions; and many of the sharpest and most
effective tracts which about that time appeared in London were justly
attributed to him.

The rage of James flamed high. He had always been more than sufficiently
prone to the angry passions. But none of his enemies, not even those
who had conspired against his life, not even those who had attempted
by perjury to load him with the guilt of treason and assassination, had
ever been regarded by him with such animosity as he now felt for
Burnet. His Majesty railed daily at the Doctor in unkingly language,
and meditated plans of unlawful revenge. Even blood would not slake
that frantic hatred. The insolent divine must be tortured before he was
permitted to die. Fortunately he was by birth a Scot; and in Scotland,
before he was gibbeted in the Grassmarket, his legs might be dislocated
in the boot. Proceedings were accordingly instituted against him at
Edinburgh: but he had been naturalised in Holland: he had married a
woman of fortune who was a native of that province: and it was certain
that his adopted country would not deliver him up. It was therefore
determined to kidnap him. Ruffians were hired with great sums of money
for this perilous and infamous service. An order for three thousand
pounds on this account was actually drawn up for signature in the office
of the Secretary of State. Lewis was apprised of the design, and took
a warm interest in it. He would lend, he said, his best assistance to
convey the villain to England, and would undertake that the ministers of
the vengeance of James should find a secure asylum in France. Burnet
was well aware of his danger: but timidity was not among his faults.
He published a courageous answer to the charges which had been brought
against him at Edinburgh. He knew, he said, that it was intended to
execute him without a trial: but his trust was in the King of Kings, to
whom innocent blood would not cry in vain, even against the mightiest
princes of the earth. He gave a farewell dinner to some friends, and,
after the meal, took solemn leave of them, as a man who was doomed to
death, and with whom they could no longer safely converse. Nevertheless
he continued to show himself in all the public places of the Hague so
boldly that his friends reproached him bitterly with his foolhardiness.
[263]

While Burnet was William's secretary for English affairs in Holland,
Dykvelt had been not less usefully employed in London. Dykvelt was one
of a remarkable class of public men who, having been bred to politics
in the noble school of John De Witt, had, after the fall of that great
minister, thought that they should best discharge their duty to the
commonwealth by rallying round the Prince of Orange. Of the diplomatists
in the service of the United Provinces none was, in dexterity, temper,
and manners, superior to Dykvelt. In knowledge of English affairs none
seems to have been his equal. A pretence was found for despatching him,
early in the year 1687, to England on a special mission with credentials
from the States General. But in truth his embassy was not to the
government, but to the opposition; and his conduct was guided by private
instructions which had been drawn by Burnet, and approved by William.
[264]

Dykvelt reported that James was bitterly mortified by the conduct of
the Prince and Princess. "My nephew's duty," said the King, "is to
strengthen my hands. But he has always taken a pleasure in crossing me. "
Dykvelt answered that in matters of private concern His Highness had
shown, and was ready to show, the greatest deference to the King's
wishes; but that it was scarcely reasonable to expect the aid of a
Protestant prince against the Protestant religion. [265] The King was
silenced, but not appeased. He saw, with ill humour which he could
not disguise, that Dykvelt was mustering and drilling all the various
divisions of the opposition with a skill which would have been
creditable to the ablest English statesman, and which was marvellous
in a foreigner. The clergy were told that they would find the Prince
a friend to episcopacy and to the Book of Common Prayer. The
Nonconformists were encouraged to expect from him, not only toleration,
but also comprehension. Even the Roman Catholics were conciliated; and
some of the most respectable among them declared, to the King's face,
that they were satisfied with what Dykvelt proposed, and that they
would rather have a toleration, secured by statute, than an illegal and
precarious ascendency. [266] The chiefs of all the important sections
of the nation had frequent conferences in the presence of the dexterous
Envoy. At these meetings the sense of the Tory party was chiefly spoken
by the Earls of Danby and Nottingham. Though more than eight years had
elapsed since Danby had fallen from power, his name was still great
among the old Cavaliers of England; and many even of those Whigs who had
formerly persecuted him were now disposed to admit that he had suffered
for faults not his own, and that his zeal for the prerogative, though
it had often misled him, had been tempered by two feelings which did him
honour, zeal for the established religion, and zeal for the dignity and
independence of his country. He was also highly esteemed at the Hague,
where it was never forgotten that he was the person who, in spite of the
influence of France and of the Papists, had induced Charles to bestow
the hand of the Lady Mary on her cousin.

Daniel Finch, Earl of Nottingham, a nobleman whose name will frequently
recur in the history of three eventful reigns, sprang from a family of
unrivalled forensic eminence. One of his kinsmen had borne the seal of
Charles the First, had prostituted eminent parts and learning to evil
purposes, and had been pursued by the vengeance of the Commons of
England with Falkland at their head. A more honourable renown had in the
succeeding generation been obtained by Heneage Finch. He had immediately
after the Restoration been appointed Solicitor General. He had
subsequently risen to be Attorney General, Lord Keeper, Lord Chancellor,
Baron Finch, and Earl of Nottingham. Through this prosperous career
he had always held the prerogative as high as he honestly or decently
could; but he had never been concerned in any machinations against the
fundamental laws of the realm. In the midst of a corrupt court he had
kept his personal integrity unsullied. He had enjoyed high fame as an
orator, though his diction, formed on models anterior to the civil wars,
was, towards the close of his life, pronounced stiff and pedantic by the
wits of the rising generation. In Westminster Hall he is still mentioned
with respect as the man who first educed out of the chaos anciently
called by the name of equity a new system of jurisprudence, as regular
and complete as that which is administered by the judges of the Common
Law. [267] A considerable part of the moral and intellectual character
of this great magistrate had descended with the title of Nottingham to
his eldest son. This son, Earl Daniel, was an honourable and virtuous
man. Though enslaved by some absurd prejudices, and though liable to
strange fits of caprice, he cannot be accused of having deviated from
the path of right in search either of unlawful gain or of unlawful
pleasure. Like his father he was a distinguished speaker, impressive,
but prolix, and too monotonously solemn. The person of the orator was
in perfect harmony with his oratory. His attitude was rigidly erect--his
complexion so dark that he might have passed for a native of a warmer
climate than ours; and his harsh features were composed to an expression
resembling that of a chief mourner at a funeral.