No More Learning

The nineteenth Earl had fallen in arms for
the Protestant religion and for the liberties of Europe under the walls
of Maastricht. His son Aubrey, in whom closed the longest and most
illustrious line of nobles that England has seen, a man of loose morals,
but of inoffensive temper and of courtly manners, was Lord Lieutenant
of Essex, and Colonel of the Blues. His nature was not factious; and his
interest inclined him to avoid a rupture with the court; for his estate
was encumbered, and his military command lucrative. He was summoned
to the royal closet; and an explicit declaration of his intentions was
demanded from him. "Sir," answered Oxford, "I will stand by your Majesty
against all enemies to the last drop of my blood. But this is matter
of conscience, and I cannot comply. " He was instantly deprived of his
lieutenancy and of his regiment. [314]

Inferior in antiquity and splendour to the house of De Vere, but to the
house of De Vere alone, was the house of Talbot. Ever since the reign of
Edward the Third, the Talbots had sate among the peers of the realm. The
earldom of Shrewsbury had been bestowed, in the fifteenth century, on
John Talbot, the antagonist of the Maid of Orleans. He had been long
remembered by his countrymen with tenderness and reverence as one of
the most illustrious of those warriors who had striven to erect a great
English empire on the Continent of Europe. The stubborn courage which he
had shown in the midst of disasters had made him an object of interest
greater than more fortunate captains had inspired, and his death had
furnished a singularly touching scene to our early stage. His posterity
had, during two centuries, flourished in great honour. The head of the
family at the time of the Restoration was Francis, the eleventh Earl,
a Roman Catholic. His death had been attended by circumstances such as,
even in those licentious times which immediately followed the downfall
of the Puritan tyranny, had moved men to horror and pity. The Duke
of Buckingham in the course of his vagrant amours was for a moment
attracted by the Countess of Shrewsbury. She was easily won. Her lord
challenged the gallant, and fell. Some said that the abandoned woman
witnessed the combat in man's attire, and others that she clasped her
victorious lover to her bosom while his shirt was still dripping with
the blood of her husband. The honours of the murdered man descended to
his infant son Charles. As the orphan grew up to man's estate, it was
generally acknowledged that of the young nobility of England none had
been so richly gifted by nature. His person was pleasing, his temper
singularly sweet, his parts such as, if he had been born in a humble
rank, might well have raised him to the height of civil greatness. All
these advantages he had so improved that, before he was of age, he was
allowed to be one of the finest gentlemen and finest scholars of his
time. His learning is proved by notes which are still extant in his
handwriting on books in almost every department of literature. He
spoke French like a gentleman of Lewis's bedchamber, and Italian like a
citizen of Florence. It was impossible that a youth of such parts should
not be anxious to understand the grounds on which his family had refused
to conform to the religion of the state. He studied the disputed points
closely, submitted his doubts to priests of his own faith, laid their
answers before Tillotson, weighed the arguments on both sides long
and attentively, and, after an investigation which occupied two years,
declared himself a Protestant. The Church of England welcomed the
illustrious convert with delight. His popularity was great, and became
greater when it was known that royal solicitations and promises had
been vainly employed to seduce him back to the superstition which he had
abjured. The character of the young Earl did not however develop itself
in a manner quite satisfactory to those who had borne the chief part
in his conversion. His morals by no means escaped the contagion of
fashionable libertinism. In truth the shock which had overturned his
early prejudices had at the same time unfixed all his opinions, and
left him to the unchecked guidance of his feelings. But, though his
principles were unsteady, his impulses were so generous, his temper so
bland, his manners so gracious and easy, that it was impossible not to
love him. He was early called the King of Hearts, and never, through a
long, eventful, and chequered life, lost his right to that name. [315]
Shrewsbury was Lord Lieutenant of Staffordshire and Colonel of one
of the regiments of horse which had been raised in consequence of
the Western insurrection. He now refused to act under the board of
regulators, and was deprived of both his commissions.

None of the English nobles enjoyed a larger measure of public favour
than Charles Sackville Earl of Dorset. He was indeed a remarkable man.
In his youth he had been one of the most notorious libertines of the
wild time which followed the Restoration. He had been the terror of the
City watch, had passed many nights in the round house, and had at least
once occupied a cell in Newgate. His passion for Betty Morrice, and for
Nell Gwynn, who called him her Charles the First, had given no small
amusement and scandal to the town. [316] Yet, in the midst of follies
and vices, his courageous spirit, his fine understanding, and his
natural goodness of heart, had been conspicuous. Men said that the
excesses in which he indulged were common between him and the whole race
of gay young Cavaliers, but that his sympathy with human suffering and
the generosity with which he made reparation to those whom his freaks
had injured were all his own. His associates were astonished by the
distinction which the public made between him and them. "He may do what
he chooses," said Wilmot; "he is never in the wrong. " The judgment
of the world became still more favourable to Dorset when he had been
sobered by time and marriage. His graceful manners, his brilliant
conversation, his soft heart, his open hand, were universally praised.
No day passed, it was said, in which some distressed family had not
reason to bless his name. And yet, with all his goodnature, such was
the keenness of his wit that scoffers whose sarcasm all the town feared
stood in craven fear of the sarcasm of Dorset. All political parties
esteemed and caressed him; but politics were not much to his taste. Had
he been driven by necessity to exert himself, he would probably have
risen to the highest posts in the state; but he was born to rank so high
and wealth so ample that many of the motives which impel men to engage
in public affairs were wanting to him. He took just so much part in
parliamentary and diplomatic business as sufficed to show that he wanted
nothing but inclination to rival Danby and Sunderland, and turned away
to pursuits which pleased him better. Like many other men who, with
great natural abilities, are constitutionally and habitually indolent,
he became an intellectual voluptuary, and a master of all those pleasing
branches of knowledge which can be acquired without severe application.
He was allowed to be the best judge of painting, of sculpture, of
architecture, of acting, that the court could show. On questions of
polite learning his decisions were regarded at all the coffeehouses as
without appeal. More than one clever play which had failed on the first
representation was supported by his single authority against the whole
clamour of the pit, and came forth successful from the second trial.
The delicacy of his taste in French composition was extolled by Saint
Evremond and La Fontaine. Such a patron of letters England had never
seen. His bounty was bestowed with equal judgment and liberality, and
was confined to no sect or faction. Men of genius, estranged from each
other by literary jealousy or by difference of political opinion, joined
in acknowledging his impartial kindness. Dryden owned that he had been
saved from ruin by Dorset's princely generosity. Yet Montague and Prior,
who had keenly satirised Dryden, were introduced by Dorset into public
life; and the best comedy of Dryden's mortal enemy, Shadwell, was
written at Dorset's country seat. The munificent Earl might, if such had
been his wish, have been the rival of those of whom he was content to be
the benefactor. For the verses which he occasionally composed,
unstudied as they are, exhibit the traces of a genius which, assiduously
cultivated, would have produced something great. In the small volume of
his works may be found songs which have the easy vigour of Suckling,
and little satires which sparkle with wit as splendid as that of Butler.
[317]

Dorset was Lord Lieutenant of Sussex: and to Sussex the board of
regulators looked with great anxiety: for in no other county, Cornwall
and Wiltshire excepted, were there so many small boroughs. He was
ordered to repair to his post. No person who knew him expected that he
would obey. He gave such an answer as became him, and was informed that
his services were no longer needed. The interest which his many noble
and amiable qualities inspired was heightened when it was known that he
had received by the post an anonymous billet telling him that, if he did
not promptly comply with the King's wishes, all his wit and popularity
should not save him from assassination. A similar warning was sent
to Shrewsbury. Threatening letters were then much more rare than they
afterwards became. It is therefore not strange that the people, excited
as they were, should have been disposed to believe that the best and
noblest Englishmen were really marked out for Popish daggers. [318] Just
when these letters were the talk of all London, the mutilated corpse of
a noted Puritan was found in the streets. It was soon discovered that
the murderer had acted from no religious or political motive. But
the first suspicions of the populace fell on the Papists. The mangled
remains were carried in procession to the house of the Jesuits in the
Savoy; and during a few hours the fear and rage of the populace were
scarcely less violent than on the day when Godfrey was borne to his
grave. [319]

The other dismissions must be more concisely related. The Duke of
Somerset, whose regiment had been taken from him some months before, was
now turned out of the lord lieutenancy of the East Riding of Yorkshire.
The North Riding was taken from Viscount Fauconberg, Shropshire from
Viscount Newport, and Lancashire from the Earl of Derby, grandson of
that gallant Cavalier who had faced death so bravely, both on the field
of battle and on the scaffold, for the House of Stuart. The Earl of
Pembroke, who had recently served the crown with fidelity and spirit
against Monmouth, was displaced in Wiltshire, the Earl of Husband in
Leicestershire, the Earl of Bridgewater in Buckinghamshire, the Earl of
Thanet in Cumberland, the Earl of Northampton in Warwickshire, the Earl
of Abingdon in Oxfordshire, and the Earl of Scarsdale in Derbyshire.
Scarsdale was also deprived of a regiment of cavalry, and of an office
in the household of the Princess of Denmark. She made a struggle to
retain his services, and yielded only to a peremptory command of
her father. The Earl of Gainsborough was rejected, not only from the
lieutenancy of Hampshire, but also from the government of Portsmouth and
the rangership of the New Forest, two places for which he had, only a
few months before, given five thousand pounds. [320]

The King could not find Lords of great note, or indeed Protestant Lords
of any sort, who would accept the vacant offices. It was necessary
to assign two shires to Jeffreys, a new man whose landed property was
small, and two to Preston who was not even an English peer. The other
counties which had been left without governors were entrusted, with
scarcely an exception, to known Roman Catholics, or to courtiers who had
secretly promised the King to declare themselves Roman Catholics as soon
as they could do so with prudence.

At length the new machinery was put in action; and soon from every
corner of the realm arrived the news of complete and hopeless failure.
The catechism by which the Lords Lieutenants had been directed to test
the sentiments of the country gentlemen consisted of three questions.
Every magistrate and Deputy Lieutenant was to be asked, first, whether,
if he should be chosen to serve in Parliament, he would vote for a bill
framed on the principles of the Declaration of Indulgence; secondly,
whether, as an elector, he would support candidates who would engage to
vote for such a bill and, thirdly, whether, in his private capacity,
he would aid the King's benevolent designs by living in friendship with
people of all religious persuasions. [321]

As soon as the questions got abroad, a form of answer, drawn up with
admirable skill, was circulated all over the kingdom, and was generally
adopted. It was to the following effect: "As a member of the House of
Commons, should I have the honour of a seat there, I shall think it my
duty carefully to weigh such reasons as may be adduced in debate for
and against a Bill of Indulgence, and then to vote according to my
conscientious conviction. As an elector, I shall give my support to
candidates whose notions of the duty of a representative agree with my
own. As a private man, it is my wish to live in peace and charity with
every body. " This answer, far more provoking than a direct refusal,
because slightly tinged with a sober and decorous irony which could not
well be resented, was all that the emissaries of the court could extract
from most of the country gentlemen. Arguments, promises, threats, were
tried in vain. The Duke of Norfolk, though a Protestant, and though
dissatisfied with the proceedings of the government, had consented to
become its agent in two counties. He went first to Surrey, where he soon
found that nothing could be done. [322] He then repaired to Norfolk, and
returned to inform the King that, of seventy gentlemen of note who bore
office in that great province, only six had held out hopes that they
should support the policy of the court. [323] The Duke of Beaufort,
whose authority extended over four English shires and over the whole
principality of Wales, came up to Whitehall with an account not less
discouraging. [324] Rochester was Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire. All
his little stock of virtue had been expended in his struggle against the
strong temptation to sell his religion for lucre. He was still bound to
the court by a pension of four thousand pounds a year; and in return for
this pension he was willing to perform any service, however illegal or
degrading, provided only that he were not required to go through the
forms of a reconciliation with Rome. He had readily undertaken to manage
his county; and he exerted himself, as usual, with indiscreet heat and
violence. But his anger was thrown away on the sturdy squires to whom he
addressed himself. They told him with one voice that they would send up
no man to Parliament who would vote for taking away the safeguards
of the Protestant religion. [325] The same answer was given to the
Chancellor in Buckinghamshire. [326] The gentry of Shropshire, assembled
at Ludlow, unanimously refused to fetter themselves by the pledge which
the King demanded of them. [327] The Earl of Yarmouth reported from
Wiltshire that, of sixty magistrates and Deputy Lieutenants with whom
he had conferred, only seven had given favourable answers, and that even
those seven could not be trusted. [328] The renegade Peterborough made
no progress in Northamptonshire. [329] His brother renegade Dover was
equally unsuccessful in Cambridgeshire. [330] Preston brought cold news
from Cumberland and Westmoreland. Dorsetshire and Huntingdonshire were
animated by the same spirit. The Earl of Bath, after a long canvass,
returned from the West with gloomy tidings. He had been authorised to
make the most tempting offers to the inhabitants of that region. In
particular he had promised that, if proper respect were shown to the
royal wishes, the trade in tin should be freed from the oppressive
restrictions under which it lay. But this lure, which at another time
would have proved irresistible, was now slighted. All the justices
and Deputy Lieutenants of Devonshire and Cornwall, without a single
dissenting voice, declared that they would put life and property in
jeopardy for the King, but that the Protestant religion was dearer
to them than either life or property. "And, sir," said Bath, "if your
Majesty should dismiss all these gentlemen, their successors would give
exactly the same answer. " [331] If there was any district in which the
government might have hoped for success, that district was Lancashire.
Considerable doubts had been felt as to the result of what was passing
there. In no part of the realm had so many opulent and honourable
families adhered to the old religion. The heads of many of those
families had already, by virtue of the dispensing power, been made
justices of the Peace and entrusted with commands in the militia. Yet
from Lancashire the new Lord Lieutenant, himself a Roman Catholic,
reported that two thirds of his deputies and of the magistrates were
opposed to the court. [332] But the proceedings in Hampshire wounded the
King's pride still more deeply. Arabella Churchill had, more than twenty
years before, borne him a son, widely renowned, at a later period,
as one of the most skilful captains of Europe. The youth, named
James Fitzjames, had as yet given no promise of the eminence which he
afterwards attained: but his manners were so gentle and inoffensive that
he had no enemy except Mary of Modena, who had long hated the child of
the concubine with the bitter hatred of a childless wife. A small part
of the Jesuitical faction had, before the pregnancy of the Queen was
announced, seriously thought of setting him up as a competitor of the
Princess of Orange. [333] When it is remembered how signally Monmouth,
though believed by the populace to be legitimate, and though the
champion of the national religion, had failed in a similar competition,
it must seem extraordinary that any man should have been so much
blinded by fanaticism as to think of placing on the throne one who was
universally known to be a Popish bastard. It does not appear that this
absurd design was ever countenanced by the King. The boy, however, was
acknowledged; and whatever distinctions a subject, not of the royal
blood, could hope to attain were bestowed on him. He had been created
Duke of Berwick; and he was now loaded with honourable and lucrative
employments, taken from those noblemen who had refused to comply with
the royal commands. He succeeded the Earl of Oxford as Colonel of the
Blues, and the Earl of Gainsborough as Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire,
Ranger of the New Forest, and Governor of Portsmouth. On the frontier of
Hampshire Berwick expected to have been met, according to custom, by a
long cavalcade of baronets, knights and squires: but not a single person
of note appeared to welcome him. He sent out letters commanding the
attendance of the gentry: but only five or six paid the smallest
attention to his summons. The rest did not wait to be dismissed.
They declared that they would take no part in the civil or military
government of their county while the King was represented there by a
Papist, and voluntarily laid down their commissions. [334]

Sunderland, who had been named Lord Lieutenant of Warwickshire in the
room of the Earl of Northampton, found some excuse for not going down to
face the indignation and contempt of the gentry of that shire; and his
plea was the more readily admitted because the King had, by that time,
begun to feel that the spirit of the rustic gentry was not to be bent.
[335]

It is to be observed that those who displayed this spirit were not
the old enemies of the House of Stuart. The Commissions of Peace and
Lieutenancy had long been carefully purged of all republican names. The
persons from whom the court had in vain attempted to extract any promise
of support were, with scarcely an exception, Tories. The elder among
them could still show scars given by the swords of Roundheads, and
receipts for plate sent to Charles the First in his distress. The
younger had adhered firmly to James against Shaftesury and Monmouth.
Such were the men who were now turned out of office in a mass by the
very prince to whom they had given such signal proofs of fidelity.
Dismission however only made them more resolute. It had become a sacred
point of honour among them to stand stoutly by one another in this
crisis. There could be no doubt that, if the suffrage of the freeholders
were fairly taken, not a single knight of the shire favourable to the
policy of the government would be returned. Men therefore asked one
another, with no small anxiety, whether the suffrages were likely to be
fairly taken. The list of the Sheriffs for the new year was impatiently
expected. It appeared while the Lords Lieutenants were still engaged
in their canvass, and was received with a general cry of alarm and
indignation. Most of the functionaries who were to preside at the county
elections were either Roman Catholics or Protestant Dissenters who had
expressed their approbation of the Indulgence. [336] For a time the most
gloomy apprehensions prevailed: but soon they began to subside. There
was good reason to believe that there was a point beyond which the King
could not reckon on the support even of those Sheriffs who were members
of his own Church. Between the Roman Catholic courtier and the Roman
Catholic country gentleman there was very little sympathy. That cabal
which domineered at Whitehall consisted partly of fanatics, who were
ready to break through all rules of morality and to throw the world into
confusion for the purpose of propagating their religion, and partly of
hypocrites, who, for lucre, had apostatized from the faith in which they
had been brought up, and who now over acted the zeal characteristic
of neophytes. Both the fanatical and the hypocritical courtiers were
generally destitute of all English feeling. In some of them devotion
to their Church had extinguished every national sentiment. Some were
Irishmen, whose patriotism consisted in mortal hatred of the Saxon
conquerors of Ireland. Some, again, were traitors, who received regular
hire from a foreign power. Some had passed a great part of their lives
abroad, and either were mere cosmopolites, or felt a positive distaste
for the manners and institutions of the country which was now
subjected to their rule. Between such men and the lord of a Cheshire
or Staffordshire manor who adhered to the old Church there was scarcely
anything in common. He was neither a fanatic nor a hypocrite. He was a
Roman Catholic because his father and grandfather had been so; and he
held his hereditary faith, as men generally hold a hereditary faith,
sincerely, but with little enthusiasm. In all other points he was a
mere English squire, and, if he differed from the neighbouring squires,
differed from them by being somewhat more simple and clownish than
they. The disabilities under which he lay had prevented his mind from
expanding to the standard, moderate as that standard was, which
the minds of Protestant country gentlemen then ordinarily attained.
Excluded, when a boy, from Eton and Westminster, when a youth, from
Oxford and Cambridge, when a man, from Parliament and from the bench
of justice, he generally vegetated as quietly as the elms of the avenue
which led to his ancestral grange. His cornfields, his dairy and his
cider press, his greyhounds, his fishing rod and his gun, his ale and
his tobacco, occupied almost all his thoughts. With his neighbours, in
spite of his religion, he was generally on good terms. They knew him
to be unambitious and inoffensive. He was almost always of a good
old family. He was always a Cavalier. His peculiar notions were not
obtruded, and caused no annoyance. He did not, like a Puritan, torment
himself and others with scruples about everything that was pleasant. On
the contrary, he was as keen a sportsman, and as jolly a boon companion,
as any man who had taken the oath of supremacy and the declaration
against transubstantiation. He met his brother squires at the cover, was
in with them at the death, and, when the sport was over, took them home
with him to a venison pasty and to October four years in bottle. The
oppressions which he had undergone had not been such as to impel him
to any desperate resolution. Even when his Church was barbarously
persecuted, his life and property were in little danger. The most
impudent false witnesses could hardly venture to shock the common sense
of mankind by accusing him of being a conspirator. The Papists whom
Oates selected for attack were peers, prelates, Jesuits, Benedictines, a
busy political agent, a lawyer in high practice, a court physician. The
Roman Catholic country gentleman, protected by his obscurity, by his
peaceable demeanour, and by the good will of those among whom he lived,
carted his hay or filled his bag with game unmolested, while Coleman
and Langhorne, Whitbread and Pickering, Archbishop Plunkett and Lord
Stafford, died by the halter or the axe. An attempt was indeed made by
a knot of villains to bring home a charge of treason to Sir Thomas
Gascoigne, an aged Roman Catholic baronet of Yorkshire: but twelve of
the best gentlemen of the West Riding, who knew his way of life, could
not be convinced that their honest old acquaintance had hired cutthroats
to murder the King, and, in spite of charges which did very little
honour to the bench, found a verdict of Not Guilty. Sometimes, indeed,
the head of an old and respectable provincial family might reflect with
bitterness that he was excluded, on account of his religion, from places
of honour and authority which men of humbler descent and less ample
estate were thought competent to fill: but he was little disposed to
risk land and life in a struggle against overwhelming odds; and his
honest English spirit would have shrunk with horror from means such as
were contemplated by the Petres and Tyrconnels. Indeed he would have
been as ready as any of his Protestant neighbours to gird on his sword,
and to put pistols in his holsters, for the defence of his native land
against an invasion of French or Irish Papists. Such was the general
character of the men to whom James now looked as to his most trustworthy
instruments for the conduct of county elections. He soon found that they
were not inclined to throw away the esteem of their neighbours, and to
endanger their beads and their estates, by rendering him an infamous and
criminal service. Several of them refused to be Sheriffs. Of those who
accepted the shrievalty many declared that they would discharge their
duty as fairly as if they were members of the Established Church, and
would return no candidate who had not a real majority. [337]

If the King could place little confidence even in his Roman Catholic
Sheriffs, still less could he rely on the Puritans. Since the
publication of the Declaration several months had elapsed, months
crowded with important events, months of unintermitted controversy.
Discussion had opened the eyes of many Dissenters: but the acts of the
government, and especially the severity with which Magdalene College had
been treated, had done more than even the pen of Halifax to alarm and to
unite all classes of Protestants. Most of those sectaries who had been
induced to express gratitude for the Indulgence were now ashamed of
their error, and were desirous of making atonement by casting in their
lot with the great body of their countrymen.

The consequence of this change in the feeling of the Nonconformists, was
that the government found almost as great difficulty in the towns as in
the counties. When the regulators began their work, they had taken
it for granted that every Dissenter who had been induced to express
gratitude for the Indulgence would be favourable to the king's policy.
They were therefore confident that they should be able to fill all
the municipal offices in the kingdom with staunch friends. In the
new charters a power had been reserved to the crown of dismissing
magistrates at pleasure. This power was now exercised without limit. It
was by no means equally clear that James had the power of appointing new
magistrates: but, whether it belonged to him or not, he determined
to assume it. Everywhere, from the Tweed to the Land's End, Tory
functionaries were ejected, and the vacant places were filled with
Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists. In the new charter of the
City of London the crown had reserved the power of displacing the
masters, wardens, and assistants of all the companies. Accordingly more
than eight hundred citizens of the first consideration, all of them
members of that party which had opposed the Exclusion Bill, were turned
out of office by a single edict.
In a short time appeared a supplement
to this long list. [338] But scarcely had the new officebearers been
sworn in when it was discovered that they were as unmanageable as their
predecessors. At Newcastle on Tyne the regulators appointed a Roman
Catholic Mayor and Puritan Alderman. No doubt was entertained that the
municipal body, thus remodelled, would vote an address promising to
support the king's measures. The address, however, was negatived. The
mayor went up to London in a fury, and told the king that the Dissenters
were all knaves and rebels, and that in the whole corporation the
government could not reckon on more than four votes. [339] At Reading
twenty-four Tory aldermen were dismissed. Twenty-four new aldermen
were appointed. Twenty-three of these immediately declared against the
Indulgence, and were dismissed in their turn. [340] In the course of a
few days the borough of Yarmouth was governed by three different sets
of magistrates, all equally hostile to the court. [341] These are mere
examples of what was passing all over the kingdom. The Dutch Ambassador
informed the States that at many towns the public functionaries had,
within one month, been changed twice, and even thrice, and yet changed
in vain. [342] From the records of the Privy Council it appears that the
number of regulations, as they were called, exceeded two hundred. [343]
The regulators indeed found that, in not a few places, the change
had been for the worse. The discontented Tories, even while murmuring
against the king's policy, had constantly expressed respect for his
person and his office, and had disclaimed all thoughts of resistance.
Very different was the language of some of the new members of
corporations. It was said that old soldiers of the Commonwealth, who, to
their own astonishment and that of the public, had been made aldermen,
gave the agents of the court very distinctly to understand that blood
should flow before Popery and arbitrary power were established in
England. [344]

The regulators found that little or nothing had been gained by what had
as yet been done. There was one way, and one way only, in which they
could hope to effect their object. The charters of the boroughs must
be resumed; and other charters must be granted confining the elective
franchise to very small constituent bodies appointed by the sovereign.
[345]

But how was this plan to be carried into effect? In a few of the new
charters, indeed, a right of revocation had been reserved to the crown:
but the rest James could get into his hands only by voluntary surrender
on the part of corporations, or by judgment of the King's Bench. Few
corporations were now disposed to surrender their charters voluntarily;
and such judgments as would suit the purposes of the government were
hardly to be expected even from such a slave as Wright. The writs of Quo
Warranto which had been brought a few years before for the purpose of
crushing the Whig party had been condemned by every impartial man. Yet
those writs had at least the semblance of justice; for they were brought
against ancient municipal bodies; and there were few ancient municipal
bodies in which some abuse, sufficient to afford a pretext for a penal
proceeding, had not grown up in the course of ages. But the corporations
now to be attacked were still in the innocence of infancy. The oldest
among them had not completed its fifth year. It was impossible that many
of them should have committed offences meriting disfranchisement. The
Judges themselves were uneasy. They represented that what they were
required to do was in direct opposition to the plainest principles
of law and justice: but all remonstrance was vain. The boroughs were
commanded to surrender their charters. Few complied; and the course
which the King took with those few did not encourage others to trust
him. In several towns the right of voting was taken away from the
commonalty, and given to a very small number of persons, who were
required to bind themselves by oath to support the candidates
recommended by the government. At Tewkesbury, for example, the franchise
was confined to thirteen persons. Yet even this number was too large.
Hatred and fear had spread so widely through the community that it
was scarcely possible to bring together in any town, by any process of
packing, thirteen men on whom the court could absolutely depend. It was
rumoured that the majority of the new constituent body of Tewkesbury was
animated by the same sentiment which was general throughout the nation,
and would, when the decisive day should arrive, send true Protestants
to Parliament. The regulators in great wrath threatened to reduce the
number of electors to three. [346] Meanwhile the great majority of
the boroughs firmly refused to give up their privileges. Barnstaple,
Winchester, and Buckingham, distinguished themselves by the boldness of
their opposition. At Oxford the motion that the city should resign its
franchises to the King was negatived by eighty votes to two. [347] The
Temple and Westminster Hall were in a ferment with the sudden rush of
business from all corners of the kingdom. Every lawyer in high practice
was overwhelmed with the briefs from corporations. Ordinary litigants
complained that their business was neglected. [348] It was evident that
a considerable time must elapse before judgment could be given in so
great a number of important cases. Tyranny could ill brook this delay.
Nothing was omitted which could terrify the refractory boroughs into
submission. At Buckingham some of the municipal officers had spoken of
Jeffreys in language which was not laudatory. They were prosecuted, and
were given to understand that no mercy should be shown to them unless
they would ransom themselves by surrendering their charter. [349] At
Winchester still more violent measures were adopted. A large body of
troops was marched into the town for the sole purpose of burdening and
harassing the inhabitants. [350] The town continued resolute; and the
public voice loudly accused the King of imitating the worst crimes of
his brother of France. The dragonades, it was said, had begun. There was
indeed reason for alarm. It had occurred to James that he could not more
effectually break the spirit of an obstinate town than by quartering
soldiers on the inhabitants. He must have known that this practice had
sixty years before excited formidable discontents, and had been solemnly
pronounced illegal by the Petition of Right, a statute scarcely less
venerated by Englishmen than the Great Charter. But he hoped to obtain
from the courts of law a declaration that even the Petition of Right
could not control the prerogative. He actually consulted the Chief
justice of the King's Bench on this subject: [351] but the result of the
consultation remained secret; and in a very few weeks the aspect of
affairs became such that a fear stronger than even the fear of the royal
displeasure began to impose some restraint even on a man so servile as
Wright.

While the Lords Lieutenants were questioning the justices of the Peace,
while the regulators were remodelling the boroughs, all the public
departments were subjected to a strict inquisition. The palace was first
purified. Every battered old Cavalier, who, in return for blood and
lands lost in the royal cause, had obtained some small place under the
Keeper of the Wardrobe or the Master of the Harriers, was called upon to
choose between the King and the Church. The Commissioners of Customs
and Excise were ordered to attend His Majesty at the Treasury. There he
demanded from them a promise to support his policy, and directed them
to require a similar promise from all their subordinates. [352] One
Customhouse officer notified his submission to the royal will in a
way which excited both merriment and compassion. "I have," he said,
"fourteen reasons for obeying His Majesty's commands, a wife and
thirteen young children. " [353] Such reasons were indeed cogent; yet there
were not a few instances in which, even against such reasons, religious
and patriotic feelings prevailed.

There is reason to believe that the government at this time seriously
meditated a blow which would have reduced many thousands of families to
beggary, and would have disturbed the whole social system of every
part of the country. No wine, beer, or coffee could be sold without a
license. It was rumoured that every person holding such a license would
shortly be required to enter into the same engagements which had been
imposed on public functionaries, or to relinquish his trade. [354]
It seems certain that, if such a step had been taken, the houses of
entertainment and of public resort all over the kingdom would have been
at once shut up by hundreds. What effect such an interference with the
comfort of all ranks would have produced must be left to conjecture. The
resentment produced by grievances is not always proportioned to their
dignity; and it is by no means improbable that the resumption of
licenses might have done what the resumption of charters had failed
to do. Men of fashion would have missed the chocolate house in Saint
James's Street, and men of business the coffee pot, round which they
were accustomed to smoke and talk politics, in Change Alley. Half the
clubs would have been wandering in search of shelter. The traveller
at nightfall would have found the inn where he had expected to sup and
lodge deserted. The clown would have regretted the hedge alehouse, where
he had been accustomed to take his pot on the bench before the door in
summer, and at the chimney corner in winter. The nation might, perhaps
under such provocation, have risen in general rebellion without waiting
for the help of foreign allies.

It was not to be expected that a prince who required all the humblest
servants of the government to support his policy on pain of dismission
would continue to employ an Attorney General whose aversion to that
policy was no secret. Sawyer had been suffered to retain his situation
more than a year and a half after he had declared against the dispensing
power. This extraordinary indulgence he owed to the extreme difficulty
which the government found in supplying his place. It was necessary, for
the protection of the pecuniary interests of the crown, that at least
one of the two chief law officers should be a man of ability and
knowledge; and it was by no means easy to induce any barrister of
ability and knowledge to put himself in peril by committing every day
acts which the next Parliament would probably treat as high crimes and
misdemeanours. It had been impossible to procure a better Solicitor
General than Powis, a man who indeed stuck at nothing, but who was
incompetent to perform the ordinary duties of his post. In these
circumstances it was thought desirable that there should be a division
of labour. An Attorney, the value of whose professional talents was much
diminished by his conscientious scruples, was coupled with a Solicitor
whose want of scruples made some amends for his want of talents. When
the government wished to enforce the law, recourse was had to Sawyer.
When the government wished to break the law, recourse was had to Powis.
This arrangement lasted till the king obtained the services of an
advocate who was at once baser than Powis and abler than Sawyer.

No barrister living had opposed the court with more virulence than
William Williams. He had distinguished himself in the late reign as a
Whig and an Exclusionist. When faction was at the height, he had been
chosen Speaker of the House of Commons. After the prorogation of the
Oxford Parliament he had commonly been counsel for the most noisy
demagogues who had been accused of sedition. He was allowed to possess
considerable quickness and knowledge. His chief faults were supposed
to be rashness and party spirit. It was not yet suspected that he had
faults compared with which rashness and party spirit might well pass for
virtues. The government sought occasion against him, and easily found
it. He had published, by order of the House of Commons, a narrative
which Dangerfield had written. This narrative, if published by a
private man, would undoubtedly have been a seditious libel. A criminal
information was filed in the King's Bench against Williams: he pleaded
the privileges of Parliament in vain: he was convicted and sentenced
to a fine of ten thousand pounds. A large part of this sum he actually
paid: for the rest he gave a bond. The Earl of Peterborough, who had
been injuriously mentioned in Dangerfield's narrative, was encouraged,
by the success of the criminal information, to bring a civil action,
and to demand large damages. Williams was driven to extremity. At this
juncture a way of escape presented itself. It was indeed a way which, to
a man of strong principles or high spirit, would have been more dreadful
than beggary, imprisonment, or death. He might sell himself to that
government of which he had been the enemy and the victim. He might offer
to go on the forlorn hope in every assault on those liberties and on
that religion for which he had professed an inordinate zeal. He might
expiate his Whiggism by performing services from which bigoted Tories,
stained with the blood of Russell and Sidney, shrank in horror. The
bargain was struck. The debt still due to the crown was remitted.
Peterborough was induced, by royal mediation, to compromise his action.
Sawyer was dismissed. Powis became Attorney General. Williams was made
Solicitor, received the honour of knighthood, and was soon a favourite.
Though in rank he was only the second law officer of the crown, his
abilities, learning, and energy were such that he completely threw his
superior into the shade. [355]

Williams had not been long in office when he was required to bear a
chief part in the most memorable state trial recorded in the British
annals.

On the twenty-seventh of April 1688, the King put forth a second
Declaration of Indulgence. In this paper he recited at length the
Declaration of the preceding April. His past life, he said, ought to
have convinced his people that he was not a person who could easily
be induced to depart from any resolution which he had formed. But,
as designing men had attempted to persuade the world that he might be
prevailed on to give way in this matter, he thought it necessary to
proclaim that his purpose was immutably fixed, that he was resolved to
employ those only who were prepared to concur in his design, and that he
had, in pursuance of that resolution, dismissed many of his disobedient
servants from civil and military employments. He announced that he meant
to hold a Parliament in November at the latest; and he exhorted his
subjects to choose representatives who would assist him in the great
work which he had undertaken. [356]

This Declaration at first produced little sensation. It contained
nothing new; and men wondered that the King should think it worth while
to publish a solemn manifesto merely for the purpose of telling them
that he had not changed his mind. [357] Perhaps James was nettled by
the indifference with which the announcement of his fixed resolution was
received by the public, and thought that his dignity and authority would
suffer unless he without delay did something novel and striking. On
the fourth of May, accordingly, he made an Order in Council that his
Declaration of the preceding week should be read, on two successive
Sundays at the time of divine service, by the officiating ministers
of all the churches and chapels of the kingdom. In London and in
the suburbs the reading was to take place on the twentieth and
twenty-seventh of May, in other parts of England on the third and
tenth of June. The Bishops were directed to distribute copies of the
Declaration through their respective dioceses. [358]

When it is considered that the clergy of the Established Church, with
scarcely an exception, regarded the Indulgence as a violation of the
laws of the realm, as a breach of the plighted faith of the King, and
as a fatal blow levelled at the interest and dignity of their own
profession, it will scarcely admit of doubt that the Order in Council
was intended to be felt by them as a cruel affront. It was popularly
believed that Petre had avowed this intention in a coarse metaphor
borrowed from the rhetoric of the East. He would, he said, make them
eat dirt, the vilest and most loathsome of all dirt. But, tyrannical and
malignant as the mandate was, would the Anglican priesthood refuse to
obey? The King's temper was arbitrary and severe. The proceedings of the
Ecclesiastical Commission were as summary as those of a court martial.
Whoever ventured to resist might in a week be ejected from his
parsonage, deprived of his whole income, pronounced incapable of holding
any other spiritual preferment, and left to beg from door to door. If,
indeed, the whole body offered an united opposition to the royal will,
it was probable that even James would scarcely venture to punish
ten thousand delinquents at once. But there was not time to form an
extensive combination. The Order in Council was gazetted on the seventh
of May. On the twentieth the Declaration was to be read in all the
pulpits of London and the neighbourhood. By no exertion was it possible
in that age to ascertain within a fortnight the intentions of one tenth
part of the parochial ministers who were scattered over the kingdom.
It was not easy to collect in so short a time the sense even of the
episcopal order. It might also well be apprehended that, if the clergy
refused to read the Declaration, the Protestant Dissenters would
misinterpret the refusal, would despair of obtaining any toleration from
the members of the Church of England, and would throw their whole weight
into the scale of the court.

The clergy therefore hesitated; and this hesitation may well be excused:
for some eminent laymen, who possessed a large share of the public
confidence, were disposed to recommend submission. They thought that
a general opposition could hardly be expected, and that a partial
opposition would be ruinous to individuals, and of little advantage to
the Church and to the nation. Such was the opinion given at this time
by Halifax and Nottingham. The day drew near; and still there was no
concert and no formed resolution. [359]

At this conjuncture the Protestant Dissenters of London won for
themselves a title to the lasting gratitude of their country. They had
hitherto been reckoned by the government as part of its strength. A few
of their most active and noisy preachers, corrupted by the favours of
the court, had got up addresses in favour of the King's policy. Others,
estranged by the recollection of many cruel wrongs both from the
Church of England and from the House of Stuart, had seen with resentful
pleasure the tyrannical prince and the tyrannical hierarchy separated
by a bitter enmity, and bidding against each other for the help of sects
lately persecuted and despised. But this feeling, however natural, had
been indulged long enough. The time had come when it was necessary to
make a choice: and the Nonconformists of the City, with a noble spirit,
arrayed themselves side by side with the members of the Church in
defence of the fundamental laws of the realm. Baxter, Bates, and Howe
distinguished themselves by their efforts to bring about this coalition:
but the generous enthusiasm which pervaded the whole Puritan body made
the task easy. The zeal of the flocks outran that of the pastors. Those
Presbyterian and Independent teachers who showed an inclination to take
part with the King against the ecclesiastical establishment received
distinct notice that, unless they changed their conduct, their
congregations would neither hear them nor pay them. Alsop, who had
flattered himself that he should be able to bring over a great body of
his disciples to the royal side, found himself on a sudden an object
of contempt and abhorrence to those who had lately revered him as their
spiritual guide, sank into a deep melancholy, and hid himself from the
public eye. Deputations waited on several of the London clergy imploring
them not to judge of the dissenting body from the servile adulation
which had lately filled the London Gazette, and exhorting them, placed
as they were in the van of this great fight, to play the men for the
liberties of England and for the faith delivered to the Saints. These
assurances were received with joy and gratitude. Yet there was still
much anxiety and much difference of opinion among those who had to
decide whether, on Sunday the twentieth, they would or would not obey
the King's command. The London clergy, then universally acknowledged to
be the flower of their profession, held a meeting. Fifteen Doctors
of Divinity were present. Tillotson, Dean of Canterbury, the most
celebrated preacher of the age, came thither from a sick bed. Sherlock,
Master of the Temple, Patrick, Dean of Peterborough and Rector of
the important parish of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, and Stillingfleet,
Archdeacon of London and Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, attended. The
general feeling of the assembly seemed to be that it was, on the whole,
advisable to obey the Order in Council. The dispute began to wax warm,
and might have produced fatal consequences, if it had not been brought
to a close by the firmness and wisdom of Doctor Edward Fowler, Vicar of
St. Giles's, Cripplegate, one of a small but remarkable class of divines
who united that love of civil liberty which belonged to the school of
Calvin with the theology of the school of Arminius. [360] Standing up,
Fowler spoke thus: "I must be plain. The question is so simple that
argument can throw no new light on it, and can only beget heat. Let
every man say Yes or No. But I cannot consent to be bound by the vote
of the majority. I shall be sorry to cause a breach of unity. But this
Declaration I cannot in conscience read. " Tillotson, Patrick, Sherlock,
and Stillingfleet declared that they were of the same mind. The majority
yielded to the authority of a minority so respectable. A resolution
by which all present pledged themselves to one another not to read the
Declaration was then drawn up. Patrick was the first who set his hand
to it; Fowler was the second. The paper was sent round the city, and was
speedily subscribed by eighty-five incumbents. [361]

Meanwhile several of the Bishops were anxiously deliberating as to the
course which they should take. On the twelfth of May a grave and
learned company was assembled round the table of the Primate at Lambeth.
Compton, Bishop of London, Turner, Bishop of Ely, White, Bishop of
Peterborough, and Tenison, Rector of St. Martin's parish, were among the
guests. The Earl of Clarendon, a zealous and uncompromising friend of
the Church, had been invited. Cartwright, Bishop of Chester, intruded
himself on the meeting, probably as a spy. While he remained, no
confidential communication could take place; but, after his departure,
the great question of which all minds were full was propounded and
discussed. The general opinion was that the Declaration ought not to be
read. Letters were forthwith written to several of the most respectable
prelates of the province of Canterbury, entreating them to come
up without delay to London, and to strengthen the hands of their
metropolitan at this conjuncture. [362] As there was little doubt that
these letters would be opened if they passed through the office in
Lombard Street, they were sent by horsemen to the nearest country post
towns on the different roads. The Bishop of Winchester, whose loyalty
had been so signally proved at Sedgemoor, though suffering from
indisposition, resolved to set out in obedience to the summons, but
found himself unable to bear the motion of a coach. The letter addressed
to William Lloyd, Bishop of Norwich, was, in spite of all precautions,
detained by a postmaster; and that prelate, inferior to none of his
brethren in courage and in zeal for the common cause of his order, did
not reach London in time. [363] His namesake, William Lloyd, Bishop of
St. Asaph, a pious, honest, and learned man, but of slender judgment,
and half crazed by his persevering endeavours to extract from Daniel and
the Revelations some information about the Pope and the King of France,
hastened to the capital and arrived on the sixteenth. [364] On the
following day came the excellent Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, Lake,
Bishop of Chichester, and Sir John Trelawney, Bishop of Bristol, a
baronet of an old and honourable Cornish family.

On the eighteenth a meeting of prelates and of other eminent divines
was held at Lambeth. Tillotson, Tenison, Stillingfleet, Patrick,
and Sherlock, were present. Prayers were solemnly read before the
consultation began. After long deliberation, a petition embodying the
general sense was written by the Archbishop with his own hand. It was
not drawn up with much felicity of style. Indeed, the cumbrous and
inelegant structure of the sentences brought on Sancroft some raillery,
which he bore with less patience than he showed under much heavier
trials. But in substance nothing could be more skilfully framed than
this memorable document. All disloyalty, all intolerance, was earnestly
disclaimed. The King was assured that the Church still was, as she had
ever been, faithful to the throne. He was assured also that the Bishops
would, in proper place and time, as Lords of Parliament and members
of the Upper House of Convocation, show that they by no means wanted
tenderness for the conscientious scruples of Dissenters.